Posted on 08/31/2011 5:21:45 AM PDT by Parody
This is my column in yesterday’s Greenville News. A direct link requires a subscription, so I reprinted it here.
Thanks!
Being ‘hung up’ about sex isn’t so horrible
One of the chief objections to Christianity is that it meddles in people’s personal lives. This is a curious objection, in some ways. Christianity has fairly little to say about food or drink, except to advocate moderation. And very little to say about clothing, except that modesty is appropriate. It’s silent on computers and automobiles. And it generally advocates discipline couched in love where children are concerned.
What its detractors mean often comes down to this: ‘Christianity has something to say about sex, and we don’t like it one bit.’ Typically, one hears that Christians are prudes and spoiled-sports, ranging across the earth, shutting down sexual pleasure wherever we locate it. Of course, higher birth rates among evangelical Protestants and Catholics seem to suggest either a staggering number of virgin births, or a tendency to, well, you know.
If we’re hung up on sex as Christians, we’re certainly no more so than a world filled with sexual images and activities. However, I think the world at large is less ‘hung-up’ than heedless and selfish when it comes to the thing it seems to value above all else.
I could delve into STD’s and their terrible effects. But I think on some level few people really care. It’s like your parents telling you about terrible car crash injuries when you drive. ‘Sure, but not me!’
However, there’s more than STD’s to show us why we should be more careful in our valuation of sex. I read an article online recently. It was an advice column for young singles. A woman wrote about her concern that a young man whom she had met (and promptly taken to bed), had not called her for several days after their initial meeting . The columnist was aghast that she was so uptight. As if, after sleeping together, she shouldn’t expect anything at all in terms of connection. Sex as a kind of post-modern handshake.
Not surprising. The idea that one can simply have a casual, sexual relationship with no emotional connection or support is a common theme in movies and television. Actress Mila Kunis, of the movie ‘Friends with Benefits,’ was asked if she thought such a relationship was possible. Her answer was insightful: ‘It’s like communism; good in theory, but in execution it fails.’
Despite the ‘theory’ society clings to, there has been fascinating research on the emotional and chemical connections that result from sex. Still, our society continues to treat it as a thing with no repercussion and precious little value.
I agree that the Church down the ages has sometimes done a poor job teaching about sex and sexuality. Many young people were taught nothing at all about sex, except that it was wicked. That was to their detriment and the shame of their parents and clergy. Odd teaching, since the Bible is full of sex, and not just warnings about it.
But far worse, the world at large was, and is, mindless about sex. If the church is too careful, it is only because sex is too important to be handled poorly. Sex not only produces us, as it were. It connects us. It not only connects us, it chemically addicts us to one another for good reasons.
Sex is a thing of enormous power. It has brought down kingdoms (and governorships, more close to home). It has united powerful families. Sex has caused murders and assassinations, sealed marriages and ended them. It has led to children and to the murder of children through abortion. It has given us literature and sculpture, both elevated and base. It has given us beautiful love stories and terrible song lyrics.
But it is no trifle. If the Church has been ‘hung up,’ the world has been reckless and irresponsible The Church has at least tried to teach us that sex has consequences more grave and wonderful than the physical, while the world has tried to teach us that it is a worthless thing, devalued and diminished once the conquest and pleasure have passed.
Some may call this right-wing, conservative clap-trap. But an epidemic of depression and anxiety in young men and women testify to the pain of connections made and broken. The markers of the dead, lost to HIV, also disagree. And generations of young, poor children with no fathers and scarcely any mothers all testify to the misuse and abuse of one of the most wonderful, and powerful, forces in the world.
Maybe it’s not so bad to be ‘hung-up’ after all.
Good piece.
Before I was a Christian, I thought Christianity was prudish and harsh regarding sex. I came from a position of ignorance and my argument was basically this: Christianity teaches that I should not do something I really want to do. Boy, was I confused.
And it’s always fun to read Song of Solomon. It’s my wife and my “song” as some couples have “their song”. :-)
Christianity is anything but prudish about sex between a married couple. Quite the opposite actually. It’s about as recreational as you can get, but I’ll leave it at that.
I loved this article.
The media hype is that you should be sleeping with anybody and everybody or there’s something wrong with you.
Stupid!
Don’t buy it - never have bought it .. and have watched friends become devastated (and pregnant) because the hype didn’t live up to the media’s interpretation of what a “normal” person should be. The movie and TV producers don’t help either.
Personally, I’d rather be hung up too.
That was one of the reasons I hated the movie, "Titanic," although it was quite popular. The basic plot of the movie was an old woman reminiscing about a fling she had with some drifter on board the Titanic when she was a young woman. Even worse, she was engaged and broke up with her fiance following the fling. There was so much material for a good story there, that was cast aside in order to attack traditional values and glorify a one-night stand.
Seems the same girls that run around with hand sanitizer, who wouldn’t think of drinking from the same straw as their friends, have no problem performing oral sex on a “Hook up”.
My mom told me, never marry someone who you would not share your toothbrush with. That sure suck with me when I looked at men to date.
>>The movie and TV producers don’t help either.<<
Those producers think we should all act like Homosexual men.
Chuck Swindoll is doing a three part series on Song of Solomon this week and today is the third day. Terrific series and while I may have misinterpreted one part that I should go back and listen to again to confirm what I thought I heard, I seem to remember Pastor Swindoll saying something to the effect that making love to your wife was more important than going to church..... http://www.insight.org/broadcast/library.html
—making love to your wife was more important than going to church..... —
I firmly believe that. So does my wife. Fellowship with your wife is much more important than fellowship with other believers. The “Christ and church” analogy is used to describe our relationship. It is second only to my relationship with Christ.
And I’ll take it a step further. I went from a long term (two decade) “mostly sexless” marriage to a “frolic at every chance we get” marriage that is now going on 15 years. The quality of life BEYOND the sexual relationship is significantly enhanced by it. And I believe we need sex almost like we need food. There are a lot of sexually frustrated married men out there (and some women too). This should not be.
There is also evidence that men that ejaculate on a fairly regular (daily) basis are at a significantly lower risk of prostate cancer. Go figure. Use it or lose it.
I agree with you.
Exactly!! How confusing is that to our children?
“My mom told me, never marry someone who you would not share your toothbrush with.”
Ha! That is too funny! It’s good advice, for sure.
Of course, now I have to laugh at my husband and myself. We’ll kiss and share drinks and all of that, but if I accidentally use his toothbrush, both of us get grossed out. I guess maybe it’s the idea of the tootbrush scraping all the nasty plaque off of the teeth?
The advice is still solid, though. I may get grossed out if I use his toothbrush, but I’m certainly not worried by it.
I was like this before becoming a Christian. Sex and love should be together.
I got excoriated by this girl who suggested I try it her way for awhile. I did, I was extremely unhappy, went back to my old ways and became a Christian!
I even asked a Christian, what the bible taught about this and why they taught what they did and he couldn’t give me a straight answer. I often wondered what would have happened had I heard the gospel straight away. Perhaps it was for the best that I did not, because I knew how unhappy living without it was for me.
I find my students are shocked when I tell them, if you don’t want sex, and don’t want kids, don’t get married. The gals need to make the connection between the two. Especially the gals.
—making love to your wife was more important than going to church..... —
***
This statement somehow suggests that the two are mutually exclusive. Of course, they are not, except maybe at the same time. This is, in part, why I give thanks for my children’s Sunday evening youth group while they were in middle and high school.
I admit that I have sexual hang-ups.
I don’t want to know about homosexuality, or trans-whatever issues. I don’t want to know what these people do, or have what they do or who they are pushed on us in the MSM and in mainstream Hollywood entertainment. I am happy to live and let live, but I really don’t want to know the details.
I’m not picking on “gay” issues either. I have hang-ups about heterosexual sex activity too. I am Neanderthal and think it’s good if our young people grow up with a healthy fear of what can happen to them from irresponsible sex activity. I think that a healthy fear of pregnancy and fear of disease can help keep people out of trouble. I want young people to know that, even though the fun and excitement of sex seems like something they feel pulled towards, that there are major bad consequences if things go wrong. If a fear of the consequences helps keep people from crossing certain lines, that is a good thing.
But I admit I am Neanderthal. In today’s world, it seems that the strong message is that everyone should have sex activity with any number and any gender of different partners, with no moral or ethical judgements being made.
The “world” has worked mightily to convince people that the Church’s teachings regarding sex are meant to oppress them and not protect them.
The sexual revolution has spawned such confusion and evil that it really does seem as if Pandora’s Box has been opened and all manner of havoc wreaked upon us because of it.
Just read the newspapers or watch TV and see the suffering that has come about because the sacred union of man and woman in the marriage bed has been reduced to animal lust.
Think of the children who don’t know who their fathers are, or who are dragged from one marriage to another(if marriage even happens)or who have different brothers and sisters from different mothers and fathers.
The argument can easily be made that it is liberals who are hung up about sex and not Christians or conservatives at all being that conservatives seek out real sex and not some method of having distorted or perverse sex. Is the reason that people continually try to invent ways to change sexuality simply because they are hung up on sex and have a problem with it naturally? So they struggle trying to change it into something it is not?
And what does the Bible call it when a spouse refuses to make love to his/her mate?
1 Corinthians 7:5 Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.
The Bible calls it FRAUD....and under the broad definition that includes ‘a breach of trust or a disloyal act’, another word for it is that it’s a form of infidelity. I cringe every time I hear of someone being accused of infidelity when it is meant in the context of going outside a marriage while there is never ever a mention of one who has committed infidelity by wantonly withholding sex from the one who they committed him/herself to. The 1 Corinthians verse makes it so clear that one must never put their spouse in a position where they are even tempted. It would seem based on what it says in this chapter, the one who refuses to make love to his/her spouse is just guilty of infidelity as the one who goes outside the marriage.
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