• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 816 0

why some people think they look ugly or deformed when they in fact appear normal. Clinically “BDD is diagnosed in people who are 1) concerned about a minimal or nonexistent appearance flaw, 2) preoccupied with the perceived flaw (think about it for at least an hour a day), and 3) experience clinically significant distress or impaired functioning as a result of their concern.”65 For such people cosmetic surgery can become dangerously enslaving.

Cybersex

Question 1: Is it lawful?

Cybersex is when a couple communicates sexually through technology, including phone, photo, video, text, e-mail, chat, and video conferencing. Often included in cybersex is masturbation. Cybersex with anyone other than your spouse, and cybersex that includes seeing or discussing anyone other than your spouse sexually, is a sin of lust and heart adultery. But cybersex with one’s spouse is permissible. If you choose to practice cybersex, you should use extreme caution that the images cannot become public in any way. Practically speaking, this can be nearly impossible.

Question 2: Is it helpful?

There are reasons that cybersex may be beneficial to your marriage. It allows a couple to remain in intimate contact throughout the course of a day when they are separated because of such things as work, or to continue some semblance of a sex life when they cannot be physically together, such as during a business trip or military deployment.

Question 3: Is it enslaving?

There are also reasons why cybersex may be too risky for some couples. If someone has a history of sinning sexually in this manner, he or she may be spiritually “weak” in this area and as a result be best served by simply abstaining, much like a former alcoholic choosing to abstain from all alcohol for safety reasons. And depending what technology is used, there is the risk that the event could be shared beyond the marriage.

201

Sexual Medication

Question 1: Is it lawful?

Living in a fallen world with a fallen body means that not everything will always work as God intended. So we use diet supplements and medications as needed in the pursuit of health and wellness. The Bible does not forbid this. In fact Luke, who wrote much of the New Testament, was a medical doctor. So medicine in general is lawful.

Question 2: Is it helpful?

When there are medically related sexual complications, medication can be helpful. For example, the man who struggles with impotence or premature ejaculation may find some help from his doctor conducting a physical and prescribing a medication. Similarly, a woman with such things as a hormone imbalance may also find help with a visit to a wise doctor. Obviously these kinds of situations can be very embarrassing. But out of love for one’s spouse, it is good to be humble enough to seek wise medical help and resume normal sexual activity if at all possible.

Question 3: Is it enslaving?

As a general rule, sexual medication is not enslaving. Perhaps the only concern is that someone might want to push the human body beyond normal functions and frequencies with the use of sexual medication. Such a thing may suggest an underlying perversion or sinful sexual addiction.

Marital Sexual Assault

Question 1: Is it lawful?

The Bible repeatedly condemns sexual assault. This includes the horrendous account of the rape of women,a including one woman who is gang-raped to the point of death,b another who is raped by her brother,c and the sexual assault of wives and virgins as the aftermath of a nation’s being conquered.a The Bible condemns sexual assault and never excuses or diminishes its horror. In Deuteronomy 22:25–29, for example, we see great concerns for the violated woman and death by stoning for her male abuser.

202

“Researchers have estimated that sexual assault occurs in 10–14 percent of all marriages.”66 Men who sexually assault their wives commonly also abuse them in multiple other ways, including verbal, mental, emotional, and spiritual abuse, in addition to battering the women physically. These beatings and rapes have little, if anything, to do with sex. Instead,