I don’t know about most, but I can’t stand messages that come across about how men are so weak minded, and sex craved. To me one of the lessons we hear preached from time to time tends to encourage this aspect, and they basically are enabling lust to happen.
Lust to me is the same thing as coveting. There is a huge difference between admiring a pretty person, and allowing your mind to imagine how they would be in bed. Today it seems they tend to blur those things, and fantasy turns into the norm. That isn’t what the bible says at all.
We also tend to over exaggerate this aspect in life, because the ones don’t wish to speak about choices in life – tend to tell you its ‘everywhere’ and they can’t escape it. There is no possible reason you are look at them as possibly weak minded in this aspect, because its always the other parties fault.
Romans 8:5 For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.
There is a huge difference between admiring someone, or the ‘OH BOY to much FLESH for me’ moments. Then you have those that use that ‘to much flesh for me’ parts of life, and twist them into a lust fest. The author I speak about uses that moment, and encourages wife’s to allow their husband’s to use them as a vehicle to get all those thoughts out of their mind. What he doesn’t seem to realize is that doesn’t eliminate the lust, but just lets them have a bit of fun with it. Here is what I’m talk about:
Understand his appetites, and free his body. Your husband’s two primary physical appetites are for food and sex. He will appreciate it whenever you make the effort to prepare delicious and nutritious food for him. Understand the pressure he feels sexually as a man: Men are wired to respond to visual stimulation, and must deal with seeing sexual imagery often in our society today. Your husband can’t escape it, so he must try to resist the temptation of it while fighting to remain faithful to you as God calls him to be. Your husband needs sexual release often in order to be emotionally healthy. Don’t withhold sex from him when there’s conflict between you. Instead, work on communicating with each other through sex, which will calm your husband, bond him closer to you, and motivate him to work on your marriage more. Let him know what you need him to do to help you enjoy sex with him more, and help him learn how to improve your sex life together. Do whatever you can to make yourself physically attractive, such as by taking good care of your body through exercise and eating well and dressing attractively both in public and at home. If your husband refuses to have sex with you, seek counseling to figure out how to solve the problem. - How to Learn What Your Husband Isn’t Telling You
(My first comment is the husband doesn’t need water as well? (laughs) look at the second sentence about the primary physical appetites! Okay – moving on….)
What is lust?
The dictionary definition of lust is "1) intense or unrestrained sexual craving, or 2) an overwhelming desire or craving."
or
Lust is having a self-absorbed desire for an object, person, or experience.
The bible speaks against this, and not once in the bible does it speak of using another person to satisfy it. It also never says that someone else is responsible for you coveting something that isn’t yours.
Men are Visual. Women are Vessels
I take issue with people using this ‘men are visual’ message, and twisting it out of shape. The above paragraph is a huge example of that. Men FIGHT to be faithful, because their eyes wonder all day long. Don’t withhold sex, because he needs this release to be healthy after all that eye wondering. Talk to him using sex on how to make the marriage be beneficial to both.
Make sure you are JUST as attractive as those women he is resisting all day, because this will help. Yes, he is dreaming there! Can you imagine trying to keep up with all those visuals in his mind? THAT will make her feel loved right?!
What the author is basically describing is allow yourself to be used a vehicle so his lust doesn’t get to out of control. How if he doesn’t use you as this vehicle? Seek counseling, because there is a problem. He suppose to want you in this way…remember?
That doesn’t mean that men don’t have a ‘visual’ component to them, but what he is describing is a man that allow that visual to become something it shouldn’t, and the cure is his wife. No. That’s wrong!
Job 31:11–12 - 11 For lust is a shameful sin, a crime that should be punished. 12 It is a fire that burns all the way to hell.* It would wipe out everything I own.
Asking Her to Enable Evil
This author needs to realize women feel used under those circumstances, and it doesn’t communicate being emotionally healthy at all. He basically states – men lust so make sure you are available when he needs it. Remember his ‘needs’. He is using shame to cover his sin.
Are men going to notice women? Yes. They don’t have to be dressed a certain either. Think BURKA, and tell me those parts of the world LUST isn’t alive and well! They have a heck of a lot less ‘visuals’ to blame it on! Think about it.
Does that mean he doesn’t love his wife when glances at another woman? No. Most of the time with healthy men a look will happen, but they don’t go into the boy’s locker room in their mind. The author seems to feel they do, but I have noticed there are many men that are insulted at these statements. Noticing an attractive women doesn’t equal him allowing his mind to LUST over her.
Lust is basically coveting something that isn’t yours, and you are using her in your mind for your own purposes. She is no longer a women, a person, but someone to be used for your own personal satisfaction.
1 Corinthians 10:13 (NIV) 13 No temptation[a] has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted[b] beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted,[c] he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.
The above scripture doesn’t mean using your wife as the vessel to endure your way out!
Do Not Covet!
The author seems to hint that using your wife will help him NOT cheat, but he never addresses this is LUST he is speaking about at all. He instead normalizes lust. Is it healthy and normal to covert things that aren’t yours? You can’t have a healthy relationship with someone that is constantly lusting – coveting - after others.
Wives do not feel loved if all they are doing is being used in this way. No doubt he is pretending he is with someone else, and that doesn’t equal healthy by any stretch of the imagination. Lust doesn’t stop because the act is done with his wife afterwards! She is being used as a substitute.
2 Timothy 2:22 Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
Give enough sex and it will stop!
When you have LUST in your heart its NEVER enough!
When you look at this teaching you can understand why wives at church are so threatened by other’s speaking to her husband (of the opposite sex). IS HE going to be able to STOP himself this time? Culturally, we have also been taught that ‘dress’ and ‘flesh’ somehow is the factor in this. The old, ‘he is inundated’ by visuals in society, and how can he be expected to stop lusting? So she looks at how much flesh is showing while he is speaking to the other woman, where her clothes might be too tight fitting for her comfort, and wondering if she sending ‘signals’ to him even without knowing it to the point her husband just can’t help himself! What can she do? She needs to hop into bed with him once they get home in HOPES that does the job.
Why that doesn’t show LUST is running his life is something I will NEVER understand! Why this way of dealing with it doesn’t show people they are asking wives to enable it to continue is not something I can understand either.
Does that sound healthy? I mean you just turned your wife into a p*rn star in your MIND! Just so I’m clear to everyone – THAT is lust! The glance isn’t lust, but the getting carried away with the visuals…and allow yourself wife to be used IS!
When you look at it? Its all about him as well. His urges, desires, and lust filled fantasies.
Stop dishonoring your life and GOD!
Sadly, way to often I read people stating its impossible to overcome. Yet, ‘make sure he is getting enough’ is still pushed. Both in this aspect are truly unhealthy.
3 It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; 4 that each of you should learn to control your own body[a] in a way that is holy and honorable,5 not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God;6 and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister.[b] The Lord will punish all those who commit such sins, as we told you and warned you before. 7 For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. 8 Therefore, anyone who rejects this instruction does not reject a human being but God, the very God who gives you his Holy Spirit.
There is no requirement to somehow lose the drives that we were born with, nor should there be any guilt for having them. On the contrary, it is a matter of the commitment of the will, the orientation of the heart, that being discussed.
I’m not familiar with the book in question, and nor have I read it. I’m not so sure I want to either. The article I linked to mostly gave me the impression that men need a mommie with perks. I don’t believe that at all. Its very degrading to men. I also seen more men willing to acknowledge they have more control over ‘visuals’ then they are given credit for. You hear from them all the time.
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3 comments:
Much appreciation for this post...I get so tired of hearing that "men are visual" - obviously they never met my (female) college classmates - talk about visual...I was aghast at the pornographic images of men (not couples) on the posters in their house...
The Bible says there is nothing that has overtaken us but what is common to man(kind). Women and men are both visual, and both lust. If anything, women are worse - (just think of the romance novels that paint the most visual of pictures using words). The attitude that "men are visual" seems to somehow excuse any responsibility they have to conduct themselves in a Christ-like manner. "It's all her fault" - like the rape victims...sad.
I agree both men and women covet/lust.
The men are visual messages (which can be true to a point) almost make the 'lust' part seem natural to them, and they can't help themselves.
The portion of the article I posted to reminded me so much of that message. It's just wrong - as it would be for anyone.
I'm tired of the men are visual excuse. Yes, I know men have needs blah, blah, blah. I know they are always on the prowl because they stare at me with that weird lustful look at the grocery store, at the coffeeshop, at school - they whistle out their car windows at me even when I am wearing baggy sweatpants and a sweatshirt. When I walk by groups of men I hear them referring to women as "pu**y" and saying who they would f-. I even walked by a house with open windows the other day and I could hear a group of 9-10 men cheering - when I glanced in the window as I walked by I saw that they weren't watching football, they were watching p*rn.
It makes me so sad that women have to deal with this. Most women I know just want to be loved for who they are but the constant unrelenting message from church, society, EVERYONE is that men are mostly and primarily attracted to "body parts" and they hate to even have to bother pretending that that isn't all they see women as.
Sometimes I think God is cruel by making men and women too different (men having such uncontrollable sex drives while women mostly want to be loved). I was sexually assaulted by a stranger a few years ago and the rapist actually tried to blame me for how I was dressed - in a baggy t-shirt and floor length skirt. Yeah, a serial rapist said he raped me because I was wearing a skirt. I could not get a conviction because of a legal loophole so even though he was a blatant stranger rapist, so he got off scot free. God isn't very kind to rape victims and neither is society. I just hate men and having to live in this crappy world sometimes...
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