Six on Sex 2: Biblical Sex Education
Last week Erik spoke about “A taste of heaven”. This week my theme is “Sex education”.
Like Erik, I would like to add in a caveat here. I will almost certainly say things that can be taken as double-entendres or innuendos. If I mean it like that it will be obvious. Otherwise, just bear with me. I will use some terminology which is not what you will normally hear in a sermon after a time of worship. If that would offend you it is perfectly OK to slip out and go help with the kids or go for a walk.
We ended last week a little provocatively by suggesting that there is a difference between sex in the sense of the physical act and good sex. To some extent we are playing with words but we are trying to get you to think about what we mean when we talk about sex - baby.
Good sex is made up of a lot of different things:
· romance,
· security,
· companionship,
· unconditional love,
· sexual love.
Relationships in general and sex in particular is impoverished by a lack of attention to the full picture. If it were perfect we may be able to show it like this pie chart (any attempt to summarise love, relationships and sex in a picture is doomed to failure but this may help a little).
My conviction is that most of what we understand about sex, most of our sex education, is inaccurate and from unreliable sources.
Singles – this is for you too. You need to know what you think, this is to help you and to help you help others. Older people like me need this information for helping younger people.
Martin Hallett said in his preface to Leanne Payne’s book “The Broken Image” that:
The subject of sexuality usually provokes more heat than light, especially when discussed among Christians.
So these are my views. I am not telling you what to think, I am telling you what I think. You will need to weigh my arguments and come to your own conclusions.
If I were to ask you about your views on sex and to show me how the Bible leads you to that point of view, could you do so? You may hold one of the following three views:
- Sex is dodgy, sketchy. I feel guilty even sitting here listening to you saying the word in polite company. OK God created it but it all went wrong with Adam and Eve and caused sin in the world. So essentially it is bad.
- Sex is fine – it is God’s way of propagating the species and providing a way of finding intimacy. Yes it is fun to do but we should lock it away in marriage and we shouldn’t dwell on it or think about it too much because it is mainly functional.
- Sex is absolutely fantastic, a peak moment of God’s creation and actually a taste of heaven.
I believe that God created sex because he created man in his image.
Genesis 1: 27
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
It is in the nature of God to enjoy a completely connected loving relationship - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We are shown glimpses of the relationship between God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit which demonstrate intimacy, connectedness, love. As God creates us He seeks to put the likeness of this relationship in us.
So when he created man the Bible says that it was not good – because there was no one with whom he could have such a relationship. Cats were too selfish, giraffes were too tall, spiders too small and had too many legs, monkeys were too smelly.
So God created Eve, woman. They had a full, intimate relationship which involved physical sex. As we will discover, good sex is a great gift from God of something that is far more than an animal act.
God meant it for refreshment, fulfilment, recreation, realignment, release, sharing, procreation, healing, lessons in loving, practice in sensitivities, development in the art of laying down our lives for one another, completion, entrance into the kingdom of being corporate, gratitude, longing, hope, endurance, fun, laughter, mysticism, embrace, and so on through the endless catalogues of blessing.
It will never be perfect (like the pie chart) because we are human. But it can be a taste of heaven. Each slice of the pie is incomplete and it will only ever fit together exactly when we get to heaven – but it is a foretaste of heaven.
Most people, in most times and most places have misjudged sex. It is not often that we behave as though we believe this is a great gift from God, specifically put in place to help us reflect his image, become more like him. I am not primarily talking about a moral code, a right way and a wrong way to behave, although God has given us direction about how to use and enjoy sex. Deep inside we know when it is rightly understood and when it is not.
I am talking about an awareness of God’s great gift, of the creativity He shows in giving it to us. I am talking of an acceptance of its place in our lives, a healthy openness and transparency with God and each other about our sexuality. I am trying to dig through the cultural clutter to unearth the purity of God’s truth about sex.
You may have heard of “The Lady Boys of Bangkok”. This is the show everyone is talking about. It guarantees that you will never look at the opposite sex in the same way again. Performed by 16 of the world’s most beautiful showgirls who just happen to be men.
When I first read that I remember physically recoiling at having been taken in. I wondered why it was such a shock. I realised it is because it is taking truth and turning it inside out, upside down.
Paul is talking about this when he writes:
Romans 1:25
They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator.
Although some of the lie is very obvious, such as in NUTS magazine or in the Lady Boys show, much of the lie is subtle. As followers of Jesus we must learn to tell the difference. We must be aware of where our sex education is coming from – is it based on lies or on truth? Over this series my desire is that we should hear the truth of scripture – that we should wash our minds afresh in truth – Godly sex education.
I have been listening out for how people think of sex:
- On a TV programme documenting the experiences of two teens in India on exchange:
When they first arrived, the father of the Indian family sat them down and said: “I am in charge here and we value discipline. This is good.” After finding out a bit more about the Brit teens he makes it clear, “No smoking, no drinking, no talking about sex”.The British boy, later on, divulges to the Indian boys that he has had a lot of casual sex (possibly) when drunk. “Oh it’s got nothing to do with love,” he says. He treats sex like a hobby, or leisure activity.
- A man, a local professional, thinks purely in terms of penetration, coitus.
- One lady, a local medical professional, talked about romance and intimacy leading to the physical act.
- A young man of 22 talked in terms of physical relationship involving touch and caressing.
- A middle aged man, separated from his long-time girlfriend, said it wasn’t kissing or even heavy petting but everything else. But it also involved warmth and companionship.
- An older woman on her second marriage said, “Well, it’s bed isn’t it?”
- Receptionists in a dentists in South Leeds said, “Yes please!” But they thought about it in terms of the plumbing only. There was no romance.
- A young couple I met at a wedding, and had been married a year were very opposite. He was a bit like Indian dad. To him, sex was not a word you use in polite company. It was associated with guilt and shame for him. She, a Brazilian girl, said that it changes. It starts off as what she called the “maximum point” of young love, then changes to duty and then to intimacy as you grow older.
- Years ago there was an advert on Radio Galaxy. A girl and a boy are talking about it. She eventually teases out of him the admission that he has never had sex. The voice over goes, “It’s OK, not everyone has had sex…”. But the implication is: you are weird for not having had sex yet, because everyone else has.
- Max Mosley, the former head of F1 motor racing, was interviewed on Radio 4, on the PM programme on the 7th Oct 2008. He said the following:
“When it comes to sex, unless you adopt the missionary position, in the dark, for purposes of procreation, you have a wide spectrum where anything you do will be considered wrong by some and fine by others.”
So, having done my research, let’s make sure we understand our words:
Sex is impossible to define. It can simply mean the gender, the “fairer sex, the opposite sex”. It can mean a concept, “sex sells, the sex factor”. It can be an adjective to describe an individual, “sexy”. It can be used as a verb, “to sex up”. As a noun it is used in idiom, “to have sex” covering a wide range of activities.
Coitus or copulation, sexual intercourse, the term used for genital contact. Popularly this is often called sexual intercourse and it is a pleasant sensation (usually). We have a strong drive to do it – especially men. However, it is still functional. And although we may mean a similar thing, coitus is still a different experience for a man and a woman – if only in the time commitment. On average, for women it takes about 20 minutes whereas for men it takes only 4 minutes.
However, if we limit the definition of sexual intercourse to the act of coitus we have a difficulty with understanding the full panorama of sexual activity - homosexual activities, oral sex, pornography, web cam sex, masturbation and so on.
Sexual interaction is the relationship between two people based on their different genders. For the act of sex, coitus, to become meaningful it must involve interaction between two people.
This important truth is not easy to dig out of our cultural confusion. Let me try and explain it without reference to the physical part of sex.
Next week, a group of men will go away on what we call “Bob’s weekend”. The event will be very different to the women’s event called “Women Rock weekend”. The way the men will relate to each other is different from the way the women do. There is a different verbal language, different body language, different subjects of conversation, different priorities, different causes of humour. The difference is not better or worse, right or wrong, it is just different by reason of gender.
We interact with each other differently because of our sex, our gender. That is without physical sexual activity becoming involved. It is not sexual intercourse of course … but neither is coitus sexual interaction. A porn star or a prostitute may be having coitus but in our terms they aren’t having sexual interaction.
I think good sex is not about being a star performer in physical terms but about being in a healthy relationship which is also physically intimate. Hence, good sex is not just about sexual intercourse.
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Most of our relationships are somewhere on the spectrum of intimacy and connectedness. Loving relationships express love, without leading to physical sexual activity.
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But sexual intercourse is experienced as sexual love only when there is already a loving relationship
There are then two challenges that need addressing:
- Challenge 1: is that sex tends to take over. It obliterates all other kinds of feeling for the other person. The relationship becomes only about sexual urges and sexual satisfaction, and sex becomes coitus. We become animals that have lots of sex, not human beings with a soul.
- Challenge 2: establishing a relationship in which sexual love is properly expressed takes a huge amount of work and effort. It does not come to us naturally. It requires our complete and unswerving commitment to one person, whom we decide to learn to love and accept unconditionally. It requires a choice of will to seek to build a truly loving relationship.
But there is huge reward in working towards a relationship where sex becomes sexual love and not just coitus. We get to experience a taste of heaven – a taste of the same oneness and loving relationship that lives in God. We reclaim who we were meant to be – man and woman together in relationship with each other as the image of God.
As it says in Genesis 1:27, I believe that God created sex because he created man in his image.
Let’s go back to the picture we started with which shows that good relationships have five significant components. These components are also a necessary part of a sexual relationship for there to be good sex. They mirror the likeness of God – they are part of his image that we are created to reflect.
Let’s have a quick look at a biblical example of romantic love.
Songs 1:9-11
You remind me of Pharaoh's
well-groomed and satiny mares.
Pendant earrings line the elegance of your cheeks;
strands of jewels illumine the curve of your throat.
I'm making jewellery for you, gold and silver jewellery
that will mark and accent your beauty.
This is not about the activity which precedes getting into bed. It is about appreciating the wonder of the person God has created. One of our challenges (particularly for men) is to stop to use romance only in order to get sex. That is manipulation.
Romance is saying, “I respect and affirm your femininity, or your masculinity”. It is warm and ongoing in a relationship. It is cultivated with walks in the park, time set aside to talk, meals together. Buying gifts. Words of praise and affirmation.
It does not have to be boyfriend/girlfriend or husband/wife. You can affirm someone else’s femininity or masculinity without it being sexual.
I remember the glow of pride I felt as a boy emerging from puberty when my mother once said admiringly, “you have got such wide shoulders”.
Whenever I got round to buying my sister a birthday gift I would try to affirm her femininity with a gift that said, “you are great as a woman”. I wasn’t always very good at this. I vividly remember being torn to shreds by my secretarial staff once for buying Alison a frying pan for Christmas. That was not romantic.
In Ephesians, Paul writes the following about security:
Ephesians 5:28
In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
Or in the biography of Jesus written by Luke, he records Jesus saying the following:
Luke 11:11,12
"Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?”
This is an example of the comfortable security that a child will have in a happy family. You feel safe, you are treated with respect and consistency. Faithfulness and trustworthiness are characteristics of secure relationships. Your parents are there for you when you are ill, in trouble, late, unsure of yourself, discovering something new. They keep you sheltered, warm, fed, financially supported. They teach you the way to the heavenly father.
Security functions at several levels: practical, emotional and spiritual levels. Relationships are not secure if you are not looking after the practical needs, the emotional needs and spiritual needs of the other person.
For this to work well a good understanding of roles should be in place. Compare the relationships in a sports team – the front players in a football team feel more secure and can go about their business of scoring goals if other players have agreed to take on defensive duties.
Sorting out who takes on which role is especially acute where a couple come together from different family backgrounds. You need to work out agreed functions for the man/husband and the woman/wife. “This is what I expect to do and deliver – what do you expect…?”
A useful book to consult in this context is “Men are from Mars, Women from Venus” by John Gray.
3. Companionship, phileo – fellowship,
A great example of this from the Bible is the way Jesus and Simon Peter interact. Remember how Peter betrays Jesus 3 times? Later on, after Jesus had been killed and then come back to life they meet up! This is what happened:
John 21:15-17
Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these?"
"Yes, Lord," he said, "you know that I love you."
Jesus said, "Feed my lambs."
Again Jesus said, "Simon son of John, do you truly love me?"
He answered, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."
Jesus said, "Take care of my sheep."
The third time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?"
Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, "Do you love me?"
He said, "Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you."
Jesus said, "Feed my sheep.
There are other examples. There is David and Jonathan, Jesus and John, Paul and Barnabas.
This is the love of best friends. They share the deepest secrets, dreams, and hopes. They making themselves vulnerable to each other. There is a sense of camaraderie.
It takes time, an investment in getting to know each other, through having fun, and sharing good times and hard times.
Companionship needs good communication skills. It requires to be able to share appropriately (not over communicating or swamping, not avoiding disagreement. Not running away when there is conflict). People who are good companions have developed good conflict-solving skills.
A helpful book on handling conflict is “Caring Enough To Confront” by David Augsburger.
None of these components of love is easy but perhaps this is the most difficult.
1 John 4:7-19
Let us love one another; for love comes from God…We love because he first loved us.
God’s love for us is unconditional. He loves us whether or not we love him back. For God so loved the world that he gave His only son … no condition attached, his love comes first. And we are called to love one another in the same way.
As humans this is most challenging. It is probably best seen in the love of a parent for a child who is brain damaged, where the parent can’t even be recognised. The parent loves the child without expecting anything back.
It is not 50-50 – I will do my bit, now you do yours. I will love you but I expect you to love me back, I will love you but I need you to make me feel good, I will love you but I need you to give me an identity as your husband or wife, I will do this for you but I expect sex later on …
Instead, it is “I will still be there even if you don’t give anything back.” This is not the same as commitment – it is more than that. It is the ability to love and to give without bargaining.
The clue is that you must seek out your identity, your significance, your self-esteem in your relationship not with another person but with God. Otherwise you can’t love unconditionally because you are constantly seeking the affirmation and self-esteem only he can provide.
A great example of this kind of unconditional love in the Bible is the story of Ruth and Naomi. You can read about it in the book called Ruth.
Sexual interaction or intimacy is about much more than the physical act.
Sexual interaction is an art. It changes through time in a relationship. In fact sex can sometimes get in the way of a relationship developing. Sex can be so intense and memorable that it can distract us from dealing with the other components of love. We emerge perhaps from a couple of years of marriage without distractions or challenges like children or illness, and where we have both been earning. A time, really, when we have enjoyed physical sex. Then, as the pressures of life begin to materialize we find that although the physical sex was great, we are struggling with romance, security, companionship and unconditional love.
We move through various cycles of friendship, courting, marriage. We move through cycles of poverty, wealth, house moves, illness, children, getting older - all of which affect the quality and form of sexual love and loving relationships.
We were at a wedding recently and heard again the familiar words which Jesus used, quoting Genesis, the ancient Jewish scriptures:
Matthew 19:4-6
The Creator made them male and female…for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.
The word used for one flesh is the same word that Jews pray every day: “Hear O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” The word is “Echad” – one, one flesh. No longer two but one.Physical sexual union is another way of reflecting the image of God, his oneness, his creativity, his new potential. It is about bringing two people together, it is about giving the world a glimpse of God, a taste of heaven.
Thus the bible gives us God’s plan: Sex education
To build relationships with romance, security, companionship and unconditional love and then, when we find a particular person to whom we are prepared to make a lifelong commitment, we are commanded into the intimacy of sexual love and of becoming “one flesh”.
Building anything like this sort of relationship takes a huge amount of work over a long period of time and is a major undertaking: which is why it is given the heavyweight qualification of marriage.
As Rob Bell says in his book “Sex.God”:
Sex is not the search for something that is missing, it is the expression of something that has been found.
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