Quick Summary
“Wow.”
That was a word I wrote over and over again in the margins of this book. Once it was because I was blown away at a finding from their research. Other times I was struck by how they uncovered how many of our Christian teachings are inconsistent with regards to men and women and the way we discuss sexuality.
But most often I wrote “wow” (or “ugh!”) in the margins because the authors quoted horrific teachings and advice for marriages, straight from many of the most widely read Christian Marriage books. The advice has usually been recycled and reused over and over again to the point that we take it for granted as gospel truth regarding marriages.
And it’s wrong. Hurtful. And doesn’t reflect the heart of God nor his design for marriage.
Ironically, I became aware of this book right around the time I was reading the book Love & Respect for the first time, a horrible book that I was appalled to read, a book that Gregoire and her companions rip to shreds along with several other well known teachings.
The aim of The Great Sex Rescue is simply this: to review many of the most well known Christian books and teachings on marriage and to examine if their teachings are consistent with scripture and contain the heart of God. As you can imagine by the title and subtitle, their aim in writing The Great Sex Rescue is to recover a healthy and scriptural view of sexual intimacy and to put away harmful and hurtful teachings that have been circulating for quite some time.
Even if you stripped away the biblical aspects of The Great Sex Rescue, it could proudly stand alone as a phenomenal book in the Sexual Education category. That attribute alone makes it worth the read. There are also discussion questions for a couple to go through at the end of each chapter as well as a “rescuing and reframing” section where the aim is to help you learn to speak more inclusively and in healthier ways about sexual intimacy.
Favorite Quotes
“If we think that’s what the Bible is talking about by one-flesh marriage (sex as primarily physical – Adam) and all the ‘do not deprive’ talk we hear, then we may start to think that what God really cares about most is that husbands ejaculate frequently enough.” (pg. 13)
“Billions of people on this planet have had intercourse. I don’t know how many have actually made love.” (pg. 22)
“Women who do not believe traditional gender roles are moral imperatives feel more heard and seen in their marriages. In fact, women who act out the typical breadwinner-homemaker dynamic all feel more seen if they see it as a choice and not a God-given role.” (pg. 30)
“Which message have you heard more often in church, studies, or Christian books? “Do not deprive your husband,” or “Women’s sexual pleasure matters?” (pg.39)
“When we tell girls that all boys will want to pressure them, we set a very low standard for boys and a very high one for girls.” (pg. 68)
“Not being able to look at woman treats women like threats rather than people. And what do you do with threats? You neutralize them…The irony is that by equating attraction with lust, we’ve boiled women down to their bodies, whether a man is avoiding her completely or lusting about her.” (pg. 92)
[regarding pornography] “You cannot free someone from their sin – that was Jesus’ job on the cross, not yours in the bedroom.” (pg. 112)
“Just as you can’t cure an alcoholic by giving him so many sedatives that he won’t want to go to a bar, you can’t cure a porn addict by giving him so much sex that he won’t want to log on to the computer. Even if it does lead to less porn use, the issue is not healed, it’s only been numbed. God doesn’t want to numb us. God wants to free us.” (pg. 115)
Leviticus has a higher view of men’s ability to maintain sexual integrity during a wife’s period than many Christian marriage books published in the 21st century.” (pg. 205)
“Almost all of the Christian resources we looked at talked about the importance of a wife keeping up her appearance so that her husband still finds her attractive, but very few of them talk about how a husband gaining weight isn’t just unattractive to his wife; it also detracts from her agility to derive physical pleasure from sex.” (pg. 208)
“The gift of sex in a healthy relationship is that you have nothing to prove anymore. You can just relax and be yourself, knowing you’re unconditionally loved.” (pg. 222)
Big Takeaways
My biggest takeaway is that we have really dropped the ball in this area for too long. I’m shocked at how any people come to therapy carrying around religious baggage around sexuality from things they were taught (or not taught) about their bodies or about how sex is supposed to work between husband and wife. This book does a tremendous job going through commonly believed “facts” about sex between man and woman, disrobes them for the fraudulent teachings they are, and reconfigures what the truth should be instead.
This book is in the rare category of books that I will read again and unabashedly refer other people to. It’s that good.
If you’d like to go a little deeper on this topic, I’ve written about related topics in a few different places:
Made Well Marriage 