Amen, and let it be.

This is often how I end my prayers. And sometimes, after the work of connecting with my husband and engaging in sex, how I end my orgasm. Amen, and let it be.

Honestly, I would give up sex in a millisecond if it could heal and stop all the sexual harm this world has encountered. As a trauma and abuse counselor, my job is to dissect stories of sexual harm and abuse. I spend my hours at work with a figurative scalpel and suture kit as I extract stories of sexual hurt and objectification. Stories of sexual abuse and objectification have cost my sympathetic system years of damage. If there was a way I could give up sex to have all that harm undone, I would. Yet, God created sex knowing it would also cause so much harm. This baffles my mind and also begs me to consider what God intended sex to accomplish for good. If God made sex, I deduce that it has to have a stronger superpower than what evil has used it for. So what was God’s intention for sex? Procreation is the common answer. But procreation must be teased out, those who are for creating. The power of what we can create together with another being in sex is absolutely mind-blowing. My husband and I set an intention when we have sex. For whose sake are we engaging in this act? Sometimes we literally say, we consecrate this time of sexual connection to combat evil in this world. If our part of our glory occurs when we engage in a covenant with another, with integrity and vulnerability, and we receive pleasure – well then let the sexual creations come! Let us offer our scared and wounded bodies to the other in an act of faith that God will show up and bless each other with pleasure and a taste of heaven.

Growing up in the church, no one told me very much about how to navigate sex as a Christian woman. Truthfully, I did as I was taught and stayed a virgin until marriage, praying that would secure a healthy sexual lifetime for me and my husband. I wish it had been that easy. Why didn’t anyone explain that sex is a powerful tool in the kingdom of God? So powerful that evil has used it to harm countless amounts of people. Shouldn’t that mean God intended it for something extremely powerful?

Doctors, therapists, parents, teachers, and pastors have trouble openly talking and teaching about sex. Sex is a powerful and difficult subject to explore through the eyes of God. Most churches have little education on who is equipped to navigate the conversations of sexuality and God, other than mandating abstinence. God’s design for sex is obviously intentional and powerful, and I believe God has given us power through the holiness involved in the act of sex and pleasure. My professor and mentor for many years, Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, is a Christian Certified Sex Therapist who trains Christian therapists on how to counsel clients around healthy sexuality. She teaches about the history and practices of the Law of Onah, laws directed mainly to men which command the man to give his wife pleasure during sexual acts, not to just think of himself. Research records these laws from the Torah, specifically outlining a sexual principle that protects women as a direct rule:

“Sexual relations should only be experienced in a time of joy.  Sex for selfish personal satisfaction, without regard for the partner’s pleasure, is wrong and evil.  A man may never force his wife to have sex.  A couple may not have sexual relations while drunk or quarreling.  Sex may never be used as a weapon against a spouse, either by depriving the spouse of sex or by compelling it. It is a serious offense to use sex (or lack thereof) to punish or manipulate a spouse. Sex is the woman’s right, not the man’s. Although sex is the woman’s right, she does not have absolute discretion to withhold it from her husband.” (Mamre, 2012, p. Kosher Sex)

These laws invite us to begin the exploration of God’s design for sex as it relates to pleasure and spirituality. It was during my first seminary class discussion that my professor mentioned that the female clitoris is the size of a pencil eraser head, but has more nerve endings than the head of the male penis. I was shocked; no one had ever told me that. She posed the question, “Why would God give women a clitoris which only has the physiological function to give pleasure?” I researched the function of the clitoris, finding it described as an extremely sensitive organ made up of erectile tissue which has thousands of nerve endings, with its central function being to produce sensations of sexual pleasure. I was stunned to confirm that the clitoris, in fact, has no function in reproduction and has 8,000 nerve endings, which is double to amount of the nerve endings on the penis. Who knew seminary could be so helpful? This information has been a stunning revelation for thousands of students and clients that I work with. We are under-educated as a Christian population about God’s design of the female body, especially concerning sexuality. How can we expect to build a healthy theology around God’s plan for sexuality if we don’t study His design of our sexual organs?

Objectification of the female body brings death. If a woman’s reproductive, life-creating body parts which are created in God’s image are objectified, it prevents her body from being engaged with the way God intended. Rob Bell describes Christian sexuality as a dance between being “angel”, a spirit without a body, or “animal”, a body that lives by basic instinct. Bell writes about how we, as believers, must live as a human, neither angel nor animal, but somewhere in between:

“Angels were here before us. Animals were here before us. When we act like angels or animals, we’re acting like beings who were created before us. We’re going backwards in creation. We’re going the wrong way…our actions, then, aren’t isolated. Nothing involving sex exists independent of and disconnected from everything around it. How we act determines the kind of world we’re creating. And with every action, we’re continuing the ongoing creation of the world. The question is, what kind of world are we creating? How we live matters because God made us human. Which means we aren’t angels. And we aren’t animals.” (Bell, R. 2007, p.63-64)

The question he asks is applicable to every person, at every juncture of life, what kind of world are we creating? In the context of our sexuality, we must ask ourselves this question. Do we see sexuality as something to fear, or have we trusted God-created sexuality as a powerful tool for creating? How do we use our sexuality for the glory of God? How do we use our bodies for creating? The secular culture leads us to believe that we are animals (i.e. over-sexualized) and often the church leads us to believe we are angels (i.e. asexual). In particular, the woman’s body through pregnancy demands us to see that sex is designed to create life. What kind of a world are you creating, one of objectification or true intimacy? Our sex life is a powerful prayer telling the story of who we believe God is and who we believe God created us to be.

What kind of world are we creating as Christians? I think the answer is displayed in our sex life.

Dr. Christy Bauman, PhD, MDFT, & LMHC is committed to helping women come into their true voice. She offers story-work consulting. She is the author and producer of her works: Theology of the Womb, Womaneering Perpetual Calendar, A Brave Lament, and the award-winning Documentary: A Brave Lament. She is a psychotherapist, supervisor, part-time professor who focuses on the female body, sexuality and theology. Christy’s work can be found at christybauman.com