Sex and the Everyday Christian

This week, I read a dating profile that caused me to pause.  The man wrote that he was a firm Lutheran, but his goals in a relationship were #1 communication and #2 romance/sex.

What caused me to pause was the inconsistency between his faith and his motives for dating.  Unfortunately, this isn't unusual.  We tend to say one thing and then do another.

No where in the lives of the average Christian is this more prevalent than in our sex lives.  Society saturates us in sex talk, mainstreams questionable sexual practices (one night stands, threesomes, to name a few), makes celebrities out of porn stars, and touts the benefits of polygamy.

The societal water is so full of pollution we don't even realize we're in it - it flows into our music, our conversations and our thought-lives.

And it shows up in our daily lives.  We don't question sex before marriage or the birth of children outside of marriage.  We think, erroneously, that living together before marriage increases its likelihood of success.  We buy into the idea that sexual compatibility is more important than emotional compatibility.

The Christian Church remains silent.  Perhaps too many have fallen into sexual misadventure to speak into the void.  Perhaps many have bought into the idea that sex is private and shouldn't be discussed in the open.  Perhaps others think parents are the ones to address it with their children, not realizing parents are too busy, scared, and embarrassed to discuss it.

On the other hand, the Christian Church feels compelled to speak out on homosexual sex.  Forgetting that it is heterosexual sex that the Bible speaks most often about, and condemns outside of marriage.

We decry abortion, but fail to address the cause: sex in relationships that aren't really relationships!  Instead, we kill babies as a form of birth control and as a way to maintain the convenience of our lives.  Surgery is endorsed as a way to avoid something that is completely preventable in several other ways.

By forfeiting our position on premarital/extramarital heterosexual sex, we lose ground on other issues. Worse, by not conforming our lives to Christ, we lose out on the benefits of grace: peace, joy, and healing.