Sex, Lies & Religion (Enjoying The Freedom of Unconditional Sexuality) [Kindle Edition]

Randy Elrod (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

For the majority of my life, I had no framework for the interrelation of sexuality and spirituality. In my religious circles, sex was what everybody thought about, but nobody talked about.

I hope this book will start conversations. Westerners generally shrink from controversial discussions and the subject of sacred sexuality is more than worthy of honest and open debate. Sex is at the heart of almost everything we do as human beings, and if it truly is the essence of existence, then it bears thoughtful and loving consideration among those of us who call ourselves spiritual.

Some people will undoubtedly find portions of this book shocking. Others will think it is tame. It is in no way intended to be a sex manual or a theological treatise. My wish is that it will cause all of us to examine closely our personal longings, our marriages, our relationships, and what we teach our children about sex. Perhaps it’s time to utilize the Bible as our sex manual. And for those aspects where it is silent, we then depend on an open dialogue with those we trust.

My candid conversations with young men I mentor, my own struggles, the shocking results of our online survey, and the inordinate amount of moral dismissals in our churches provided me the incentive to write this book. I have seen wives leave their husbands because of pornography addictions and marriages fall apart due to misplaced affections. Throughout my life, I have seen religion provide judgment instead of grace in almost every situation.

Of course, there are extreme cases of sexual dysfunction that need to be dealt with. Seeing a qualified sex therapist, psychiatrist or licensed marriage counselor is one of the most spiritually mature actions we can take in cases of severe problems.

But I can’t help but think that if we really believed our misplaced sexual longings were an indication of a desperate search for God and the original experiences of the garden, many of us would find redemption instead of condemnation. That’s what I’ve been given. And I’m thankful.

If you get nothing else from this message, know that this book is about redemption. I suppose you could say it is controversially redemptive. I have realized through the years that it takes shaking up the status quo to get anything accomplished. So be it.

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 196 KB
• Print Length: 168 pages
• Publisher: create 2.0 Publishing (February 5, 2010)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00378L7CM
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #323,233 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

More About the Author

Randy Elrod is described by his friends as a Renaissance man. A dreamer, artist, writer, mentor and teacher, he enjoys a marriage of 30 years with his childhood sweetheart, Chris. They enjoy traveling the world, the sacraments of food and wine, the culinary arts, and hosting guests at their home "La Maison des Reves" in historic downtown Franklin, Tennessee. They have two daughters, a son-in-law & a maltese named Taffy. He loves reading and favorite authors include Ayn Rand, Frederick Buechner, Madeline L'Engle and David McCullough.

He enjoys painting nature and the beauty of the female figure with watercolors and is currently the artist-in-residence at O'More College of Design in Franklin. Randy revels in the sensory overload of climbing America's highest mountains. He also once navigated the Uganik River with only a tent and raft in grizzly country for a week in the wilderness of Kodiak Island, Alaska. He has completed nineteen full marathons (yes, 26.2 miles each).

A self-taught artist, Randy began painting in the winter of 2002 at the age of forty-two after his wife gifted him with an easel and paints. A lifelong love affair with graphite sketching provides the foundation for the watercolors and anchors his distinctive style. Originals and limited edition prints can be purchased at randyelrodart.com. All profits benefit his charity, Kalein, a non-profit Center for Creative studies that provides world-class master teachers and retreats for aspiring artists of all genres. (www.kalein.org)

An Ordained Minister, he has three decades of pastoral and counseling experience - the last fifteen years in two mega-churches with over 16 thousand members.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sunday School Teachers - Beware!, March 19, 2010

By 

Gina Parris "Peak Performance from the Inside... (Tullahoma, Tn) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sex, Lies & Religion (Paperback)

It is not often that I open a book by a minister and immediately find a description of his euphoric sex-on-the-beach encounter with his wife as a sacred experience. That is when I realized two things about this book:

* 1. Not everyone will like this material.

* 2. I will probably love it.

Randy Elrod presents a thoroughly researched paradigm shift in the way spiritual people approach sex. He is talking to Christians in this book (the brave soul,) but I think it calls to those who have cast away their Christian faith as well.

Sex, Lies and Religion is in its own words, "controversially redemptive" in its purpose. Controversial because not all people can reconcile paragraphs that deal with the very practical i.e. "how to use a vibrator to make erections last longer," with the spiritual concept of intercourse symbolizing intimacy with our passionate Redeemer.

As Elrod delves into how to masturbate without going blind OR becoming a pervert, many a Sunday School Teacher may blush in horror (While students from 12 to 120 may cheer out loud.) When he deals with the lies about fantasy (ergoing the football kind) he offers compassionate clues into the yearnings of humanity.

Whether tackling lies about nudity, gender equality, self-pleasure, sexual fantasy or "yada,yada, yada," he continually offers truth to set the reader free from condemnation. Elrod writes with the pen of an artist, philosopher and poet, painting pictures that glisten with supernatural love, acceptance and eroticism. He scoffs at the religious notion that the body is evil and unspiritual. He embraces the idea that ALL we do can be spiritual and draw us closer to God.

If I have any concerns with this book it would be that it is sometimes so deep and idealistic that its beauty may be lost on the average guy who likes to drink beer and play poker on his non-church days. The song of songs after all, calls not just to poets and philosphers but to all who have ever yearned to give and receive true love. It is in the presence of such overwhelming goodness, that vices and "unholiness" lose their appeal.

I love the book Sex, Lies, and Religion. Not just because it dares to go where no minister has gone before, but because it vibrates (no pun intended) with life that is abundant, love that is undefiled, and redemption that is complete.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What Christians should really think about sex, February 6, 2010

By 

Adam (Marietta, GA, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sex, Lies & Religion (Enjoying The Freedom of Unconditional Sexuality) (Kindle Edition)

There are many books out there about sex, even a lot of books about sex oriented toward Christians. There are not many that are about how to have a healthy view of sex as a Christian. Sex, Lies and Religion will be uncomfortable for many to read. It is about sex, the lies that religion and culture tell us about sex and how God has created sex, not just for pleasure and procreation, but as a teaching tool to show us how God wants to be intimate with us and desired by us.

I have two clear teaching points about sex that I can think about. These are not the bird and bees discussions. I had those too, but instead these two discussions were about what to think about sex. When I was in early high school (sophomore?), Charlie Peacock released an album called Love Life. I remember talking with my Mom about the fact that a large Christian bookstore chain would not carry the album because it included the line "they were naked and unashamed" (the song was Kiss Me Like a Woman). Apparently the decisions makers did not get the biblical reference. Or Charlie Peacock's point that we need to have more Christian expressions of positive sexuality, within marriage, to counteract the negative expressions of sexuality outside of marriage. My Mom though that the song was a beautiful expression of sexuality and disagreed with the decision. A second teaching point came as a pastoral intern during seminary, when my supervising pastor has a conversation with me about how uncomfortable some of the music we were singing in church made him. It used language that was too intimate and showed too much desire. He clearly thought there were sexual overtones to the music. I disagreed for pretty much the same reasons. I thought there were some sexual overtones to the music and thought that not only was it appropriate, but it illistrated the type of desire we should have for Christ and the church.

Randy Elrod's book follows in that vein. I think that this book should be discussed. Depending on the small group and their willingness to be open, it might be too intimate to discuss in small groups. But if there are any books that you should read together with your spouse, this is one of them. The book is divided into three sections: Sex, Lies (about sex) and Religion.

The opening section was what might make people most uncomfortable. There was a good discussion on masturbation and another on the purpose of sex. While I agree with most of the Lies section, it is probably organizationally the weakest of the three sections. It deviated from the other two sections and was more scattered. The third section was the most theologically oriented. The best parts were when he was trying to talk about why sex shows us to be intimate with God. I do wish he had relied a bit more on some of the theologians from the Middle Ages. Many of them were writing about similar themes and it would have grounded the teaching a bit more in historical theology.

Overall this was a good contribution to the Christian world I hope it sells well and it can help to counteract some bad teaching on sexuality.

___________

Disclosure: I received this book free as a digital advanced copy (a PDF file that I converted to read on my kindle.)

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Misses opportunity to share that this sexual freedom is a benefit of marriage, April 24, 2010

By 

Janny (San Jose, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sex, Lies & Religion (Paperback)

First, let me say that there is a lot of good in this book. When I started reading it, I knew that the author was a friend of my pastor, which gave him credibility and trust - neither of which was lost, however I think he missed a big opportunity on which this platform provided.

It wasn't until I got to Chapter 11, that I realized that I don't see this Christian author promoting this sexual freedom for within the boundaries of marriage at all. And that, for me, is a deal-breaker. I feel that this omission compromises the entire message of the book. On page 125, he says "The theological symbolism of sexual union (whether single or married) makes visible the invisible mystery of God." Huh?

He continually uses the words "lovers" and "couples" even when he refers to a Bible verse which specifically says husband and wife (not "couple") - pg. 137: "Sexual union is also liturgy and a sacrament. It is an entrance of a couple into the profound mystery of the Lord (Eph. 5) This is the essential calling of sexual communion and it's liturgy - the sacrament by which the couple becomes "one flesh."

On page 139 he does say "But selfless and dynamic lovemaking - particularly within the context of marriage - is not only a richly satisfying experience, but also one of sacramental ways encountering the mystery we call God (1 John 4:16). It's that word "particularly" that irks me. Again, I don't personally know Randy, but I feel he is saying - I guess it's better if you're married, but if you're not, don't worry, as long as your goal is to get to know God better, have sex with whomever and attain this goal.

There is an obvious amount of research that went into this book and I agree that much of what has been taught (or avoided for that matter) in church about sexuality is meant to make people feel shameful of their God-given sexual longings. Though it is recognized that these desires can become twisted and sinful...the author beautifully writes that "Sometimes the body longs for God in the most paradoxical of ways. Could it be, as one writer puts it, that every knock at the door of a brothel is actually a knock at the heart of God?" pg 21.

In the Lie about Self-Pleasure, which is interesting, and quite, frankly, made me laugh out-loud with this sentence: "Despite these cautions, self-pleasure does offer positive benefits. There is a reason God gave us hands and genitals with a complementary physical proximity." Funny? Yes. An argument that stands up? No. Some friends and I were discussing this and one said you can say the same thing about pulling the trigger on a gun - your finger has complementary physical proximity, right? Also, perhaps the proximity was given for more reasons than just self-pleasure, like, I don't know, washing/bathing? Not entirely disagreeing with that chapter, I'm just sayin'.

I wanted to like this book - but it would take quite a lot for me to recommend it, and when I do, I'd probably want to lend them my book with my notes. Again, there is A LOT of good in this book - from self-serving actions on a multitude of levels, lust, self-control (we tend to trade the ultimate for the immediate, pg. 116 and HALT - Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired, pg 117) and several other topics typically shied away from in many churches.

I would LOVE to hear a what Mark Driscoll has to say about this book :)