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Can Moral Erotic Materials Help Christian Marriages?
If Christians had the freedom to use moral erotic material to help their marriages, would Christian marriages be stronger resulting in lower Christian divorce rates?
At a marriage seminar put on by the Bible Church we were members of, the Pastor who spoke, told us that seventy five percent of married Evangelical married men masturbate regularly due to marriage intimacy problems.
Last year I was telling a friend about MarriageRomance.com. He is an advising director for one of the divisions of Campus Crusade for Christ. He said that Christians definitely need help in this area. He said if you take nine Evangelical Christian married couples, three are in the process of getting divorced, three don't have anything to do with each other in bed, and three are struggling with having a romantic life together.
I told another friend about the site. He worked for Campus Crusade For Christ for twenty-five years. He said that it was worth a try to start this site, because he said something is needed. He said, “You know what I couldn't understand, was that the Holy Spirit didn't seem to make a difference in Christian marriages.” He said, “You know, divorce rates are higher among Christians.”
Could it be that divorce rates are high in Christian marriages because the Church does not want to admit that Christian married couples are not just spiritual and physical beings but also sexual beings? I remember Harold Sala saying once on “Guide Lines For Living”, that Christians need to admit that we are sexual beings.
Could it be that Christian culture has misinterpreted what Jesus said about “lust” and so they are zeroing in on regulating “lust” instead of focusing on the real issues behind marriage problems, and in thus doing creating problems?
Could it be the Church has elevated the sin of "lust" above marriage itself, thus weakening Christian marriages and causing many divorces in the process?
Jesus condemned a good idea “Corban” (which was pledging property to the Church) because it resulted in the Jews not taking care of their elderly parents.
Would Jesus condemn our Christian concept of “lust”, because Jesus knows it is a misinterpretation of what He said, and he knows while it is generally a good idea, but when it is rigorously applied to marriage, it weakens marriages and causes divorces? Click here to see what we feel Jesus meant when he said, it is adultery to look at a woman to lust after her.
Maybe Jesus knows that the real problem in Christian marriages is that married couples get upset when their spouse does not live up to their expectations. And the church needs to focus less on beating up spouses for how they try to cope in a bad marriage, and instead focus on helping married couples learn to be content and be happy with each other.
During the first years of marriage and during the childbearing years, many married couples need help in the area of intimacy. The Church needs to allow married couples to use moral Godly tools to help their love life stay strong. If the bonds of intimacy unravel during this time in their marriage, the resulting bitterness spreads like a cancer, destroying the relationship in other areas of the marriage too. Sometimes up to twenty or thirty years later, is when the couple ends up getting divorced due to these problems early in their marriage.
Christian marriages need moral tools to work with in the area of intimacy. In Jesus day and in the Old Testament, women could not divorce their husbands, while husbands could divorce their wives easily. And husbands were allowed to have multiple wives. So a wife was very loyal to her husband. While this was not optimal for women, it did help women to have respect and be attentive to her husband's needs.
In our day, men and women can divorce each other easily, and so they easily loose respect for each other.
When a couple first marries, they are normally deeply in love. Months or years after the honeymoon, if the couple begins to argue with each other and loose respect for each other, the couple may not feel like having sex with each other.
Once the couple is not meeting each other's emotional or physical sexual needs, the bonds of intimacy and closeness of marriage begin to unravel.
Once a married couple stops having a healthy sex life, emotional and physical sexual energy begins to build within each of them. Over a period of time, this excess emotional sexual energy may cause one or both of the couple to withdraw from each other and fill their time with other activities and sometimes do secret sexual things behind each other's back.
From flirting, looking at porn, reading romance novels, going to topless bars, watching soap operas and TV shows, to getting deeply involved with a hobby, sports, spending excess time at church or in some other organization or some other activity, these all can be ways the married person who's sexual needs are not getting met, tries to make up for not having a good relationship with their spouse.
We believe that many times when married men look at porn, they are using it as a way to relieve excess sexual emotional energy and survive in a marriage where they have a less than wonderful sexual relationship with their spouse. This could be comparable to having more than one wife in Bible times. Please remember that a wife in Bible times could not tell her husband that he could not have an additional wife.
My wife has commented that she thinks a woman would rather have a husband who is faithful to her and looks at pictures with her, than have a husband with multiple wives. In Bible times women did not have a choice. And God did not seem to think this arrangement was wrong.
We defend husbands, not to condone them looking at porn, but rather to take the focus off of beating up the husband which leads to his public disgrace and usually to divorce.
What many times happens, is that the wife tells her Pastor and she insists that her husband go to counseling, or else face separation or divorce, and the husband ends up feeling betrayed by his wife, and so the marriage relationship ends up destroyed. He becomes as critical of her as she is of him and the marriage is a war zone.
We believe Jesus would rather us error on the side of saving a marriage rather than error on the side of causing a divorce. We believe Jesus would not single out one sin as worse than another in marriage. Jesus taught that getting angry is murder. And wanting something that you don't need is usually covetousness, which is worse than worshipping an idol. And the list could go on. And so we think it is important that the husband and wife maintain a mutual respect for each other and not think that they are better than their spouse.
We feel that when a husband and wife are upset with each other and begin to withdraw and begin to have their needs met from other sources, that all the ways they do it are wrong.
Whether it is porn on the internet, or spending all their time at church, or spending their nights at the bar, or surfing the web to all hours, or absorbed in a hobby, or watching TV, or excessively involved with sports, or anything that a married person uses to as a substitute for a good relationship with their spouse is wrong because it is hurting their marriage.
We believe married couples should work these things out between each other and God. We believe that if a married couple really loves each other and loves God; they can work their problems out anonymously and save their dignity and their marriage.
Jesus introduced grace. The motivation for being good under grace is love. And when there is love there is no need for the law. We believe that if the husband and wife can stay deeply in love and can use tools to help them, then they will mature and not need the tools later in life.
We suggest that the proper response to a husband looking at porn is for his wife to say, “What is it in our marriage that is not optimal, and is causing you to feel the need to look at porn? What can we do together as a couple to meet your needs so you do not need to look at porn.” Maybe initially it may be necessary to look at the pictures together at night before having sex. Or maybe reading or listening to MarriageRomance.com stories together would be enough to help the husband to look forward to being with his wife instead of secretly looking at porn.
We believe a man can be happy with one wife, if they both love the Lord and want to serve God together.
We feel the key to being happy as a married couple is for both the husband and wife to have a desire to please God and to be content with what God has given them.
If you do not know Jesus as your personal Savior please click here, or here.
The Bible teaches over and over, that God wants us to be happy with what He has given us. Adam and Eve sinned because they were not content with what God gave them - they wanted more; the knowledge of good and evil. When Moses led the nation of Israel out of captivity, the nation constantly complained about their conditions. God had to punish them for not being content. God wants us to be content with what we have.
We believe that the problems in marriage are caused because the husband or wife, or both are not happy with what God has given them.
Some people are poor and can't afford what they want, and so many times they are not content with what they have and end up coveting the things other people have. This covetousness of wanting what others have can end up showing it's ugly face as a spouse that is constantly complaining to their mate that others have more than they do and when are we going to be able to afford this or that. God wants married couples to be happy even if they are poor compared to the standards of those around them. A real test of spirituality is a spouse who is content with their spouse when they do not have much money.
And when people are rich, and can afford anything they want, they are just as guilty for buying all the stuff. Covetousness is still a sin, when you can afford and do buy stuff that you do not need. This is why Jesus told the rich man to give all he had to the poor. This is also why Jesus said it's harder for a rich man to get into heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. And this is why the New Testament warns repeatedly about how the love of riches and the love of money are wrong.
A true test of a spiritual spouse is one that will live on less money, even though they couple has much more money, and use the extra money to send missionaries and help the poor and use the money for God instead of shopping habitually.
God says, "Love not the world neither the things of the world, if anyone loves the world, the love of God is not in him."
The way we should look at life is that all the things here on earth, are tools to be used to further God's Kingdom. And when we don't use the things here on earth for God's Kingdom, then they become a wedge between God and us.
So everything we do and buy and say should be filtered through a screen that asks us; “Is this only for me, or is this something that will help me further the Kingdom of God?”
We strongly recommend that when a married couple is not being intimate with each other, that they should not do things behind each other's back. They should not withdrawal from each other filling their time with other activities, but rather they should start communicating and working out their problems.
Before they even work out their problem they should decide to love each other and provide for each other's emotional and physical sexual needs. A healthy sex life is contagious, and will help heal other parts of the marriage too.
But how can a couple enjoy being intimate with each other when their own emotions are not telling them they are in love and want to make love?
Our web site MarriageRomance.com was founded to help married couples in this area.
Here at MarriageRomance.com we try to provide a moral way that married couples can increase passion and sexual desire in their marriage.
We encourage the husband and wife to commit to each other and God, that they will stop all their secret sins, and stop any activities they are filling their time with, and instead devote all their emotional and sexual energy to their spouse until their relationship is healed.
And a good way to begin feeling in love again is to begin reading together or listening to our mild marriage romance writings together. The stories have a way of melting away bitterness and renewing your love for your spouse when you both listen to them together.
For spice in bed, the couple may want to listen or read some of the medium or hot stories while they caress each other. This way their sexual energy helps build a stronger marriage. Building a strong marriage makes for a useful couple who can serve God together better.
We believe the Kingdom Of God will be blessed when Christian marriages know about this site and are not condemned by other Christians when they decide to use it to help their marriages stay healthy.
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