Can you put a price on a lady? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.
I recently wrote a post in response to someone arguing about why we should have abortion laws as they are and not tightened and one aspect he included was that your sex life is at stake. The link to that post can be found here.
A good friend of Deeper Waters (And I mean that sincerely. This is someone whose opinion I value highly) has raised some concerns about some statements I made. I think I see what the concern is and I would like to address it.
The idea that I presented in the piece is that a woman is going to determine what she’s worth. I think the problem is that I was not clear as to whether I was talking about subjective worth or objective worth when I was writing.
So let’s state it clearly. A woman is worth everything. In fact, so is a man. In medieval times, it was said the life of one human being was worth more than the entire universe. After all, humans bear the image of God. The universe doesn’t. The universe is made for us. We are not made for it.
Each person who lives is someone who Jesus Christ loves and, in my opinion, contrary to a Calvinist position and no, I’m not debating that here, died for. Of course, when I say that, I wish to emphasize that it is not because Jesus has some need of any one of us. He doesn’t. God could exist just fine without us. We cannot exist just fine without Him. It is His abundance of love that we are to respond to.
Yet while each of us has this great worth in us, many of us do not see this great worth that we have. Thus, when I said that a woman is going to determine what she’s worth, it was not an objective sense, but rather in a subjective sense.
In economics, value is seen as relative. A shopkeeper can set up a price for an item. Will you buy that item? You will buy it if you have the resources, it is something you desire, and if you think that that object is more valuable than what you pay for it.
If you’re at the food court at the mall, you might really want a slice of pizza, but if the store was selling them for $10 a piece, you would probably not buy. Why? Because you like pizza, but you think that price is over-priced! You could go over to Subway or Chick-Fil-A instead and get something that you might desire less but is more reasonable with your budget.
On the other hand,you might want that big screen TV and it could even be on sale, but if you do not have the resources in order to get it, you should hold off on it.
Finally, there could be an item to you that’s really interesting and you do have the resources, but right now, it just really isn’t something that’s as desirable as another object so you won’t pay the price on order to get it.
Prices change in the market in response to many factors like cost of production, how many of that item are left, etc. In some places, like EBay, one can get more out of an item because someone who wants it more than anyone else is going to be willing to pay more for it.
None of that determines any objective worth on the item, but it does work with a subjective worth. Many of us have probably paid more for an item than it’s really worth simply because we wanted it so badly and didn’t want to have to risk someone else getting it. Some of us might also have haggled for items at garage sales before and places like that.
So now let’s take this over to the worth of a woman.
A woman’s objective worth in the eyes of God I do not think changes. Her subjective worth however, does change, depending on how she sees herself. If a woman sees herself as no good, she is more prone to put a low price on herself.
This is evidenced, for instance, in girls that want someone they can love and so freely give themselves to men just so they can get pregnant and have a baby to love. They can often go to homes that care for women in need and as soon as they leave, they’re out there trying to get pregnant again.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with a woman wanting to get pregnant, but we do see a problem with the behavior of these women. It is not thinking about what is good for the child, but what is good for their own benefit. That child is a huge responsibility and needs to be treated as such.
If a girl thinks the only good she can do is to bring pleasure to a man sexually, then she will also be more prone to sleep around. After all, in her eyes, that is what she is worth. There are women who through various forms of abuse suffer with this kind of mindset where they have been treated as a sexual object and soon see themselves as just sexual objects.
This should also be a warning to married man. We dare not take up the attitude that the only purpose our wives have in our lives is to give us sexual pleasure. I make it a point when talking about Allie to people to point out that Allie is my partner, but I don’t just mean sexually. I mean she is my life support. She is my encouragement. She is the one that I rely on. The only one who ranks above her in my life is God Himself. As has been said by someone I saw recently, marriage is two people sharing one life. Men. We must ALWAYS be living our lives in honor of our wives and if we treat them as just sex objects for our pleasure, we are not honoring them the way Scripture says. Of course, we should enjoy the pleasure of being with them, and they should enjoy the pleasure of being with us, but they do not exist just for that.
My contention is that if a woman sells herself at a low price, subjectively, she is making a statement about herself and how she is to be valued. That statement can lead when done enough to a statement about all other women. After all, if a guy can buy the big screen TV at one store for $1,000 and the exact same one at another store for $800, all things being equal, which one will he go with? If the guy is just interested in sexual pleasure and woman A has the price of “marriage” while B has the price of “a good month of dating”, which one will the guy go for?
Women. Please always watch the guys you are dating and find out what they really want. If all they want from you is just sex, then this is not marriage material for you. If they really want your sex, then they should be able to pay the price. If they’re not willing to pay the price of marriage, then do they really want your sex?
Of course, this does not mean mistakes might not be made by people who have the full intention of waiting until marriage. After all, we will ALL be tempted in the dating relationship. Certainly when I was dating Allie, there were times when I was very tempted, but I had to learn to control myself and wait for the proper time for those desires to be fulfilled.
So what happens if a couple makes a mistake?
In the Christian system, you repent and move on. It doesn’t mean you break up, but you make a vow then to practice chastity until marriage and wait. You seek to forgive one another and anyone else you might have wronged. If pregnancy is the result, you accept full responsibility. Of course, the Christian worldview condemns abortion so that’s not an option. In that case, I definitely think marriage should be done since that child needs their mother and father both and the child is best raised by its biological parents.
Let us make no mistake. We are all worth more than this universe, but we often don’t see it. One of the greatest blessings that could come in the Christian community I think is to see our proper relationship to God through Jesus Christ. We need to move it beyond the “personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” Jesus is not just a friend you make like any other friendship. He’s the sovereign Lord of the universe. We need to figure out who He is first, then figure out who we are in Him, and live our lives truly as if we are in Him, something we all work on when we struggle with our own worth in this world.
So again, could the solution be that we just need good doctrine and good application of that doctrine? Has the church missed something by just having application without a foundation in it? Is this the way the church is failing in sexual ethics? We just have a position that says “Don’t do this sexually” and we have it floating in air that we don’t know why we hold it when temptation comes? Of course, the added danger is that if we also float doctrines like the resurrection in the air without telling people why they should hold it, if we dispense with the former, the latter is certainly on its way out the door.
I hope this does clarify my position for all involved. Certainly, every woman, regardless of the mistakes she has made in her life, is priceless. The problem is that simply people just don’t know how much they’re really worth. It’s no surprise they sell themselves short.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
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