Bare Marriage

Episode 306: Thalidomide, Bad Marriage Books, and a Jesus Who Laughs

• Sheila Gregoire • Season 9 • Episode 306

Share episode

Send us a text

Happy American Thanksgiving! We're rerunning one of my favorite episodes from four years ago where Rebecca and I talk about what God is actually like—spoiler: He laughs and takes joy in life, not just suffers on the cross. We also dive into why our Great Sex Rescue research matters and address all those critiques about our methodology (and yes, we're now peer-reviewed, so that critique doesn't really work anymore). Plus, we tackle that awful Missouri pastor story about "trophy wives" and explain why harmful marriage advice is like thalidomide—it might help some people, but that doesn't mean it's not causing serious damage to others.

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSOR

Order Dorothy Greco's book For the Love of Women! Learn why it can feel so difficult to be female in our society, and what we can do about it.

TO SUPPORT US: 

LINKS MENTIONED: 

Support the show

Join Sheila at Bare Marriage.com!

Check out her books:

And she has an Orgasm Course and a Libido course too!

Check out all her courses, FREE resources, social media, books, and so much more at Sheila's LinkTree.

Sheila 
Welcome to the Bare Marriage podcast. I'm Sheila Wray Gregoire from Baremarriage.com. I just I come we like to talk about healthy, evidence based biblical advice for your sex life and your marriage. And let me say to all of my American friends, Happy Thanksgiving. It is your Thanksgiving. It is not ours. Because up here in Canada, we do Thanksgiving in a normal way, in that we have it at the beginning of October.
So, we have a much greater distance between Thanksgiving and Christmas, which to me makes immense sense. But I know many of you are celebrating today, and you're having either a wonderful day with family or a stressful day with family. And either way, I pray that it's a good day no matter what it might bring. 
But because it's Thanksgiving, we were debating what we want to do for the podcast today? And Rebecca actually moved last week. So Rebecca and Connor had a tremendously busy week. And then of course, Keith and I were helping. So we've gotten behind on things and we just thought, you know what? Let's rerun a podcast. So I have a podcast that I point to quite a bit, from way, way back four years ago, and we are now at episode 305 or 6 or something of the Bare Marriage Podcast.
We've done a lot of them, and many of you haven't started listening until maybe the last year or two. So I thought we would bring one up from four years ago. You can see how different we sounded back then. But in this one, the first half of it, I thought was a really good conversation. As we enter into the Christmas season and think about Thanksgiving, just asking what God is like.
So Rebecca and I had a great talk about that. What is God like and what are some of the roadblocks that we have to identifying with him? And then in the second half of the podcast, we addressed a lot of the critiques that we were getting as the Great Sex Rescue came out about our research methods. And we put, it's just one of the best podcasts that had a lot of, a lot of those critiques addressed
And so I just wanted to run it again so that I could keep pointing to it. And it's it's newer. I will say that since this was first recorded, our work has also been in a peer reviewed journal. So all the people who were arguing that we didn't do our research methods correctly, well guess what? You know, we're in the Sociology of religion journal, and we have a bunch of other papers out right now in the submission process.
So we're peer reviewed. You really can't make that critique anymore unless you were also a peer reviewed author, or unless that critique is happening within academic circles. So that's really nice to be able to point to that. But I'm going to let you listen in on this conversation between Rebecca and me and then between me, Rebecca and Keith, about the little mind, the drug thalidomide, and about who God is.
So let's listen in.
Sheila
So I am here with my daughter Rebecca. Hello. And Rebecca Lindenbach is my coauthor of The Great Sex Rescue, which launched just last week. 
Rebecca
Yes.
Sheila
And we are so excited. It's been a great week. There was a New York Times book review. It was one,
Rebecca
and they loved it.
Sheila
Yeah, it was like they said that it should have been titled. Well, I even say it. 
Rebecca
I don't know, I think I think that if you were to say it with the right intonation, then it would become inappropriate for the podcast. So we will, we will link to it, which you can go check it out, but it's worth the read. It's quite funny.
Sheila
Yeah, they were very positive about it. It was included in a number of different books they were reviewing, including some BDSM ones.
Rebecca
But I loved that they included us under books that will offer sexual freedom. Yeah. Yeah. Like when they're doing the roundup of books in the current, you know, market that will offer sexual freedom. Ours is the one for Christians.
Sheila
Yay! And speaking of freedom on the blog, we are actually switching emphasis for the next few weeks. Yeah, so we have been talking about the Great Sex Rescue forever, and it's kind of been some heavy conversations have been important ones, and we've gotten so many great emails from people who have said, finally, I feel free again for freedom, which is wonderful, but I want to talk about something which I hope will be really uplifting.
And of course, the Great Sex Rescue is going to come into it, of course, but I want to encourage us to think about marriage and a little bit of a different way. And so I'm going to tell you a story. In 2012, when you were 17, we went on a Mediterranean cruise. Yes. And we spent some time in Italy.
And then Keith and I spent some time there with you guys. Afterwards. We stayed behind, and it was, it was wonderful. Tons of fun. But we went into so many cathedrals and art galleries and we were just so much Renaissance art. It was just amazing. But when I came back, I had this kind of weird thought as I looked back on all the art we had seen, which is that a lot of it left me kind of empty.
And one of the things I'm about to say is not anti-Catholic. No. Okay. Because I'm talking about Renaissance art. We were all the same then. Yeah. So, so this is before the Reformation.
Rebecca
This is our shared history.
Sheila
This is our shared history. And this is not an anti-Catholic thing. No, no, no, not what I noticed is that in all the paintings in which Jesus appeared, he tended to be doing three different things. Yeah, either, he was a baby. Yep. Or he was on the cross. Yes. Or he was rising in the air. Yes. Every now and then he might have been doing a miracle.
Every now and then he was getting baptized with a dove coming down onto his shoulder. But in general, he was either a baby or he was dead. And there was very little in between. And as I got thinking about that, it seemed that Jesus didn't have a lot of emotion. You know, like the emotion was either he was dead so he didn't have any emotion, or else he was in anguish.
But you just didn't see this wide range of emotion. Whereas the apostles had emotion. They were often shown doing neat things. Mary certainly had emotion, but Jesus really didn't. And I got to thinking about this, and I realized, you know, I wonder if too often we think of God without emotion, or.
Rebecca
If the only emotion he's ever allowed to feel is this stoic anguish or disappointment or sadness.
Sheila
And I know I sometimes think of God like that.
Rebecca
Oh yeah.
Sheila
Sort of like God's a magazine cover, you know, six things you could be doing better.
Rebecca
Yeah. Exactly right. Seven ways you're failing right now.
Sheila
Yeah exactly. You know, and and yet what if that's not actually what God is like? You know what if we actually serve a God who laughs?
Rebecca
Yeah.
Sheila
Because think about what we know about who Jesus hung out with. He hung out with rough fishermen. Now, the closest that I come to that is, my son-in-law is in the military. Yeah. Not. Not your husband?
Rebecca
No, no. My brother-in-law.
Sheila
Yeah. And I know whenever the military guys are together, they laugh a lot. And the reason they laugh is that they're telling jokes.
Rebecca
Yeah, they're telling jokes. They're poking fun. They're just kind of, you know, blowing off steam. Yeah.
Sheila
And they're laughing. And I'm sure that the fishermen laughed and told jokes. And Jesus was okay with that. Yeah. And they actually enjoyed being with Jesus. If Jesus got upset every time someone told a joke, I don't think people would have liked being around him.
Rebecca
No, I mean, who would like being around that person? No one.
Sheila
Right. And so, you know, Jesus is okay with people telling jokes. Jesus hung out and he had dinner with tax collectors and sinners. And in those days, dinner took a long time.
Rebecca
It was like a hours long event.
Sheila 
Hey there! Have you ever been challenged when you bring up some of the stuff we share on this podcast about how, hey, there's no need to be so angry men and women are equal now, and you know that's not right, but you don't know what to say. Well, thank you to the sponsor of today's podcast, Zondervan Publishers, for publishing an amazing book that can give you the words and connect the dots for you.
Dorothy Greco's For the Love of Women has just launched, and it's such an incredible book
Dorothy Greco's book shows how in all kinds of different areas of society, in business, in medicine, in the church, of course, in government and especially with sex, that women are set up often to fail. We have great obstacles that we're facing, but we can overcome them. She points us to how and she gives us a way to answer people when they say, oh, but the sexes are equal now, so pick up for the love of women.
You will love it just as much as I did.
Rebecca
And I think that when we, when we emphasize this, Jesus who suffers and Jesus who dies over the Jesus who sees and enjoys and who loves, that I think comes down to this idea that we have where the whole thing about being a Christian is about understanding how we're horrible people and trying to beat the horrible person out of ourselves instead of resting easy in God's grace.
Sheila
Yeah.
Rebecca
And this is something that's a huge part of my story. You know, because I grew up really in the heavy evangelical, cultural context, which is, in essence, tells you are a worm who God can only stand to look at because he decided to sacrifice a son. And I'm like, now, obviously we believe we needed the cross.
We needed the crucifixion. We needed someone to cover our sin so that we could be, you know, in right standing with God. But when we minimize all of Jesus's life or the call of a Christian to simply be focused on how horrible people we are, we miss out on what it means to love God like a little child, right?
We, we miss out on what it means to have faith like a child. And when I was really realizing this is even looking at my own son, I was saying this to mom, as you're talking about the podcast is I didn't really understand what it meant to love God like a child until I had one, because now what we do every night is we sit in this rocking chair and we read stories, and for a good portion of it, he will just take your arm and he'll just play with the arm hair.
And, there's no embarrassment and there's no thinking. She's going to think this is weird, or is she going to get mad? She's just like, oh, looks fussy. I'm going to play with this. I'm going to try to pull some out. Mommy makes funny noises if I do that. You know, like there's 
Sheila
He's just, he's 16. He's 16 months old. Oh yeah.
Rebecca
That's an important context. Yes. Yes, he's 16 months old. But he just, you know, it's the same kid who every now and then will just walk over and stick his finger in your belly button, just that.
Sheila
It's squishy, like.
Rebecca
Yeah, exactly. Mommy's even more so because I had a baby. Yeah. No, but like, just that utter and complete belief that you're just safe and you're just loved and you get to just explore and just have fun. And just mommy loves me, and I'm going to pull out her arm hair, and that's not going to change anything. Yeah.
Rebecca
You know, I'm going to enjoy just giggling at mommy. I'm going to, you know, roll around on the floor and stick my tongue out. And I know that mommy's going to be looking at me and think, oh, I'm so cute. Yeah, I really do think if you're a parent, you want your kid to think that you think they're awesome.
Now, you also want your kid to understand where they go wrong and where they hurt other people, and where that is not an okay thing to do. But we don't want our kids to only think that we're always looking at them with disappointment. Yeah, it is important that my son knows that when he pokes the dog's eye, that makes mommy sad.
And he knows that.
Sheila
And it makes the dogs. And I don't.
Rebecca
Think he cares about the dog though. I think he only cares about mommy.
 Sheila
Yeah.
Rebecca
No, but that is an important part of parenting. But it's not that's not the entire relationship. Just, just.
Sheila
Just for clarification, their dog is 5 pounds. Yeah. Alex, the dog does not pose a risk to Alex.
Rebecca
No, no, no.
Sheila
He also has no teeth. Alex knows it's a risk to the dog. Just so none of you are aware about this, you.
Rebecca
Now, we are. We are responsible. That's it. Is that the disappointment or the punishment or the frustration or the. No, that wasn't okay. That I don't want my son to ever think like that's our entire relationship. I want him to think of me as the mommy who likes to just laugh with me while I roll on the floor.
Sheila
Because, I do think that Jesus laughed. You know, if he hung out with tax collectors and sinners, they were telling jokes. They were laughing. If he took little children up on his lap, he must've been smiling and laughing a lot at little kids. And so our God laughs. And when you read Romans 8:29 that we are predestined to be transformed into the likeness of Jesus, we often read that to mean that means that we are being transformed into holiness and selflessness and that's part of.
Rebecca
That is definitely a big part of it.
Sheila
That, that is part of it. But it's not the whole thing.
Rebecca
But it's also what do we think holiness looks like, right?
Sheila
Because the likeness of Jesus is someone who laughs and someone who takes joy in life and enjoys what he can.
Rebecca
Yeah, and I will say, we often like to say things where joy isn't the same thing as happiness, right? Joy is something bigger than happiness. But I also think that a big part of joy is positivity. Like you can say I'm content, but my life is horrible and I think and you're head and be constantly bogged down by all these horrible things.
But I think that a lot of times we get into this idea where God is happy with me when I'm suffering, because then I can learn how to be joyful. But what if part of being more like Jesus is just being able to be joyful when things are good, too? It's not about always trying to seek out what's bad so that we can grow, but it's also just about taste and seeing if the Lord is good.
Happier those take refuge.
Sheila
Yeah, what I'm seeing in a lot of marriage advice is that when you suffer. So when your marriage is difficult, this gives you a great opportunity to grow more like Jesus. Yeah. And so it almost seems like the more unhappy you are in marriage, the more Jesus will grow you into who he wants you to be.
Rebecca
Yeah, It's like, oh sure, you have this super easy, lovely, happy marriage and you picked an awesome partner and everything is going pretty easily for you because both of you are people who are already pretty Christlike and sacrificial in your day to day life. But your marriage isn't as good as mine because mine is horrible. And so I have more sanctification that can come from it.
And I know it sounds very extreme. That kind of is the impression that I get from a lot of these books. It's like, I'm sorry, my marriage is pretty easy right now. Like I know the thing goes through seasons, but my marriage is not less able to be used by God because Connor and I are actually a pretty good team.
Sheila
Now, God can use suffering. Yes, God has used suffering in my life, and it's often in times of suffering that we learn how to cling to God the most. But you know what else God uses? Times of real happiness and joy. The truth is, God uses everything.
Rebecca
Yeah, well, and also the whole idea of a marriage being the reason you're suffering, why? Like if your marriage is causing you to suffer, the holy thing is not to sit through and suffer, it's to fix it. It's to get into a situation where the marriage is not causing suffering.
Sheila
Yeah. And I think sometimes we put up with stuff we shouldn't put up with because we think, well, at least this is a vehicle for sanctification in my life.
Rebecca
Yeah. Because we picture Jesus as sad and on the cross. Yeah. And that's it. And that's a part of Jesus, but it's not the whole story.
Sheila
And so then the more that we can empty ourselves, the more that we can show that we are selfless, the more we grow like Jesus. And while that's true, I also think that the more that we can make our relationships be ones that are abundant in love and joy, the more we are also like Jesus.
Rebecca
Yeah.
Sheila
And so I don't think that we have any special reward for suffering. I think that, I think that God uses everything. And if you are in a difficult marriage, yes, God will use that
Rebecca
But also that does not mean you need to put up with it for the rest of your life, because God will be disappointed with you if you aren't able to muscle through.
Sheila
And so I just want to take some of the rest of the weeks in this month and say, hey, how can we just be more joyful about marriage and, and not always talk about marriage like it's this huge slog that God wants to use in your life to make you better? Because we all know marriage is so hard.
And instead just say, hey, how can we just have more joy? How can we see marriage from the point of view of the God who laughs?
Rebecca
Exactly.
Sheila
So that's the one to look at, to turn things around. Okay. We have a bunch of other things that we want to work through quickly on this podcast, and things that people keep sending me, keep asking me about. Yeah. And one of them, I think I've had about 50 people send me this story. The Missouri pastor, the.
Rebecca
Missouri pastor, the Missouri pastor from Missouri.
Sheila
Who said, hey, ladies. Yeah, you better be a trophy wife. Yeah. Or else he is not going to want to be with you. You know, part of being a good wife is looking attractive. And he talked about a husband he knew who had a divorce weight where above that,
Rebecca
he would divorce her.  
Sheila
And he actually read an anecdote from the book. His Needs, Her Needs, which we included in The Great Sex Rescue an example of a problem. It talks about how being married to a woman who has gained a lot of weight is like a prison sentence.
Rebecca
Yeah, which is just horrific. And frankly, we don't want to comment on this too much. We're just commenting on that so that people will stop sending it to us
Sheila
Well, we're glad you guys sent that, because some of the best stuff I talk about is saying, 
Rebecca
oh my Gosh, my readers.
Sheila
So I actually, really enjoy readers sending stuff. It's just that, like every reader in the world just sent me this. Yes, the issue is the issue.
Rebecca
Is not sending us this. That you know, like we can't find other messages because there are so many messages like.
Sheila
Because this really resonated. And I guess what I want is to comment. I don't want to comment on the substance of what he said because it was gross. We've already summarized it.
Rebecca
And frankly, we don't need to spread it anymore.
Sheila
I think he's still at his church. I know he's on leave entirely now, I guess I think so, so that's good. I guess I just got so much bad press, which is wonderful. But you know, what I find so interesting about this is that a lot of people said, you know, we were taking things out of context in the Great Sex Rescue.
And it really wasn't that big. And then the very week that our book launches, this thing hits the news where a guy used the very anecdote that we did, and the point that we were making is that there's such a double standard in Christian books, because there's so much emphasis on women having to stay good looking. And it's just, it's just really rotten.
Rebecca
And also, it's important to realize that when these men are saying things like women have to stay in a certain weight range in order to even be acceptable, that's just also a problem obviously.
Sheila
And we do agree that everyone should try to be healthy. Yeah. Obviously that's a way to love your spouse. But the thing is it's not women. It is both of you together. And whenever we make it a gendered thing like this is something that she owes him. But he can be whatever size he wants. doesn't matter. That's when problems really start.
And when we talk about it solely in terms of appearance rather than health, that's also where there's big.
Rebecca
When we talk about it in terms of once you're not attractive enough anymore, that's a problem for me. It's like, you know, you married someone who wasn't going to be 23 your whole life, so deal with that.
Sheila
We thought that that news story was really sad, and I really feel badly for the people in the pews. And that's another thing that we want to say is part of the purpose for the Great Sex Rescue is to help women identify and men actually identify when what they're being told just isn't true.
Rebecca
Yeah, and that was one of the things that was encouraging. And I joked about, oh, stop sending it to us. Don't stop sending it to us. One of the things that is so encouraging, whenever this kind of thing happens, is seeing how many people notice that even without us saying anything. And who do send it to us and say this is so horrible. Have you seen this? Yeah. That actually is encouraging to us. So I know I joked about it but just to make it very clear it was a joke.
Like we said in last week's podcast, this is such a lonely job to call stuff out and to say, you know, in essence say the emperor has no clothes, right? Like, hi. Or we shouldn't make horrible derogatory remarks to women because they aren't within 5 pounds of their marriage weight. Yeah. You know, like that should not have to be said, but here we are.
Right. But the fact that all of you saw it and said, this isn't okay, and spoke up on social media, spoke up with your friends, spoke up in the comment section where we saw it like, that's amazing and that's what we need. Yeah. Whenever you see something that smells funny, call it out, because there might be like ten other people who are reading that saying, oh no, and just no one else has said anything publicly because it fits with the status quo.
Sheila
But even more importantly than that, if it's your pastor.
Rebecca
Yeah.
Sheila
Call it out, because that's where things get dicey, right? Is when it's not on social media, but it's actually at your church. Like, what about the women who were sitting in those pews? We don't know how this blew up. Apparently, I think someone just saw the video that was posted on Facebook or something, but it might not even have been a parishioner who blew this thing up.
They just may have seen the video. Maybe all the women sitting in there. I don't know what they were thinking. Yeah, but I'm sure a lot of them were very hurt. But when you're sitting in a pew hearing from your pastor that you have a relationship with, it's easy to feel like I'm the one with the problem if I disagree, totally, because they're the ones with the training.
That's my pastor. He's my spiritual authority, so I need to listen to him. And what we want to say is that we found that so many evangelical books spread teachings that are harmful. It is time for us to be allowed to exercise discernment. And if something doesn't look like Jesus, you don't have to listen to it.
Rebecca
Yes, exactly. And I do want to say, I know that it's really scary to actually call people out in person. And if that's really just too much, you don't have to. But you know what you can do? You can just literally get up and leave. People might think that you're taking a bathroom break, you know, but just don't come back.
Just stand in the sanctuary and, you know, make yourself coffee. Yep. And then if anyone comes out to say, oh I'm sorry, I just have a problem with what he's saying. And you don't even need to give any more explanation. But just if we make it normal that people don't have to be okay with horrible things being said from the pulpit, I think that'll go a long way.
Sheila
Yeah. Or from a Bible study group or wherever. Anywhere. Just remember, you're allowed to exercise discernment.
Rebecca
Yes.
Sheila
Okay, quick reader question. I would like to read a question every podcast. And we've been talking about seeing a God who laughs. Yeah. Just as angry at us and having discernment in church. And this one kind of relates to both. It does. Okay. Do you want me to read or do you want to read it?
Rebecca
You can read it.
Sheila
Okay. So she says, I'm going to summarize a little bit. She got married a year ago and they found that she had hormonal problems, specifically endometriosis, which were leaving her in severe, crippling pain. Her husband's been really supportive, but she's felt really alone. And that's because the church culture took a very dim view of any form of birth control, which is the main treatment for endometriosis and the one that they decided to use.
Yeah. She's happy to say that it's helped a lot, and she's hardly ever in pain after sex anymore, which is great, but she feels like she can't tell anyone about her condition because they would disapprove of her choice to use hormonal birth control and not be concerned about the pain that she's had. It's hard to not see my fellow Christians as a supportive group who I can tell about my suffering and ask for prayer or help.
Can you offer tips to the church for how to be more understanding of women in this kind of situation? I wish there were more Christians who would just be listening ears, rather than those who would judge a very private decision like birth control, especially for medical reasons totally unrelated to trying not to have kids yet. Yeah, completely. And we really do need to call this something other than birth control.
Rebecca
Yeah. Because that's not birth control. That's a treatment strategy. And I do want to say that like, you know, I, I and I'll say this personally, I really did struggle with the idea. Do I use hormonal birth control? Do I not? Like what's the ethical reasons. And frankly, I didn't know this until recently. But when you are breastfeeding, the same things happen in your body as what happens when you're on hormonal birth control.
Like you don't really create as much of the lining, so eggs can't implant as easily. So even if you do ovulate, it's still less likely to implant and stuff. So like it's, it's not as black and white as people who are really worried about the, about like, you know, in essence it just making it so that you can't get pregnant through not implanting, not through like preventing ovulation make it sound right.
But also, frankly, there's no evidence that it doesn't make you ovulate. And there's a lot of evidence that suggests that it does actually stop ovulation.
Sheila
Yeah. Yeah. Now, I mean, in terms of when we're talking just about birth control, you know, I do have some concerns just because so many people have told me the pill wrecks their libido.
Rebecca
Well, and for me personally, the reason I'm not on the pill is because it makes me incredibly depressed, incredibly anxious.
Sheila
And we do need to say as well that there's more than one kind of pill. So even saying the pill is a misnomer because there's more.
Rebecca
And I will say on every single pill I've been on, yes, I have been anxious and aggressive.
Sheila
But you know what? Some people swear by it. Yeah, some people don't. But regardless, what she's saying is forget the whole birth control thing. Exactly. I needed to be honest. For medical reasons. Exactly. And that's.
Rebecca
Valid. And to me, I'm like, thank goodness we live in a day where she has something that helps her through this pain.
Sheila
Yeah, but, you know, if this were anything else, like if she had to take thyroid medication, yeah, nobody would be upset about it. But it's like because it's about your uterus. Somehow we get upset.
Rebecca
And this to me is very much the, you know, the God who's always disappointed in us. Yeah, right. This is not the God who bundles you up and says, you have been in such pain for so long, and you don't have to do that, right? So I think, I think we just need to understand that it's really easy to jump as, you know, as religious people, it's really easy to jump to our what do I believe, black or white thinking?
What can I prove with the Bible? And we forget about the compassion piece. Yeah. And we forget about the fact that we are a religion that deals with people, not tokens of our belief system. Right? Like we don't want to put someone up as well. This person had endometriosis and she didn't choose any birth control she suffered through for the Lord.
Yeah.
Sheila
Like, yeah.
Rebecca
So you don't get brownie points for not helping yourself.
Sheila
Yeah. So we just need to see this very differently. And I would encourage all of us as women to be far more giving and, and gracious to other people's choices about birth control in general. But then this isn't even about that. No, this is really about health. And just because something affects someone's uterus or hormones does not mean that they're making some choice about sex.
Yeah, like we need to understand that the uterus is a part of the body and sometimes stuff can go wrong with it and it just needs some help. And that has nothing to do with all of the stuff that we often associate with it. And so we really need to give our friends a break. And if you're in a church where you would be judged for something like this, I don't know, maybe think about whether that's really a healthy church for you.
Rebecca
Yeah, I do think it's fair to say that if you're not able to get medical treatment for a condition that's causing you extreme pain without extreme judgment, that's concerning, because then what happens if you have something else you need to go to the church for that. You need them to not be judgmental. Yeah. You know what happens if you and your marriage is struggling or if you have kids and you suffer with severe postpartum depression and you go for support, are you really going to get support or should you just really believe more?
Yeah, right. Like you have to like these kinds of things do tend to go hand in hand in these kinds of circles. So I would, I would just be very careful and find some of that is a safe place.
Sheila
Because I'm reading a great book right now called A Church Called to Tov, but yes, by Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer.
Rebecca
Everyone's reading this book, right? Yeah.
Sheila
And, and I think that's a good one to read to figure out if your church is toxic or not. So we will leave that at that.
Rebecca
Yep.
Sheila
We have brought my husband, Keith, on to the podcast with us, and we need to address the research question again. So last week.
Keith
So, you guys do some research?
Sheila
So for it but the Great Sex Rescue, we surveyed 20,000 women. We looked at marital and sexual satisfaction and how different evangelical teachings affect Marilyn's sexual satisfaction. And last week we told you what some of the common criticisms that we're getting are from people who don't like our book.
Rebecca
Yes. And I will say, people who don't even know our methodology.
Sheila
Yes, who don't know our methodology? So they're accusing us of a lot of stuff that it wasn't even possible for us to do, which is which is kind of funny. We will put a link in the podcast post to last week's podcast where we did go over this a lot. We don't want to rehash this again. One quick thing that we do want to say though, is that we are getting accused of being biased and having a biased sample. Yes. Which we find kind of laughable because.
Rebecca
It really to me, it just shows a lot of ignorance.
Sheila
Yeah, because in.
Rebecca
Because in order to do an odds ratio analysis, by definition, you have to have comparison groups. Yeah. So they're saying it's just all women who all believe the same way. It's a bunch of angry, hormonal women who don't like our books.
Sheila
Yeah. Or it's or it's a bunch of women who all came from Sheila's blog.
Rebecca
Yeah. Who all who all agree with Sheila. Right. And the thing is that if everyone agrees we would have no comparison group.
Sheila
Yeah. Yeah. And that just shows this.
Rebecca
Fundamental misunderstanding of the of like a basic odds ratio analysis. Yes. Every survey has some level of bias. The Canadian census has a level of bias because the kinds of people who fill out the census in general are of a certain demographic versus others. Even a government census. Yeah, has some bias. The question is whether or not the bias calls into question the results of the survey.
Yeah. And the bias that they're saying makes it impossible for us to even find any differences. And we did find differences.
Sheila
Yeah. Because what we were doing again was we were saying, okay, if you believe that all men struggle with lust is every man's battle, how does that affect your sex life? And in order to figure that out, we had to have people who believed it and people who didn't.
Rebecca
And not only that, we had to have a big enough group of people who didn't versus who did that. We could know that our findings, our odds ratios, were not simply due to chance. Yeah. You know, we had to have a big enough one. And we will say we did not report anything in the book that was not incredibly statistically significant.
Sheila
Yeah.
Rebecca
But what we were, what we were saying that was we got all these people who are trying to discount our survey for all sorts of different reasons, who have no clue what they're talking about, because, frankly, again, they're showing they don't understand what odds ratios even mean. And they don't know our methodology.
Keith
And they don't understand statistical significance. No. Right. Yeah. Because that's a huge thing.
Rebecca
Yeah. Exactly. And so what's happening is people are saying this now. We just wanted to ask, okay, so why are you trying to discount our survey?  Because our survey found that some pretty big teachings harm marriages. Yeah. So if you're trying to discount our survey, which one of these teachings do you want to hold off?
Sheila
Yeah, we had five big findings. We had more than that, but we had five big, big findings. So the first is simply that we have a 47 point orgasm gap. Yeah.
Rebecca
And I would say that is totally in line with other research, that's completely within the normal range.
Sheila
Yes. So we so that gives us some external validation as well. So other peer reviewed surveys for instance, find that 95, 96% of men say they almost always or always orgasm, whereas we found only 48% of women said the same thing. So have roughly a 47 point orgasm gap. That's finding number one. Finding number two. Does the idea that boys will push your sexual boundaries have a negative impact?
Yeah. The idea that girls have to be the gatekeeper, that boys are the accelerator, girls are the brakes. You know, this has profound impacts later in marriage. The idea that all men struggle with lust is every man's battle.
Rebecca
Yep. That really just destroys a lot of aspects of marital and sexual satisfaction, and it destroys it, even if they only heard it and they don't even believe it. Yes, that's what's interesting.
Sheila
Yes, a woman is obligated to have sex with her husband, whenever he wants it.
Rebecca
Yep. Exactly.
Sheila
Bad stuff.
Rebecca
Bad stuff happens.
Sheila
And that. Hey, ladies, if you don't want him to watch porn.
Rebecca
You have to have sex with him.
Sheila
You have to have sex with them. So if you're saying you don't like our survey, then what you're really saying is we don't agree that those teachings are bad. Yeah. Or we don't care that there's an orgasm gap.
Rebecca
Exactly, so either. Well, we shouldn't be focusing on women's orgasm anyway or. Well, you know, all boys are little rapists in the making, so you can't really change that. Or else it's. Yeah, your husband's never going to want to only have eyes for you. Ever. And you're constantly going to be second rate to what he really wants or is going to be, you know, put out more so that he doesn't go to what he really wants and he settles for you instead.
Or it's, you know, consent, sexual autonomy. We don't need any of that here. We got a wedding ring. So marital rape doesn't really exist. And you should just have sex whenever he wants it, regardless how you're feeling.
Keith
And the thing is, your book doesn't just bash them now.
Rebecca
No, of course.
Keith
And I read your book, your book says things that are very positive. Like I was really overwhelmed by, for instance, the obligatory sex message. Yeah. I was overwhelmed by the number of women who, in your focus groups, talked with their husbands and said, hey, I bought this idea that I have to have sex with you or you're going to watch porn, or I have to sex you because I'm married to you now.
So it's essential that I do that. And it's not really something I feel I'm doing freely. And their husbands freaked out and said, I don't think that I want you to have sex with me because you want to have sex with me. I want this to be something that we both enjoy. And they were like, are you kidding? 
Like, I didn't realize that. So your book is very positive. It's saying, hey, let's get these teachings, let's put them aside and let's just enjoy being with each other and loving each other and building our relationship together. It's not just about bashing little teachings, is it? But putting those teachings to rest. But it's about having much more healthy. Let's go forward in a good way kind of teachings. Yeah, and why would people want to resist that? I don't understand to.
Rebecca
Me, the whole book is just about forgetting what is behind and straying towards what is that right? Like that whole mentality of the Christian faith, where it's when we have things that are wrong and bad in our past, whether it's, you know, past sin or, you know, like harmful beliefs, even I think it all applies where we forget what is behind me, strain towards what is ahead, remembering that, you know, Christ is the prize that calls us heavenward, you know? And so I think that that's what we just need to remember here. And so if people don't if people are trying to discount our survey, then you just gotta ask, why?
Sheila
Yeah.
Rebecca
Why are you threatened by a survey that says women should have consent? Women should orgasm, boys should respect the need for consent. And also that you know what marriages should be faithful and that your wife's vagina should not be the only thing holding you back from another woman. Those are the kinds of things we're saying is that, like, you know, marriage is supposed to be this mutual consensual
I just want to really emphasize that one. Yeah. But there's this whole idea of what marriage could be. And yeah, we have to call out the people who have worked against that.
Sheila
Yeah. So I think what's happening is that several of the authors that we have critiqued, their books, have been saying, oh, but their survey was badly done when they don't know our methodology and they have no idea what they're talking about. Really. We do have a link to our methods page, which we will put in the podcast description, so you can go read that along with their FAQ.
But I do think it's kind of funny because I think they think that by discounting our survey, they can discount our book, but really by discounting our survey, they're showing what they really stand for.
Rebecca
Yeah, exactly. If they agree with our survey, then there's no reason to try to discount it.
Sheila
Yeah. I think what they're upset about is that what we found when we looked at this survey, we saw the results. We saw which beliefs were harmful. We looked at other peer reviewed studies, saw what was harmful, and then we started looking at all these books, and we found those harmful teachings in these books.
Rebecca
And it's uncomfortable to be called out for having caused harm. It just is.
Sheila
And, you know, I've actually been feeling quite, I don't know what the right word is, but I've been feeling a lot of compassion for some of these authors this week because I can't imagine what that's like, like, to hear that what you've been teaching has caused harm. Yeah. And I've been praying a lot that God will show compassion on them and will bring someone into their life that will just help them understand that we still do serve that God who laughs.
Yeah, right. That he still is loving and just very accepting of them. But that doesn't take away the harm they've done. And that's not my role to show compassion. We were called to write this book.
Rebecca
Our fight will always be for the sheep. Yeah. You know, and a lot of these teachers shifted from sheep into wolves in sheep's clothing because we have heard again and again that what they have written has caused harm. And instead of addressing it, instead of changing what they said, instead of issuing public statements, instead of working hard to undo what they have done, they've doubled down.
And I think that that's, that's what's our job is our job is to give the sheep the ability to say this person isn't safe. So it might be someone else's job to come alongside those, those people who have done the harm and say, you have screwed up. You have made a mistake here. That is not your whole story, but you are still responsible for it and you need to address it.
Yeah, and I hope someone does that and I hope.
Sheila
But even in that, God is still, God still loves you and God still rejoices over you saying yes.
Rebecca
Yeah, exactly. But that does not discount the harm that is done. And that's our job. Yeah.
Sheila
Okay. So we want to turn to another question, another big issue. So let's take this from a bit of a different angle. And this is this is a conversation that I want to have a bigger conversation here is you know, the pushback we often get is but how can you discount a book just because it's harmed some people when it's helped so many.
And so I want to explore, how does the book actually help, like philosophically, how does the book help people? And I was thinking about this, and I think there's a couple of different ways. One is if a book truly says something new, that is really important, I would put a book like Boundaries by Henry Clarke and John Townsend in that category.
I think that was a book that really helped me because it says something totally new. It said, hey, you know, being a Christian doesn't mean being a pushover. Yeah, like being a Christian. You still have to eat. You still get to stand up for what is right. And boundaries are important. I don't know, is there any book that's really helped you guys that has said something new or.
Keith
Well, I really like The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Yeah, I thought that was very good. I had a lot of really good information that was settled elsewhere before. Now it's kind of in the water, but it's.
Sheila
Yeah, in the 90s. In the 90s. Yeah. It's what made us get rid of our TV. Yeah, yeah. At the time. And I think another thing is, like a book can be really helpful if it just teaches you something that you didn't have a lot of other ways of learning. Yeah. You know, so, Gift of Sex by the Penner’s for instance.
Great book on sex. Scored 47 out of 48 on a rubric. It was one of the 13 books that we analyzed. Yeah, a really strong book on sex. I really like that one. I think The Good Girls Guide to Great Sex falls under that category, too, that it's, you know, very helpful when I'm teaching stuff, something like that, that can be helpful if it's something you need to learn.
And I think another way a book can be helpful is if it's written in an accessible way or by someone that people wouldn't have listened to otherwise, like the perfect example to me is Terry Crews.
Rebecca
I don't know stuff he's doing on porn.
Sheila
I don't know if he's actually written a book. If not he should. Yes. But like you know Terry loves yogurt. We all know that. And Terry hates porn. Yes. Right.
Keith
And like and toxic masculinity and.
Sheila
And toxic masculinity, Terry Crews has just been such an amazing Terry is not saying anything new. Yeah. Like I don't think he's saying anything that people have not said before.
Keith
Yeah, but he's saying it to groups of people who would only hear it from Terry Crews. Yeah, yeah, which is awesome. And I think he's amazing.
Sheila
Yeah, And so I think there's a lot of room for people like that, you know, to speak in. And I just, I just so respect him and Terry we love you. Yes, yes. I don't love yogurt, but we love you. I,
Keith
I love it.
Sheila
So I was thinking about it. Those are sort of the big ways that I see that a book can help. Yeah. Now, what if you find that a book harms? But a lot of people say that book really helped me. And here's why I have a theory.
Keith
Okay, okay. Let’s hear the theory.
Sheila
I have a theory that what if the book helped? Because any book you read in that situation about marriage, what about because, what if it's the process of actually reading a marriage book? Yeah, that is doing the helping rather than the book itself. Well, it's.
Rebecca
Also why do we find that, you know, there are good therapists and there are mad therapists, but going to therapy helps. Yeah, right. Like there are studies that show that, you know, therapy like who your therapist is definitely impacts the extent to which it helps. But at some point, just talking to someone and getting the basics of cognitive behavioral therapy will help you even if you don't have a great therapist.
Keith
Yeah. Well, even more than that in medicine when they're putting a new drug in the market there's always, you know, they do it are called placebo controlled randomized double blind trials. Yeah. There's a bunch of people and some of them are getting the new medicine and some people are basically getting a sugar pill. Yeah. Like they're getting a nothing pill.
And the thing is that in the nothing pill group some get better. Right. It's not a small number either. True. Like I mean if you do a new blood pressure medication and it works you have to show that it did better than a dummy pill. Yeah. Right. Right. Because the pill group will get better. Yeah. So just by doing something, by doing anything, some people are going to get better, that's just the way things work.
Rebecca
Yeah, I know, I know that, Katie, when she was little and got all those migraines, we stopped letting her, like, we had to ration the number of Advil she could take as you're worried she's going to get to, like, just an ulcer. Exactly. And so Katie would just pretend to take an Advil pill, and it would help her headache get better, you know, cause her body remembered what it was, but she wasn't actually getting any of the drug.
Sheila
Yeah. And so I, you know, if you're married, if you want to work on your marriage, if you're like, you know, I really want to invest in my marriage. So I'm going to take the time to read this book.
Rebecca
Yeah. And you do it with your partner. Yeah. Who also is invested in your marriage.
Keith
The book could have been like The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Oh, is that what you're saying? Well.
Sheila
I mean, most marriages. But even the ones that we found caused harm, they also do. I mean, pretty much every marriage book encourages people to be less selfish. You have to think of your spouse and communicate more. So even if there are some of the harmful teachings we talked about, you know, I still just tell people to be selfless and yeah, yeah.
Keith
Those are good.
Rebecca
Things. Yeah. But the difference is, you know, it's the idea of if everyone is saying the same mundane kind of five pieces of advice, and the way that you're kind of different is that you have teachings that harm them, that's not a great way to stand out. For instance, a really good example that comes to mind for me is the book Love and Respect.
Okay. So when we, whenever we talk about Love and Respect, the two things that people say really help them are the idea of like, you know, husbands and wives. And I see things differently, like the pink and blue glasses idea. Right. You're just you're, you're looking at it with pink lenses. Right. And then what a lot of couples say they do is figure out what are my lenses, what are my spouse's lenses. And so they get into an argument you can talk about, okay, I'm just seeing it from a different point of view. That's perfectly fine. Also is, you know, pretty generic marriage advice.
Sheila
Well, yeah. I mean, the book, a great book that we thoroughly recommend is the book How We Love.
Rebecca
Yeah. And that's the entire thing looking at your attachment style. And that's the lens that you see the world through. Yeah. Right.
Sheila
By the Yerkovich’s, is an amazing book.
Keith
Because, because that's the thing, too. It's not just a gender thing. No, it's to make it purely a male female thing. It's just crazy.
Rebecca
But I just try to give examples of things that I've helped people write in Love and Respect. So that's one that's really helped people. But again, it's kind of generic marriage advice. But the other thing that they all say is the idea of the crazy cycle of like, you do something mean and then someone else does something mean and retaliation.
At some point one of you has to just start being nice. Yeah, right. You know, that's everywhere. That's parenting advice. It's in workplace negotiations. It's just general interpersonal. Like I dealt with that in my interpersonal conflict resolution class in university. Gottman has been talking about that for a long time.
Keith
So it's no surprise that reading that in that book helps people, because when they read it in other books, yeah, that helps them there too.
Rebecca
The difference is that Love and Respect also has this whole paradigm of the idea that, you know, women and men need to relate to each other differently, and they do so in a way where women apparently don't need sex in the way that men do. Because remember, he does say, if your husband is typical, he has a need you don’t have.
Keith
To think that, like me was then in the appendix where he talks about the workaholic husband. Yeah. And he says to the woman that you should say something to him once quietly, and then if he doesn't respond, wait 10 to 20 days before you speak to him again. Yeah. I mean, to me, I would. That is just ridiculous.
As a woman, I would never want to be in a relationship where I had to be scared to talk to somebody for 10 to 20 days about an issue that was that important. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense.
Rebecca
And so if the way to your book is different from other books, is that, in essence, you tell women that the sex isn't for them?
Sheila
Yeah.
Rebecca
You know, and you also tell them you're not really allowed to speak your mind, whether or not they meant to say that. That is what a lot of people are reading from it. That's why we say these books do more harm than good, because the good that they do is just kind of out in the water. They're not adding to the conversation.
They might spin it in a different way, right? Instead of saying it's attachment styles, or instead of saying it's just, you know, different experiences color our perspective. They say blue and pink lenses, which is cute.
Keith
Yeah. And it's a nice visual image.
Rebecca
Exactly. It’s helpful
Keith
It's easy to remember.
Rebecca
Yeah. And that is a very effective mode of communication. And if they say, you know, the whole crazy cycle idea, you know, like that may have helped people, but it's already out there. And so if the things that you're doing well on, everyone else is doing well on, and it's just the things that make you different are the things that hurt people.
That's where we, we, we are concerned and that's where I think we need to recognize as a Christian culture that you don't get to just do something that hurts people because you also put in the mandatory positives.
Sheila
Yes. Because anybody likes it's like all the people who say Love and Respect help them. Had they read a different marriage.
Rebecca
Book, I just wonder if it would help them to, if.
Sheila
It would have helped them as well. And that and that's really the issue, right? We have a story that we want to tell you about Thalidomide, the drug thalidomide, which was out in the 1950s. It was done by a West German company. It ended up being sold in Britain under dozens of different companies with different names. And originally it had all kinds of different uses.
But one of the uses was for nausea during pregnancy. Yeah. The reason that solidified went so big is that they couldn't find the lethal dose. They gave mice all kinds of thalidomide and no mice ever died. So they decided this must be a really safe drug. Exactly what they found, however, was that if you took it between days 20 and 37 after conception, it could cause horrendous birth defects, missing limbs, deafness, blindness, all kinds of things.
I actually knew a guy who was missing his arms, due to Thalidomide when I was at Bible College in England. And it was so cool because he could actually count change with his toes. Yeah, he carried this money in his shoes and he could. Anyway, it was amazing. You could drive with his feet. It was really cool.
But anyway, Thalidomide did horrible, horrible damage. I read a history of thalidomide and just copied some of the things that I want to. I want to read it too, because I think that they relate. So it says. In 1958, Thalidomide was produced in the United Kingdom by the Distillers Company Biochemicals Limited, under the brand names of Distaval, Tensival, Valgrain, and Asmaval.
All their advertisements claimed that Distaval can be given with complete safety to pregnant women and nursing mothers, without adverse effect on mother or child. So they made this claim.
Rebecca
Yeah.
Sheila
But they had never checked.
Rebecca
Yeah. They haven't actually done any studies.
Sheila
Yeah. They had no evidence for that claim. How often do we hear that about Christian books?
Keith
Yeah, this is God's way. So it will work.
Rebecca
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. We can. And that's exactly it. What they said is that it doesn't kill mice, so it must be safe. What we say is we can find one verse in Scripture that seems to support this on the surface, so therefore it must be right. It's the same thing.
Sheila
Then in November of 1961, the first article appeared in The Lancet explaining the problems with thalidomide. Shortly thereafter, it was taken off the market, which was difficult because it went under so many different names, so I had to trace it all down. The UK government had to do awareness campaigns about this because women were giving their extra pills to sisters and friends.
Rebecca
Exactly. And so think about all the books on our shelves that all have different names, but all have the same harmful teachings. And think about your average book study at your church. What are you going to be reading?
Sheila
Yeah. Because a lot of women took the lead am thalidomide and there were no ill effects. Exactly. In fact for many women it helped them. It cured the nausea. And so they were like, oh, you're feeling nauseous.
Rebecca
This is a miracle.
Sheila
This is a miracle drug. Here you go. And so they gave it to their sisters. They gave it to their friends. And then their sisters and friends had babies with birth defects. And the thing is when, when you find a book helpful and you recommend that book without realizing that it's harmful, you don't know what situation your sister or your friend are in.
You know, you might, you might be married to a guy that's really great. And so advice like you read in Love and Respect isn't that bad.
Rebecca
Yep.
Sheila
But if you're married to a guy who isn't great, then that book could do a lot of harm.
Rebecca
Yeah, it can be devastating.
Keith
And you've had many women tell you that that's exactly what happened to them.
Rebecca
Yeah, yeah. Especially since we've had lots of women say I was recommended this book by someone who it helped. And for me, it led to horrible outcomes.
Sheila
And it's not just Love and Respect. I know I shared, I shared on the podcast a while ago what happened when I read the Act of Marriage before we got married? Like it's. Yeah, yeah. Like it's just a lot of these books that we found were harmful. They harm some people. And we have to keep in mind that just because it didn't harm you doesn't mean it's not going to harm others.
Sheila 
Lots of people ask me how they can support what we're doing in changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage, and I want to give you two quick ways. One is our Patreon group that we pretty much always mentioned on this podcast, but the other for people who have a little bit more money they want to invest or some money that God has said, hey, I want you to use this to seed the kingdom.
The Good Fruit Faith initiative of the Bosco Foundation supports what we do. And when you donate money through the Good Fruit Faith initiative, it helps us do things like write more academic papers, create podcast series that we're hopefully going to be launching next year. Gets our work into other languages and more
And if you live in the United States of America, you will also get a tax deductible receipt for your charitable giving.
So please take a look to join us. We're specially looking for monthly donors who can give even as little as $10 a month. Do you realize that if everybody on our newsletter list gave $10 a month, we would be making $450,000 a month?
That's wild. Oh my word. Focus on the family would be quaking.
Exactly. So please, will you give us some money and help us do what we do on a bigger basis.
Keith
Now, are you getting to the intent part of things at some point.
Sheila
Point, no. But you can talk about because.
Keith
One of the things I want to say is that you're getting pushback, that, of course, these authors didn't mean to cause harm, as if your point is that you think that these people went out intentionally, out of the way to cause harm to women. No one thinks that, the very beginning of your book says, we don't think these authors intended to harm you, give them the benefit of the doubt. You say that at the beginning of the book, no one thinks that. And it's not that we think these people are intending to do any damage. I don't think that people, when they marketed thalidomide, were trying to hurt women and babies. Of course they weren't. They were trying to help, but when they realized it was hurting, they stopped and they changed what they were doing. And that's all you're trying to say with this book is, hey, look, you meant to do something really, really good. But in certain situations it turns out really bad. So can we just take a step back here and maybe, like, speak into this again in a way that's clearer?
So if you're in a relationship where things are tense, where emotional or physical abuse is happening, that that's a very different scenario and it has to be treated very differently and you need to identify that kind of thing rather than putting a book out as the be all and end all to solve all marriage problems for marriages that are in crisis, that are in this, that are in that to say, like, look, this is where this book works really well this is where this book doesn't work as well. And having the humility to say that that's the case would be so helpful.
Sheila
Yeah, yeah, just give those warnings. Okay. Here's something else about thalidomide. Thalidomide forced governments and medical authorities to review their pharmaceutical licensing policies. As a result, changes were made to the way drugs were marketed, tested and approved both in the UK and across the world. One key change was that drugs intended for human use could no longer be approved purely on the basis of animal testing.
Yeah, so just because it works on animals doesn't mean we can just give it to humans. Exactly. And I think what's happened is a lot of marriage books. What I would say is just because men like the advice, doesn't mean it's going to work for women.
Keith
And you're right that there's a lot of good stuff with that in medicine these days about how, you know, that's kind of it. We test drugs on men, and then we market them to men and women, and we're learning medicine that is not healthy and that's not appropriate. And so, you know, if we're going to be healthy in our marriages, the stuff that we recommend needs to be tested on both men and women, not just men alone.
Rebecca
Exactly. And we just need to know what our outcome is that we're aiming for. Right. A lot of these books might be really, really successful in getting women to put out more and divorce less. Yes. A lot of these books may have awesome rates of lower divorce and more sex. But is that actually a good outcome if it also has lower orgasm rates for her, higher rates of sexual pain, less emotional closeness during sex, feeling like her opinions don't matter as much as his
Sheila
More abuse.
Rebecca
More or even more abuse in some cases, right? We didn't test for the numbers.
Sheila
Yeah. One thing that Gretchen. Yeah, and we didn't do that because it would have triggered mandatory reporting and.
Rebecca
It was about ethics.
Sheila
Of it. And it was. Yeah. Gretchen Baskerville, who wrote The Life Saving Divorce. One thing that she says is that, and she has research on this, so I'll have to send you over to her site to find it. But Christian women experience more abuse, not because their husbands abuse more, but because they put up with it.
Rebecca
So does that mean that like when a woman who's not a Christian is abused she leaves faster. Yes. You mean. Yes.
Keith
And so if you don't think a book is doing that. Yeah. Okay then at least raise your voice in saying that is something we need to fix.
Rebecca
Yes.
Keith
Honestly, if your book is not the problem, okay fine. But let's agree that women staying in abusive marriages longer is not a good outcome, and we should all be working to make that stop.
Sheila
Exactly.
Rebecca
And our goal and what we think the goal of all books that deal with marriage and sex should be is just that the people reading them are able to recognize, first of all, where they have been hurting their spouse, potentially. Yeah, I think that's important. But also validating where they may have been hurt. You know, I think these are important things, you know, helping people understand what does abuse look like, what does marital rape look like?
And I know these are two harsh things, but the happier things are this, also inspires people to treat one another as Christ wants us to treat one another, that both partners are more satisfied and are more, you know, aware of how to meet each other's needs. Yeah. And we're not talking where one person does all the giving and one person does all the taking.
No. And the actual needs, that are not gendered needs. You know, both people have a need for sexual release. Both people have a need to be emotionally close. Both people have a need for their opinions and their desires to matter in their marriage. And also, we just want these books to help people have marriages that are life giving, not life draining
Your marriage is not successful based on how many years you stick it out miserable together. Your marriage is not more successful. If you put up with the abuse for 18 more years and someone else did. You know our marriages are successful because they're a way that we can joyfully live out our vows together. But if someone is breaking those vows by mistreating you, by neglecting you, by abusing you, by, you know, all these different, horrible ways that someone can break their vows.
The goal of a Christian marriage book should not be to teach someone how to push down their needs, push down their desires, push down their rights that they were given in their marriage vows. The goal of a book should not be to simply keep people together, even if it means that one of them is miserable and having their life drained from them.
The goal of marriage books should be to set free, and that should mean together. If both people are healthy, Christlike people. But Christ, remember the Christ who laughs does not look at you, who is being abused, does not look at you, who is married to a selfish, evil man or a selfish, evil woman. The Christ who laughs, the Christ who loves us does not look at you and say, well, do you really matter as much as your marriage does though?
Yeah. Do you really matter? The Christ that we talk about, these books, the Christ that says that marriage is meant to just be this refining tool and isn't about your joy or your satisfaction. The Christ that says all of that kind of stuff, the Christ says, you need to become lesser so that your spouse can. Their ego is safe.
You know, I don't see Christ in the Bible. I see the Christ who says, I belong to gather you up under my wing like a mother hen. I see the Christ who says, is the Sabbath created for man or man for the Sabbath? Like that's the Christ that I see in scriptures. And that's not a Christ who tells a woman or a man that the way to be holy, the way to have me be proud of you, is to push down everything about you and to minimize everything about you, and to shut up and put out long enough that you can at least say, I didn't get divorced.
Sheila
Well said. Okay, let me say something not quite as serious. Yes. Okay. Well it is.
Keith
I got something a little bit more upbeat as well.
Sheila
Okay, well, mine's kind of serious. And you can do the upbeat. Okay. So you were talking about putting up with abuse and not getting divorced. The other thing that you mentioned earlier, which I just want to reiterate, is that another way that you can judge whether a marriage book is successful is like, maybe wives just have more sex.
Yeah. And what we did find is that all of our negative teachings or at least three of them, I don't know about.
Rebecca
Obligations.
Sheila
The obligation. Sex, have sex. So, he won't watch porn even on this one about lust. I think they're all associated with women having more sex with more frequent sex. So women believe this when you.
Rebecca
Read.
Sheila
When you threaten women, they do have more sex. It's just very unsatisfying. And marriage satisfaction goes down. So if you're only judging it, by how often women have sex, then yeah, it's doing its job. But is that really the proper measure?
Keith
Because I think most guys would rather have a little less sex. That was a bit more fun and enjoyable for everyone involved, right? The thing I was going to say is this in the end, I think what we're saying is that the one thing we know from Scripture is that God uses the marriage relationship as an image of Jesus' relationship to the church.
Christ and the church is meant to be the picture of the husband and the wife. And I don't know about the Christ that you serve and the church that you want to be in, but I want to be in one that is joyful, that is full of, you know, growth and, and love and all the fruits of the spirit.
And to me, if you have a book that is teaching that, run to that book, if the book is teaching something other than that, then stay away from the book, because that's the picture. If the book says, it's all about meeting physical release or he's going to go use porn. That's not a joyful picture of two people uniting, the way that God intended.
Look for those kinds of things and run after those kinds of things. That’s what I would say?
Sheila
Okay, last thing about Thalidomide. Okay. One more thing. One more thing. The yellow card scheme was set up for doctors to share previously unknown side effects of medications they prescribed. The scheme has now widened so anyone can report a side effect.
Rebecca
Yes.
Sheila
So what they realized was that they didn't have a centralized way of figuring out what the side effects were, so they didn't pick up on these problems early enough. And so now they have a way that every day regular people can report this stuff. And that's what we want to say. It's like what people think should matter. It shouldn't just matter what the authors think, what the publishers think, what the powers that be think. You know what the people in the pews think, what the people who read the books think should matter. And we're just hoping that we can get your voices heard..
Rebecca
Yeah, And that's what we were trying to do. And so we surveyed 20,000, and then we did interviews and focus groups with a bunch more. Did a follow up survey of over 1500. Yeah. You know, we have emails from, I think, close to 1700 women who are interested in doing focus groups and interviews. And we have a whole bunch more.
Sheila
About 4000, actually.
Rebecca
Oh my goodness. Yeah. But this is what we want to do is we want to give the voice to the people in the pews. Because you are the ones who are being affected, whether for good or for bad. And so isn't it time that you have a voice?
Sheila
People are really criticizing us for this. And in the next few weeks you're probably going to hear some of that. But staying strong comes from your matter. And I just want you to remember that. Yeah. If they criticise the survey, then which of these teachings are they trying to hold on to?
Rebecca
Yeah. And we just want you to know that for us, the well-being of the reader, the well-being of the average person who's just looking for help, how a book affects them will always matter more to us than the reputation of the person who did the harm. And I think that's how it should be.
Sheila
Yep.
Thanks for tuning in to this rerun episode. And again, Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends and to my more Commonwealth friends and people from elsewhere. Yeah, I'm glad you're here too. I also had something really fun to announce, which is the Good Faith initiative of the Bosco Foundation, which is an initiative where we can disseminate our information about what healthy marriage and sex looks like.
It's part of a nonprofit. So if you're in the US, you can get a tax receipt for donations. And one of the things that we used that money for this year was to hire an actual video producer, a video editor, to make some short videos explaining some key concepts. We did a video on why complementarianism doesn't work, on why we need to teach kids consent, and why talking about modesty to teenage girls actually backfires, on why women are actually looking for a spiritual leader, or what we mean by spiritual leader isn't quite right. So just taking some of the things that we talk about all the time on Bare Marriage and putting it into a much shorter video with high production quality, that you can share with your pastor, etc. and we've started a new YouTube channel for that called Good Fruit Faith.
We're cross posting it on my own channel too, but I'm going to put the links to those videos in the podcast notes, and I really encourage you to take a look at them. And as Giving Tuesday comes up this week. If you have some extra money and you would like to help us spread the word, we're looking at raising some money for some more translations.
We have some Spanish translations of The Good Girls Guide to Great Sex coming up in February. You'll hear more about that soon. We want to get the Great Sex Rescue out in Spanish, but we also want to be able to pay for some translations for people who are working on the mission field. We've got several, ones that we're considering now.
We're still working on more academic papers. We're still working on doing some continuing education for pastors and just a lot of initiatives that we hope that we can get going in 2026. So, if you do have some funds, we would love for you to give even just, you know, $10 a month if you could partner with us.
It would make such a difference. And so we're going to put the link to that too, if you're not in the US. And so the tax receipt doesn't do you any good. And I'm sorry I can't give tax receipts. No other country right now is thinking about it and working on it, but we don't have it yet.
You can always join our Patreon group. It is super fun. And when you give even $5 a month, you can get into our Facebook group, which is one of my safe spaces on the internet. So check that out. The link is in the podcast notes too, and we will see you again next week on the Bare Marriage podcast. Bye bye