Good Wife University (GWU)
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Chapter Sixteen -- Sunday Services


Katy knew she was in trouble.  She and Bruce barely made it to
the chapel during the first hymn.  'All You Need is Love' by The
Beatles was blasting out of the speakers and everyone was
tapping their toes or swaying to the music.  As the "Love is all
you need" counterpoints faded away, the preacher stood behind
the pulpit.

"Is love all you need?" he asked, looking over the congregation
with a blank expression.  "Does anyone here really think that
love is all that you need?" he demanded more forcefully, his
brows furrowing into a stern frown.  "Can love provide food?
Clothing?  The necessities of life?  Will love care for your
spouses and children?"

He paused for a long time, waiting until his congregation began
to squirm uncomfortably on the padded benches, before he
continued, firmly saying, "Well, I believe that love is all you
need.  Not just romantic love, or sexual love, or even the agape
love that we preachers so love to talk about when we talk about
love.  The Bible tells us all we need to know about love and that
love really is all you need."

"So let us pray."  He bowed his head and let silence reign for a
minute.  "Lord, help us all to do your will, to accept your
teaching.  You are deserving of all our praise and love.  You
taught us, reminding us of the Great Commandment, 'Love the Lord
your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all
your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the
second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.  All of the
Law and the Prophets hinge on these two commandments.'  And
Lord, help us all to remember that our spouse is also our
neighbor, deserving of that same love."

Picking up a slip of paper, he continued, "Let us especially
remember Gloria and Sam who are having difficulties with their
marriage, working hard to keep their matrimony holy.  And Steven
and Christie, whose newborn daughter is suffering from a
congenital heart defect and may not survive the emergency
surgery performed yesterday.  Please keep them in your prayers. 
And..."

The preacher continued a long time, adding more and more names
to the prayer list.  He concluded by leading the congregation in
the Lord's Prayer.

Then the tall, handsome preacher looked up again and smiled. 
"Before I continue, I have some confessions of my own.  I'm
still not comfortable with what I still judge to be debauchery
and perversion that occurs on the grounds of this school.  So
before I agreed to take part in services here, I had to pray long
and hard for guidance.  And the Good Lord provided the answers
from the Good Book."

"I believed myself to be a good and holy man," he sighed.  "I
prayed for a sign, I opened the good book to a random page,
hoping, praying.  And my eyes fell on the scripture in the
twenty-first chapter of Matthew, verse 31.  'I tell you the
truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the
kingdom of God ahead of you.'  I took that as an admonition
against my judging for my Lord said, "Do not judge or you too
will be judged.  For in the same way you judge others, you will
be judged and with the same measure you use, it will be measured
in you." (Matt 7, 1-2)

"So how am I to judge?  Again, Jesus gave me the answer in
Matthew 7, verse 18.  'A good tree cannot bear bad fruit and a
bad tree cannot bear good fruit.'  Friends, my beloved wife and
I were on the verge of divorce few years ago when she informed
me that she was leaving for twelve weeks."

His smile broadened as he softly chuckled into the microphone,
"If you think your being nude is embarrassing and hard to take,
imagine what it was like for a young preacher's wife."  Many in
the congregation snickered before he continued, "And I was
relieved that she was going.  It gave me time to think and to
pray.  But I agreed to go to some classes for husbands.  I was
amazed when I was reminded of the scriptures along with the sex
and communications lectures."

"Jesus taught us, 'At the beginning, the Creator made them male
and female and said, for this reason a man will leave his father
and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one
flesh.  So they are no longer two but one.  Therefore, what God
has joined together, let no man separate.'"

During the preacher's last words, the haunting strains of Paul
Stookey's 'Marriage Song' drifted softly from the chapel's sound
system.  By the time the last refrain of "...whenever two or more
of you are gathered in his name, there is love.  There is love."
echoed through the chapel, everyone's throat was choked with
emotion and more than a few tears rolled down cheeks.

"Brenda and I had vowed to love, honor, and cherish.  And I had
convinced myself that I was fulfilling my vows," the preacher
confessed after a suitable reflective pause.  "I wasn't.  I had
convinced myself that denying sex was good and holy.  I can show
you scriptures to support that, that denial.  The Puritans
believed in denial.  But I'm Baptist.  Oops, a lot of Baptists
listened to the Puritans, I'm afraid."

"So listen carefully," he grinned.  "This may be the only time
you ever hear a Baptist preacher say this.  Do it.  Screw each
other every chance you get.  In First Corinthians, chapter 7,
verse 5, Paul tells us, 'Do not deprive each other except by
mutual consent and for a time so that you can devote yourselves
to prayer.  Then come back together so that Satan will not tempt
you because of your lack of self-control."

"I confess to you all that I deprived my wife.  I convinced
myself that it was because I was holy, that God's work was more
important than my marriage.  It is.  But, and this is even more
important.  By denying my wife, I was going against the law of
God.  I was doing wrong.  I was sinning."

"In the coming weeks, you ladies will hear many admonitions from
the scriptures.  I've heard all of the other sermons so that I
wouldn't duplicate the lessons some of you ladies have already
heard.  And my lessons are for the men here, the husbands and
future husbands.  Men, don't deprive your wives.  And ladies,
you have my permission to remind the men."

"So gentlemen, what do the scriptures tell us?  Again, it's Paul
who commands us in Ephesians, 5:25, 'Husbands, love your wives as
Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her
holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,
and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain
or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.  In this
same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. 
He who loves his wife loves himself.  After all, no one ever
hated his own body but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ
does the church -- for we are members of his body.'  Each of you
must love his wife as he loves himself."

"Paul calls it a profound mystery, the relationship of Christ to
his church and a man to his wife.  Paul never married.  Most of
us have or will.  We may never understand fully, but we can
learn.  And my beloved wife taught me.  She taught me what it
means to love."

The man fondly looked over to his wife, seated to the side of
the altar.  Once again, music came from the sound system, a
kareoke background.  And after the first chord, the Baptist
preacher began singing, "It must have been cold there in my
shadow."

Bette Midler need have no fear that his rendition will ever
outsell hers, but he sang with deep feeling.  Both he and his
wife were crying tears of joy as he finished, ".'cause you are
the wind beneath my wings."  There wasn't a dry eye in the
chapel as he held her and kissed her.  No sound was made in the
chapel for several minutes.

Reverend Bradley slowly walked back to the pulpit, glancing back
at his wife several times.  He looked out over the congregation.
Several women were still wiping their eyes when he suddenly
shouted, "Husbands!  Love your wives!  This is the command of God
Almighty!"

For the next ten minutes, the preaching was what everyone
expected from a Missionary Baptist preacher.  He shouted, then
whispered.  He quoted scripture and pronounced his
interpretation in a singsong, never seeming to take a breath. 
"The apostle Peter, first among the chosen twelve, commands in
his first epistle, 'Husbands, be considerate as you live with
your wives and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and
as heirs with you of the glorious gift of life so that nothing
will hinder your prayers.'"

"The gift of LIFE!" the preacher shouted.  Then he whispered,
"Heirs to the glorious gift, the gift of life.  So _NOTHING_
will hinder your prayers.  Nothing.  Gentlemen, the next time
you kneel between your wife's naked thighs, give thanks.  Pray
that you will satisfy her, her physical needs, and her emotional
needs, and her spiritual needs.  It is not only right and proper,
but also God, Jesus Christ our Savior, and all of the apostles
command that you do so.  So how do you do that?"

"Let's begin with a wife's physical needs.  You can learn a bit
from books.  But..."

More carefully chosen contemporary music punctuated the long
sermon.  More confessions of his own foibles and missteps gave
humanity to the lessons.  Even though most of those present were
tired from lack of sleep the night before, not a single person
was tempted to doze during his preaching.  Everyone, especially
the men, hung on every word until he finally said, "I promised to
keep this under an hour.  I will.  Remember this.  Love one
another."

The Beatles recording of 'All You Need is Love' began to play
again as a recessional.  Reverend Bradley accompanied his wife to
the back of the chapel where they waited to greet the
congregation as they left.  Then they all went to the dining hall
for brunch.  Reverend Bradley accepted congratulations and thanks
for his sermon as they were served by the erotically dressed
sophomores.

"Doesn't that turn you on?" one of the husbands asked, nodding
toward a gorgeous pair of buttocks swiveling away back to the
kitchen for a fresh pot of coffee.

"Of course it does," the preacher acknowledged, enjoying the
opportunity to continue his lessons.  "But Paul taught me that
it's good to marry and have relations with your wife.  It is
better to marry than to, as he put it, 'burn with passion.' 
Getting turned on, that burning with passion, is acceptable when
the outlet is your spouse.  God doesn't make mistakes.  He
planned for men to get turned on by looking at women."

"But doesn't it, well." Bruce began uncertainly.  "I mean, don't
you want to do it with her?" he asked, again nodding toward one
of the naked women, not his wife.

"And doesn't it say somewhere that just looking is like
committing adultery?" another asked.

"One at a time," the preacher laughed.  "First, let's talk about
looking.  You're talking about Matthew 5, where Jesus said, 'You
heard it said, 'Do not commit adultery.'  But I tell you that
anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed
adultery with her in his heart.'  That's the same place where
Jesus said, 'If your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and
throw it away,' and 'if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it
off.'  But be very careful about taking bits and pieces of the
Bible out of context and trying to apply them literally. 
Otherwise you'll be blind and have no hands."

He continued, "Jesus also said you have about as much chance of
getting into heaven as getting a camel through a needle's eye. 
If you take that out of context, then why even try to be good? 
Because of God's grace, that's why.  So you've committed
adultery in your heart.  But action speaks louder than words and
you will ultimately be judged on your actions, not your thoughts. 
I committed adultery in my heart with that young woman.  But in
a little bit, I'm going to commit love with my wife."

"Well said, preacher," Clarice's husband called out, toasting
Reverend Bradley with a glass of orange juice from the next
table.

Bruce nodded with understanding, then smiled, and went to findhis
naked wife.  Once he found her, obviously enjoying a conversation
with some of the other women, he drifted back to hear that it was
all right to "just fuck" once in a while.

"That was one of my biggest problems," the preacher confessed. 
"The bondage.  Kinky sex was definitely a Baptist no-no and when
Brenda told me how excited it made her to be rendered completely
helpless, I..  Well, I had trouble coping with that for a while
because the first thing I though about was Paul.  In First
Corinthians, chapter 6, he tells us that the wicked will not
inherit the kingdom of God.  He says, 'Neither the sexually
immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor
homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor
slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.'  And I
believed that anything even slightly kinky came under the heading
of 'sexual immorality'."

"Well, when I have trouble working anything out, I go back to
prayer and the Bible," the reverend recommended.  "You can learn
a lot there.  The first thing I found was Proverbs, 14:1 which
says, 'Homes are made by the wisdom of women but are destroyed by
foolishness.'  Was I being foolish?  How about Proverbs 12:1.
'Anyone who loves knowledge wants to be told when he is wrong. 
It's stupid to hate being corrected.'  There are lots of warnings
about adultery and consorting with prostitutes in the Bible but
not one word that says you can't tie your wife up.  Believe me,
I've read every word many times."

"Well, while I was in Proverbs, I kept reading about gaining
knowledge so I decided I needed to know a little more about what
my wife was asking for.  Can you image a preacher taking his wife
to a bondage club?  Well, I did.  We joined something called 'The
Power Exchange' in the Baltimore-Washington area and went to
what they call 'munches" where you get to know people who are
kinky in a nonsexual environment.  Know what?  I liked them. 
Most of them are good people."

"Know what else?" he chuckled.  "They teach the same things
that are in the Bible.  You heard me say from the pulpit, 'treat
your wives with respect.'  I don't think I'll ever tell
my congregation how much I respect my wife when I cuff her
hands behind her back and make her 'burn with passion', but I
do respect her, her needs and wants and desires to follow
another scripture.  The third chapter of First Peter begins,
'Wives, be submissive to your husbands.'  Brenda takes that very
seriously."  Many the couples gathered around laughed.

"I sure do," she grinned, kneeling before her ordained
husband, completely nude.  "My beloved husband." 

"Just one of our concessions to the Bible," he chuckled,
ruffling her hair lovingly.  "We've agreed that she will never
call me 'Lord' or 'Master' because those titles belong to God. 
But I know whenever she calls me 'beloved husband', she's in
a submissive mood."  Then he added, "And she's horny.  I'd
better not let her 'burn with passion' too long or she'll be
tempted by Satan.  And so might I."

Reverend Bradley reverently took his naked wife's hand and
pulled her to her feet, then walked out of the room, caressing
her bare bottom with his hand as he led her away to show his
respect with a paddle.. or maybe a cane, crop, or whip.

The couple was a hot topic of conversation that afternoon as
many others cooled burning passions, now sure that they were
doing God's will.