The Gospel and Sex

Ha! That title got your attention!  Here's Tim Keller on "The Gospel and Sexual Relationships"

The moralist tends to see sex as dirty or at least a dangerous impulse that leads constantly to sin. There will be an approach-avoidance relationship with sex. The uneasy conscience of the moralist will lead to either complete avoidance OR to a very driven, breathless need for sexual experience. Both come from a glory-vacuum within, which makes sex into a way to fill the emptiness. On the other hand, the hedonist sees sex as merely biological and physical appetite. Thus the hedonist may be less convoluted and troubled about sex, yet they have also given up on the deep longing of their heart to have union with someone sexually that is completely, unconditionally, and permanently true to them.

But the gospel shows us that sexuality is to reflect the self-giving of Christ. He gave himself completely without conditions. So we are not to seek intimacy sexually but then hold back control of our lives. If we give ourselves sexually we are to give ourselves legally, socially, personally – utterly. Sex is only to happen in a totally committed, permanent relationship of marriage. Through Christ’s transformation of us, that ideal is somewhat realizable even between two sinners.

Your Kids and Sex

Well, that title should get a lot of attention.

Speaking of attention, Anne Marie Miller recently posted an article that has gotten a lot of it, and rightly so. Please read Three Things You Don't Know About Your Children and Sex. If you are a parent, you need to read it. It is blunt. It is scary. It is unpleasant to read. It is, however, true to the world we now live in - true to the wold your kids live in.

Please read it.... and pray about it...
 
...and then talk to your kids.

Exotic Creatures in New York City

From the New York Times, comes a fascinating anthropological study of a truly strange branch of humanity: religious people practicing sexual chastity in New York City. 

What a strange bunch! The article reads like a story on Animal Planet about exotic animals, including a unique football playing animal named Tim Tebow.

Trinity Laurel moved to Manhattan at 21 to pursue a modeling career. Raised in a Christian home, Laurel was a virgin when she reached the city, and says she has “remained pure” while living here since.

Not all of her friends can relate.

“They’re like, ‘How do you do that?’ ” Laurel, now 28, said. “People are almost fascinated.”

Welcome to New York, Tim Tebow. Now that the Jets have broken training camp and Tebow, a famous chaste Christian, becomes a full-time New Yorker, it has become a common, and mildly amusing, pastime to fret about the temptations he might face or the potential loneliness he might suffer.

Read it to see what the world thinks about you, if you are practicing Biblical morality.

Hat Tip: Get Religion

Link Fest

Some interesting links found this week:

Give up the Gimmicks, Youth Pastors
Some Stats on Sex
What Does it Mean to Be Biblically Balanced?
Real Books Will Never Die
The Evangelical Industrial Complex and Celebrity Pastors

Does Taylor Swift Matter?

For my readers who are mothers or fathers of teenage girls (or are teenage girls wanting to someday be mothers) check out Why Taylor Swift Matters by Danielle Bean at Inside Catholic.

I think Swift has enjoyed unprecedented success, especially among female listeners, because she's not just a singer, she's a writer. She began her career by winning a poetry contest when she was just nine years old.

But Swift is not just any writer. She's a writer with a rare gift for giving voice to the longings of young girls' hearts and souls. Feminists like Chloe and Jamie may not like it much, but little girls really do dream of being fairy princesses, meeting handsome princes, and . . . getting married and having babies. Just you try to stop them. The flowery details might vary from one young girl to the next, but the longing to find personal fulfillment in loving and being loved in return is a universally feminine one....

...She may not intend to be a poster girl for authentic Catholic living, but Swift has tapped into a uniquely feminine longing and given it a voice, along with a rare sense of innocence. Contrast her particular brand of femininity with the sexual imagery pushed upon us by other popular music stars, such as Katy Perry or Lady Gaga, and you'll soon see what kind of battle is being waged for young women's hearts and minds.

Let's see, little girls: Shall we seek personal fulfillment through a sincere gift of self and a life of self-giving love? Or by using sex as a weapon with which we attempt to dominate men?

Roll your eyes if you must, but my money's on Swift, sappy love songs, and every little girl who dreams of loving others and being loved in return. Women who deliberately choose otherwise in the name of freedom and independence do so at the peril of their own happiness and satisfaction. In the end, no amount of feminist posturing can rewrite the lyrics that are written on every girl's heart.

Read it - if for no other reason it ticks off crazy, man-hating feminists!

Hat Tip:  The Anchoress

Better Than...

From Justin Taylor quoting John Piper - Having God Is Better than Money, Sex, Power, or Popularity

"We need to ponder the superiority of God as our great reward over all that the world has to offer.

If we don’t, we will love the world like everyone else and live like every one else.

So take the things that drive the world and ponder how much better and more abiding God is: take money or sex or power or popularity. Think about these things.

First think about them in relation to death. Death will take away every one of them: money, sex, power, and popularity. If that is what you live for, you won’t get much, and what you get, you lose. But God’s treasure is “abiding.” It lasts. It goes beyond death.

It’s better than money because God owns all the money and he is our Father. “All things are yours, and you are Christ’s and Christ is God’s” (1 Corinthians 3:22-23).

It’s better than sex. Jesus never had sexual relations, and he was the most full and complete human that ever will exist. Sex is a shadow, an image, of a greater reality—of a relationship and pleasure that will make sex seem like a yawn.

The reward of God is better than power. There is no greater human power than to be a child of the Almighty God. “Do you not know that we shall judge angels” (1 Corinthians 6:3)?

It’s better than popularity. Fame is a pipe dream if you are only known by human nobodies. But if the greatest beings know you, that is a popularity of another kind. The greatest popularity is to be known by God (1 Corinthians 8:3; Galatians 4:9). And when it comes to angels: “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent out to render service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation” (Hebrews 1:14)?

And so it goes on and on. Everything the world has to offer, God is better and more abiding. There is no comparison. God wins—every time.

The question is: will we have him? Will we wake up from the trance of this stupefying world and see and believe and rejoice and love? And suffer?

Dealing With "Sexual Obesity"?

So many parents are concerned about childhood obesity, but what about the growing problem of "sexual obesity" in our culture? What is sexual obesity, you ask? Check out this article at First Things - The Weight of Smut:

...But while we’re on the subject of bad habits that can turn unwitting kids into unhappy adults, how about that other epidemic out there that is far more likely to make their future lives miserable than carrying those extra pounds ever will? That would be the emerging social phenomenon of what can appropriately be called “sexual obesity”: the widespread gorging on pornographic imagery that is also deleterious and unhealthy, though far less remarked on than that other epidemic—and nowhere near an object of universal public concern. That complacency may now be changing. The term sexual obesity comes from Mary Ann Layden, a psychiatrist who runs the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program at the University of Pennsylvania. She sees the victims of Internet-pornography consumption in her practice, day in and day out. She also knows what most do not: Quietly, patiently, and irrefutably, an empirical record of the harms of sexual obesity is being assembled piecemeal via the combined efforts of psychologists, sociologists, addiction specialists, psychiatrists, and other authorities.

Read the whole thing- read it and weep for the so many people suffering under these addictions.And it is not just affecting adolescents:

And this list is just one possible way of starting a conversation about the consequences of today’s novel sexual obesity. There is also the question of what the same material does to adults—about which another empirical record is also being amassed, and about which more will be said later in this essay. Pornography today, in short, is much like obesity was yesterday—a social problem increasing over time, with especially worrisome results among its youngest consumers, and one whose harms are only beginning to be studied with the seriousness they clearly deserve.

Parallels between the two epidemics are striking. Much like the more commonly understood obesity, the phenomenon of sexual obesity permeates the population—though unlike regular obesity, of course, pornography consumption is mostly (though not entirely) a male thing. At the same time, evidence also shows that sexual obesity does share with its counterpart this critical common denominator: It afflicts the subset of human beings who form the first generation immersed in this consumption, many of whom have never known a world without it—the young.

Smut is truly a weighty thing on the human soul.   God have mercy!

Cheater, Cheater

I don't know what this story from Northern Virginia was dong on the web site of a Los Angeles TV station, but I sure got a chuckle out of it. See "I Cheated. This Is My Punishment." NBC Los Angeles. There has got to be a country song in here somewhere!

"Shame can be a powerful punishment. Just ask the guy who had to stand at the corner of Leesburg Pike and International Drive in Tysons Corner, Va., on Wednesday morning.

You know, the guy wearing the sign that said, "I CHEATED. THIS IS MY PUNISHMENT."

William Taylor, of Centreville, Va., told a passerby that he cheated on his wife -- and she found evidence of it on his cell phone. So the wife doled out a rather creative punishment: He had to stand at the intersection during morning rush, wearing the handmade sign.

People reported seeing him as early as 9 a.m., and his presence was discussed on several of D.C.'s morning radio shows. A little before 11 a.m., Taylor's wife texted him and said he'd been out there long enough. He removed the sign and skedaddled.

Leesburg Pike in Tysons Corner is one of the most traffic-clogged arteries in the area, making for maximum viewing pleasure.

Hope it was worth it, buddy."

Polyamory -- Perfectly Plural Placements

We've all heard plenty about Gay marriage and the great debate about the definition of marriage- but are you ready for Polyamory? Albert Mohler writes:

Polyamory, reports Newsweek, is having a "coming-out-party." Polyamory is the current "term of art" applied to "families" or "clusters" comprised of multiple sexual partners. As Newsweek explains, this is not exactly polygamy, because marriage is not the issue. Advocates of polyamory argue that their lifestyle is not "open marriage." Indeed, they define their movement in terms of the moral principle of "ethical nonmonogamy," defined as "engaging in loving, intimate relationships with more than one person -- based upon the knowledge and consent of everyone involved."
----------------
"....Perhaps the best way to understand this new movement is to understand it as a natural consequence of subverting marriage. We have largely normalized adultery, serialized marriage, separated marriage from reproduction and childbearing, and accepted divorce as a mechanism for liberation. Once this happens, boundary after boundary falls as sexual regulation virtually disappears among those defined as 'consenting adults.'"

If Gay marriage is fully accepted in American society and culture, there will be no logical barrier to polyamory in its various forms also achieving legal status.

Living in a Fornication Nation

You don't have to compromise with our sex-saturated culture. By God's grace you can stay in the sexual safety zone.

So says J. Lee Grady in an article at his "Fire in the Bones" blog entitled Staying Pure in a Fornication Nation. The article summarizes a speech he made to a group of college students. His four points of advice are:

1. Don't redefine your morality
2. Don't sell your birthright
3. Get ruthless with your weaknesses.
4. Live a transparent life.

Good advice for all of us.

Lovemaking as A Spiritual Discipline?

On Valentines Day, Mark Driscoll promotes Married lovemaking as a spiritual discipline at Spiritual Disciplines: Lovemaking

In our age of rampant sexual sin, God intends for us to learn the spiritual discipline of sexual chastity while we are unmarried. However, God also blessed marriage as the holy outlet for sexual desire and one means of protection from the temptation to engage in sexual sin.

Free Sex
Married couples who do not have free and frequent intimacy together are warned by Paul that they are leaving themselves vulnerable to Satan’s temptations to either sexual sin or bitterness. Therefore, God’s answer to our desire for oneness and pleasure is to overcome our shame and fear through the gospel so that we can give ourselves in every way to our spouse, and also receive them as God’s gift to us.

Duke Lancaster agrees. So do I.

Warning for Married Preachers

All married preachers who want to maintain HHCM should probably watch this video and maybe this one too.

This Blog Supports H.H.C.M.

The picture above comes from Mark Driscoll's blog as part of the promotion of his Song of Solomon preaching series (which is quite good, BTW).

David Matthias at The Road to "Elder" ado.. wonders when the HHCM T-shirts will start appearing, and imagines weird conversations.

"Are you into this new rage, HHCM?""Yeah it is amazing!""Where can I find some?""After being at the altar""Eh?I mean where do I look for some?""In your own bedroom""No I mean where can I buy some?""You can't. Find a nice girl, buy her a ring, commit your life to her then it is all yours""Woh, that sounds intense"

All in favor of HHCM shout Amen!

The Journeyman shouts Amen! (Currently celebrating year 29 of HHCM with no end in sight)

Christian Sexual Questions Answered By Mark and Grace Driscoll

Back in September I noted that Mark Driscoll was starting a preaching series through the Song of Solomon entitled "The Peasant Princess," dealing with the touchy subject of sexuality in Christian marriages. I've listened to some of the sermons and think he is doing a good job. I've also thought (selfishly) "better him than me."

Mark allows his listeners to e-mail or text in questions during his sermons, which he answers from the pulpit (what a brave man!). On this subject, he invited his wife Grace to join him in handling the questions. Some of the questions were perhaps a little too explicit and or complex to handle from the pulpit, so the Driscolls dealt with them in blog posts.

Zach Nielsen has pulled together links to the blog posts Christian Sexual Questions Answered By Mark and Grace Driscoll

Mark Driscoll and his wife Grace are answering often ignored questions about sex on the Mars Hill Blog.

• How can Christians decide what they should and should not do sexually?
• What are some good books on marriage and sex?
• Why does God give young men such strong sexual desires?
• How far can unmarried people go sexually?
• What are some non-sexual ways to build marital intimacy?
• What are some of the freedoms the Bible gives for married lovemaking?
• How often should a married couple make love?
• What should we do if one of us does not feel in the mood for sex