Intended for Pleasure: Sex Technique and Sexual Fulfillment in Christian Marriage by Ed Wheat
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I read this many years ago, and have been giving it away in my pre-marital counseling, also for many years. I recently decided I ought to read it again, and was pleased to see that the book had weathered the years well. There are parts that are a bit too “medically sounding,” but there is a lot of good info here for young couples. I guess I will continue giving it away.
Timely.
thx.
A weakness of this book is that it fails to locate God’s purpose for copulation within God’s purposes for marriage, or even with any reference to them. God ordained marriage for companionship, procreation, and protection from uncleanness– but Dr. Wheat leaves that all aside and speaks only of pleasure. The book’s assumption that contraception is normal for married couples is a natural outflow of its unmooredness from God’s purposes for marriage. Ultimately, Wheat is satisified if married couples have fun, but God has ordained that the fun is a byproduct of fruitfulness. Married couples need to have that opened up… Read more »
Daniel — good comment.
“Byproduct of fruitfulness” — with fruitfulness being defined as … what exactly?
Genesis 1:28.
Matthew — if you are speaking for Daniel, you are saying fruitfulness = children.
Yet neither Daniel above nor Moses in the passage you cite confines sexual activity to attempts for pregnancy.
Dear PerfectHold, Yes, I mean the pursuit of having children. Today we are a generation of farmers who sow our seed with no expectation or even desire of reaping a crop. This is not only sinful, but stupid. We need to be taught God’s purposes for marriage and then walk by faith and desire to raise up many precious arrows who will contend with their enemies in the gate – desire to have a great harvest of souls, our own children and those outside – to show our Master at the end of the age. How can we be hospitable… Read more »
Lost me a bit in your last line.
How you distinguish between the “attempt for pregnancy” and “pursuit of having children”?
And can “companionship, procreation, and protection from uncleanness” be accomplished if a pursuit of having children is absent from the couple’s thinking?
I don’t know if pursuit of children is nessessary but what is definitely wrong is the pursuit of childlessness.
Christopher — always? What if the couple learns of a transmissible disease or such?
There might be exceptions but in general trying to have the number of children be inversely porportional to the amount of sex is the wrong way to do things.
Is it not possible, and even godly, to enjoy the act and not be thinking about producing children?
Take it a step further even.
Is it an ungodly approach to maximize this contact, and in MANY considered instances also maximize the chance (humanly speaking) of restricting conception?
>>> Is it not possible, and even godly, to enjoy the act and not be thinking about producing children?
Of course.
>>> How you distinguish between the “attempt for pregnancy” and “pursuit of having children”? It’s a matter of attitude towards the thing – do excuse me if I read yours wrong. “Attempt for pregnancy” reminded me of those who respond to the biblical call to a fruitful marriage bed with, “Are you saying everyone is supposed to have as many children as they can?” — which when you hold that on the one hand up beside Elkanah’s question to barren Hannah, “Am I not better to you than ten sons?” and God’s great blessing of Job with 14 sons and… Read more »
I’m tracking — so please elucidate the attitude difference?
One views God’s command to be fruitful and multiply as shackles, danger and/or drudgery to be avoided, a curse (if they were honest) – the other views it as it is: a blessing from the Lord, a reward, a harvest to present to the Lord at the end of the age.
Maybe others can help.
Love,
So perhaps you are equating “attempt for pregnancy” with “pursuit of having children” and pitting those two synonymous terms against avoiding pregnancy.
Yet can we not at the same time see the danger of having kiddos (and so try to avoid it) in many circumstances while also accepting them as a blessing should He deliver them despite our best attempts to avoid?
>>> Yet can we not at the same time see the danger of having kiddos (and so try to avoid it) in many circumstances while also accepting them as a blessing should He deliver them despite our best attempts to avoid? God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it,” and our response is, “can we not at the same time see the danger of having kiddos (and so try to avoid it) in many circumstances while also accepting them as a blessing should He deliver them despite our best attempts to avoid?” This… Read more »
It can indeed be — wise & faithful — given the thorns and deformities now in cursed earth around us.
And one that Job attests to in so many of his prayers.
I’m not sure I’m understanding you. Do you mean the prayers where Job in his despair wishes he had never been born… and are you arguing from that that it actually would have been better for him not to have been born, and that therefore we are justified if we turn away from pursuing fruitfulness?
And PerfectHold, are you asking these questions for the purpose of placing yourself under the Word of God for the obedience of faith? I’m having trouble distinguishing you from one of those men who have endless questions that never result in obedience. In other words, their questions are fruitless. I warn you: do not be one of those who hear the words of Jesus and do not do them.
Love,
Speaking only for myself and this might be too much information so consider yourself warned but I find fertility sexy. I think you’re on to something regarding our bridling at it. Think of that scene in That Hideous Strength where Merlin suddenly understands that Jane has made herself barren. Lewis was an old bachelor when he wrote that but still.
As far as this book goes, I’m not sure it’s better than just sending the kids out to figure it out on their own.