Unka Glen

Anonymous asked: What’s your take on premarital sex?

Unka Glen answered: It’s not as good as post-marital sex.

The truth is, I had a number of “wild years” in my life, and had more backslides than I care to count. And I lost my virginity in high school, long before I got married. Did it feel good? Yes, like they say about pizza— good pizza is amazing, bad pizza is still pretty good. Did it ruin the relationship I had with my wife when we met and decided to get married? No.

But I said what every premarital person says on losing their virginity… it’s a subtle combination of “that was something”, and “is that it?”. I thought it would be amazing, and spectacular, and earth shattering, but it was kind of a fumbling and clueless moment that we hadn’t talked through, and that we weren’t really ready for. It wasn’t magical or amazing.

It felt a lot like we had dessert before dinner.

Soon after, the relationship ended, and I sought the forgiveness I knew I needed, and got things back in track. In truth, it was a LONG journey from that moment to figuring out how to be a Godly man in a relationship, and I spent some years living entirely on my own working that out.

But in the end, once I got myself on track, and met my wife, the experience on my wedding day was TOTALLY different. We had spent much of our engagement talking about our likes and dislikes, stuff we wanted to try, all our wild fantasies. And that wedding night was something.

But that was only the tip of the iceberg. You see, everyone has their own ideas about sex, and what it’s for, but for the two of us, looking at it as believers, we discovered that sex could be a way for us to find a deeper intimacy. It became a beautiful way for the two of us to literally become one flesh. It became a way to bring excitement, and thrill, and sweet pleasure into our lives. It was a way of taking things from good to great. But if you don’t have the good marriage to start with, well, then it’s all icing and no cupcake.

Married sex, at least within the context of Christian marriage, should be a celebration of the chance to give another person a deep and abiding pleasure, a way of celebrating the body of your partner, and a celebration of giving a deep, beautiful emotional release. It’s about loving another enough to map out their every secret pleasure spot, learning their every turn-on, and spoiling them rotten with pleasure.

Sex, in the context of Christian marriage, becomes another way to serve one another. And trust me, if you do it right, it’s truly worth the wait.

Anonymous asked: Right now, I really feel down in the dumps. Recently, I’ve been watching porn. I always stop for a while, then head back to the habit of doing it again. It really sucks after every time where I say I want to stop, and yet I’m continuing in this vicious cycle. 

Could you help me out here, uncle? You’re freaking awesome, for all the replies you’ve given to all the people out there. This has really crippled my spiritual self, and almost always, my dreams of becoming a worker for God full-time feels like it’s teetering on a crevice. Please help me out here! 

Unka Glen answered: I got ‘cha on this. You feel bad about this situation, but let ask you a question, are you SURE you know what to feel bad about? I’ll bet you don’t. When it comes to sinnin’ you’re still an amateur, listen to the professional, I’ll tell you what to feel bad about.

— It’s not the sex part. God made you with a built-in desire to look at naked people. God make sex to feel good, He wants you to enjoy it feeling good, and when He puts limits on you, that’s so you can enjoy it more, because the time is right.

Yes, you aren’t following God’s instructions on this, but I’ll bet that you don’t really know exactly what God’s instructions are. And I’ll bet that you have no earthly idea how important mistakes in your sex life are to God, as opposed to all the other mistakes you make in your life.

I’ll bet that when you mess this up, it feels like the most wrong thing you can do. It’s not. The sex part isn’t even the most wrong part of this situation, let alone your whole life. 

— It’s not the porn part. Yes porn can be exploitive and demeaning to women, but even when it isn’t doing all that, it’s doing something worse: it’s making sex boring. It’s making it just another image on a screen. Two-dimensional. Unfeeling, uncaring, cold. 

Taking something sacred, beautiful, and super-hot, and turning it into something boring and cheap is wrong, but it’s not the main thing that’s wrong here.

— It’s not the masturbation part. Ask God if it’s okay for you to be masturbating or not (that’s what you do when there isn’t a really clear Bible verse on the subject). Whatever He says should be the last word on the subject. But again, I’ll bet that you took your cues from the society around you, and decided that if that many people are ashamed of it, then God must be against it. 

Let God speak for Himself, and make no mistake, the last thing you should be doing is looking at the culture around you for indications of what God thinks. This is a mistake to be sure, and as common as the others, but still, not really the main point here.

— It’s not the the cycle itself. You could look at this situation and be glad that you have the strength and character to at least occasionally stop this behavior, and you could have looked at this situation and see that all the guilt and shame never stopped you from falling off again.

Seeing that shame and guilt weren’t working, you turned them up, and they still didn’t work. This means one of two different things: A) you are a sociopath with no conscience, or B) guilt and shame have no power to help this situation, they just make you feel bad in a way that makes you feel like you can’t turn to God. But you know what you can turn to? Porn.

There’s your cycle, and you should have seen that developing, and why it’s wrong to wallow in the guilt that is already weakening your resolve to stay on the path . This is wrong too, but not the most wrong thing here. 

— It isn’t the hidden sin part. Sins we do in secret seem darker and more evil, but the truth is, if you had never looked at porn and masturbated, then YOU would be the odd one out. This, of course, doesn’t make it okay behavior, but it should put things in perspective. Lacking this perspective has been hurtful to you, and damaging to your walk, but that still isn’t the main thing here.

HERE IS THE MAIN THING: you didn’t turn to God. I’m guessing that most of the times you fell off of your own self-imposed commitment to stop, it was because you were lonely, sad, depressed, tired, or overwhelmed. 

You may be looking at this behavior outside of the thing that’s driving it, and that’s a mistake. Porn is a response to something painful going on in your life. And like most of us, you turned to the things of this world for comfort. And if you can dig it, you took a much better option that many of those around you. But it’s a wrong option. 

God is there at the bottom of life. God is there when you just feel like you can’t take it any more. God is there when everyone else has left you behind. God is there, and He isn’t judging you, or scolding you, or giving you hoops to jump through. He’s there to give you comfort, and love, and peace, and hope.

Turning away from those things He offers is the sin. Anything else you do, any other direction you take, is a sin. The right direction to take is into His arms. Dwell there awhile, and for that moment, I’ll bet you don’t have a craving for anything else in the world.

Anonymous asked: I love God. I have struggled with lust almost my whole life. I bring this up because I am an art student and there is an entire class on studying the human figure. Nude. The models are sitting there in class. It is more annoying than anything else, but how can I deal with seeing the nude figure all the time? Is there a way to please God and stay pure in this situation while also not making a scene?

Unka Glen answered: Here’s a word I’d like us to all stop using— purity. Purity is a long term ideal to be strived for, purity is something we work out in a process with God, it is not our natural default state in any area of our lives, especially when it comes to the constant itch of lust. 

But you present an interesting challenge. There is a difference between the naked statue of Michelangelo’s David, and a naked image on a porn site. I don’t know if I can explain that difference, but then again, you’re the artist, so you tell me. There is a difference between the celebration of the most beautiful thing in all of creation, the human body, and something that has been cheapened and erotisized. 

But what constitutes that difference? Can one enjoy the beauty of the human form without being triggered into lust? Where is that line? How do we walk that line? If you think about a medical student, they deal with nudity on a frequent basis, but that’s in a clinical and de-erotisized environment. A picture in an anatomy textbook is likely to be neither erotic, nor art.

I think if you’ve struggled with lust (like roughly, oh, 100% of the human population), then you already know that you can’t really hide away from it. It’s everywhere. But it may actually be an empowering exercise, with the Lord, to see beauty in the human body, and to NOT let that vision be crowded out by lust. Maybe then you can show us, with your art, how we can do the same.

What a joy, to think of being at that point where you’re not giving in to the ride that lust wants to take you on. Maybe that’s what great art is really all about, something that takes us beyond our mere appetites, to see the fingerprints of God Himself.

Anonymous asked: i’m in this crazy cycle where i pleasure myself by reading pornographic material and masturbating. i battle within for about 5 minutes, and then it’s like a go into a trance, and have no idea what i’m doing, and when i realize what i’m doing, the urgency in turning to God is almost comical. i feel like i’m really struggling. I’m trying so hard to remain pure not only for my future husband but for myself as well because the aftermath of it is really hard as well. i feel guilty all the time and just dirty. i know it’s easy to say i’m just going to stop but i’m nearly 20 yrs old and it’s escalated from innocent childhood exploration to reading erotic material. i don’t want this holding me back in my walk anymore. [edited for length, and this didn’t come anonymously, but I’m anonymousizing it for her (that is too a word).]

Unka Glen answered: Okay, there is a lust thing going on here. I’ll certainly grant you that. But let’s look at everything else going on here as well. Shall we?

1. Part of this activity makes you feel good, and part of it makes you feel terrible. So our eyes should be open to the fact that it just doesn’t work as a way of improving your overall mood.

2. Normal people have sexual desires. Those desires are, in and of themselves, not wrong or sinful. It’s of course what we do with them that puts us on the right side of things or the wrong side. You aren’t dirty, and sex isn’t dirty. It’s the most intimate physical expression of love there is, and God made it to be beautiful and meaningful and fun. There would be something wrong with you if you didn’t want that in your life.

3. You feel “guilty all the time”, and that hasn’t fixed things, so moving forward, we know that the emotion of guilt is not part of the solution (and we may indeed discover that it’s part of the problem).

4. This guilt-centered view on masturbation is compelling us to focus on the wrongness of this whole cycle, but its given us no wisdom as to how we got here. The emotion of guilt has you saying: “I am bad, therefore I want bad things, and because I’m bad I don’t stop myself from doing the bad things I want to do, thus reinforcing that I am bad. End of story. Nothing else to see here.”

The conviction of the Holy Spirit sounds different: I’m better than this, and God has better for me than this, so why would I settle for something so inadequate, small, cheap, and empty? There must be a reason why I’m settling, and I need wisdom to figure it out.”

5. The emotion of guilt clouds the wisdom you need to understand this thing, and to lay the ax to the roots of this thing. So let’s say you pray and meditate on it, and you realize that you get caught up in this cycle every time you’re lonely. Well, loneliness is fairly easily dealt with, once you finally see that as the source of things. Maybe you realize this cycle kicks in when you feel stressed. Maybe this cycle starts when you feel doubtful about finding the right man in your life. 

Regardless… if you cure the disease, the symptoms can then be eliminated.

One last point: you said you don’t want this holding you back in your walk anymore. I hear stuff like this being said, a lot. “Sin separates us from God”, well, yes it separated (past tense) me from God, and then God sent His Son, and He closed that separation by paying for those sins. When I accepted that payment for my sins and become a Christian, Romans 8 says nothing separates me from the love of God. 

I think maybe we’ve got it in the wrong order, first I come out separate from God’s plan and his will, and then sin is the result. 

What I’m saying is, nothing is holding you back from God, and nothing can hold you back from God. Open your heart to His love and boldness as you read this. He is near, so toss aside anything that troubles you, and steals your joy, and dwell in the warmth of God’s love. There’s no more temptation there. 

Everything else is a work in progress. God is patient.

Your lies are stupid. I don’t mean that to be insulting, heck if I’m insulting anyone it’s me for believing your stupid lies. Actually, I haven’t just believed these stupid lies, I’ve often lived my life according to them. 

Here’s a stupid lie: I’m the only one who’s looked at porn. The porn business makes about a zillion dollars a year, but I’m the only one? Heck, if Christians alone stopped buying it, they’d go out of business. Here’s another stupid lie: people won’t think I’m cool if I’m a Christian. Cool people don’t care what anybody thinks. Besides, what, people are gonna think I’m cool for being nothing?

Here’s another stupid lie: I’ll never find someone to fall in love with, and get married. Dang, the whole world, down through the generations, has found a way to pair off and hook up, but you, in an internet-connected world of nearly infinite possibilities, presents such a huge challenge to search algorithms and to Almighty God Himself, that we can’t find someone for you? C’mon.

Here’s another stupid lie: God doesn’t really love me when I mess up. Heck even imperfect people like me manage to love others, even after they’ve made mistakes. I’m supposed to think that a God who says about himself, “I AM LOVE”, somehow is less loving than I can be?

These lies are so stupid, that by simply saying them out loud, they start to fall apart and lose their power. So all that’s over now. The cure is simple: anything that steals my joy, I’m gonna say out loud what that thing is. Your lies are too stupid to work in the cold light of day.

In Jesus name,

Me

P.S. Bite down on that and suck it.

Anonymous asked: Good day Unka Glen! I would like to ask for your views on love. I know that love is the most precious and delicate thing, but how do you really know if it’s love that you are feeling? Thank you in advance and God bless!

Unka Glen answered: Well Paul said it best, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” (1 Cor. 13).

But maybe we should also talk about what love isn’t:

Love isn’t infatuation. Infatuation is when you like something about a person, but when you get to know the person, you suddenly realize you’re dating more than just a the cute haircut you like.

Love isn’t about co-dependancy. Co-dependancy is about being fixated on another person for approval, identity and self-esteem. If this relationship gives you a feeling of worth that you didn’t already have from God, then this isn’t about love.

Love isn’t lust. Lust is that itchy feeling in your trousers that goes up when they dress a certain way, and down when they dress another certain way. Love doesn’t fluctuate like that. 

Love isn’t a crush. Crushes are generally our way of imagining what it would be like to be with a certain type of person. Those feelings can be really strong, but they’re based on a imaginary relationship, not a real one.

Love isn’t about stalking or obsessing. If you’re hiding outside someone’s place with binoculars, this isn’t love, you’ve just bought a one-way ticket to Creepytown.

Love isn’t worship. Worship as about adoring a deity that has the power to change your life. No human fits that bill.

Finally, love isn’t romance. Romance is emotional, love is spiritual. Romance is showing people how much we care, love is way beyond human caring. You said in your question that love is delicate, it’s romance that’s delicate. Love is the toughest thing there is.

Anonymous asked: What about females that struggle with lust, pornography, and masturbation? I feel like it’s such a downplayed problem in our society and in our churches, but I know it’s a very real problem for me, and as a woman, I feel like there are limited resources out there. What would you say to a woman who struggles with this temptation/issue?

Unka Glen answered: I’d say that you’re not alone. I get just as many messages and prayer requests from women struggling with pornography as I do from men. CNN reports: “In the first three months of 2007, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, approximately one in three visitors to adult entertainment websites was female; during the same period, nearly 13 million American women were checking out porn online at least once each month.”

It bears mentioning that this is a relatively new trend, and the internet has a lot to do with that. If it means anything, I’ve mentioned this issue with every pastor I’ve talked with in the past six months. So hopefully the awareness is increasing. 

But let’s make a few things clear, the theology and spirituality of all this works the same with women, as with men. God gives us a sex drive, and He gives us wise instructions on how to operate it. We tend to ignore that, screw it up (no pun intended… well maybe a little), and then we end up turning back to God and trying it His way. And speaking for myself, wow, yeah, do it His way. Like everything else in the Kingdom, it’s really tough at first, but then things get really awesome. 

Sex, and the desire for it, isn’t dirty— it’s beautiful, natural, and God given. There is nothing weird or abnormal about you having a curiosity about sex, to have a sexual imagination/fantasy life, and to take matters into your own hands (okay, that was intended). Things may take a wrong turn, but this is a very common occurrence, I assure you.

I’m not sure most Christians know where to rank their sexual imperfections and struggles, because they tend to really fixate on them in a way that often eclipses all other considerations in their walk. So let’s make sure we aren’t wallowing in guilt and shame on this thing, and we FOR SURE need to stop portraying masturbation as some kind of all-consuming evil. Because dang.

Having said all that, I think every church should have a women’s group that meets to talk about sexual struggles, including rape/molestation issues, and sexual appetite/changing sexual lifestyle issues. I think women need to be empowered to heal each other on this stuff, and I spend many hours training the ladies in my own inner-city ministry to do just that for each other. 

Final note: ask yourself, am I using porn as a sort of “boost” when I’m feeling bad towards myself? Am I using porn when I feel lonely and unloved? Am I using porn to change my mood off of something negative? If so, then I think, rather than getting all negative and upset about the porn, why not ask yourself a simple question: am I using the best tool for the job? (See, now you think I’m intending puns all over the place).

There is a better cure for low-self esteem and loneliness, and plenty of better ways to change your mood and outlook. Porn is just the easiest way, the most readily available way. But it isn’t the most effective way. That means you’re cheating yourself out of a better life, all for want of going to God and telling Him, “I want what’s real, and lasting, I want what’s pure and true, I need pleasures beyond the physical, I need pure uncut 100% angelic joy filling me up to overflowing until it’s pouring out of my life and into everyone else’s around me! And I need it right now!”

God wants you to have the real stuff. If you’re running short, that’s on you, buttercup.

Anonymous asked: Dear Unka Glen, Have you ever had a problem with porn and masturbation? I feel like I am the only Christian guy who is struggling with such problems. do you have any tips or tricks that can constantly remind me that my body is the temple of God? Despite what is said in the Bible, I would prefer to not gouge out my eyes and chop off my hands. 

Unka Glen answered: Not only are you not the only Christian guy who struggles with this, but I’d say that at least once a month I find myself counseling a pastor who struggles with porn. Okay? And yeah it’s a fair question of me, you deserve to know whether your spiritual leaders have had their struggles or not. And you bet, I struggled with this stuff big time when I was your age.

But in truth, even that isn’t fair to your struggle. As you know, I am super-old (born in the late Jurrasic, frozen and later thawed), and to get a glimpse at a non-airbrushed, pre-silicone, very curvy, mostly still-dressed ladies in what passed as porn at the time, we would ride our bikes for hours to get to a friends house who had somehow got his hands on some magazine that had been found in the trash. 

We were so busy trying to find it, we never thought about trying to resist the temptation. Porn seemed to be constatntly resisting our efforts to get at it. The temptation levels, in terms of how easy it is to access porn today, is no comparison. I guess you could say I fell into temptation with much less to tempt me, but today you have a much tougher challenge to face, and I respect that.

Before we delve any further, you may want to look at this post where I cover the theology of masturbation, because I won’t be repeating much of that here. And you may want to look at this video, which is a bit cheeky, but makes a serious point about stripping away the shame to find effective ways of dealing with this struggle. 

As you’ve already guessed, when the Bible tells you to gouge out your eye if it causes you to lust, this is what’s called a hyperbole (which is just an exaggeration made for emphasis or effect). The point in this case is clear, do whatever it takes to get your body under your control, make whatever changes needed to break your habits.

So in your case, as I’ve mentioned before, if you want to change a habitual behavior, you want to look at the context that usually surrounds that behavior. With this issue, I’m guessing that temptation is at it’s strongest when you are: alone, stressed, and when some sort of outside stimulus has set you off. 

So you don’t necessarily need to be able to fight this thing all the time, but you need to be able to totally defeat it at these “high risk” moments. Plan something else for those times. Something that gives you a sense of release and pushes the reset button on the stress. Maybe for you that’s going for a run, maybe it’s watching a movie with your favorite snack, maybe it’s playing a video game.

For any habit you want to break, it’s about being proactive, thinking and planning for the day ahead. If you stumble, pick yourself up, quit feeling sorry for yourself, and figure out how to improve your strategy. It may take you stumbling a dozen times for you to find a habit-breaking strategy that works for you. So be it. God is patient.

There are no easy fixes, and that may be part of the lesson God is looking for you to learn here: how to I prioritize what I need to fix, so I can be sure to focus all my attention on the most important thing (which may not be masturbation just yet, by the way), then how to I work a complex strategy to deal with a complicated problem? 

Personally speaking, good Christian fellowship has helped me stay on-track more than anything in my life. And finding a way to be thankful in prayer has prevented more backslides in my life than I could count.

Now, brace yourself for a BONUS MASTURBATION QUESTION:

Anonymous asked: Unka, my question is this: The guy I’m almost dating (spirit-filled, amazing, heart-for-God, guy), opened up to me about the fact that he can’t and shouldn’t go longer than a few days without masturbation because things get crazy for him hormonally. Whats the deal? Sexual addiction/lust, physical issue/needs marriage, or both?

Unka Glen answered: How about— full of it/trying to play you? 

Ah, the “Hulk Defense”. For those of you who are unfamiliar, this is where the boyfriend explains that if he doesn’t release the pressure, a dangerous hormonal build up will occur, and he will expand to twice his normal size, go on a rampage, and smash everything in sight with his super-strength. Indeed we’ve all tried the “I need to orgasm, or I’ll die” speech. But c’mon sista.

I mean, he’s right from the standpoint that to do without orgasm is a bummer of MASSIVE proportions, and that physiologically speaking it is different for men to “do without”. But it won’t kill him, or drive him “hormonally crazy”. Young men who aren’t sexually active, will ejaculate in their sleep, so the body knows how to regulate it’s own levels. And we all need to learn to regulate our own behavior. 

We all have our sin nature, but God calls us to make use of super-natural strength to control whatever natural desires we have in our bodies.

If your almost boyfriend had said that he prayed about it, and that God wants him to focus on making other changes, and that masturbation is slated for a change to be made later, that might be one thing (we obviously can’t change all our behavior all at once, so there has to be a priority, an order of importance that God places on those changes that need to be made). But this sounds more like excuse making to me. 

He needs to learn how to pray through and set boundaries that God ordains, in order to have healthy relationships with anyone, let alone a romantic relationship with you.

thathipster-texas asked: This might be a weird question.. But I’ve gotta ask! My best friends want to all go swimming on Labor day - 3 are boys, 3 are girls (including myself). What kind of swim suit is appropriate to wear in the company of my God-fearing brothers? And is it okay to ask them personally?

Unka Glen answered: You’ve come to the exact right place to get all the answers you need on the subject of ladies swimwear. Let’s start with this, I think anything along these lines should be fine:

Okay, maybe that’s taking things a bit far… So let’s break down the issues you’re dealing with here:

1. I’m thinking of asking male persons how revealing my outfit should be. Um, yeah. Two possibilities here, either you’re dealing with truly Christian guys, who will tell you that a cute pair of board shorts and a matching cover-up over a modest bikini top is fine… or you’re dealing with guys who aren’t that Christian, and you’ll get a response like: “I’m pretty sure thongs are totally in this year”.

2. I really want to wear this cute suit that I just got, that I had to look all day to find, that fits me and that didn’t make me feel bad about myself. Okay fine, just make sure that it has the structural integrity to withstand being hit by a gentle wave without showing everyone your lady business. You don’t want to spend all day tugging on a small piece of fabric in a failed attempt to cover your areas, ya know?

3. I don’t want to inflame any lust in my male companions. Oh sweetie. That ship has already left the harbor. At their age, I’m not sure it can be inflamed a whole lot more. I mean, does an erupting volcano burn a little hotter in the noonday sun? I guess, but, ya know, it’s already pretty hot. Besides, some other gal who really craves attention will be walking around and falling out of her suit anyway, so let’s not pretend that we’re single-handedly holding back a hormonal tsunami with our fashion choices.

Bottom line, it’s important to express your style and your femininity, to feel comfortable in what you wear and comfortable in your body, and to know that men will find you attractive regardless, and that’s all lovely. With that in mind, modesty is something that’s easy to under-do, and hard to over-do. You won’t really regret wearing something a little on the un-revealing side, and you’ll probably be more relaxed and into the fellowship… and that’s what it’s really all about anyway.