Jay Stringer, Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing (Tyndale House, 2018)

‘The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God’ (p.xv). This quote from Bruce Marsh opens Unwanted and helpfully sums up the basic premise of the book. Stringer argues that if we study and understand our own sexual brokenness, it will reveal to us the road to our own healing and take us back to the loving arms of God. When I first grasped that this was the premise of his book, I must admit I doubted him, but the more I read the more convinced I was that he was onto something.

Stringer argues that if we study and understand our own sexual brokenness, it will reveal to us the road to our own healing and take us back to the loving arms of God.

Before I delve deeper let me define Stringer's words. He defines ‘sexual brokenness’ as unwanted sexual behaviour that persists in our lives despite our best efforts to change it (p.xxi). It is important to point out that he is not talking about same-sex attraction here. Rather, he is talking about pornography use, using hookup apps, committing adultery, and paying for sex.

In the first section, ‘How did I get here?’, Stringer argues that our unwanted sexual brokenness is not accidental, and that there is always a reason for it (p.19). He helps the reader establish what that reason may be for them by asking them to look back at their childhood and to how it may have impacted them. He argues that our sexual brokenness may have been influenced by rigid and strict parents, overly-controlling parents, disengaged parents, by being abandoned as children, by being relied upon too heavily by parents, or through suffering trauma and emotional abuse. He demonstrates his point by drawing on surveys, other academic work, and the stories of men and women he has counselled. Once this point is demonstrated, he then highlights how these negative experiences create blueprints or road maps for how as adults we have sought to navigate life. Stringer argues it is because of these blueprints that we make bad decisions sexually, even when we know that they are wrong and will do us harm.

After establishing how we got here, in the second section Stringer helps us see ‘Why do I stay?’. This was an immensely helpful section. We cannot simply look at our past to understand our present struggles; we also need to look at our present situation to understand how we can move on. Stringer highlights the many drivers in our lives that fuel our unwanted sexual brokenness. Are our basic relationship needs being met? Are we looking after our body? Do we understand why we do what we do? Are we trying to escape, and what are we trying to escape from? Are we struggling with purposelessness and thus looking for a quick fix? How is anger at another or a situation fuelling and shaping our sexual desires? Do we believe that nothing is ever going to change? How is the sex industry feeding our unhealthy sexual desires?

Both sections one and two are very sobering, but thankfully, section three, ‘How do I get out of here?’ is incredibly hopeful, and very practical. Stringer encourages the reader that the only way to disarm the power of shame is to face it, that we need to tell alternative stories, develop healthy routines of delight, that we need to repair broken relationships, but also set up good boundaries, that we need to seek a community in which we can be honest and vulnerable in, and that we need to find our purpose.

I cannot overstate how helpful I have found Unwanted. Both for myself and how I will now pastor others.

I cannot overstate how helpful I have found Unwanted. Both for myself and how I will now pastor others. As a minister I have often rebuked sexual sin and encouraged people to fight the good fight, especially when it came to porn use. Someone would confess to me of their struggle with porn. I would remind them of who they are in Christ, pray for them, and encourage them to install accountability software and join an accountability group. However, often they would keep on failing. Sometimes for years. But I have never thought that maybe a person’s struggle may actually reveal the way to their healing. Stringer has helped me not only see this, but he has also given me the tools to help others grow and move forward. I am profoundly grateful for this.

However, this incredibly helpful pastoral correction comes along with a view of the gospel that I sadly can’t agree with. He states that ‘the paradox of the gospel is that our failures do not condemn us; they connect us’ (p.xx), and that ‘the voice of the Lord is never filled with accusation or frustration’ (p.xxv). But there are dangers here in implying God does not now take our sin seriously.

Through the prophets in the Old Testament God regularly condemns acts of sexual immorality (Nathan confronting David in 2 Samuel 12 to name just one). While in the New Testament Jesus states that acts of sexual immorality are one of the things that defiles a person (Matthew 15:18-20), and in Revelation he speaks strongly about the judgement coming for one who is leading people into sexual immorality (Revelation 2:20). It is because Adam and Eve failed, and we like them fail too, that we are not living in the garden now. Failure does condemn us, and instead it is the paradox of the gospel that God comes to rescue us from the consequences of them. Thus, we can say that failures condemn us and the gospel connects us.

This misunderstanding of the gospel is a major drawback of the book, and yet I think it is also part of why I have found this book so enlightening. Stringer’s theological underpinnings are very different to my own. For him, evil is the work of the devil, and the gospel is then salvation from the devil’s power. I don’t disagree with this; I just also believe that the gospel is about salvation from the consequences of sin.

Stringer’s perspective leads him to focus ruthlessly on the presence of evil in our lives, both in how we were raised and our current situation. Because I can agree that the devil is real and working now, I have been able to learn so much from this book about how to spot the work of evil in our sexual brokenness and how in Christ we can find healing and wholeness. I would advise the discerning reader to engage with this book. It honestly has been so helpful to me. But I struggle to give it my wholehearted endorsement, because, as I have said, Stringer and I are not in agreement on the breadth of what the gospel covers.