the rambling missionary

by erika haveman

Last week I talked about why good girls watch porn.  At the end of the post I suggested that there was such a thing as healthy sexual desire.  Realistically in a world that is riddled with unhealthy sexuality there naturally has to be a God given positive – He is the one who created sexuality in the first place.

As I alluded to last week there’s a lot of ideas in our Christian world that sexuality is bad.  As a result good Christian kids grow up not really knowing why they should wait until marriage to have sex.  So they start sleeping with their girlfriend or boyfriend because inside of their God created selves they desire sex.  Deeper than that I think there is the desire is to be known.  So let’s look to a little bit of Scripture to see what I’m talking about.

Genesis 1-2

God creates the world.  It is good.  God creates man.  It is very good.  God says it is not good for man to be alone, so God creates woman.  Man must be united with his wife.  Nakedness is good for the two original human beings, and there is no shame.

Okay, so what I can gather from that is that the kingdom of God includes perfect relationship between a man and a woman where they are to be united (cling, cleave, keep close) as one flesh (this word has sexual connotations attached to it).  So, people were created to join their lives to another, and because God didn’t create lots of wives for man we can also safely assume that there wasn’t meant to be lots of wives for one man.  If that had been the intention it for sure would have been included in the creation narrative.  One woman for life with that one man.  Considering Genesis 3 outlines the “fall of man” you should never think that the first man and woman had a perfect, blissful, trial free life.  In fact we know they had sex and had children and eventually their son killed their other son.  Not exactly a stress free marriage.  However, that’s probably another blog post.  The point here is that God evidently made one for one, and that sex was a part of their relationship.  We can assume, I think, that God created them with the desire for the other.  Realistically I think God created attraction because without it why would anybody ever want to join their life to another?  I mean really, think about it, life is so much easier on our own.  We can always do what we want, go where we want to go, eat what we want to eat because we aren’t responsible to anybody.  Uniting our lives with someone else is really a bizarre choice, so attraction and sexual desire towards that person really helps.  Since this is a reality in our lives, then, we need to learn how to steward it well.

I think the next best place we can go to understand healthy sexual desire is Song of Songs.  While I do think Song of Songs is riddled with allusions to the creation narrative to which I just referred (just notice all of the garden imagery!), I also think this book is probably the best example we’ve been given for marital relationship we’ve got.

I realize that Song of Songs is probably the most debated book in Scripture, next to Revelation, and that many believe it is an allegory between Christ and the church.  I won’t get into details today (or any other day probably…this is more of a real life lecture kind of thing so just come and do an SBS and you’ll understand it all) but when it comes down to it the interpretation of the Song of Songs is not a salvation issue.  My opinion is the book is a love song about the marital relationship, and without it I’m not sure where in the Bible we could go to find a couple so in love and embracing of their God given best friend and spouse.

That said, if you read the book literally (and you should) you’ll see the honesty and openness of communication between the two lovebirds.  I refrain from using the term “lover” because “lover” can be suggestive of a random sexual partner, and there is nothing random about the love between the couple in Song of Songs – but there certain is a lot of sex.  Euphemisms reign in this book, and in my opinion this makes it clear that God intended the sexual relationship in marriage to be one of pleasure.  There is, as any married couple will tell you, a learning curve sex and it’s not as easy as porn, or that sex scene in the movie you just watched, makes it look.

Learning curve aside, God created sex for husband and wife.  God Himself is not sexual – this was something He gave specifically to men and women.  God is certainly omnipresent, but sex was a gift given to humans.  If God gave us such a gift, a gift that exists in our bodies in such a way that He’s made us aware of from even such young ages thanks to attraction, then we are going to be released to have a healthy desire for it.

While we can actually live without sex – it’s not a need like bread and water – God has still given us an appetite for it.  I started expanding on this point, but then found myself rambling enough to write another post…so I guess you’ll just have to wait for next week to read the rest of my thoughts on this!