It’s a little odd when someone who doesn’t have any connection to children tries to tell you how to parent a child. While their advice may not be wrong and may come from a good place, it’s void of the overall parenting experience, which is quite expansive. To make good parenting decisions, you need to know a child’s preferences, attitude, sore spots, how much they slept the night before, and much more. Good parenting is an ever-evolving relationship that cannot be addressed easily by a simple suggestion, a self-help book, or even Scripture itself.
In the same way, it’s a little odd when someone who doesn’t have a sex life tells you how sex works. While their advice may not be wrong and may come from a good place, it’s void of the overall marital experience, which is quite expansive. To make good sexual decisions, you need to know a spouse’s preferences, attitude, sore spots, how much they slept the night before, and much more. Good sex is an ever-evolving relationship that cannot be addressed easily by a simple suggestion, a self-help book, or even Scripture itself.
Enter the Apostle Paul—a single man doing his best to disciple the new church movement that has been quickly coming into existence. Though celibate and unaware of how marriage and sex work, he tries to give advice:
“The husband should give to his wife what is due her and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.” (1 Corinthians 7:3-4)
Many horrors have been committed on behalf of these words, most often by sex-hungry husbands. Had Paul known the amount of sexual dysfunction that can happen in marriages and the various relational components that play a part in a healthy sex life, he would have chosen his words more carefully. While progressive enough to note that both women and men have sexual desire, his theological advice lacks the intimacy that all good sex is founded on. In a healthy marriage, Paul’s advice can somewhat work because sex comes from the overflow of intimacy. But as generic marital advice, his words have often created bad sex at best and abusive sex at worst, as people use Scripture to bend sex to their will and make it look like the command of God.
God is not interested in pimping spouses out to one another, and Scripture should not be used to justify such situations. There are many variables that go into creating a healthy sex life, and Paul’s words here should not be used to objectify our spouses. They are the people we love, not sex objects.
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