Stephen W. Simpson

Books attempting to bridge the presumed cultural divide between Christianity and Sex are becoming quite common. In "What Wives Wish their Husbands Knew about Sex," the authors attempt to do, from a Biblical foundation, just that.

They are certainly to be commended on several fronts:

1) They recognize that the Bible does affirm regular, fulfilling sexual relations between a husband and his wife.

2) They attempt to derive their main assertions from Scripture itself.

3) They encourage us to reject the extremes: prudishness and sexual excess.

4) They draw the connection between love (the kind of love at which Christians should excel) and sex. This connection means that Christian husbands, are called to be great lovers (non-sexual), which allows them to be great lovers (sexual).

Unfortunately, despite these positive points, much of what is contained in this book is, I fear, ultimately unhelpful to married couples. I don't want to belabor these points so I will attempt to be brief.

1) First, it is not clear that the authors have properly understood the context of the Song of Songs and how to interpret it properly. While I commend them for their rejection of the allegorizing of this book, I think they miss the progression from engagement to marriage to consummation. Because they interpret every passage as relating directly to a married couple, they draw conclusions that do not necessarily follow from the text.

2) Most importantly, I think the book advocates a view of sexuality within marriage that actually affirms, rather than rejects, dangerous cultural views about sexuality. The authors regularly insist that Christian marriages should be filled with "mind-blowing" and "hot" sex. Throughout the book the bar is set quite high in terms of the quality of sex Christian couples should enjoy.

One of the biggest problems in the culture today, and not simply relating to sex, is the constant pursuit of bigger, better, faster, more. We lack a cultural perspective on what it means to be satisfied. We must be careful not to allow this to creep into Christian bedrooms.

One pastor I know uses the analogy of steak and burgers. Steak is wonderful - we should all appreciate a great steak. But we can't have steak every night. Sometimes we're going to get burgers and we need to be able to appreciate the burger rather than resenting it for not being steak.

Or think of giving your wife a spectacular gift for your 10th anniversary. On the 11th anniversary you also give her a gift, but it cannot possibly match the prior year's. Does the wife have the right to reject the gift because it does not meet or exceed the quality of a previous gift? Of course not. She needs to be satisfied with both gifts.

So it should be with sex in marriage. All couples should know how to give their partner steak and they should enjoy and cherish that steak. But there is a time for steak, and there is a time for burgers. If we cannot be satisfied with burger-quality sex, not always - but regularly, than we will put tremendous strain on our relationships.

I have little doubt that the authors would agree with this but the bulk of the book seems to ignore this most important point.

3) Finally, and perhaps this is a minor point: it troubles me that the authors perpetuate the "Scarlet Letter"-derived attitude which claims that the Puritans were total killjoys who had no use for sex, beauty, fun, etc. The authors set the Puritans up as the source of the extreme anti-sexual bias in some elements of the church. They have not done their research. Helpful correctives can be found here and here.

Also on this point - I think it is irresponsible of the authors (even ignoring their Puritan-confusion) to indicate that prudishness is as dangerous as sexual impurity or excess. The authors suggest that the (im)balance of sermons (more sermons warning against lust than encouraging vibrant sex-lives) is out of line with the Scriptures. While I hope Christian marriages will include enjoyable sex, I'm not aware of any Scripture passages which suggest that "The prudish shall never inherit the kingdom of heaven." Scripture is, in fact, quite "imbalanced" if you think that kind of statistic is important.… (mehr)

As a mother of three on the ground and one on the way, stories about others who have more children than the norm (is it 1.25 these days?) always pique my interest. When the story of a husband who suddenly found himself the father of quadruplets was published, and with a Christian slant, I was very interested to read Stephen Simpson’s experiences.

Truthfully though, Assaulted by Joy wasn’t quite what I expected. Much of the book is devoted to Simpson’s life as a self-proclaimed “jerk” – his teenage angst and rebellion (most notably marked by his experiences with music and how they didn’t jive with his youth group), his dissatisfaction with life in general, and so forth.

Readers may also want to note that Simpson and his wife struggle with the decision to carry all of their children for as long as they can – there isn’t a distinctly pro-life stance presented here in the preservation of each tiny baby’s life.

There just doesn’t seem to be a lot of joy to go around in this book. Even after the birth of his children the books emphasis is on feelings of overwhelm, medical challenges etc. Maybe I missed the joy somewhere along the line?

Of course, this memoir is realistic for that reason – many of us struggle with feelings of overwhelm, angst, and frustration, especially when we try to run our lives on our own instead of surrendering all those details to the Lord. Well, let’s be honest – sometimes even when we’re doing our best to hand these things over to the Lord.

I suppose I was expecting something more definitively joy-filled that distinctly celebrated children rather than being mired in the many struggles and discontent moments of life. If, like me, you’re looking for a deeply inspirational read, this title won’t likely fit the bill.

Reviewed at http://quiverfullfamily.com… (mehr)

Perfect for : Personal Use, Great for the cynic in your life, Bible Study

In a nutshell: I immediately liked the author - his candidness and honesty was refreshing, and while I could not relate to everything he wrote about, he sounds alot like one or two people I know well! I was able to gain some insight into my own life and relationships from the author. He talks openly about his life from the time he was seven, through school, college, marriage and parenthood. I'll hand it to him - he was able to see what it was in his life that turned him into a cynical person, and he explained it in a conversational tone, so it was easy to understand. The entire book is that way: conversational in tone with plenty of examples and pearls of wisdom. This is a great book for both the cynic and the bystander, as well as people who have gone through life changes like marriage and parenthood! The author shows us that even in our ups and downs, God is at work in our life and has not forgotten us, we just don't understand what he is doing right now. An added benefit for me is that I feel the author was able to help me see that some actions and comments are made with certain intentions that I may not understand at the time, and my reaction may not be what the other person is expecting.… (mehr)

Assaulted by Joy is my first ARC that I am reviewing. What an exciting book! The question that was posed when I was asked if I would review this book was "Is this the perfect gift for the man in your life?" and I must answer with a resounding "YES!" I have already asked my husband if he would read it. But let me back up a little here. The author accepted Christ at the age of seven - (I love it when he says that this is where the story begins.) "When I walked down the aisle of a Baptist church as a boy to receive Christ as my Saviour, nobody told me that being a Christian is difficult, dangerous even. . .the closer you were to God, the happier you would be. The less you sinned and the more you followed God's Word, the more your life would be meaningful, happy, and complete. In my years as a follower of Christ, however, I've discovered that the opposite is often true. Don't get me wrong - the most ecstatic, victorious moments of my life resulted from having a relationship with Jesus, but so have the most aggravating and painful ones."*

His story, about his sometimes painful high school years (can everybody relate?), to college, losing a close friend, and meeting his wife and starting a family is engaging, humorous, in many instances I caught my self shaking my head in agreement - and is full of insight and wisdom that touched my life. I would like to share two of those nuggets here.

From chapter 3: What we don't realize is that we teach one another wisdom even when we hurt each other. We learn how to love in the midst of brokenness and imperfection. Those who hurt us sometimes teach us far more than those who love us. Sometimes they're even the same person. Those we care about have the greatest capacity to hurt us. Love creates the possibility of pain like nothing else. It's just like our relationship with God.*

From chapter 6: We could only make the best decision in a situation where there was no obvious choice. He told us that either choice involved potential guilt and loss. We might have to ask forgiveness from God regardless of what we chose.*

Now -for the question about a perfect gift for my husband. I would hope that this book would bring him a little closer to accepting Christ. He has been on the journey for awhile now and I have hope that letting him see someone else's walk with Christ (other than mine..) would open his heart even more.

I highly recommend this read for where ever you are in your personal journey -
*any quotes from this book are from an Advanced Reader's Copy and may not reflect the final published version.… (mehr)