Your Body Is Not Bad: A Response

LET'S TALK ABOUT SEX!

Now that the awkwardness is out of the way (or maybe, in some cases, it has increased lol), let's get to the topic at hand.

A friend from church recently posted a spot-on blog entry discussing women’s responsibility regarding their bodies and men’s lust (you can read it here). This post is a response to continue the conversation about that topic.

Here’s how I’d like to address this:

1. If you haven’t already read Amanda’s post, go read it now.
2. I’ll comment and/or elaborate on statements from Amanda’s post, which will be in bold (any emphasis of underlining is added by me).

Just a heads up -- because I don't want to catch anyone off-guard -- I'm going to be transparent in this post regarding some of my experience with lust and how God has worked in my heart to uproot it. This is a topic that deserves honest discussion shall be treated as such.

Let me first state that every man, regardless of his circumstances, is completely and totally responsible for his own actions:

But every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed. ~ James 1:14

When we are tempted, it is by our own desires. Period.

However, just because you feel a certain way doesn’t mean you are absolutely compelled to act on it; God has given enough grace to you to be able to hold fast in spite of temptations:

The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure. ~ 1 Corinthians 10:13

As Job said, “I made a covenant with my eyes not to look with lust at a young woman” (31:1).

Now, for thoughts about comments Amanda made.

“It’s really important to clarify that staring or being distracted is not equal to sin or lust. It’s when we start mentally and emotionally interacting with something that isn’t ours for the taking that it becomes a heart problem.”

Just because a thought runs across your mind doesn’t automatically mean that you have to carry it out to fruition. You have the ability, in any situation, to not give in, and in that situation, how you choose to respond is your responsibility and no one else’s.

During a summer break when I was in college, I worked at a computer store. A woman that I had met there had come in and gone over to the service counter to talk to the repair technician. I remember getting carried away fantasizing about her when the Holy Spirit spoke to me, “That’s what I don’t want you to do.”

In other words, “Selfishly using her for your own pleasure is what I don’t want you to do.” Note that this did not happen until after I had gotten carried away and was lusting for her.

In other words, it’s not the attraction to her beauty that is the sin, but how you handle that attraction.

Let me be clear: being tempted is not sin; if it were, Jesus would’ve sinned because it’s said that he was tempted and that he was also without sin (Hebrews 4:15).

It’s not the desire that's the sin (although a certain desire, such as being sexually aroused, may increase the chances of a particular sin, such as lust), but it’s the action you choose within that desire that breaks God’s law (and then it becomes sin):

“You have heard that it was said by them of old time, 'You shall not commit adultery,' but I say unto you that whosoever looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.” ~ Matthew 5:27-28

To say “whosoever looks at a woman in order to lust after her” wouldn’t be much of a stretch of Jesus’ intention here.

Whosoever commits sin [violates] the law, for sin is the [violation] of the law. ~ 1 John 3:4

“I’ve believed the beauty and mystery of a woman’s body is responsible for making guys ‘stumble’ or lust... What this registered to my mind was that I had to cover up my body so that guys who looked at me wouldn’t ‘fall into sin.’ My body = stumbling block.” (ref. Mark 9:42)

We’ve had Cain’s story drilled into our head so many times about when God asked him where was his brother, Abel, and we hear Cain’s defensive, self-justifying response, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” and we automatically link it to his state of sin.

Wrong.

Was Cain his brother’s keeper? To an extent, yes, but mostly because Cain was Abel’s older brother (Genesis 4:1-2), and older siblings have a bit of responsibility to look out for their younger brothers and sisters. However, presumably by this time, they are adults since they have offered their own sacrifices before God and God ends up banishing Cain to a nomadic lifestyle, which he must be able to carry out on his own (Genesis 4:3-4, 12).

However, we are all each individually responsible for our own actions (reference the Kingdom of Heaven clip above):

“...work out your own salvation...” (Philippians 2:12)

“The person who sins is the one who will die. The child will not be punished for the parent’s sins, and the parent will not be punished for the child’s sins. Righteous people will be rewarded for their own righteous behavior, and wicked people will be punished for their own wickedness.” ~ Ezekiel 18:20

Two quick clips to illustrate this.

The first is from the movie, Mortal Kombat. The final battle includes a scene where Liu Kang, the hero of the movie, is talking to his enemy, Shang Tsung (pronounced “soong”), except Tsung has taken the form of Liu’s younger brother, Chan, and is trying to convince Liu of being guilty of Chan’s death:

Chan was convinced that his destiny was his own responsibility and not anyone else’s, and when Liu remembers this, he’s free from the guilt and condemnation of carrying that burden.

In other words, Liu was not responsible for the actions of his brother because we each have our own choices to make.

In the same way, women are not responsible for the actions of men. Woman may play a part in how a guy responds to a situation, but the responsibility for the response is ultimately placed on the man's shoulders.

The second clip comes from Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Community Church:

Did you catch that? “We should’ve started telling people... that they have to take responsibility to become self-feeders.”

In other words, your spiritual maturity is your responsibility and yours alone.

Now, that being said, for men who are looking for a source of beauty and mystery apart from God, women are the next best thing: they are made in the image of the God that we men long for, but because we're not directly looking for God, we go after that part of creation that bears the most resemblance to the Trinity and that we already have a natural attraction toward: women. Plus, for a man, a woman can make us feel alive like almost nothing else can.

However, this doesn’t give girls permission to flaunt what they have, and this is where Mark 9:42 comes into play:

"But if you cause one of these little ones who trusts in me to fall into sin, it would be better for you to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone hung around your neck."

I would be willing to bet that there are lots of women who don't plan their actions with the intent of causing a guy to lust after them. However, this verse would apply to those women who do intentionally try to get men to lust after them.

I remember my dad telling me that, in order to be guilty of a crime you must be convicted of two things:

1. Action.
2. Intent.

For a child who breaks something by accident, yes, they are at fault, but punishment isn't going to cause the likelihood of their behavior to decrease because they didn't intend to do it in the first place:

On the other hand, for the child who maliciously picks on another kid at school, being told they will be judged at the end of their life for all their actions may have behavior-altering consequences:

Remember your Creator in the days of your youth... Let us hear the conclusion of the matter: fear God and give glory to him, for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment -- with every secret thing -- whether it be good or whether it be evil. ~ Ecclesiastes 12:1, 12-13

“Boys hit puberty and girls start ‘developing’ and the church tells us, ‘Cover it up!’ ... Traditional Christianity has tied together the human body with lust, and ALL attractive people with sexual sin.”

It’s amazing how one person’s insecurities can be passed on to another. For example:

A dad has a young daughter, say 5 or 6, and they joke and play around in ways that involve physical contact (e.g.,  tickling or poking each other in the side, etc.). However, the girl grows up and she becomes a young woman, her body matures, and the dad stops playing with his daughter because he's uncomfortable showing this type of physical affection to a woman who has physically matured -- even if it's his own daughter.

What’s she left to believe? How is she supposed to interpret the sudden termination of physical affection from someone who is supposed to love her unconditionally?

“My body is shameful.”

“My physical maturity makes guys uncomfortable.”

“My body makes me unlovable.”

She now finishes growing up with mixed messages, having a childhood of love from daddy but, as a young woman, believing that what is really beautiful and attractive about her body -- that has grown and matured from a little girl’s into a young woman’s -- is actually a source of repulsiveness and is bad, and that she must be to blame for it since it’s her body.

Not so!

The Trinity created men and women in Their image (Genesis 1:27), and when everything was done, They saw that it was very good. The Hebrew word for very (Strong's #H3966) means exceedingly or especially, and that applies to everything that was created -- including the physical form of the woman.

While working at a camp after college, a man came to speak about worldviews and taught one of the best sermons I’ve ever heard. He said that, basically, Christians have 3 reactions to the world’s culture:

1. They’re offended by it, and so they withdraw from it.
2. They’re compelled by it, and so they assimilated into it.
3. They’re distressed by it, and so they engage it.

Just because some people are offended at a woman’s beauty, or because some women use it for evil (e.g., selfish gain), doesn’t mean that the beauty and mystery of a woman’s body is a bad thing -- it's part of the reason that men are attracted to women in the first place!

But, deeper than that, it is a reflection of the heart of God. Remember, women are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), and since God doesn't have a physical form, even Eve's physical form was a reflection of the feminine side of the Trinity.

Restoration Is Available

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor; he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound. ~ Isaiah 61:1

This verse is not talking about people who are captives because of slavery, or prisoners because they’re in jail, but the mental and/or emotional bondage that we get trapped in because our minds have a particular thinking pattern engrained into them, or because our hearts have become entangled in something we should’ve never allowed them to get involved in.

If you regularly shop at Christian book stores (or even walked through the Christian section at a Barnes & Noble), there’s a good chance that, at some point, you may have run across the book, Every Man’s Battle, which has the premise that every man struggles with the sin of lust (hence the name, Every Man’s Battle).

Well, yes and no.

Yes, men tend to be more visually wired and can be sexually aroused by something that is strictly visual (whereas women tend to be attracted to something that has a greater amount of emotional resonance to it), but it’s not every man’s battle.

As a man who has, in the past, given parts of his heart to sexual sin (I was in a sexual relationship with my girlfriend when I became a Christian), I can say that it is a wonderful feeling when you’re hanging out with your friends at the pool and are able to glance at a beautiful woman in a bikini and not be immediately drawn to lustful thoughts.

Notice that I did not say stare, because that's just going to invite temptation. One of my favorite song lines comes from John Reuben's song, I Haven't Been Myself:

Thoughts led to emotion which led to action.

If you think about something long enough, your heart kinda says to your brain, "What's going on up there?" and then your thoughts start having emotions linked to them, and that's where you can get into trouble.

But as far as the freedom from that ingrained pattern of thinking, it’s like carrying a heavy backpack and then one day you wake up to find that it’s been cut away from you.

Yes, you can choose to continue to carry it, but why would you?

Even before I became a Christian (which was my freshman year in college), my first encounter with God was in ninth grade when I had asked him to take away all my sexual desires. As a 14-year-old boy who wasn’t even a Christian, that’s an amazing thing to ask God for.

And you know what? He granted my request.

I can remember my best friend in high school, David, coming over and chatting with girls online about sexual things. What was I doing while he was on the computer? Sitting on a stack of sofa cushions in the corner reading a magazine and thinking, “What he’s doing is stupid.”

Why do I bring this up? Because not all men are hopelessly defenseless against the battle for lust, and because breakthrough of mental and emotional strongholds and victory over long-standing habits is available with the help of God’s healing.

Final Thought

So thank you, Amanda, for posting something that liberates women from the guilt and condemnation of being held responsible for something over which they have no direct control (a guy’s lust), while simultaneously showing them that their bodies are not a thing of shame, but something of great mystery, beauty, and glory.