Because we're friends I'll tell you that I have a few thoughts, but I have only read reviews and articles regarding the book and film. I have not actually read Fifty Shades of Grey.
Why?
Four reasons.
First, I am fairly picky about what I read because I have so little time to read. Second, if it's popular, I question it. Wildly popular? I'll probably not pick it up. (Left Behind? Never read it.) Third, I understand enough to be able to stand against things like glorifying violence, abuse, emotional pornography, actual pornography, degrading women, and degrading sex. And fourth, because I'm free.
I also won't see the film, because I'm
I also won't see the film, because I'm
Free.
Women have shared strong views on why they can't handle what the hype is all about--it's just reading a few books or just seeing a movie. It's way outside their reality, it's just escaping into a story for a little while. Besides, women can be sexual any way they want to. If it includes a bit of consensual bondage, being dominated, or hurt that seems scintillating, so what? Women have the right or are free to experience what they want, so what's all the fuss?
I see something in the broader story and in the broader reaction that actually reminds me I am indeed free, but not like the blog and article responses suggest. We want something beyond our story, beyond our experience, and what this invites us into is that "beyond" means sly contracts, bondage, domination, hurt, confusion, unmet relational needs, and yet still an attraction to go further.
In very plain language, without any BDSM attached to it, we have already experienced this.
So many of our stories include that somehow, somewhere along the way we were enticed within a relationship. Maybe we were enticed to have our desires and needs met, enticed by how different he was, enticed by risk or change. At each point along the way, even before we ever had sex, we were agreeing to go down a path with our spirits and souls, and eventually our bodies joined. We may not have even realized it. Many of us could name now that in the end, we realized that what sexual sin did was bind us. We felt overcome, overruled, dominated by our sin, our struggle, and our desire to have what we deeply needed or desired. And when sex and that relationship didn't deliver, pain flowed, hurt abounded, and we were left confused. Many of us were willing to go further down the dark paths of sin and brokenness, hoping we'd finally find what we needed and wanted.
So I don't need to see it. It is not thrill, excitement, and harmlessly outside my own experience. It is my experience. And experiencing "beyond" has nothing to do with something outside of me and everything to do with Christ's work inside me. Beyond my experience isn't Fifty Shades of Grey, it's freedom.
Freedom from a deeper hunger and thirst for things men could never give me, freedom from offering my body to take part in and be mastered by ever darkening shades of sin and shame, freedom from hating my body, freedom from degrading my soul, freedom from the weight all this bore on my ever shattered spirit. I was freely loved, freely given grace, freely made new, freed. Freedom in Christ means I am free to know my Savior and how He meets my needs, free to offer my body in worship and righteousness, free to be whole--spirit, soul, and body, free to be me, free to love and let a man off the hook for not being God, free to never go back, free to embrace His story in my life, free to live beyond.
Free.
Just another seed of my faith,
Ginny
In very plain language, without any BDSM attached to it, we have already experienced this.
So many of our stories include that somehow, somewhere along the way we were enticed within a relationship. Maybe we were enticed to have our desires and needs met, enticed by how different he was, enticed by risk or change. At each point along the way, even before we ever had sex, we were agreeing to go down a path with our spirits and souls, and eventually our bodies joined. We may not have even realized it. Many of us could name now that in the end, we realized that what sexual sin did was bind us. We felt overcome, overruled, dominated by our sin, our struggle, and our desire to have what we deeply needed or desired. And when sex and that relationship didn't deliver, pain flowed, hurt abounded, and we were left confused. Many of us were willing to go further down the dark paths of sin and brokenness, hoping we'd finally find what we needed and wanted.
So I don't need to see it. It is not thrill, excitement, and harmlessly outside my own experience. It is my experience. And experiencing "beyond" has nothing to do with something outside of me and everything to do with Christ's work inside me. Beyond my experience isn't Fifty Shades of Grey, it's freedom.
Freedom from a deeper hunger and thirst for things men could never give me, freedom from offering my body to take part in and be mastered by ever darkening shades of sin and shame, freedom from hating my body, freedom from degrading my soul, freedom from the weight all this bore on my ever shattered spirit. I was freely loved, freely given grace, freely made new, freed. Freedom in Christ means I am free to know my Savior and how He meets my needs, free to offer my body in worship and righteousness, free to be whole--spirit, soul, and body, free to be me, free to love and let a man off the hook for not being God, free to never go back, free to embrace His story in my life, free to live beyond.
Free.
Just another seed of my faith,
Ginny
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