Dirty, Shameful Sex
Disclaimery text: This post was written by a guest contributor. One who just happens to be my older brother. In debating the subject back and forth (who doesn’t want to talk about such things with their siblings?) Mike responded in an email,
“These are the kind of discussions that I want to be having at whatever church I end up at. Honest, intellectual explorations of faith without judgment or condemnation when your views may differ.”
I promptly started crying.
The fact that these discussions can’t or don’t happen elsewhere kills me. This site’s primary function is to foster a dialogue around a specific subject matter. Sometimes we’ll facilitate that conversation well and other times we’ll only succeed in pissing off our readers. You should know that we (aka the ladies of IKDH) won’t always agree with what gets written by our guest contributors, much less by each other. Still, the debate has merit. With that in mind I’m going to ask that in response to this post (and really, any post) you frame whatever criticisms you have in the context of furthering the discussion. I have no issue with disagreement. I have issue with using what’s written here as fodder for personal attack. -SARAH
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A church that I’ve been attending, recently had a sermon that revolved around 1 Corinthians 5. In the passage, Paul admonished a church for their permissive attitudes towards sexual immorality. His solution, found in verse 5, was to “hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.”
Having been raised in churches and educated in Christian schools, I’ve often heard this passage used to browbeat congregations into submission with regards to all things sexual. Sure enough, not five minutes into the sermon the pastor referred to sex outside of marriage as something that was “dirty and shameful.” He went on to talk about sex and erotic thoughts as though simply acknowledging their existence would rot us from the inside out. We were encouraged to flee from anything that would inspire such insipid and dangerous feelings in ourselves until we had walked down the aisle.
At this point, I knew I wouldn’t be attending this church any longer. Sex and erotic feelings are not shameful or dirty. Far from it. Sex is awesome. Really, really awesome. It pains me that some churches continue to preach this harmful and potentially heretical nonsense about an act and desires that God intended as a gift, not a curse. Let me explain.
Physical intimacy (by which I mean holding hands, the horizontal no-pants dance and everything between) is a natural expression of love that was designed to complement the emotional attachment you feel for your partner. The book this site takes its title from would argue that physical contact is just too dangerous to mess with. The logic being, that physical involvement is a slippery slope and that it leads to temptation (where your failure is implied). While I do agree that ideally intercourse ought to be reserved for a marriage relationship, I also think that not having any physical contact with someone that you genuinely care for robs the relationship of a gift intended to build further intimacy and trust between two people. It is a physical expression of the love and commitment that you both feel for each other.
That said, physical intimacy outside of a committed monogamous relationship does cause problems. Sex or any physical act born of erotic attraction, becomes destructive when commitment is removed and it becomes about the act and the selfish desires of one or both people involved. We all instinctively know this on some level. It’s why we feel empty and curiously lonely after we sleep with a near stranger. It’s why people often consume drugs or alcohol just before making those poor decisions. They need something to numb themselves to the unnatural aspects of the act they’re hoping to engage in.
God’s gift of sexuality is unique to mankind and should be cherished, never labeled as something to be ashamed of or dirtied by. Even the angels, another of His awesome creations, weren’t given the gift of sex and sexuality. He gave them amazing celestial powers and seemingly magical capabilities that Harry Potter would envy, but no junk in the trunk or bait and tackle to speak of. That gift he reserved for humans. Why then do some churches continue to associate it with the most negative of human emotions? Are we not aware of the damage we may be causing?
Imagine a 13 year old boy in the congregation struggling with the changes he’s feeling in his body. He’s confused because he heard on Sunday, that if those feelings manifest outside of marriage, their genesis is not from our Creator but from Satan in an attempt to lure us into a life of immorality and ultimately to hell. If the boy can’t somehow reconcile the two he may give up the pursuit of holiness altogether, or miss out on one of the greatest gifts that God has blessed us. All because someone told him at some point that the natural feelings he has are evil and disgraceful.
The church that preaches sex and sexuality as a dirty or shameful thing is both misleading and possibly damaging their congregation. We, as a Christian community, need to get better at discussing and addressing these issues without the guilt and associated red-faced shoe-gazing that currently occurs. Sex and sexuality is a part of our intended design, yet we treat it as something hostile and contrary to our desire for holiness. Arousal isn’t a physical sign of our fallen nature, but a manifestation of the yearning for a gift that our Creator blessed us with. When we feel uncomfortable or uneasy, let’s try to remember that sex is something that all humans past and present, (including Jesus!) have had to deal with at some time. Sex is not dirty, and that feeling in your pants isn’t your groin’s attempts to lead you to hell. Any pastor who preaches otherwise, I believe, is guilty of a lie. The gift can be used incorrectly, but it isn’t an inherently shameful or dirty thing.
What are some of the negative messages you’ve received about sex and sexuality? How does that match up to the idea of it is as a gift?”
-MIKE R
