MyChainsAreGone
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- Apr 18, 2009
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The visual conditioning of men is very real... and there's no doubt that more than "half a dozen" medical journals and a gazillion pastors will confirm that "men are visual." The conditioning is so pervasive as to seem to be "natural."can you prove the assertion that God did not make man visual. I am just asking, because I can probably pull half a dozen medical journals proving that men have a mental disposition to that.
But logically, the notion that men are created that way absolutely falls apart under any reasonable and thoughtful analysis...
Let's start with the theological part... (and I'm not going to reference the address of every scripture here since I'm going to assume that you'll know the inferences that I'm making to specific scriptures. If you are unsure, please ask and I'll provide the scripture address that I'm referencing)
- God is a Trinity... a plurality expressed as a Unity.
- God is Love... which actually logically requires Him to be a plurality of some sort, because otherwise in eternity past, God would not have had an object for His love.
- God made men and women in His image. To adequately image God, mankind had to be a plurality.
- God Designed Sexual union (become one flesh) to be the way that mankind can image a plurality expressed as a unity.
- The unity of the Godhead is a relational unity... the "motivation" for that unity is Love (relational), not "visual" or anything else.
- The unity of man and woman--to accurately portray the unity of the Godhead--is based not on visual, but relational
- God does NOT expect us to unite physically with every woman we see, but only with the one with whom we have the God-established marriage covenant.
- It is inconsistent (or worse) to suggest that God created men to be motivated to sexual union visually when the unity of the Godhead is 100% relational.
- We have to start with the fact that the Bible never tells us that men are visually aroused.
- The bible never tells them that they can only see their own wives' bodies.
- The bible never tells them to limit what they see in order to contain their lustful responses.
- The Bible never tells them which body parts they cannot see without igniting impure passions.
- The bible never tells women that the cannot allow any man but their own husband to see their bodies.
- The Bible never prescribes hiding anything from sight in order to control covetousness/lust... of any type.
More biblical reasoning...
- God calls us as men to "rejoice" (sexually) "in the wife of your youth"... for all our days.
- That means that if a man is only aroused visually, then when our wives gain weight or get droopy or lose a breast or become wrinkled and withered through life, her visual sexual appeal to us may become completely lost.
- It means that by the time we are old, we had BETTER be transferred to "relational" sexual arousal, else we'll be unable to function sexually!
- It means that if it's right for a man who is old, it is right for a man who is young.
- It means that our wives' exclusive claim to our sexual interests can be maintained throughout her life and even grow stronger as we age... not grow weaker.
- Now doesn't that sound more like God's way?
- Lust = Covetousness. The OT uses the word Hebrew word translated "covet" when it describes lust. The NT uses the Greek word for "Lust" when writers quote the 10th commandment.
- The 10th commandment itself forbids both the coveting of a neighbor's house (covetousness) and the coveting of a neighbor's wife (lust).
- Would anyone suggest that the way to overcome coveting would be to eliminate all visual exposure to the object of the exposure?
- Must I build a hedge to hide my neighbor's house? Should I demand that HE build a head to hide his house? Should I build my own house completely separated from my neighbor's house... so far away that I can never see it and be tempted to covet it? I know of no one suggesting such and idiotic idea. The answer to covetousness is contentment and gratitude. It is not in treating my neighbor's house as the problem.
- Would anyone suggest that the way to overcome lust would be to eliminate all visual exposure to her or her body? Must I turn my eyes away from her to avoid the temptation? Must I demand that she cover her body so that I can control my lust? Must I refuse to be in a neighborly relationship with my neighbor's wife--if she happens to be young, beautiful, and shapely--in order to prevent my own lust? I know of no passage of scripture suggesting such and idiotic idea. The answer to lust is contentment and gratitude. It is not in treating my neighbor's wife--or her body--as the problem.
- But that's exactly what the church today has done... we treat the sight of a woman as the problem and excuse the man's lustful response as a "God-Given" response.
- If a trait is God-Given, then it must be a good thing. But is it a good thing for every man to have sexual responses to every woman who's skin he happens to observe?
- Jesus told us in Mark 7 that nothing outside a man can defile him by going into him.
- Jesus listed a bunch of sins that come from within a man... including a number of sins associated with sexual impurity.
- Sexual impurity is NEVER a result of something outside of a man... so whether he eats it (food) or sees it (a shapely woman), if he has an impure response, then the sin has been revealed, for it was already within his heart.
- Limiting what we see will NEVER correct the impurity in our hearts.
- If there's not impurity in our hearts, then what we see will NOT create and impure response!
- God is NEVER the source of "temptation" for any man (James 1).
- Yet... if God made women's bodies to be an "automatic" sexual arousal for men when they ever see any woman's body, then it suggests that God's handiwork--amazing and gorgeous handiwork--actually IS the source of temptation for men.
- By what mechanism to we train doctors to have the ability to "shut off" their visual-arousal reflex as soon as they strap on a stethoscope? When home with their wife, the visual kicks in, but in the office with a patient, no such issue, right?
- The fact is that there is no training or "reconditioning" that doctors undergo in order to squelch the visual-arousal response. They simply treat patients as persons... fully deserving of dignity and honor and respect and of NOT being sexually objectified... even if they are fully exposed to their doctor.
- Furthermore, if a doctor has access to see their patients naked and they are irresponsible with that access (i.e. use it for sexual gratification), we revoke that doctor's license to practice and literally throw him in jail!
- Such a response is totally unfair if the guy was only responding "the way God made him."
- Artists who draw/paint/photograph the nude for artistic (not inappropriate contentographic) purposes are regularly exposed to the unclad human form (male and female) with absolutely no sexual response. How is that even possible? It's possible because they have rejected and eliminated the visual-arousal response in their own lives... and they can then see the person and honor their physical beauty (which is actually God's artistry) without besmirching it with impure thoughts and responses.
- Morticians routinely prepare our dead loved ones for burial... meaning that they are literally exposed to and handling the unclad bodies of men and women all the time. But if one allowed himself to get sexually aroused by the sight of those female bodies, we would most assuredly call him a pervert... and never use his services again! Is that fair? If men are naturally "visually aroused"?
- Pavlovian conditioning is VERY real! It works on dogs, and it works on humans.
- If the ONLY time a man EVER sees a woman's nude form is when he is actively pursuing sexual arousal...
- If the message we tell our young men from before the time that they even know what sex is that seeing a woman's body unclothed is forbidden... and a sexual sight...
- If we constantly demand that women keep their body parts covered to prevent men from "automatically" lusting after them...
- If every man has been told time and again that the female form is sexually alluring... and his every response to ever seeing it has been sexual in nature...
- THEN, that man will be so thoroughly conditioned to have a sexual response to the sight of a woman's nude form that he will ASSUME that it's completely natural... especially since every other guy he knows has the same experience/responses.
- And it also means that the only sure way to break the conditioning is learn how to disassociate the bell (nudity) from the food (sexual arousal). It requires the renewing of our minds. It requires embracing the truth (NOT visually aroused) that will then set us free.
- And that's why we teach at our MyChainsAreGone website that changing how you view the human form IS the answer to lust and inappropriate content addiction.
Also, from a medical and pastoral perspective, one of the authors at MCAG spent a lot of years as an obstetric nurse AND as a pastor. Here's his story about having to deal with the nakedness of women on an almost daily basis:
And here is that pastor's rebuttal of the "Men are Visual" myth...
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