A NSFW Marriage

Ladies...What smell do you associate with your husband?  What does your man know about your body that no one else knows?  What was he doing to you the last time he made your legs shake?

Fellas...What outfit does your wife wear that makes you reconsider whether or not you want to leave the house?  What does she whisper in your ear when she gives in to her passions?  How does she respond when you take her over the edge?

HOLD ON STU!!! you may say.  How can you ask such things and consider this a Christian blog?  What happens in the bedroom needs to stay in the bedroom!

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I've met a good number of people who have been through atleast one divorce.  Not to pry, but when a divorcee opens up to me about their divorce I always ask two questions.  How long were you married?  Where did it start going wrong?  In some instances I meet people who were married for a few months to maybe a handful of years.  In many cases those people open up about an inability to compromise or agree.  Sometimes they talk about a marriage that was rushed into or a spouse they didn't fully know.

I've always heard that the first seven years of marriage were the hardest.  So it has been almost shocking lately as I ask my questions to divorcees that I've heard less about the failure of 3 and 4 year marriages and more about the failures of 20 and 30 year marriages.  A coworker of mine recently divorced his wife after 34 years and 5 children.  The common theme in the dissolution of many of these long standing marriages is that marital bliss is replaced with responsibility.  Passion is replaced by practicality, sex and seduction gives way to study and sleep; and eventually your spouse is more like a coworker who sees you in your comfy sweat pants.  

In Matthew 13 Jesus talks about sowing seed.  In verses 6 He talks about seed which has been scorched by the sun and verse 7 is about seed that has been choked by the thorns.  When expounding on His parables Jesus explains that the seed scorched by the sun as being without root saying that it "quickly falls away" at the signs of trouble.  In verse 22 he explains that the seed among the thorns is one that is choked out by the worries of this life and deceit of wealth.  While this parable speaks of salvation I also think it speaks to our failures in marriage.  Some are not properly rooted and die quickly while others suffer a slow suffocating death.  

That's not the way God designed marriage.  When Adam and Eve sinned in Genesis 3 they hid from God.  Before hiding from God however they hid their most vulnerable parts from each other.  That was not God's design.  God's design in putting those two together was a unity that the bible terms "one flesh".  Woman and man were not made at the same time, but woman was made from man for man.  They were made from the same flesh.  Mark 10:8 says the two shall be married and become one flesh.  Ephesians 5:28-29 says husbands are to love their wives as they love their own flesh.  In order for a couple to have sexual intercourse they have to come together and be one flesh.  That was God's design for marriage; an intimacy so deep that two people become one.

The acronym NSFW means not safe for work.  It is a warning attached to a message or link that you probably don't want other people to see you looking at this.  In essence, this is for your eyes only.  Look at the youth of folly and the adulterous woman in Proverbs 7.  While the union is ungodly and the story is meant as a warning this passage also details a successful seduction.  

The bible starts off by telling us that she was dressed as a harlot.  She provides visual stimulation showing the young man what she knows he wants to see.  She pursues him and verse 13 says she catches him and kissed him.  She looks at him boldly and seduces him with her words.  She says, "I came out to meet YOU.  I looked for YOUR face and I found YOU." 

 Even though the bible says that she runs all over the square looking for men she seduces the youth by setting a scene and convincing the youth that it's all for him.  The bible makes no mention of her beauty saying only in verse 21 that she seduces him with her words and caused him to yield.  His response the bible says is that he gave himself over to her and he followed her.

In the context of this relationship, it was sin.  In the context of marriage it is exactly how this should happen.  When a spouse attempts to arouse us or entice us we should be willing to give ourselves over to that person.  

For most husbands our attempt to give ourselves over to our wives is doing what it takes for her to achieve a climax.  By God's design, a man's climax is a near certainty but a woman's climax is the result of attention to detail, an ability to react to unspoken clues.  Through this a husband gives himself over to his wife understanding that he derives pleasure from her pleasure.  A husband giving himself over to his wife is is a man giving everything he has to let his lady know that her time spent seducing him was worth it.

  

Marriages need these NSFW moments.  They need the effort of doing things for the other person.  They need a person willing to shut out the world for a time and give themselves to their spouses needs and pleasures.  

1 Corinthians 7 tells us that our bodies are no longer our own.  Don't let that get lost in the everyday rigmarole.  Find time and make the effort to have a NSFW marriage.  It's not admitting to the seduction of your spouse, the spine tingling foreplay or the acts of sex that displease God.  It's allowing the cares of this world to uproot or choke out your marriage; tearing apart what God has bought together.  Put the work into your marriage, but try to have as many not safe for work moments as life allows.   

Misplaced Nostalgia

I was 9 years old when I read The Greatest: My Own Story.  Everyone in my 5th grade class had to present on a famous African American, and I was assigned Muhammad Ali.  At 9 I was extremely uncomfortable with this.  Growing up in the 1980's; I knew Muhammad Ali more for his religious conversion than I did for his unparalleled hand speed, his granite chin, or his dogged determination.  I began reading and found myself engrossed in his story.  I read about his training, his work ethic, his love for his family, his disappointments in his failed marriages, and all things that made him tick.  I began to respect Ali, not as a loud-mouth athlete with immeasurable gifts inside the ring, but a man who influenced people to his benefit.  It wasn't an accident that he was polarizing.  If you didn't like Ali, he made sure that you disliked him enough to pay to watch him get whooped.  My admiration for Ali the man grew to the point where I hung this painting in my office 3 years ago.

Most people know that before changing his name to Muhammad Ali he was Cassius Clay.  What not many people know is that Cassius and his brother Rudolph Clay were raised Baptist.  Their mother, Odessa Clay, was a woman of faith who ushered her two boys to church every Sunday.  Christianity was a major part of Cassius' upbringing, but a faith he chose to depart from.  In speaking on his conversion, Muhammad said that he looked around and saw portraits of a white Jesus, white angels, white biblical heroes and wondered what happened to black Christians when they died.  Ultimately he felt his race was unaccepted in the Christian Church and converted to Islam.  Cassius' upbringing and conversion are similar to Malcolm Little; better known as Malcolm X.

  Before he became a world known orator known as Malcolm X, Malcolm Little was the fourth of seven children born to Louise and Baptist Minister Earl Little.  Like Cassius, Malcolm was being raised Baptist, and the Baptist faith was a big part of his early life.  At the age of six Malcolm's father was killed by a streetcar.  The accident was deemed a streetcar accident by police and a suicide by the insurance company that covered him, but it is widely believed that there was foul play.  Malcolm's childhood didn't get any easier as he mother was committed after a nervous breakdown and Malcolm became a foster child.  Eventually Malcolm embarked upon a life of crime which led him to jail and ultimately a conversion to a faith he found more accepting of his race than Christianity.  

Both Malcolm and Cassius began as Christians, but converted to the Nation of Islam because Christians (not Christianity) permeated the belief that they were inferior Christians and inferior people because of the color of their skin.  These were individuals with God given gifts that were, for lack of a better word, in house that saw fit to convert to another religion because of the attitudes of the time.

Ultimately Malcolm and Cassius will have to stand before God and answer for their conversion.  I bring this up however because in this election season I've continuously heard the prayer, "Help America get back to the Christian principles it was founded on."  The sentiments expressed in these attempts to "harken back" are not innately pure and not shared by everyone.  The things that made America great to some made it a prison to others.  The freedoms and opportunities enjoyed by some were the result of freedom and opportunities denied to others.  America as we know it began with the near extermination of natives who showed kindness and grew from prosperity attributed to individuals who embraced greed and called it God.  Ecclesiastes warns us about looking back so fondly on the past because it is not a wise inquiry.  The trip down memory lane with America is not pleasurable for all.  There are many evils done by people claiming to be "God fearing Christian men."   

It's not our God given duty to resurrect the past or prevent the future.  We were born when we were born because God has a purpose for us in the time he placed us in.  There are lessons to be learned from the past.  There are new challenges to be met in the present; one of which is not alienating and disenfranchising those in the body.