Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Hi friends, Asher with Un Fayed Christianity. Welcome back to the book review that I'm doing of my book, Live Free Making Sense of Male Sexuality. If you miss the first four chapters, go ahead, click the link below and it'll take you to the other videos that were review the earlier chapters. I'm taking one video to review each chapter as I work through all 20 chapters of my book in celebration of the four year anniversary and also getting ready for the release of the audio version of the book. So if you'd like more details about Yeah, why I'm doing this and, and some of the things coming down the road, go ahead and watch the very beginning video. It's gonna have the title, something Along Live free of a review of my own book, or something along that lines. I kind of forget what I titled it, but today we're, we're discussing chapter five, Drinking from a, Well, that doesn't satisfy, I start the chapter off by rehearsing the scene in, uh, PBS's Victoria series.
Speaker 0 00:00:57 I dunno if you've watched that or not, but it's a, it's a good series. We, we enjoyed watching it, but there's this scene where Victoria comes to meet Lord Melbourne or Lord m who's been kind of somewhat of a father figure, but she's slowly discovering that she's actually falling in love with him. She comes to meet him privately and proposes to him. Backstory is Lord Melbourne has been married, his wife left him years ago, and so he's remained, he didn't divorce her. He's remained officially married to her. Um, Victoria doesn't, Victoria knows this. She also knows that that Lord Em's wife had left. And so she's coming and promises not to leave him, but Lord Melbourne says that just like the rooks he makes for life and just gently turns her down. And I remember watching that the first time and thinking, Man, I don't know, like, could I do that if a lady's coming to me privately and offering me marriage proposing to me, like, could I have this, the inner strength to remain faithful, especially in a situation where he, he hadn't had marital intimacy for many years.
Speaker 0 00:02:11 Like who knows how long he had gone living alone and he had kind of a lonely life. And so this would be, you know, she's a young, made in a young queen, giving herself to him, and like that would be super tempted. Like surely you'd kinda give in to some degree and, and just, I don't know the historical accuracy specifically of that particular event, but just the picture that PBS gave us, this, this man committed to his wife, the fortitude to resist even when he's being <laugh> propositioned or proposed to by someone, it probably felt really good to want. And, and just what it confronted in me that so much of my looking for sex even, but even looking for approval, appreciation is coming from this thing deep within where I need something to be filled. And it's, and it can feel at times like I'm looking anywhere for something to feel that.
Speaker 0 00:03:16 And that's a dangerous place to be. And when we find ourselves in, in the context of this book, when we find ourselves struggling with lust, struggling with sexual immorality, what's really at the bottom of that is we're looking, we're thirsty for something, we're looking for it to be filled, and we're just, sadly, we're looking in the wrong place. We're filling it with sex or sexual excitement, sexual exploitation of some kind. And it doesn't satisfy, like no matter how much we try to fill it, it doesn't satisfy. So that's kinda the gist of chapter five. I would love to hear your feedback, your thoughts on it or any questions you have. There is one fairly major thing that I would change if I wrote this book again, and that is, I riff off of the example where Jesus in John chapter four meets this woman at the well. And I kind of use her as an example of someone who was longing for something deep within and keeps looking for it through sexual avenues because she's a woman. Jesus says she's had five husbands, The the man that she was currently with was not her husband.
Speaker 0 00:04:37 As in the years that I've written this book, I've, I'm in the middle of Bible college obtaining a bachelor of biblical and cultural ex of Jesus. And so I've, I've done more Bible study than ever in my life and even just background study and understanding like some of the context and so forth. And I think it's actually really, really hard to draw the conclusion that the, the woman at the well is necessarily out there frivolously, like trying to find lovers. Actually, she's probably someone who's been rejected a lot. She had been disposed of by men throughout life in that culture. Being married was big, was significant. You needed to be married. She's coming out in the middle of the day instead of the cool of the day out at the well where there's a lot of sun. It's hard work to bring up this water.
Speaker 0 00:05:28 And so she was a lady filled with a tremendous shame and tremendous dispo, feeling dishonored by all these men. And so she's probably a better example of someone who's been abused and used throughout life, not necessarily that she's just seeking sexual fulfillment in all these different ways. She's not a prostitute that that should be, well, we don't know if she is a prostitute, but because the language is that she's had five husbands, she's probably not a prostitute. She's had husbands who keep putting her away for whatever reason. And with every new putting away of her reputation is more and more tarnished because in that culture, a man could put a wife away for not cooking his food, right? But a lady like when she's been put away, then that's a sign of shame, a sign of this, this rapport dishonor on her reputation and on who she is as a woman.
Speaker 0 00:06:31 And so that's the one thing that I thought about is like, you know, that's, I I would probably use a different story to illustrate the point. I think, I think the point is still true. One example that we might be able to draw from is Saul, which I do draw on later in the book, but I could just just introduce him earlier than I do. And the story of how, like him being chosen by the people coming from a, a, like the lowest of the tribes, the tribe of Benjamin, him being chosen was like, you can tell throughout the biblical narrative that this became somewhat of a significant thing to Saul. He, he, he begins to wear the fact that men are following him on his sleeve to the point that when people are, the Philistines are descending on him and his men are running away from him, he decides to take things into his own control.
Speaker 0 00:07:31 And instead of doing it God's way, he does it his way and offers a sacrifice instead of waiting the amount of days that Samuel had told him to wait until Samuel came and offered the sacrifice on their behalf. So I do introduce that, We're gonna get into that story later, but I could just have introduced it earlier. That would be one example. I'm curious what other biblical stories or biblical examples might you think of that depict more accurately how we have these thirsts and these hungers inside of us and and we keep going after it even though it doesn't satisfy? I do think we could use the story of the woman at the well, because Jesus specifically talks about like, if you drink of this water, you're gonna thirst again. But the water that I give you will never thirst. It takes a little bit of a different angle. But this notion that we are thirsting for something that we can only find in Jesus, but we look for it in different ways outside of Jesus and it causes us to keep thirsting again. And even though, just like water, Jesus is not saying, Oh, you should stop drinking water biologically, we need to keep drinking water, right? We're, we're gonna die if we don't have the proper amount of water each day. In the same way, relationships and intimacy is something we're designed for,
Speaker 1 00:08:55 We need, but if we use those to fill something deep in our souls, it's gonna leave us wanting, We're gonna keep thirsting, we're gonna, we're gonna keep needing more and more out of the relationship. We're not gonna be able to give anything to the relationship. The relationship might break apart because we're, we're putting too much pressure on it that neither of us are designed to give. So there's a couple different angles I could take at it so that we're a little more biblically accurate. And that's one of the reasons that has inspired me to review my own book is that I've noticed in Christian books on relationships and sexuality and so forth, sometimes we take scripture and we use it without like doing the study of like, what is the context, what's actually going on here? And is it applicable to the situation I'm wanting to apply it to?
Speaker 1 00:09:44 Sometimes we just take it and use it as an example because it makes the point we're trying to make. That's not good use of scripture. That's basically a form of is Jesus, which is a fancy word for saying reading something. I'm assuming the text is trying to say something that it's actually not trying to say. And rather than just being a good student of the word and letting the text say what it says, like there are ways, like sometimes our points might be wrong and we need to change our points, but there are other ways to depict or to illustrate this point of we go after things that don't satisfy and I could do it in a more biblically responsible matter. That's the one thing I would change. I'm curious what your thoughts are, what your feedback is. Did you think about that when you read it? If you've read it, if you haven't read it, what, what are your thoughts based on this video? I'd love to hear from you. Drop a comment below or send me a a message until tomorrow. Tomorrow's chapter is chapter six and we're gonna look at fig leaves. You may or may not know where I'm headed there. We'll see you then.
