05-12-2010
To open the show this morning Mark and Debbie talk about a new 3-D Centerfold Playboy readers will receive in the next issue.
A wife e-mails about a naked sky diver, and a man wants to share a hotel room with his girlfriend to save money. A husband is looking for help after being denied sex for 16 years and sleeps in a different room. A young woman wants to know what to do with her boyfriend that is trying to get away from her.
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Regarding the question about 16 years without sex, I have not encountered in any of the numerous pastoral and professional counseling sessions I have attended, sexual refusal has never been characterized as being unfaithful. It’s a problem, to be sure, but one to be sympathized with – more non-sexual touch, etc…
(bad sentence structure above….sorry)
Further, why do people wait so long to address it? Because we are told, “sex isn’t the most important thing in marriage.” See Focus on the Family and other similar ministries. Well, that automatically puts it way down on the list. Mark, you are about the only one in Christian circles who promotes the sexual contract idea. Bringing it up with friends? Never had any success with that, partly because I would believe that the women were in a similar situation as we were. This was not considered a make or break issue in the marriage. AND, in my case, that we weren’t having sex must have been because of me.
I’d like to see any references to external sources (the Torah?) that I can use to support the assertation that marriage is a “essentially a sexual contract”. I’m not disagreeing myself, but am about to preach on marriage/sex in my church and would love to be able to defend this point as it’s so radical and unusual to what we have heard in Christianity before.
cheers,
KC
@KC
This resource is not directly addressing your question, however does take a cultural view of the discussion Jesus had with the Pharisees about divorce.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/october/20.26.html
Within this article, it does point to some of the nature of the OT marriage contract. If I recall, the article points to the bigger paper on this topic. I’d point out that Instone-Brewer’s assertions here are not without controversy. Just google it.