I once got into a debate with a legalistic Christian about exceeding speed limits. I have no qualms whatsoever about doing so because I know judges dismiss tickets earned for driving a few miles per hour above posted limits. He insisted I was sinning. He failed to see his flawed logic. If judges who uphold the law agree I wasn’t breaking the law, then who was he to tell me I was?
Moralistic and straight-laced Christians are people who have so boxed themselves into law-keeping that they’re unable to process the possibility of setting aside what feels good from what is good.
Running red lights and driving at 60 in a 30 feels dangerous. Because it is. But if performed by an ambulance rushing to save lives, it’s an act of grace.
Religion stunts your growth spiritually, psychologically, sexually, maritally and socially.
Religion is the reason a female blog follower said she’s in a marriage in which she feels emotionally distant and heartbroken. It’s the cause of my earlier tension in determining whether to pursue a marital ANR in the first place.
If I were still ensnared by religion, Christ-centered ANR won’t exist.
If Christ were entangled in 21st century American religion, Luke 23:29 would be censored and He would have damned the woman in 11:27 to hell.
Be very careful who you allow to shape your soul. Joshua Harris, author of the widely popular I Kissed Dating Goodbye and other well-known Christian manuals on dating and purity, has not only divorced his wife, he has also renounced his faith.
I’m especially shocked because I, along with other godly Christians I know, read his books and trusted his godly insights.
I thank God that in recent years, though, especially since founding this blog in 2014, I’ve come to question these insights and have grown out of the unbiblical asceticism and moralism Harris taught.
Thank you, B.H.C. and K.O.K. churches, along with multiple individual Christians, for being some of God’s instruments of breaking me from my legalism. Most importantly, thank you, Holy Spirit for showing me that it’s okay to celebrate my physical desires and desire an ANR, along with deep, enjoyable sexual intimacy in marriage.
Our problem is we rely on our own efforts to achieve purity and holiness rather than the Spirit, so this results in tragedies like Joshua Harris or my former roommate who likely avoided the Song of Solomon because it made him stumble.
Be extremely cautious who you allow to shepherd your heart. Resist legalism and moralism. Discard anything that doesn’t align with God’s word, including his mandate that we have great sex in marriage.
“I think the problem with the Boomers wasn’t that they embraced postmodernism, so much as that they were simply self-absorbed. And the reason people like Joshua Harris who follow a Puritanical form of Christianity lose their faith, is that the object of that kind of religion ultimately turns to self. If I am trying to be holier than God even asked me to be, my worship gets directed toward myself. Jesus warned Pharisees against replacing God’s commands with human commands. And Paul tells us to run the race, keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus. I believe Satan deceives us into making a small shift where we shift our focus to ourselves, practicing right living, and what we come out with is a dead religion that will fail to protect us. When faced with conservative Christian beliefs arguing with progressive Christian beliefs, I can’t help but think that both sides are missing thr point. It is God’s kindness that leads us to repentance, it is his love that saves us, and if we love him we learn to love his design. We cannot win hearts with arguments and proofs.”
I’m a Christian. I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I don’t use bad words. My shirt is always well-tucked. Whenever I fart or use the bathroom, it always smells like roses.
This is the fake, pretentious, moralistic brand of Christianity that is prevalent in most ultra conservative churches, is very damning to the soul, and Jesus warns against when He condemns the Pharisees.
“Critics sometimes argue that passages extolling the pleasures of sex are inappropriate and should not be in the Bible. The book of Pr, though, sees sex as a gift from God that is to be enjoyed in the context of the commitment of marriage. An intimate relationship with one’s spouse and the physical delight such a relationship can bring is commended by Pr and is seen as a powerful antidote to the temptations that can lead to unfaithfulness and immorality.”
Some people find this blog by googling things like “is it sinful to breastfeed my husband?”, and I received this on Wednesday on my Facebook page: “I CANNO’T UNDERSTAND CHRIST CENTERED ANR.HOW CAN LOVE FOR BOOBS AND LOVE FOR CHRIST GO TOGETHER?”
It may seem to many that I am preaching a sexualized form of the have-it-your-way prosperity gospel.
However I’ve come to realize that it’s possible to loathe the prosperity gospel to an unhealthy extent. I should know. That used to be me.
If anyone preaches any other gospel, let them be accursed, warns Galatians 1:8, so I understand the apprehension of many believers when faced with unfamiliar biblical exegeses or potentially compromising/tempting lifestyles.
But those who preach the orthodox gospel tend to ignore biblical allusions to earthly stability.
Of first importance is the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ, but God, being rich in mercy and love, also cares about our earthly needs. Problem is, sinners often misplace our priorities by stressing the mundane over the celestial. At the end of the day, God still wants us to live lives full of joy because the Son rose.
I responded thus to the Facebook message:
“Hi there friend. I really appreciate your honest but interesting question.
You see, this is exactly why there’s a need for Christ-centered ANR. If you read Proverbs 5:19, you’ll observe that Christ unequivocally exhorts me to enjoy my wife’s breasts.
Love for Christ and love for boobs go perfectly well together, as long as all the fun is kept strictly within the marriage covenant.
Please read my post titled ‘Am I twisting Scripture to justify my kinky fetish?’ because I tackle this subject there. Thanks.”
I know many Christians, including some of the church friends mentioned here would think it irreverent for Christians to even contemplate such a thing as an Adult Nursing Relationship. This shows that even Christians aren’t exempt from making God in their own image. But prim and proper doesn’t mean godly and reverent.
Careful study of Song of Solomon reveals that our God does not at all shy away from erotica, and a proper hermeneutic of Song 8:2, 7:8 and Proverbs 5:19 indicates that He sees nothing irreverent about Couples Nursing.
Someone else said this relationship takes the focus off God, while in fact God gets His glory out of every non-sinful thing we do. We need not become overseas missionaries to glorify God.
Pastor JF told me that God gave us the institution of marriage as a means of propagating the gospel by virtue of it being the most natural way to make disciples. I think there are few things more beautiful than believers making more believers, naturally.
Sex is spiritual. When believers have sex, the beauty of the gospel is lived out.
Self-giving sex in the way of the Cross only leads believers to fall more deeply in love with Jesus Christ and better understand the gospel and the Trinity.
Christ’s objective in voluntarily letting His own creatures kill Him isn’t limited to the reconciliation of God and man. It also includes reconciling man to man, or in this case, man to woman. Superior, God-glorifying sex is one of the benefits of having faith in Christ’s atonement.
Blogging about sex, specifically Adult Nursing Relationships, and reaping stronger Christian marriages as a result is the gospel in action.
“Life is good, eternal life is better.” – Stellar Kart
“Redeemer represents a middle ground, he says, between the moralism of conventional right-wing Christianity and what he regards as the do-what-feels-right narcissism of secular culture.”
One of the reasons I absolutely love Tim Keller is that he’s one of the exceedingly rare pastors in America who tries to walk the fine line between theological conservatism and loving everyone regardless of race, gender, religion, socio-economic status or sexual orientation. This well-roundedness is what orthodox Christianity teaches. Despite this, he comes under fire even from fellow believers.
The quote above is reminiscent of mine from ‘When Purity Becomes an Idol‘: “Of all human beings on the planet, Christians who are neither moralistic nor legalistic have it best. They get to enjoy the best of both this life and eternity.”
I’ve become well acquainted with a Pastor JF, another man of God. I discussed with him the brother from the conservative website who prescribed to his male readers that slip into pornography a 12-month cleansing period, during which they’re to avoid dating.
Granted, if I had a teenage daughter, and some dude were to ring my doorbell saying “hi, I’m Joe Schmo. I’m here to take your daughter on a date. Oh, by the way, I just viewed porn about 30 minutes ago”, honestly, my instinct would be to karate him back where he came from and slam the door shut. And I don’t even know karate.
So clearly, we see that some healing time is necessary, he’s right about that. 30 minutes of porn purity won’t be enough to date my daughter, and I’m sure many dads would be with me on this. But where do we draw the line or set the window of acceptance? 60 minutes? 7 days? 12 months? There’s no hard and fast rule given in Scripture. But we cannot, and must not insist everyone follow our own subjective healing intervals. Pastor JF thought his 12-month ban was arbitrary.
Which makes me wonder: why do so many of us fail to be Berean, why do we instead blindly respect those who come up with arbitrary rules and dress them up as Christian?
You weep over your sin because of the sin, not because of the holy and righteous God it offends.
You prioritize your thought life over your spiritual life.
You vehemently disagree with this statement: “there needs to be a fair amount of primal, sexual and physical attraction between a man and woman who are considering dating or marriage.”
You judge believers that do things requiring moderation/discernment but aren’t sinful, such as drinking alcohol or talking to attractive members of the opposite sex to whom they’re not married.
You observe cleansing rituals like a Pharisee.
You think a good Christian is someone who doesn’t watch any popular TV shows or movies.
You focus more on your physical health than the gospel.
Rather pursuing God’s heart as revealed in the Scriptures, you pursue having a clean conscience and environment.
The mere mention of certain body parts and bodily fluids that God sees as part of His good created order and are mentioned in the Bible, such as ‘breasts’ and ‘semen’, does violence to your soul.
Your body reacts involuntarily whenever someone uses profanity near you.
You consider it taboo to discuss sex in polite company. No amount of caution/child-proof filtering is sufficient for you.
When is purity an idol if God’s eyes are too pure to look at evil (Hab. 1:13)?
Three years ago, I shared a house with a number of roommates, all Christian guys. Incidentally, when implicitly discussing certain ‘intimate desires’ of mine with the house, one of the roommies counseled me to try deferring thoughts of sex until marriage.
Thank God I’ve grown in the intervening years since the roommate “counsel”. Yes, we ought to defer super explicit thoughts of sex until marriage, but I now realize that thinking of sex the way God does is beautiful and is nothing to be ashamed of, even when single. I still love them, but I won’t place myself in their kind of Pharisaic environment again.
Colossians 2:16-23 reads “Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink … [t]hese are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person [is] puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind. They have lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow. Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules: “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.”
And 1 Timothy 4:1-5: “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.”
RC Sproul comments on vv. 3 and 4: “The false teachers promoted a rigorous lifestyle (cf. Colossians 2:20-23). Some Gnostics argued that since the material world was evil, the spiritual individual should avoid it…[t]he following argument focuses on foods. Paul has already affirmed marriage in 3:2, 12 …[c]ontrary to the false teachers, the Christian affirms the essential goodness of God’s creation (Gen. 1).”
In Luke 7:36-50, Jesus saved the sinful woman that had an alabaster jar. Like Simon the Pharisee, moralists think no one who claims to represent God should even touch a woman like that. In v. 50, Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” We see from the preceding Scriptures that what saves us isn’t a life of sound morals, or the abstention from things or people we consider dirty, it’s faith in Christ alone. If moralists and legalists were in Christ’s shoes, only the “clean” would be saved.
If purity is your idol, you inevitably will have a very lopsided view of God.
Biblical holiness says “since I’ve been bought with a price, I won’t hesitate to sever any body parts that jeopardize my relationship with my Savior.” Moralism says “Why don’t I sever my body parts? That way, I’m guaranteed to feel holier.” Moralism has it backwards.
I too used to be very moralistic. I fought to keep my CN desires at bay because something in my puritanical conscience made it seem dirty, and I thought a holy God would never approve, at least not without a ring on my finger. However, after researching and embracing Couples Nursing as a healthy lifestyle that is highly compatible with a Christian worldview, my view of who God is has expanded: it’s now a lot richer, deeper, and more closely matches who He has revealed Himself to be. Moralists/legalists are far too narrow-minded about God’s character and attributes. They’re striving so hard for holiness that they miss it completely, because they strive according to their own human definition of holiness.
In 1 Timothy 5:22-23, the apostle Paul says “Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, nor take part in the sins of others; keep yourself pure. (No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments).”
Did you catch that? In one verse Paul exhorts Timothy to purity, then in the next he advises him to drink a little wine for health reasons. Also consider the all-too-familiar miracle of Jesus turning water to wine. The triune God directly endorses the consumption of alcohol in moderation because He knows that a little wine does absolutely nothing to defile us. It’s what comes out of us that defiles. RC Sproul again comments on v. 23: “the practice of abstaining from wine as a matter of principle perhaps reflects the influence of the false teachers’ concept of purity (4:3) … Paul recognizes the medicinal value of wine.”
God’s goal in preserving His Word was far greater than merely multiplying people’s knowledge or improving their morals. The Bible “is not an inspired book of moralisms or a book of virtues; it is, from cover to cover, a book about the glory of God in Jesus Christ through the redemption of his people who will dwell in the kingdom of Christ forever” … The center-point of Scripture is Jesus Christ himself, and the goal of the storyline of Scripture is his kingdom …we [must] make certain that Scripture transforms us and turns us toward Christ…
-Timothy Paul Jones, PhD, How we got the Bible, 18.
Christianity is so not about morality. Moralism is a false gospel with a near-perfect record in flying under the radar and creeping into the Church, even to the pulpit.
In Luke 11:37-41, “[w]hile Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to dine with him, so he went in and reclined at table. The Pharisee was astonished to see that he did not first wash before dinner. And the Lord said to him, ‘Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also? But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you.”
Purity starts from the inside out, not outside in. Again, legalism/moralism has it backwards, as Sheila Wray Gregoire expresses below:
Personally, the older I get the more I think that most rules are antithetical to the gospel. If it were honestly about rules, we wouldn’t need to “walk by the Spirit”. If rules were all that it took to achieve purity, then we wouldn’t need Jesus!
She goes on to admonish Christians against judging fellow brothers and sisters in Christ for having standards of purity that differ but aren’t necessarily sinful. She then emphasizes the centrality of the Spirit/gospel over the “purity culture” or man-made moralistic rules.
Habakkuk says God’s eyes are too pure to look at evil, but human purity often leads to a self-serving performance trap. God’s piety and ours are on totally different levels. He defines purity as holiness, sacredness and righteousness but we tend to see it as moralistic cleanliness, both in thought and environment, as we’ll see in the examples below. Whenever we pursue purity to “feel clean” rather than honor Jesus, we’ve just fashioned purity into an idol.
An older man at a former church recounted his marital difficulties with his ex-wife, who in hindsight wasn’t even Christian. “She was just one of these really moralistic types”, he lamented. While courting her, her pseudo-Christian worldview had him deceived, but everything hidden eventually comes to light (Luke 12:2). As the years went by, she no longer could tolerate his love for Christ, and filed for divorce. A “Christian” divorced another for being too Christian. What’s worse, her “pastors” sided with her completely.
God promises that absolutely no wrongdoers will inherit His kingdom. He says no sin whatsoever will be granted admission into Heaven but He singles out some specific sins in 1 Corinthians 6. “And that is what some of you were”, we’re told. “But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11)
Notice that we’re not washed, sanctified or justified by our own sense of morals, clean thoughts or virtuous upbringing but “in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” The blood of Jesus alone washes us clean. If you really want to feel clean, focus on the Crucifixion and Resurrection. Regrettably, I’ve met far too many Christians who seem to think the kind of Christian upon whom God looks favorably is the one who doesn’t drink, smoke, or use ‘bad words’ (see picture below).
I once asked another roommate in the same house if he’d seen a certain show on MTV – one of the more tasteful ones on that network. “Nope”, he responded with speed and firm conviction, “[and that should be the response of a] Christian: I have notseen that show on MTV.” I had to caution him that being culturally aware doesn’t undermine one’s testimony as a Christian.
We had a lot of interesting discussions in that house. Around dinnertime one evening, I discussed with two roommates – including the MTV-avoider – the very realistic scenario of a Hollywood aspirant getting saved. Both were averse to the idea of having a fellow believer in Tinseltown. They wasted no time in letting me know that the aspiring star-turned-Christian must exit the highway to stardom because Hollywood is full of drug abuse, among other sinful lifestyles. “That’s what Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie do on their days off,” they asserted. Moralism is just legalism’s better looking sister. I’m glad a third roommate and I found it biblical to remain in showbiz while exercising discernment about which roles to take on.
The God who wrote Romans is the same One who wrote the Song of Solomon.
During another of our dinnertime conversations, the MTV-avoider told me that the Song of Songs makes him stumble, so he probably avoided that too. Wow. Now I think this is bordering on blasphemy. If you’re a Christian for whom the Song of Solomon is a stumbling block, I honestly don’t know if there’s a point in reading any other book of the Bible. The Song was written by a loving God who cares deeply for all believers and wants them all, single and married alike, to read and learn from Solomon’s love song.
That He intends single Christians to read it is obvious from the refrain “Do not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.” If the book were only meant for married believers, the exhortation against arousing love prematurely would be totally pointless. The God who wrote Romans is the same One who wrote the Song of Solomon. The Holy Spirit who inspired 1 Peter also inspired Proverbs 5. By staying far away from all erotic stories in the Bible, one essentially protests “God, some parts of your Word are purer than others, so I’d rather just stick to those safe parts”, when God equally wants us to understand the theology undergirding sex as much as He does suffering for the sake of Christ. Knowing what God thinks of erotic desire is just as important as knowing what He thinks of financial stewardship. The gospel is of first importance but having a solid biblical understanding of secondary topics such as sex only enhances, not weakens one’s understanding of the gospel.
I don’t see a difference between the former roommate’s avoidance of biblical erotica and non-believing Thomas Jefferson who cut and pasted pages of his Bible. We can’t cherry pick only those parts of Scripture that appeal to our tastes, personalities and thought processes while disregarding others. Such behavior is not Christian.
In hindsight, it makes sense that whenever I took prayer requests from that brother, purity was often his response.
While conversing with a fifty-something year old pastor about societal decadence, I mentioned porn and he felt slightly uncomfortable. Now I realize we all have different comfort levels and I don’t know his personal struggles but I wish the mere mention of the word once didn’t cause visible discomfort to a two-time grandfather. How can we evangelize that industry if some of us dare not utter the “P word”?
To the pure all things are pure (Titus 1:15), but to the moralistic many things are dirty.
The first chapter of Titus speaks about how the circumcision group wanted to gain personal holiness through their actions. Yet again, we see that moralism has it backwards.
I know two former church friends with too strong an ascetic leaning to their Christian faith. Both felt uncomfortable, one even judgmental, to see beer at a church social, being held in a home. Some churchgoers, like the woman mentioned above, aren’t even Christian at all. Just Pharisees in disguise.
This false view of purity is in each and everyone of us.
Although wanting Christians to have better sex lives in marriage and promoting this vision may not always feel holy, it is holy. How we feel doesn’t always match up with how God feels about us. Unless you have a biblically legitimate reason, an indefinite suppression of your sexual desire doesn’t make you holier, it makes you more sinful. Whoever does this is challenging God for gifting him/her a sex drive. The right response is to seek a spouse (see 1 Cor. 7:9). The knowledge that God will pour His wrathful judgment on the adulterous and other sexual sinners should only steer us towards marrying someone to whom we feel sexually attracted. God delights in my desires for an ANR and great sex within the covenant of marriage.
I’ve come to the conclusion that moralists are people who like it easy. They’d rather just run the other way instead of facing the battles the Lord expects us to fight. Rather than seeing the beauty in sex, they’d rather see it as dirty. Instead of loving people, they find it easier to judge them.
But Jesus didn’t save us to become moralistic goodie two-shoes. He didn’t leave His Father’s right hand, subject Himself to an unfair trial and allow Himself to be brutally murdered just so we could be converted into prim and proper, morally upright, nice guys and gals, or upstanding, patriotic citizens who in turn raise our children with sound family values.
Any Christian who thinks sex is gross makes God out to be a liar, because God declares all His creation good and pure.
In light of the foregoing, I have to be clear about something: I’m not better than anyone. Just a few years ago, I was also a very moralistic Puritan, as mentioned above. But the more I researched Couples Nursing, the more convinced I became of its biblical beauty. This coincided with my finding a solid church which for the first time wasn’t legalistic. A church whose congregants were human, real, accepting, and didn’t pretend to be sinless. Now, I’m much less of a moralist.
Although preaching sound doctrine, many men at the church have a taste for beer, and several even brew their own. The most gracious, people-friendly pastor I’ve ever known, Pastor JH shepherded this church. Praise God for well-rounded Christians who aren’t too ‘pure’ to live regular but changed lives. Of all human beings on the planet, Christians who are neither moralistic nor legalistic have it best. We get to enjoy the best of both this life and eternity.
Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.
— Acts 10:15
I am convinced and fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself.
If you were ever in a situation in which confiding your ANR practice/interest to a pastor or elder is met with a surprising rebuke, with said church leader trying to convince you of its sinfulness, I think you should strongly consider leaving that church. Regardless of what anyone says, the Bible in no way, shape or form labels Couples Nursing as sinful, so let no human being impose their opinion or personal tastes upon you.
According to my logic, the fact that the Bible doesn’t label masturbation as sin either should also mean it’s ok, shouldn’t it?
No way. That’s quite a leap, because by its very nature, masturbation is selfish. The person who indulges in it is robbing their spouse of something God intends to be shared in the marriage bedroom. But Couples Nursing, by its very nature is selfless, giving, deeply uniting, and from the name alone, we see that it involves couples bonding, just like God intended.
What about adult bottle feeding or a million other alternative lifestyles? The lack of a biblical prohibition obviously means they’re acceptable, right?
Well, because it’s alternative doesn’t mean it’s sinful. The overwhelming majority of Couples Nursers would consider bottle feeding alternative, but there’s no biblical evidence that those who desire it in marriage are in sin.
There are simply too many legalistic, controlling, borderline cultish tendencies destroying too many churches.
Stifling others’ God-given freedoms is symptomatic of the autocratic. Going beyond God’s Word and instead using one’s own tastes and preferences to hold another human being’s conscience hostage is a grave sin. Whoever does this is playing God.
There’s this very useful Christian website based in Colorado. Affiliated with a well-known conservative organization that promotes family values, the site provides many helpful resources to single Christians and young adults and I generally enjoy their gospel-centered articles, but one day, I came across an unhelpful, unforgettable statement that I must call out.
If you’re a single man who one day stumbles by viewing porn, wait one year before actively dating a sister in Christ, the statement essentially read. The author acknowledged how harsh that sounded, but maintained that with such filth still close to the surface, men have no business pursuing God’s daughters.
To be fair, the author also stated that the habit of viewing porn is a terrible one to bring into a marriage, and I agree wholeheartedly. My main problem with his article is his failure to differentiate between the habitual viewer and the occasional stumbler. He simply tossed everyone in the same boat. One year fits all.
I know it’s possible to give up a porn habit but still struggle to forget, even after several years, because, let’s face it, regular porn consumers never completely rid their minds of pornographic images, regardless of the passage of a year or ten. Does that mean they’re never to seek marriage? A lifetime of singleness for folks who just can’t get those decades-old images out of their heads? As we can see, it’s not about time since last viewing. God sees things in terms of heartfelt repentance (Acts 2:37), not in terms of time frames. He doesn’t keep a record of when we last wronged Him, and I sure am glad for that.
It’s your attitude towards porn and how far you’re willing to go to guard your heart that counts, not how recently you viewed it.
At amusement parks, we often run into signs that say “you must be ‘this’ tall to get on this ride”. These signs remind me of the mindset too many Christians have. I’ve come across far too many Christians who say ‘before considering marriage, you must be “this” sanctified’, subjectively setting some level of sanctification as a yardstick. For a few extremists, that level is nothing short of perfection.
Let me state one thing clearly: God only has one indisputable marital prerequisite, and that’s saving faith in His Son, not some human-defined sanctification benchmark, or the abstention from some particular sins for some human-determined period. The ability to care for your would-be spouse is also important, but anyone with genuine faith in Christ would naturally want to care for their future spouse.
Another reason I find the advice legalistic and troubling is the fact that according to the author’s logic, every married man who gives in to pornographic temptation must separate from his wife for a year each time it occurs, or, unlikely but possible, that the God-fearing single man who despite his best efforts, keeps slipping into porn once every eleven months and twenty nine days must stay single for life, as he’s locked into a vicious circle.
Moreover, insisting on time frames and human-defined levels of righteousness before marriage is exactly the kind of works-based righteousness against which God warned us through the letters of the apostle Paul. The only biblical pattern I’m aware of that mandates physical separation during a period of cleansing is tied to Mosaic Law, which no longer applies to believers.
If a single man is struggling with porn, this shows that there’s a beautiful, God-given desire that he’s trying to fulfill in the wrong ways. Having him wait twelve months is probably counterproductive. I have a different, multi-layer proposal: finding several accountability partners, using internet monitoring software, taking his sexual desires to God in prayer, and perhaps his body is signaling time to begin begging God for a wife.
It’s your heart attitude that matters, not time frames. I know abstaining from all things remotely sexual, including marriage and the opposite sex, has only caused problems for me.
This is one of my biggest problems with the Church today.
We’re so dogmatic and unforgiving that we conjure up unreasonable rules like the Pharisees did (see Matthew 23:4).
Unlike Pharisees, God has a dichotomous view of morality. By His standards, no one is worthy of marriage, since we all fall into sexual sin each and every day (Matthew 5:28, Mark 7:20-23). Thanks be to God for Jesus Christ, through Whom we have already been perfected without having to wait 12 months. Our positional sanctification is already complete in the present, and that goes even for the worst porn fanatic who now places his trust in Jesus.
Christians are so steeped in unbiblical, moralistic traditions that they are unable and unwilling to dig up the real truth and appreciate that which God endorses and declares beautiful e.g. Couples Nursing, thus the Christian taboo surrounding anything sexual is perpetuated.