The Asian Female Christian Sex Addict?
“Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God.”
– G.K. Chesterton/English Theologian & Writer
The late English writer and Christian Apologist G.K. Chesterton is credited with this quote and I believe it speaks to humanity’s deepest desire for God.
As a Christian counselor, I once heard of a woman who considered herself a devoted Christian but struggles immensely with her sexual urges, passions, and sordid sexual past. She came into counseling because these sexual feelings and fantasies eventually led to an affair.
She is tormented by the tension that she wants and desires violent sex yet also wants to be a faithful follower of Christ and doesn’t know what to do. So what am I supposed to do in this case if I was working with her? Condone her behavior? Acknowledge her struggle as normal? Quote a Bible verse that speaks about God’s forgiveness? Can anything be said or done to take away this woman’s intense feelings of shame?
As a counselor who specializes in shame and compulsive behaviors, I’d like to take another approach. From the context of her family and church background (i.e. lack of father or male role models, feeling scorned and judged by her Christian church community), I’d first probe her regarding her own values and perceptions of God’s love, mercy, grace, and atonement for our sins. This is not about giving her a theological education, but more to root out the pernicious thoughts that are robbing her of grasping God’s glorious work through Christ’s redemption for humanity on the Cross.
This is a woman who deeply wants to feel God’s acceptance wash her clean. Unfortunately because the Christian church has been so reticent to talk about sex, many well-meaning Christians have no idea what to make of their sexuality and desires. What I’d like to tell her is that her sexual desire is a Godly desire. God planted that desire in her so that she could find intimacy and love. In this world, we can easily confuse sexual desire for love and I believe in this case, this woman desperately is seeking not sex but love. She indicated she had countless sexual experiences but never felt “connected” with any of the men. In her frenzied sexual activity, many men and women could easily call her, in today’s vernacular, a “slut” or “whore”. But I know this is not how God sees her. God sees a godly woman crying out to be touched by his grace.
So what context is best for this? By a “Christian” counselor like myself? By a pastor, church, a small group, or mentor? I’d have to say it’s a two-way street between her church and her own willingness to be more vulnerable before her Christian brothers and sisters. However, if her church leaders rigidly view sex as just “wrong” and lack the insight to recognize her sexual desire as a god-given desire for intimacy with our Creator, then she’d have to find another church. But this woman also needs to be more vulnerable before a body of believers where she can feel safe enough to be open about her struggles so that she can be healed to the core of her soul.
“Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” (James 5:16 KJV)
Otherwise, she could wind up spending a life-time spinning in an emotional and spiritual merry-go-round in a therapist’s office without ever receiving God’s eternal love that she so desires.
Let this case study remind us that that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) but also that as Christians, Jesus’ blood and sacrifice have washed us clean of any shame or condemnation Satan has been using to make us feel unworthy before God and God’s church.
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8:1-2 NIV)
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