Sexual Shame in Women and How to Experience Freedom

Joy Skarka

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781666736465
  9781666794786
• eBook ISBN:
  9781666794793
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Christian Theology
• Index: Social Sciences

Sexual shame causes women to feel far from God, live a secret life of sexual sin, doubt that God loves them, and even question their salvation. Sexual Shame in Women and How to Experience Freedom will help readers understand sexual shame as one of the root issues among women's sexual struggles, while focusing specifically on the issues of pornography and sexual abuse. Ministry leaders must help women find freedom from sexual shame to help them walk in sexual integrity, wholeness, and healing. The freedom journey begins through understanding the character of God, being known in biblical community, and understanding God's design for sexuality. This research project is a dissertation from Dallas Theological Seminary's DMin program.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Importance of This Study

In a world in which a rising number of women are addicted to pornography, research points to sexual shame as one of the factors that keeps women in bondage.1 For women to find freedom from unwanted sexual behaviors, they first need to find freedom from sexual shame. Biblical shame can be used in positive ways, but this study will focus on the negative aspects of shame. As one will learn from this research project, sexual shame begins from many different avenues but is continued as Christian women fail to understand a biblical view of sexuality. Generally, instead of being sexually discipled by the church, women are sexually discipled by North American culture. Popular views of sexuality do not align with Scripture. Music, books, social media, and movies all send the message that people can have sex with whomever they want, whenever they want (sometimes not even with consent), with zero consequences. When women experience consequences because of their sexual choices yet fail to understand biblical sexuality, they experience cognitive dissonance, which can result in sexual shame.

Women in particular receive erroneous messages while lacking a shame-free response from many churches. Most commonly, churches remain silent on sexuality or preach a “just don’t do it” message, instead of teaching a theology of sex and pointing hurting women to the grace of God. Because many women lack a view of healthy sexuality, they fail to understand that sexuality outside of God’s design will hurt their sexuality and spirituality. Instead of pursuing sexual integrity in community, they often turn to sexual sin and, as a result, experience sexual shame—creating a vicious cycle of sin and hopelessness. In this project, readers will explore the literature and research that asserts that one of the key psychological issues of sexual sin is sexual shame. Sexual shame destroys relationships with others and disconnects women from God. Such shame also causes people to hide, isolate, expect rejection, hate themselves, and/or remain in addictive cycles, never finding freedom.

To help women break free from sexual strongholds, ministers are wise to start with the issue of sexual shame rather than behavior modification, because “out of the heart comes fruit” (Luke 8:15). To discover how women have found freedom from sexual shame in the past and to equip churches to minister in these issues, two surveys were conducted to derive information about how Christian women have experienced sexual shame and how they have found freedom from such shame.

Definition of Terms

In order to converse about the topics in the research project, readers should agree on what they mean by terms. Here are three key terms essential to the conversation:

Shame

Shame can best be defined by examining three different areas of impact: identity, emotions, and relationships. Starting with identity, Curt Thompson, psychiatrist and shame expert, explains shame as a sense of “there being something wrong with me” and feeling powerless to change one’s condition or circumstances.2 Psychologist and trauma specialist Diane Langberg shares Thompson’s belief: “Shame is not just a feeling, though it is profoundly that. Shame is a sense of the self—the ‘I am’—as defective, empty, worthless, and trashed.”3 Popular shame researcher Brené Brown defines shame as “an intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.”4 In her study on women and shame, participants described shame using terms including “devastating,” “consuming,” “excruciating,” “filleted,” “small,” “separate from others,” “rejected,” “diminished,” “trapped,” “powerless,” and “isolated.”5 From this study, Brown found that women experience the most shame from specific categories, including the following: “appearance and body image, sexuality, family, motherhood, parenting, professional identity and work, mental and physical health, aging, religion, speaking out, and surviving trauma.”6 Jay Stringer, a licensed mental health counselor, ordained minister, and speaker on the subject of unwanted sexual behavior, defined shame as “the most painful experience that something you have done or failed to do has made you unwanted or unworthy of belonging.”7

Secondly, shame is defined through negative emotions. In another study, Brown states, “Shame often produces overwhelming and powerful feelings of confusion, fear, anger, judgment...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Previous Research and Literature Review
• Chapter 3: Procedure and Research Method
• Chapter 4: Research Findings
• Chapter 5: Conclusions and Implications for Further Study
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Appendix C
• Appendix D
• Appendix E
• Appendix F
• Appendix G
• Appendix H
• Appendix I
• Appendix J
• Appendix K
• Appendix L
• Appendix M
• Appendix N
• Appendix O
• Appendix P
• Appendix Q
• Appendix R
• Appendix S
• Appendix T
• Appendix U
• Appendix V
• Appendix W
• Appendix X
• Appendix Y
• Bibliography