Serious conversations about things that matter
This month at DanBoone.me, we’re celebrating our two-year blogiversary. We’re revisiting and highlighting some of the most popular posts that you, dear readers, have designated with your visits, comments, and shares.
Earlier this year, I released a book called Human Sexuality. I have written extensively on the topic in my new book, as well as in an older book, A Charitable Discourse. Several sexuality-themed posts (which were excerpts from these books) are among the most popular.
Love intensifies within a covenanted marriage as two people yield themselves to each other. This love is a gift that makes us fully human. Christian couples find security in marriage when sexual desire is transformed and made holy.
A younger generation, fearful of committed relationships, desperately needs to hear stories of deep joy, security, and confidence found in a marriage of submission to God and to each other. When we “forsake all others” in our thoughts, habits, and actions, we give our spouse (and ourselves) the gift of a strong physical and emotional bond that comes from a healthy, holistic, spirit-filled sexual relationship. Our sexual desires are continually purified, turned outward toward our spouse, and transformed so that they grow deeper, richer, and more intense as we live in union with each other.
The world’s sexual narrative says, “It’s private. It’s nobody else’s business. Nobody else is getting hurt.” I beg to differ. When you choose to practice casual sex—bonding and breaking, using and leaving—you are damaging your capacity to love another human being the way God has loved you. You’re harming something deep in your being in exchange for a moment of hedonistic pleasure.
No one’s getting hurt? Think again. As a pastor I’ve logged time listening to human stories. A trail of tears has left watermarks on my life. I’ve listened to stories of unplanned pregnancies and abortions, disease, date rape, acquaintance rape. I’ve listened to confessions of the use of pornography, which turns men, women, and children into objects of sexual pleasure. I’ve listened to testimonials of sexual addictions. I’ve seen middle-aged wives dumped by Daddy for a younger model. I’ve seen breakup, regret, depression, low self-esteem, adultery, ruined reputations. I’ve watched homes torn apart, children of divorce, and friends you can’t invite to the wedding. I’ve counseled the fallout from the moment the fiancé says, “Did you? And who?”
The sexual story of our world has created more pain than almost any other evil.
In our culture, sex has become recreation for many. It no longer requires intimacy or friendship. In the hook-up culture, you pick someone in a crowded room and go to a bedroom with them. The introduction of the birth control pill removed consequences for unplanned sex. Then the condom removed the fear of venereal disease. Then the morning-after pill removed the remaining worries. And if all else fails, abortion erases the “oops.”
Science has altered the consequences of sexual intercourse. Culture stepped into this new scientific world and detached sex from its deeper life-bonding meaning. And now, it’s just sex, nothing more. What’s the big deal? Why get so uptight? Protect yourself, use condoms, and if all else fails, there’s always abortion. What’s wrong with premarital sex?
I wish to challenge this assumption and mindset. Sexual intercourse is more than a physical act.
For the Christian, the distinction between a private life and a public life does not exist. Our thoughts, feelings, emotions, fantasies, and actions are a help or hindrance to the people we live among.
To say that sex is a private matter between two persons is a misunderstanding of Christianity. What we do is everybody’s business!
The health of our relationships depends largely on the way we live our most personal lives. As I understand scripture, God via the church has the responsibility to tell us what to do with our money, time, and genitals.
Most Christians have not yet comprehended this. Early in our walk with God, we assume there is an ethical difference between deeds done in public and private, and we place primary emphasis on public deeds while minimizing the impact of private deeds. But what a Christian does in private is everybody’s business. Now I am not making the case for total vulnerability to the paparazzi, removal of curtains and boundaries, or the tell-all rags that adorn the grocery store checkouts. Privacy is to be respected as an act of human decency. What I’m suggesting is that our private lives have public consequences.
Of all that was created, there is only one unique creature into which God breathes his breath and declares that it is his own image and likeness.
The dignity and character of God are embodied in the human creature. No other created thing is given the relational and rational capacity to understand this or respond back to the creator.
The union of a fragile creature and a faithful creator is the intent of our making. We are fashioned for relationship with God. John Wesley said, “For what is the most perfect in heaven or earth in Thy presence but a void, capable of being filled with Thee by Thee” (from A Plain Account of Christian Perfection
But it doesn’t end there. Our narrative also says that God created the human, male and female he created them. And it was not good that the male was alone. No other material being filled the ache of aloneness – not birds, trees, or rivers – though he was made of the same stuff as they. Only when presented with the woman, made of the same dust yet fully other, did the male find his aloneness addressed.
In my last post, I introduced you to what’s happening in today’s relationship culture among young adults. Dating is actually dead, and rampant attachment anxiety means that “hooking up” is the norm. Men and women are not burdened with commitment in their relationships.
So, what does this mean for the next generation? I think it’s some pretty scary stuff.
My role on university campuses for the past 30 years has given me a front row seat for the movie titled Dating. Relationships between college students have become so nebulous that the defining question on campus is, “Is this a date?”
I owe my understanding of the cultural shift in dating to Dr. Scott Stanley. He visited Trevecca Nazarene University in the fall of 2014 and lectured on the topic “Sliding vs. Deciding.” Dr. Stanley is a research psychologist and professor at the University of Denver and is a recognized specialist on cohabitation (living together without being married). His assumption is that dating builds the necessary foundation skills for commitment in marriage and that the demise of dating has left us sliding into relationships rather than deciding about relationships.
Sex is good. I agree. I agree wholeheartedly without reservation.
Some Christian studies have gone as far as statistical analysis on the matter of whether Christians have better sex than the rest of the world. These studies are cute, and maybe make a point, but I’m not sure they are useful to the Christian story. I’m not sure the game is won by the side that proves it has the best sex. Do we really want to compete at pure hedonism? And if we win, what have we proved?
Sex is good, but it is not the essence of life. Sex is wonderful, but it is not the most wonderful thing about being human. Sex is not the goal of relationships. Sex is not even a basic human need. It is a desire, a craving, a want. It is not a human need. Food, air, water—those are human needs. I have yet to do the funeral of anyone who died from a lack of sex or to see it as the cause of expiration on a death certificate.
