Saturday night at Barnes and Noble, I was browsing and I wandered into the Christian Inspiration section (which, interestingly, is right beside the Warfare section) and happened upon Every Young Man’s Battle, a book filled to bursting with “strategies for victory in the real world of sexual temptation.” I read the back of it and realized I had to read the whole thing. Sure, I could’ve waited until the next day to go look for it at the library, but why wait? So I bought it. (And I plan on returning it once I’m done reading it - so no breaking the spine or spilling coffee).
This book is too good to be left uncommented upon in an overly sarcastic, potentially offensive, and most certainly sacreligious manner, so I plan to write a detailed review and post it here as I go. I read “Part I: Where Are We?” last night. So, time for the first installation of my review.
Let’s start with the back cover, actually. If you go to the BN.com page (click the link above) you can read what’s there, under “From the Publisher.” This is the part that really leapt out at me: “…how to clean up your thought life.” Your thought life? Is it just me, or does that sound a little too Orwellian for comfort? You’re not allowed even to think about sex? Wow. This oughta be good.
Chapter 1: When Football Was King
We begin chapter 1, wherein co-author Fred Stoeker begins telling the story of his degeneration from dedicated, sexually pure high school student with one goal in sight — becoming an all-star quarterback — to bed-hopping player enmeshed in the sordidness of college life.
In high school, his love of football kept his “urges” in check. However, what puzzles me is how easily he gave up. Despite his all-encompassing dream of PAC-10 football, when he showed up at try-outs at Stanford and saw the other quarterbacks and realized how much better they were — he quit. Just like that. He’s no Rudy, clearly.
And so, as his football dreams died, he turned his attention toward… (ominous music) … women.
After his freshman year, Fred returns home and starts dating an old friend. It got serious fast. At one point they spend a weekend together at a lake cabin. The first night there, you can imagine what he’s thinking. So, what does his girlfriend say?
She says: “You know I’m saving myself for marriage — hopefully ours. If you push forward with this, I want you to know I won’t stop you. But I will never be able to respect you as much as I do right now, and that would make me very sad for a long time.”
What? That comment really confuses me. So, she’s saying, if he wants to, she will have sex with him — but she will lose respect for him? What about her simply saying no? I guess it’s not up to her. She’s the woman. She’s the recepticle. (And secretly horny? Is she pushing her horniness onto him, making it his problem, not hers?) I’m also curious as to how she would feel about herself if she would lose respect for him in this situation. It is very puzzling indeed.
You’ll be happy to know that our hero resists — for now. When he goes back to college, he meets another girl and falls in love. He believes she is the girl he will marry. “Since there was nothing holding [them] back,” they have sex.
Huh? Nothing holding them back? What was holding him back in the cabin at the lake that is suddenly absent now? That emotionally loaded comment from his girlfriend? God? What, exactly?
Apparently he rationalized that since they would get married eventually, it was okay. Well, they end up breaking up. And so begins a series of further rationalizations. And thus we see how our hero ends up sleeping with quite a few women during his sophomore year of college. All of this serves to illustrate “the fiery draw of premarital sex.”
Chapter 2: Distance from God
Chapter 2 begins with good ol’ Fred still hopping from bed to bed, oblivious to the fact that something is wrong with his life. He graduates college, moves to San Francisco, and takes a job as an investment banker. One late night in his office, while watching a sunset out the window, God speaks to him and tells him he needs to change his ways. He realizes that something has really changed when, while visiting friends, he enters a bathroom where the walls are papered with Playboy centerfolds, and is “repulsed.” Hmmm. Could living in San Francisco have turned him gay?
But the real turning point comes when he tracks down an old high school crush and they quickly head back to her apartment and into her bed (he’s changed, though, right?) — and he can’t get it up.
Clearly this is a sign of God working in his life — not his repressed gayness.
As an aside: this chapter ends with Fred stating that a few months later he meets Brenda, and the two of them “commit to saving intercourse until [their] wedding night” (emphasis mine). Hmm. Interesting choice of wording there, Fred! Not that I am suggesting anything impure.
Chapter 3: Oneness with God
A large portion of chapter 3 is devoted to quotes from the New Testament that show that God does not tolerate any form of “sexual impurity.” Interestingly, all these quotes are from the Pauline epistles.
That Paul. Hoo boy, he was obsessed with sex.
Also, we hear from a teenager named John, who “can commit to this abstinence thing,” but he’s not giving up blow jobs. And then we hear, “But maybe you”re not like John at all. You”re a good kid.” Because only bad kids have oral sex. Naughty, naughty!
Some choice outtakes from Chapter 3:
Perhaps intercourse once seemed wrong, but you recently got it on with that girl in English class and you didn’t feel guilty at all.
Sex without guilt! Heavens, no!
Attraction to the female body is a natural, God-given desire.
But attraction to the male body? That’s queer! It’s an evil choice.
We’ll be tempted in many wrong ways to play with these natural desires and attractions to girls. Obviously, stripping off her clothes in the basement at the afer-game party is a wrong way…
Especially if she doesn’t want you to. That’d be date rape, cowboy. (But I forgot, how she feels about any of this isn’t an issue in this book.)
… but it’s just as wrong to stare lustfully at her and fantasize in your mind.
Damn! What’s a guy to do? (And, I’m curious, where else could you fantasize besides your mind? Redundancies…)
There isn’t a day in which I don”t take a call on my daily radio talk show from a husband or wife asking how he or she can recover from an adulterous affair or a partner’s sexual addiction.
A partner’s sexual addiction? I’m really curious as to what they mean here. Especially because later they go on to basically disparage wives who don’t want sex all the time.
When we turn on the computer and masturbate over naked, nameless lovers lying across our screen, we aren’t like Christ.
Mmmm… naked, nameless lovers… -wait, what? Ahem. Yes. Well, no shit, Sherlock. For one thing, I’m pretty sure they didn’t have computers 2,000 years ago.
There is one more chapter in Part I, but it’s nearly as long as chapters 1-3 put together, so I’ll wait til later and write a separate review of chapter 4.
It’s kind of cruel, really. This book tells you you”re not even supposed to think about sex, yet it describes in detail the “exhiliration” of an orgasm, steamy sex scenes from movies, etc… What are they, a bunch of teases?
Since this is probably the longest blog entry I’ve ever written, it should suffice for now. I apologize for any typoes. It’s past my bedtime.
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Well, if you are consciously not thinking about sex, then aren’t you really thinking about sex?
Niki: here’s your assignment for today. Don’t think about an orange.
Far be it from me to rain on this sarcasm parade, especially since I too - as a Christian - have often enjoyed poking fun at much of the Christian ‘inspiration’ (see Christian fad of the day) products. Hell, I probably embarassed my parents at my old church’s Christmas Eve service last year when I chided those who would hear for the minister passing out ‘nail pendants’ so we could all ‘remember the crucifixion’ … I was waiting for Mel Gibson to shout ‘Amen’ throughout the whole scene.
Nonetheless, let me ask this of you Amber - had someone - say Xon or I - penned something that took exhaustive lengths to ridicule and embarass another religion (say Islam or a New Age belief system) - particularly some of its core beliefs, what would your reaction have been? Truthfully.
Or say someone had decided to ridicule an agnostic homosexual’s process of ‘coming out of the closet’ … would you laugh, or would you say it was hateful and unnecessary?
Your satire doesn’t particularly offend me, hell I found the ’sex with girl in English class’ quite funny, but I’m just curious.
And I guess I have a morbid infatuation with being ‘that guy’ in all debates.
If Islam and New Age beliefs are just as hilariously ridiculous then yes, we would laugh at that post too. Go for it. :)
“Your thought life? Is it just me, or does that sound a little too Orwellian for comfort? You’re not allowed even to think about sex?”
Welcome to the world of Christians. Thought and action are oddly the same to them in moral terms. That is really, really odd. But to invoke or participate in a philosophical on ethics about this would be way too much like school, so I won’t start.
Jmac, I’m not trying to embarass a religion. I’m poking fun at the people who wrote this book. There’s nothing high-minded about it. I don’t think they are representative of Christianity as a whole. I think the people who do think this way (Christian or otherwise) are ridiculous. Please don’t over-analyze this, anyone. It’s good old fashioned satire. You should see this book. It’s a hoot. (Or scary. You be the judge.) But you have to laugh or else you’ll cry.
Anything that you ridicule, it has to do with the tone and intent as to whether it’s hateful.
Also, I stand by Chris’s concise one-line answer. No need for me to pontificate further.
“Welcome to the world of Christians. Thought and action are oddly the same to them in moral terms. That is really, really odd.”
I think it would be more accurate to say that Christians think that thoughts and actions both count in moral terms, not that they are “the same.” Jesus tells people not to get cocky over their ‘purity’ if they are constantly fantasizing about cheating on their wife, because this fantasizing is also wrong (as it flows from an unfaithful heart, and it’s the heart that matters). But if we had to ‘pick’ between fantasizing and actually cheating on our wife, it would definitely be ‘better’ to just fantasize.
All sins are bad, in that they are all tiny rebellions against the character of God. But not all sins are ‘equal’, as though murder is no worse than stealing a pencil from Wal-Mart.
Yes, that is exactly what that apocryphal story was. She (or his representation of her) was following her ordained gender role and bowing before her pater familias and he was therefore responsible to whatever happened. Ugh.
And, Jmac, I’d be happy to regale you with the sex tales of Orthodox or Hasid Jews, but when compared to the those of the various Christian (and Islamic) Sects, they truly pale in comparison. I mean, how weird it is to have sex through a hole in a sheet and avoid it on the Sabbath. Hell, the Talmud urges both male and female Jews to fulfill their “marriage duties” and ensure that each is satisfied with whatever kind of sex life they can have together. Just ’cause some of the weirdos on your side of the fence make you uncomfortable doesn’t mean you should jump on Amber :-)
What I think Amber is mocking is not Fred’s trip through sin to god or his tortured, hack-ish “prodigal son,” Augustine-esque metaphor; rather, she is mocking the 20/20 hindsight, pseudo-knowing, faux-worldliness and egotism of the author.
I mean, how could a line like:
Attraction to the female body is a natural, God-given desire.
Not be mocked? It’s absurd on its face as there are obviously people who feel very close to god who are gay, no matter what people like Fred Phelps tells us, I can’t see how they are any different from a straight person who feels the same closeness with god. This is an example of Fred interjecting his own theology into his story and, in my opinion, making it worth of mockery. YMMV.
Thoughts?
I’m not sure what’s more disturbing … the fact that I’m a tad curious or the fact that you have tales to regale. :)
I will just say in poor Fred’s defense here, that technically he has the right to interject his own theology into his own story. You can mock it all you want, there’s nothing wrong with that.
I suppose what I was saying was that it’s absurd to you, but not absurd to him based on his belief system.
Going a step further, it’s not even entailed by the line Ep quoted.
(1)Attraction to the female body is a natural, God-given desire,
does not entail
(2)Attraction to the male body is not a natural, God-given desire.
Of course (wink, wink) we all know what this rube really thinks about homosexuality, but as a matter of analysis of his words this is a serious mistreatment.
It is a misreading to deem someone’s written statement as absurd because of some other belief that we all know or think we know (wink, wink) that he holds and which we find objectionable. The objectionable belief particularly is a completely different subject from what Fred is discussing in the chapter in question (He is giving an autobiography of his own sexual history, and also laying out what he takes to be the biblical view of non-marital sex). He is not talking about homosexuality, he never brought it up (unless he did so in a passage Amber failed to mention).
But don’t take this as an indication that I enjoy defending the sort of evangelly that comes out of most “Jesus Junk” stores (or, in this case, Barnes and Noble). May it never be! :-)
That is true. And no, he doesn’t say anything about homosexuality in that chapter. But it wouldn’t be the highly offensive satire I intend it to be without snarky comments of that nature!
FWIW, the last chapter of the book is called “When Your Feelings Are For Other Guys.” I was tempted to skip ahead and read it, but I’m resisting. Got to do this in the proper order.
Accoding to Snopes.com, the hole in the sheet thing is an Urban legend.
From what I’ve been taught, there is a difference between having a thought about doing something wrong, (being tempted) and whether you dwell on the thoughts.
Or as one religious authority figure put it (I can’t remember who at this point):
Thoughts about sex entertain me. Actual sex entertains me even more.
Way to resurrect an old thread! And welcome to my not-so-humble blog.