Thursday, June 29, 2006

Warning: This Website Contains Content that May be Considered Christian (apparently)


Today at work Andy was asked by a customer to check for a bible study (or something) that they had seen on a website called Solomons Dance(.com). He came into the office and logged onto the website to find that it was a Christian based site dedicated to the fine art of love making. The home page says this:

The bible teaches in Psalm 149:5 that sex is a form of worship. By coming together in mutual love, as married partners, we worship God, and sing unto him. It is this act of making love that is Solomon’s Dance – a dance before the Lord in the love and compassion that God himself designed into this most intimate of times .

This, as it stood, seemed fine. Sex, obviously, is a wonderful, God given gift so there should be no reason why a group of God-honouring Christians shouldn't set up some kind of web based forum discussing it. What caught our attention, however, was a link titled Intimate Products. Andy had to print off the home page and take it upstairs to the waiting customer (to see if this was the website he meant) but put me in charge of finding out what exactly these Intimate Products consisted of. I dutifully obliged. With Pauline looking over my shoulder (hiding her interest cunningly behind a series of well placed tuts) I clicked on the link to find that Intimate Products divided into four main categories: Intimate Toys, Intimate Games, Intimate Clothing and Furniture. Now many of you may be asking why I deemed it appropriate to go any further? The answer: curiosity. I know it killed the cat and all but I'm on a Christian website so I figure "how bad can it be?".

It can be bad!

The number one bestselling Intimate Toy from Solomon's Dance(.com) was..... well it was rude. I'll spare you the details suffice to say it contained the words "delights", "jelly", and "riser".

Now I appreciate that as a single Christian guy, I could be accused of being a little naive when it comes to such matters (although I should point out that all the married employees of Wesley Owen were just as shocked as I was to see these things being billed as God-honouring aids) but sometimes the Christian stance on sex baffles me.

A couple of years ago I went to see a very close and recently married friend and his wife (also now a very good friend). They were talking about the joys of being married. I was looking round their home and looking at wedding photos and videos of the honeymoon etc etc. But as soon as me and my friend (let's call him Moses) left the house to pick up lunch he turned to me and said "mate - I love sex". Now as two single guys, I had no problem talking to him about all this stuff before he was married but now he was telling me about something very personal and private and it didn't seem quite right somehow. But recently I've been thinking. Should Christians talk about sex more? Moses wasn't bragging down the pub about some fit bird he'd picked up for a night. He had just discovered something very beautiful and wanted to share that with one of his closest friends. When I recently told one of my friends (female and married - we'll call her Cordelia) about this though she was horrified at the idea. She insisted that sex was something extremely personal and shouldn't be talked about outside the relationship. And I've just been wandering, would single Christians benefit if their married friends were a little more open about sex? I have some single friends (mostly female) who are terrified at the prospect of sex and other single friends (mostly male) who are...well...frustrated. Would talking about sex more openly help or make things worse?

In a sense I agree with Cordelia. But I'd also really like to know how I should react to a Christian website that sells E-glass Touch Me Massagers.

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