Sex, God, and the Lies You’ve Been Living With — A Marriage Guide That Finally Says What Everyone Is Thinking. Of everything I’ve been sent, this is the one word choice I keep sitting with the longest: “lies.” Not myths. Not misunderstandings. Lies.
Why the harder word might be the more honest one
I’ve used gentler language than this throughout most of this project — myths, inherited beliefs, filters we didn’t choose. All of that is true, and none of it is wrong. But “lies” names something with a moral weight the softer words don’t carry, and I think that weight is deserved more often than I’m usually comfortable admitting. Believing sex within marriage is shameful, or that wanting it makes you less holy, or that your body is something to manage rather than a gift to receive — these aren’t neutral misunderstandings drifting around unclaimed. Something or someone taught them, and calling that teaching what it actually is might be more honest than continuing to call it a myth.
What “finally says what everyone is thinking” is promising
This half of the subtitle is doing something almost pastoral, oddly enough. Most people carrying shame about their own intimate life assume they’re the only one still carrying it — that everyone else somehow got the healthy version and they alone are behind. “What everyone is thinking” quietly promises the opposite: you are not unusual for feeling this, and the book isn’t going to make you feel more alone by pretending otherwise.
My actual hesitation
“Lies” is a strong word to put on people who were often doing their honest best with what they’d been given — a parent, a pastor, a culture, none of them malicious. I want the word to indict the belief without indicting every person who ever passed it down in good faith.
The line I want you to keep
Calling something a lie doesn’t require calling the person who told it to you a liar. Sometimes the kindest thing you can do for both of you is name the belief honestly and let the person go.
Sacred, but Fully Known launches October 3rd. Subscribe below — one more of these to go.
— Funke
Sacred, but Fully Known: A Faith-Rooted Companion to Intimacy in Marriage launches October 3rd, 2026. Subscribe above to follow the story, and to be first in line on launch day.
