For the past six weeks, our church has been having a sermon series focused on this very topic. Yes, you read that correctly. For the last six weeks, leading up to a seminar we will be having Saturday, we have been talking about SEX in church!
And, now, with my review of the book, it's a topic again.
Donald Miller writes:
"I think we can think nobody is affected by our actions, by our habits, but they are. We aren't independent creatures, we know. We are all connected. And in a family, in marriage, it's important that sex be something special, and as men, it's important we take the initiative in protecting it."
Sex is a form of communication and bonding between two individuals, ideally in a covenant marriage, and when that becomes tainted, it can affect the entire system to fail if you let it. I learned first hand the effects of this.
However, Donald Miller goes farther when closing the chapter by writing:
"The great arguement, then, is not whether sex is good or bad outside of a relational commitment, but whether sex is for anything other than the release of pleasure. There is no scientific evidence to suggest that sex is for bonding. Common sense tells us sex bonds people, but science can't go into the poetic. The tendency, when pleasure drives logic, is to reduce sex to a dry Darwinian definition, ignoring the poetry of our bodies. And this doesn't sound like much of a crime, until we remember the arguement about the value of a dollar. Poetry, then, matters. What we feel about something, what we agree about for the sake of health and progress, becomes critical. I think of sex this way, not only because this is the way God thinks about sex, but because logically, even apart from some sort of Christian morality, the poetic interpretation has to be upheld."
Anyone who knows any element of my life story knows that I did not wait to have sex until I was married. I was pregnant with Isa when I said "I do." I was fortunate though, because the man who took my virginity is the one that I ended up marrying. I have never had sex with anyone other than Jose.
However, he was not a virgin when we met. He was, in my eyes, an experienced man-skank (sorry honey!) because he had been with more women than I cared to know about and he had lost his virginity about five years earlier, and in many instances, they were girls that he wasn't even in a relationship with. Then, he had his affair to add another name to his list.
The thing is, the act of sex itself was not the part of the affair that bothered me the most, but it was that he chose to do this personal and intimate act with someone other than me, other than the person that he has pledged his life to. And to think that I had to share this "secret" part of our life with someone else is what tore me apart. To think of our sex life (okay, if the blog doesn't have a content warning on it, it will now) and what it was, as Donald Miller says, "poetry" and to think that he shared that with someone else is what hurt. It's vague and very abstract, but it's true.
That's what is so special about sex. It's not the physical actions or the medical definition; there's a *spark* of connection, bonding that cannot be experienced quite the same through other activities. And that is what needs to remain sacred.
I do think that sex is like any other fallen element of life, however, and I don't know that we speak about it much. But if you fail, if you are sinful and have sexual relationships outside of the context that God created sex to be, there is the path of asking for forgiveness, repenting, changing your behaviors. And, the consequences may not disappear, and physically, you will stay the same, but your heart can be changed. God can renew your heart to a place that you are able to use sex within marriage as a beautiful and poetic thing. And, that, is what is the best news possible when talking about sex. God wants us to have a pure and amazing reflection of sex. It does not need to be dirty or gross or emotionally painfully. It was created by Him for a purpose, and He wants us to enjoy it, within the proper contexts.
And so often, it's swept under the rug and locked up in a dark closet. So sex becomes taboo. But it doesn't need to be. It shouldn't be.
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