The Purpose Driven Sex Life, Part 2

In my last post, I showed, in a tongue in cheek fashion, that many have the wrong impression of what Christians believe about sex. Most folks believe that Christians have a negative view of sex. I suppose I should qualify that and say that there are many Christians who do have a negative view of sex. But they ought not to.

No less a Christian leader than Augustine believed that sex was sinful in and of itself. Augustine had lived a very wild life as a young man, and after his conversion to Christianity looked back with shame on his wild ways. For some reason he apparently never got over his guilt or remorse from his wild ways so he taught that sex was sinful in and of itself and could only be redeemed or sanctified through procreation. I am not sure of all the nuances of his thinking on this, whether or not he saw sex as a "necessary evil," or used some other form of ethical reasoning (maybe Jeremy or one of the other philosophers can chime in here).

This view was reinforced when I saw "Inherit the Wind" in college and the character of William Jennings Bryan was asked what the Bible said about sex, and Bryan answered "it is original sin." I don't know if the real Bryan believed that, but certainly the producers of "Inherit the Wind" wanted us to think that is what Christians believe.

Although Christians believe that sex is good the negativity with which we talk about sex really prevents us from gaining a hearing in the world today. I think that, rather than merely telling people that sex outside of marriage is bad, we should be saying something along the lines of "sex is so good within marriage that you are foolish to waste it outside of marriage." I know that sounds like semantics, but it has a more positive spin.

Part of the problem with getting a message like that across is that many Christians probably really don't believe that in their hearts. They may say it, but their actions belie their words. Although my little slogan up there about sex being so good in marriage may sound nice and just like the thing a pastor should say, I realize that many people in the church don't really believe that in their hearts. This is why there is so much use of pornography and so much sexual activity outside of marriage.

I won't assume to be able to figure out what goes on in the hearts of everyone, but we all have divided hearts on these matters. I know that I can be completely offended at something lewd one day and captivated by it the next, if I am not walking close to Christ. Where I get worried is when I see those who call themselves Christians calling down fire and brimstone on those who are involved in sin. I am often tempted in such situations to get Shakesperean and say "the lady doth protest too much methinks." I suspect that some of those who display the most public offense at these things may be dealing with their own unresolved guilt. I'm drawing a blank right now, but I know those in the mental health professions have a term for this, where someone loudly condemns in others the same things they struggle with. (Maybe Adrian can chime in on this). Jimmy Swaggert comes to mind as an example with his vociferous denunciations of Jim Bakker all the while he was having his own little, er, tryst, on the side.

I remember reading something from Francis Schaeffer years ago where someone asked him if he should break up with his girlfriend because they had sex together. Schaeffer wisely told him that they had sinned and needed to confess this, but they ought not to treat sexual sin as if it were somehow worse than any other sin. While their engaging in premarital sex may have been symptomatic of some deeper issues in their relationship, that in and of itself was not a reason to break up. I will add that, in my experience dating couples who engage in premarital sex often mask some deeper problems in their relationship through sex, but the sexual involvement in and of itself, is something that can be repented of and redeemed.

In the Bible, sex gets alot of people in trouble (think David, think Solomon), yet at the same time notice in the gospels how tender and compassionate Jesus was to those caught in sexual sin. In the gospels, sex is not the grossest form of sin, it is pride and arrogance. Hence, prostitutes and tax collectors were entering the kingdom of heaven ahead of scribes and Pharisees. Episodes of illicit sex didn't keep people like Rahab, Samson and David out of the hall of fame of faith in Hebrews 11 and we ought to keep that in mind when we are comparing different sins.

All of this rambling is simply to point out that Christians have often demonized the sexual relationship and we ought not to. Yes, there is such a thing sexual sin and yes, I will agree that there is a sense in which sexual sin is often harder to walk away from than other sins. But there are many other sins of the heart which are far more deadly, because they can fly under the public radar and because they can often be whitewashed with a holy veneer.

So, with all of that, I'm finally getting to what I wanted to say about the purpose(s) of sex. There are several purposes, but I'll focus on one in particular. And, I'm seeing that it will take another post to say what I want to say. For now I'll just touch on a point that deserves much more attention, but that I only want to say a couple of things about. In my next post I'll try to get to what I really wanted to talk about. For now I just want to point out that Augustine was wrong about sex, it is a good and godly thing that is to be enjoyed amongst married couples. Sex cements the one-flesh relationship between a man and wife and the one-flesh relationship between a man and wife is a picture of Christ's relationship to the church.

I'm a protestant so I don't take the Roman Catholic view that marriage is a sacrament in the technical sense, but I can't help but seeing marriage in some kind of sacramental sense. I am using the word in the sense that Harry Blamires did when he said that we live in a sacramental universe. Everything in the world represents God in some way, it is reasonable that this is so considering that God made everything. Speaking particularly of marriage in this regard I can't escape the sacramental significance of marriage in Ephesians 5:31-32.

Marriage is a holy and good thing and this ought to govern how Christians talk about it. Somehow we've got to find a way to emphasize this in our public and private discourse.