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: What’s the difference between loving a woman and being in love with a woman?

Unka Glen answered: The Bible says there is romantic love, (which the Bible calls “eros”), and God’s love (which the Bible calls “agape”). For all too many people, when they say they’re “in love” they mean that they have eros, but not the agape. But for you, when you fall in love, you should be feeling both.

So what does it look like to have BOTH the eros AND the agape? Well…

- This kind of love will make you want to be a better man for her. You suddenly realize you have a lot of stuff that needs changing. Deep down you know she is God’s own princess. She’s human the same as you, and yet, you know she deserves better than the way you act around your friends.

- This kind of love makes you pleased to serve. It gives you joy in the face of sacrifice. Her happiness is your happiness. 

- This kind of love causes you to see her as God sees her. To see her potential in Christ, the obstacles that hold her back, and the way to help her overcome those obstacles, one at a time. To love her is to see her as God created her to be, and to honor her, and respect her, and to treat her as if all that potential has already been realized.

- This kind of love allows you to be totally hot for her in that way where you want to marry her, take her to that honeymoon bed, memorize every inch of her body, find every secret spot that makes her melt, and spoil her with pleasure until her toes curl and she remembers why she puts up with you. But this same love gives you all the strength you need to wait, and savor that waiting, knowing that the waiting is all part of making it great. …As is making up for lost time (can I get an Amen?).

- This kind of love is patient, it’s kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it’s not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. This love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 

This love never fails.

Anonymous asked: Hi Unka Glen! I’m sexually active with my non-Christian boyfriend, and we’ve tried to stop many, many times. I’ve explained to him why sex is a sacred thing to me, but both of us are consumed by desire. The hardest part is that I don’t know if I can stop, and so I feel myself pulling away from God because I know I’ve done wrong. The only thing I can do is ask God to take away the temptation and lead me in the right direction, because I am weak. What can I do?

Unka Glen answered: Break up. 

I’m super-sorry that it’s come to that, but sweetie, when the plane has already crashed into the side of the mountain, it’s too late to fiddle with the controls. In many respects, this is what dating is all about, realizing that certain relationships and certain ways of managing those relationships are unhealthy, and lead to doing wrong stuff. In marriage, you have a commitment to work all that out, but the beauty of dating, is the freedom to end things, learn your lesson, and move on.

And gaining what wisdom is important. So let’s look at that. Let’s start with the dating outside the faith part. You’re absolutely right to think of sex as sacred, in the sense that it is: pleasing in God’s sight, special, and meant to be used in a certain way. But someone outside the faith isn’t going to see it that way, and isn’t going to support you in that. He also won’t support you in most of your efforts to live a life pleasing to the Lord, and you deserve to have that kind of person in your life.  

Sex is meant to be a purely pleasurable part of life, but you’ve turned that into something you’re ashamed of. Don’t think that you’ve gone too far and taken in too much pleasure, quite the opposite, you’ve settled for way too little. The sex I have inside my marriage is a beautiful part of the intimate bond we share, it is utterly guilt free, and (though it’s clearly none of your business) it’s often quite gymnastic.

That’s why it makes sense to wait until it’s right.

Secondly, you mention having a hard time fighting the temptation, and as they say in Alcoholics Anonymous (where they spend a lot of time talking about temptation), it’s important to change “people, places, and things”. That is, some environments and some relationships create a situation where fighting temptation is just too difficult. Step one is getting out of those environments and relationships, step two is getting stronger, and step three is getting into new and healthy relationships and environments. 

Trying to get strong first, where you know you’re already in over your head and failing, makes little sense. First, step away, then build up your strength. Finally, there’s one more thing to look at here, and that’s this business of pulling away from God because you’ve done wrong. 

Here’s the thing on that— when you mess up, that’s when you go towards God, not away from God. You and I are imperfect people, if you hold off on approaching God until you’re going “well”, then you’ll be waiting a long time. But what if the pulling away from God part was the main thing breaking His heart, and that all this sin was just a consequence of that pulling away?

Clear everything and everyone else away until you’re left with nothing but you and God. Repent of pulling away. Repent of seeking love that was only ever going to be a poor substitute. Repent of trying to fill those empty spaces with sex, when that was never going to work. God offered you the real thing, but you went for the fake. 

Maybe you don’t think you deserve the real thing. 

RUN into His arms. Leave everything else behind. He will bring some of those things back into your life, in a different way, for a different purpose, and with specifc insructions on their use. It doesn’t matter what you gain, if you end up pulling away from the Lord, and it doesn’t matter what you lose in getting closer to the Lord, because He is all you need. 

Anonymous asked: I’ve been following your blog for awhile and you give great advice, so I was wondering if you could help me. I’ve been seeing this guy for about 8 months now. We’re both Christians, and we’ve both committed to saving sex for marriage, and we have boundaries and everything to help keep that commitment. However… just because we don’t go that far (or even close to that far) it doesn’t mean I don’t think about it, and lately I can’t seem to stop thinking about it in a way that’s definitely not um… good. It’s actually quite distracting. I want to wait. I believe God says I should wait. We both do, but… I kinda feel like I’m going crazy here and I’m terrified all this dwelling on it is going to drive me to do something I regret, because right now the less rational side of me doesn’t want to. How do I help myself move past this and dwell on other things, especially when I’m around him?

Unka Glen answered: Well, it’s normal and healthy for you to feel a bit hot and bothered in your private areas. If you know where those boundaries are, and you respect them, and you desire to wait, then I think you have very little to worry about here. But let’s look a few things that might help you deal with those burning desires in your Secret Garden of Heavenly Delights.

First, I would tell your boyfriend about it. I know that might go against a lot of your instincts, and it would perhaps be a little less than demure to mention that kind of thing early on, but eight months in, it’s time to work together as partners on this thing. The truth is, he likely doesn’t suspect that he’s having this kind of effect. As men, none of us is quite certain what about us arouses such… interest.

To be sure, he’ll be flattered (which doesn’t hurt anything, by the way), and you’ll have everyone on the same page, in terms of finding strategies for dealing with this issue. And rest assured, he feels the exact same way, if not more so. Shame is the enemy here. Whatever you hide, that’s the thing most likely to take you out, drag it into the light, and that temptation loses its power.

Secondly, in Christian marriages, and dating relationships, we need a certain sense of balance. We should see our significant other as a lover, one we feel passionate about (you’ve got that covered). But we also need to see them as a friend, one we can confide in. And we need to see them as a sibling in Christ, with whom we’re sharing a spiritual journey.

Work to see your man as a balance of all three of these. If one gets out ahead of the others, it’s not about feeling less in that area, it’s about bringing the others up to speed. So in this case, work on stuff that builds the friendship and fellowship you share. Trust me, this will really work.

Finally, you should keep all this in prayer. Don’t hide in shame, instead run towards God and pray something like this:

A prayer for the horny young Christian gal:
“Dear Lord, thank you for giving me a healthy, active, and passionate sensual side. Not to mention a pretty vivid imagination. But here’s the thing, I want to enjoy all of this to the fullest, and I can’t do that, until I’m sure I’m living all this out the way you want me to. Lord keep me from setting boundaries too lose and going too far, and keep me from setting them too tight and denying myself something beautiful you have for me. Mostly Lord, I need self-control. Lots and lots of it. I don’t trust myself, I only trust you Lord.”

Anonymous asked: I just started dating a guy that I’ve been friends with for two years. We both love the Lord, and I am encouraged by him and love spending time with him. However, last night he confessed to me that whenever we are sitting together, we don’t even have to be touching, but, well, I guess the best way to say this is that he gets ‘aroused’ much easier than most guys (at least that’s what he said. I have no scale to measure by). I was just wondering if there is anything practical I can do about it.

Unka Glen answered: Most normal healthy young males get “aroused” with roughly the same ease. Which is to say, on almost any occasion, for almost any reason. A cooling breeze up a pant leg, for example. That’s assuming that by “aroused” you mean he’s sailing at full mast, that is to say, he’s rising to the occasion, that is to say, he’s pitching a tent, but he isn’t exactly camping. 

Okay, I’m being a bit cheeky, but the point is, guys that age have hormones surging through their body like a load of circus clowns, and there’s nothing wrong with him, or you, on that. It takes a few years of dealing with hormones for the brain and the body to learn to communicate properly. Until then, the body has a way of activating the countdown to the launch sequence, even when the brain didn’t really send that signal.

Young guys have a way of being overwhelmed by women, and rightly so. I mean, all of a sudden it hits them: all those soft curves, the sweet voice, the warm smile, the blushing cheek, and they smell good too! When God made the world, He saved His best for last— when He made woman. And in truth, men should never lose that sense of wonderment and passion, especially by the woman they’re committed to. I certainly haven’t.

So in the end, don’t stress over it, and let him know it’s no big deal at all. Then make sure your physical boundaries are firmly set where God wants them to be, and keep a strict eye on them. It’s a good idea to find things you can do as a couple that can be a fun distraction away from the physical, that way when things get over-heated, you can switch it up.

Let’s face it, dating is a modern cultural phenomenon. The Bible doesn’t say anything about it, because dating as we know it today didn’t exist back then. So can we still apply the Bible to the modern cultural phenomenon of dating? You bet. But it won’t work to try and rewrite the rules of dating to make it more righteous, and that’s not how mature Christians handle things anyway.

We don’t need the right rules for Christian dating, we need the right goals for Christian dating.

Here’s how we do it— we start with a healthy, loving, functional Christian marriage (which the Bible says a lot about), and then work our way backwards. That is to say, if we know where we want to land, then we design dating to be the thing that takes us directly from here to there. Simple.

So let’s look at the elements of a healthy Christian marriage:

Teamwork and companionship. First and foremost, you’re forming a team that can serve the Lord better together, than you could serve Him separately. This means that every member does his or her part, it means we need to be able to trust one another. Nobody comes into this picture the eternally weak victim, and the other the eternal giver of attention and sympathy.

This is a team. We watch each other’s backs, we take up the slack when the other one is hurting. We divide the load and carry it together. So why not start developing this teamwork element in the dating process? Secular dating is often about two very independent people coming together, but Christian marriage is about forming a unit that works together to bring glory to the Lord.

Mutual encouragement in your walk. Not everyone can be a strong encouragement to us in our walk. It takes some character and some spiritual maturity to really be able to spiritually uplift that other person in a meaningful way. We need to get to know this other person, to know all their faults, as well as their strengths. 

That would tell me that dating should be about (eventually) letting down our guard, and being vulnerable about our struggles and weaknesses. We should strive to find a way to begin to actually minister to each other in simple little ways. To find ways of not just encouraging the other person, but to really hit the nail on the head when encouraging them. And to be able to do the same with all aspects of this person’s walk.

Strong boundaries. All relationships need healthy boundaries. And marriage should have the strongest of them all. There is a wide range of ugly behavior that you should consider unthinkable within your married life. Dating should be a sort of training ground for all that. 

Where do we draw these boundaries? Do we listen to our hormones? Do we get super-strict? Or do we go really crazy and pray about it? What happens when we violate those boundaries? Who was supposed to be keeping watch on those boundaries? Dating should be about learning to answer all these questions.

Understanding and sympathy. I don’t know why this is, but I can put up with a whole lot of troubles in life, if I have a little sympathy and understanding. My urban ministry job (which I love more than the air I breathe) is stressful like you can’t imagine, and one day it was really getting to me, so I said to my wife, “I’m stressed, do something!” Without a word, she lifted her shirt and flashed me.

Now THAT is ministry. 

Well, of course I’m not suggesting that you flash the person you’re dating, but I am saying that because my wife had understanding and sympathy for my situation, she knew exactly what to do. Dating should be about listening and trying to see the other person’s side of things. As 1 Cor. 13 says, “love is not self seeking”.

Healthy sex life. (Speaking of flashing) Anyway, every Christian couple’s counselor asks the same question, when they sit down with a couple for the first time: “how often are you two having sex?” They do, I promise. That intimacy and connection and release of tension is really important. 

So when you’re dating, it’s about praying through where those physical boundaries are, and keeping them. But it’s also about enjoying the stuff that God says is okay, and it’s about entering marriage, and your sex life, without any guilt or shame, because you’ve worked all that out before you got married. 

…When you look at all this, you can see that there’s a lot to get done in your dating life. So you really shouldn’t get started with that unless you’re ready to put in the effort, and you feel like this person could be the right fit for all of the above. And you break off a dating relationship when the relationship veers from these goals, and you can’t seem to get it back on track.

It’s about the goals, not the rules.

tinaille asked: Hi Unka Glen! Since you’ve been answering dating questions, can you tell me your insights about I Timothy 5:1-2 with regards to dating? what does it mean to treat someone (or be treated) with absolute purity?

Unka Glen answered: Sure thing, here are the verses you mentioned: “Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.” Well, at first glance it doesn’t sound like dating advice, and that’s because, and this may shock you, in no way is this dating advice.

In order to properly understand any verse in the Bible, you need to know it’s context. In this case, the context is Paul writing to his disciple Timothy, having left him in charge of the church in Ephesus. 1 Timothy was written as a set of instructions on how to run things and keep them on track. I think if you reread these verses with this in mind, they will make much more sense. 

Digging into the original Greek of the New Testament, we can say that the use of the word “purity” here refers to “presenting one as ceremonially clean”. That might give it the double meaning that purity refers to discipling the women in such a way that they are presented to God, having been washed clean of their sins by the blood of Christ, and also to be sure not to have intercourse with any of them. 

Purity, as I’ve said in a few posts, is one of those words that’s often misused to the point of straining the limits of good doctrine. The biblical concept of purity is described as taking a lump precious metal from the ground, and heating it until it melts. The impurities float to the top, and are removed. In these Biblical examples of purity, the heat of the fire represents hard times as Isaiah 48:10 says, “See, I have refined you, though not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.”

Biblical purification refers to a process of facing a series of challenges, where we must give up those impure elements of our lives, in order to overcome those obstacles. The Greek word used here for purity is derived from another Greek word that means “like God in perfection”. And I don’t know about you, but I’m not in any position to claim that I’m keeping anything in God-like perfection.

As I’ve said, you could argue that the particular Greek word in the verse above could refer to being pure in the sense of being a virgin (and there are already verses that tell us that intercourse before marriage is a sin, and a forgivable one, by the way). But we can’t use this verse to support the misuse of the word purity to support the current man-made rules about dating. This verse has nothing to do with dating.

rachevz asked: Hey Unka! So I’m friends with this Christian guy, but we like each other and want to date one day, if it’s the Lord’s will. We want get to know each other a little better, but we don’t spend time alone together. We’re not physical. we have accountability partners, who have no problems with our relationship. However, a few girls at church have voiced their negative opinions. They’re the types of girls who enjoy putting people in their places. They think we’ve gotten too close because we talk a lot. But that’s the normal evolution of a friendship, right? And we’re keeping God at the center of it. I still feel peace, but he struggles with second guessing himself. I wondered if you have any advice, as a man, on how I can encourage him.

Unka Glen answered: Did Moses have a hundred percent buy-in from the people he led? Did Jesus? Did Paul? In Galatians 1:10, Paul says “Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ”. The Bible actually says that we should beware when everyone speaks well of us (Luke 6:26). 

There is a certain type of church-goer who feels that the strength of their conviction for Christ is in the number of things they are against. They start by being against, ya know, sin. But everyone is against that stuff, so we’ve got to go bigger, we’ve got to be against stuff that MIGHT BE a sin. 

So in this case that’s dancing, talking, smiling, dating, kissing, texting, holding hands, long walks in the moonlight, and movies about feelings. All these things could maybe, possibly, someday lead to something sinful, down the line, so now I can show everyone how committed I am to Christ, by not doing any of this stuff! 

I know, just by the way I lay this out, you can already see that this is not the thought process of a mature Christian. Everything might lead to something. All of life is a slippery slope to something sinful.

The real issue is: can I set boundaries and keep them, thus stopping that slide down that slope? If I can’t, then yeah, I shouldn’t even be near anything that could trigger a backslide, because this is an area of weakness for me. Alcoholics shouldn’t be bartenders, for example. 

But if you can set and keep boundaries in your love life, as most of us can, then it’s time to figure out how this relationship can glorify the Lord, not how to get everyone to think it’s the right thing. 

Anonymous asked: Dear Unka Glen, my boyfriend and I both have had on ongoing struggle with viewing pornography. I’ve recently stopped and committed the issue completely to God, falling onto His promises and Word whenever I feel temptation. My boyfriend, however, doesn’t seem to be trying as hard. He says it’s harder for him because he’s a man. Is it really true that boys have a harder time than girls? I told him that he has to stop regardless because it’ll hurt us both in the long run. No excuses.

Unka Glen answered: Unless he’s been a woman, I’m wondering… how he would know that it’s supposedly easier for women? Sure, in fairness, male sexuality is different in plenty of ways, and that does present certain significant challenges. But rising up to those challenges is meant to make us stronger and more in control of ourselves, not less. 

Making changes in our lifestyle is much harder than most people think. How many people do you know, who lost weight, and never put it back on? What about people who join a gym, and still go there every week? People struggle to make and keep changes, and excuse-makers, well, they have no chance.

The only way to succeed, is to take the route that you’re taking: relying on God. Will power won’t work. Fear, shame and guilt are just emotions that burn off and leave us in the same place where we started. You’re right to say “no excuses”. If he falls off after hearing that, he isn’t worthy of you. If he rises to the occasion, he’ll thank you for dealing with this like a strong woman of God, and calling forth a strength from God, that he didn’t even know he had.