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Chapter 2
Sexuality
Can you build a fire in your lap and not burn your pants? Can you walk barefoot on hot coals and not get blisters? It's the same when you have sex with your neighbor's wife: Touch her and you'll pay for it. No excuses. . . . Adultery is a brainless act, soul-destroying, self-destructive; Expect a bloody nose, a black eye, and a reputation ruined for good. Solomon, Proverbs 6:27-29 The Message
What a thrill it was for me to run the Boston Marathon with forty thousand other runners in 1996 for the hundredth anniversary of the famed race. When the gun went off at noon on Patriot's Day, we all began making our way from Hopkinton to Boston on a two-lane road. Talk about crowded! It took runners at the end of the line more than twenty minutes just to reach the starting line. Then it was elbow-to-elbow and aching-calves-to-aching-calves for most of the race.
Now imagine what it would have been like to line up at the front of such a crowd and then to run in the opposite direction of everyone else when the gun sounded. Picture the puzzled looks, the ridicule, the bruised ribs, and the trampled toes. It might have been safer to try driving clockwise (against the traffic) in the Indy 500!
Now you have a somewhat accurate picture of what is meant by swimming against the stream. And you have a pretty good idea of what a life of sexual purity looks like today. The strong current of immorality is all around us. Swimming against the current takes more energy and strength than many have.
In many environments today, people expect sexual immorality-even with young teenagers. They merely encourage them to use precaution and protection. This public attitude was evident in the mid-1990s when a popular actor was picked up with a prostitute on Sunset Boulevard. He faced terrible public ridicule because he'd been unfaithful to his gorgeous live-in girlfriend. (Stupidity was evidently a more serious charge than sexual misconduct!) Both his actions and the public's reactions made the seventh commandment prohibiting adultery seem outdated.
Perhaps the clearest insight into the world's perspective is a question asked at the end of The Scarlet Letter, a 1995 film starring Demi Moore and based very loosely on Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic novel: “Who is to say what is a sin in God's eyes?” Hester Prynne lands in the twenty-first century!
It isn't really news that immorality fills television-from morning soaps to racy afternoon talk shows to prime-time sitcoms. Even the news is tainted. USA Today (that paragon of virtue and chastity!) reported that “the nightly newscast is chockablock with explicit language, lust, and perversion. TV moguls weep with grati tude: this carnal cornucopia has spilled into . . . their ratings sweep.”
Not everyone with a television is limited to the shows that are programmed, however. Thanks to VCRs and video stores, we can be more selective about what we watch. And what are people watching? Well, there's an interesting mix as one recent top-twenty list of video sales shows. The list included:
1. Pinocchio
2. Playboy Playmate of the Year
3. Beauty and the Beast
4. Playboy Celebrity Centerfold
5. Disney's Sing Along Songs: Friend Like Me
8. Playboy 1993 Video Playmate Review
10. Barney Rhymes with Mother Goose
12. 101 Dalmatians
14. Barney's Best Manners
15. Playboy: Erotic Fantasies III
18. Playboy: The Girls of the Cabaret Royale
19. Penthouse: The All-Pet Workout
20. Barney's Magical Musical Adventure
I'm guessing someone sent Dad to the store for a video for the kids and he grabbed one for himself while he was there. One can only hope that “Barney's Magical Musical Adventure” isn't a euphemism for some XXX-rated porno flick!
And now, thanks to the magic of telecommunications, the current of immorality can flow into our home computers. Courtesy of on-line services and the Internet, people of all ages can enter into sexual conversations (cybersex), check kinky alternative bulletin boards, and download pornography in the privacy of their own homes.
We need not be shocked that the world lives by standards no higher than enjoyment and precaution. And as the church we do not need to waste our time whining about how immoral the world is.
We mention the white rapids of this stream not to condemn the stream but to challenge those who are supposed to be swimming against it. What decisions will you, as a follower of Jesus Christ, make because of your commitment to him?
After admitting that he and his fiancè were already sexually involved, a twenty-year-old student recoiled defensively when I challenged him to refrain from continued sexual activity until they were married. For a few minutes I engaged in a debate that I was losing. Whenever I gave a reason why they should wait (e.g., “You don't know that you'll remain together”), he had a quick reply. There was just no way they were going to break up, he assured me. And there was no way that sharing a bed together could be damaging, he reasoned.
Finally, I did what I should have done initially. I asked him if he was a disciple of Jesus. When he assured me he was, I said, “Then that seems to settle it. I don't guess I understand all the reasons why Jesus doesn't want you to have sex before you're married, but then discipleship doesn't mean following Jesus only when you understand all his reasons. When you follow him, you place your trust in him. You admit that he can control your life even when it doesn't make complete sense or feel right. I want to encourage you to trust Jesus by refraining from having sex until you're married.” That seemed to make more sense to him than all the other arguments combined.
I heard one man tell a small group about the time his daughter called long distance from college to ask him to explain again why she shouldn't have sex before she was married. If it had been my daughter, my first question would probably have been, “Where are you calling from?” I'd just pray she wasn't calling from a car phone!
As her father, I would hope to have the presence of mind to speak not of diseases and unwanted pregnancies but of discipleship. What would Jesus do?
What Jesus Taught
Perhaps the place to begin is to point out that Jesus was not antisex, as some have misunderstood him. When some Pharisees tried to pull him into the raging debate concerning divorce and remarriage, Jesus insisted that all discussion should return to God's original intentions for marriage in Genesis 2.
“Haven't you read,” he asked them, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female'?” Didn't they remember that God had intended for a husband and wife to become “one flesh” (a phrase that implies more than the sexual relationship, but which surely includes it)?
Jesus understood that sexuality isn't a punishment from Satan to be endured but a gift from God to be celebrated in marriage. He knew that the Creator could have devised other ways for babies to be born but chose instead to make us sexual beings.
It's important that our children grasp this truth. They will pick up on our many warnings about sexual immorality. But if we don't balance the warnings with teaching about God's delight in sexuality, they'll wind up thinking sex is evil.
Yes, sex is a good gift from God, according to Jesus. Yet it's a gift that is to be fully opened only in marriage. Jesus condemned adultery (sexual involvement by someone who's married with a person other than his or her spouse) and sexual immorality (sometimes translated “fornication”-any sexual involvement outside of marriage).
Those who follow Christ have learned to trust his guidance for sexuality. They believe that any limitations he has placed on the gift are to protect us, not to deprive us of enjoyment. They accept this heaven-sent blessing, enjoying it fully only in the context of the marriage relationship in which a man and a woman have promised to stay together. Only in marriage can sex be explored and enjoyed fully.
In God's design, two people are to remain together-no ejection seats or rip cords-whether the romantic voltage is high or low at the moment. In marriage by God's intentions, there is a commitment that transcends the hot and cold fluctuations of erotic passion.
We have a huge problem with our culture in that many of the icons considered “sexual experts” (because they engage in endless sexual explorations or endless discussions of sexual explorations) actually know very little about sex. They tend to limit sex to mere anatomy when in reality it is multidimensional.
God, the Creator of all males and females, is the only one who fully comprehends all the implications of our sexuality. He knows that there is much more to sex than what can be illustrated in a textbook! And this one who fully understands is the one who has protected us by limiting the sexual relationship to marriage.
The religious leaders of Jesus' day would certainly have agreed with him up to this point. But then he took God's intentions even deeper:
You have heard
that it was said, “Do not commit adultery.”
But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman
lustfully has already committed adultery with her in
his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge
it out and throw it away. It is better for you to
lose one part of your body than for your whole body
to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes
you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is
better for you to lose one part of your body than for
your whole body to go into hell.
One can be technically chaste but full of immorality, according to Jesus. When confronted by Pharisees and teachers of the law who were disturbed that his disciples didn't follow their traditions about hand washing before eating, Jesus answered that evil doesn't come from what goes into a person, but from what comes out of a person's heart. “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man ‘unclean'; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him ‘unclean.' ” Sexual conduct isn't primarily about hormones; it is a matter of what is in one's heart. Therefore, a person can commit a sexual sin while fully clothed in a classroom, at a desk in the office, or in the living room of his or her own home.
Because God made all people in his image, it is wrong for us to reduce others to objects of our sexual desires. That is what Jesus calls “lust.” Lust is more than looking at someone and finding them attractive or looking at them and having a sexual thought. After all, God is the one who wired us so that we can have such thoughts.
But just as appropriate anger can easily turn into bitterness, so an appropriate sexual thought can become lust. The lustful man or woman looks at another person with the intention of feeding his or her fantasies and then turns the other into little more than a sexual fantasy object. A translation that brings out Jesus' intentions would be: “Anyone who looks after a woman for the purpose of lusting after her has already committed adultery.” Lust eventually becomes obsessed with fulfilling one's desires, even knowing it's against God's will.
Jesus' instruction on sexuality is concise and refreshing in an age of misinformation. Here are at least three of his insights for Christ followers:
1. Sex is a
gift from a loving Creator.
2. Sexual
relationships are to be confined to marriage.
3. Because all
our actions are from our hearts, we must be pure
in our thinking as well as in our actions.
How Jesus Lived
Jesus Christ was fully human, yet fully divine. Orthodox Christianity has always believed this despite being unable to explain it completely.
Heresy has been passed on through the centuries by those who believe one aspect of his being but not the other. Some have insisted that he was fully human but not really God-a prophet of God, perhaps, or maybe even “a son of God,” adopted by the Father for his purposes. But he was not truly God.
Others have claimed that Jesus was indeed God, but that he only seemed to be human. Apparently the apostle John had to face such false teachers, for he sternly wrote: “This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.”
Many Christians struggle with believing that Jesus Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords, was fully human. They're very uncomfortable with the idea that Jesus faced sexual temptations.
Yet the writer of Hebrews claimed that he was “tempted in every way, just as we are.” This surely includes the sexual temptations that most men (and women) face.
But Jesus never caved in to his desires! Hebrews adds, “yet [he] was without sin.” He was with many women-some emotionally vulnerable and some with sordid sexual histories. Yet he never used women as objects of his desire. Consider these examples:
1. The
woman at the well. When Jesus met a woman
from Samaria at a well, a woman who had gone
through five husbands and was now living with
another man, he treated her with complete respect
and spoke to her about living water that wells up
to eternal life.
2. The
woman caught in adultery. When a woman caught
in the act of adultery was cast in front of Jesus
by some religious do-gooders, Jesus got rid of
the hypocrites and then spoke with great love and
dignity to the poor woman, calling her to a new
life in God.
3. The
woman who anointed Jesus' feet. When a
woman with a sordid sexual history began wiping
his feet with her tears and with perfume and then
drying them with her hair, Jesus defended her to
a man who was offended, insisting that her
actions came as a response to God's
marvelous forgiveness in her life.
Jesus treated all the women he encountered as dignified individuals, pointing them back to God, who alone could make them complete. Surely there were temptations along the way (at least the writer of Hebrews was sure there were). But because Jesus' heart was eager to serve God through loving others purely, he never crossed an inappropriate line.
Doesn't it help you to know that you're following one who can sympathize with you in your temptations?
Swimming Upstream
So how do we deal with lustful inclinations? Jesus told us to gouge out our eyes and cut off our hands if we must. This hyperbolic language certainly makes a point: We are to take drastic measures to be sexually pure. Don't pamper sin. Don't flirt with it. Don't nibble at sin like a fish toying with bait.
Remember that Jesus' words are not just for individuals but also for a group-a new community, the church, seeking to follow him. The church must be a group of people who . . .
• call
for moral purity
• remind
each other in worship of why we live differently
• confess
(usually in some small group setting) our
struggles and failures
• hear
again and again God's word of forgiveness
One powerful Sunday at a church in Abilene, Texas, following a message on sexual purity, all high school and middle school students were dismissed to a large room. There they were met by the elders and their wives and by some of the youth leaders. They listened as these godly people committed themselves to modeling sexual purity before them and to praying for them. Then the teens were asked to raise their hands during a prayer if they would pledge themselves for a year to sexual abstinence because of God's love and because of Jesus' example of purity. In a separate room, several hundred university students met with their leaders to make similar pledges before God. Many other prayers for courage to be pure were offered by those remaining in the auditorium. We live or die as a community!
Christ followers need to encourage each other to seek good and avoid evil. They should also try to cut off the supply for whatever fuels their lust-like movies, magazines, novels, and television shows that are filled with sexual temptations. (Keep in mind that no one person has been made vice president in charge of moral limits for a church. These are personal decisions-though still made in the context of community.)
Sports Illustrated, source of the annual swimsuit edition, isn't usually a primary source for encouragement in this area. But in 1996 the cover story was about David Robinson, all-star center for the San Antonio Spurs and a dedicated Christian. The magazine spotlighted his eagerness for sexual purity:
The Silver Dancers
come onto the court during a timeout, and David
Robinson does not watch. He sits at the end of the
San Antonio Spurs' bench with his perfect
posture, drinking a cup of water, looking down at
coach Bob Hill diagramming a play. The Silver Dancers
are the Spurs' version of the Laker Girls,
choreographed for the maximum number of jiggles and
pelvic thrusts. Their uniform tonight is hot pants
and tight silver shirts. The predominant lyric in the
heavy-beat music is “Do that thing.” Do
that thing. Do that thing. Do that thing.
Do that thing?
No, David Robinson
does not watch. Assorted other Spurs, especially at
the outer reaches of the huddle, can be seen sneaking
peeks, uh-huh, and second looks. Last season's
Most Valuable Player somehow removes himself from
this part of the show. He says he never looks at the
Silver Dancers. Not on purpose. He will not allow his
mind to wander down the mildly carnal paths that are
offered to the Alamodome crowd of 23,883. Why open
himself to the possibility of impure thoughts?
The article explains that the reason he will not let his eyes wander is that he is committed to following Jesus Christ. “I made a rule when I got married,” he mentions when asked about all the women who try to flirt with him. “I decided that if anyone's feelings are going to be hurt, they're not going to be my wife's. If I think someone is acting inappropriately, I say so. It may sound harsh, but that's the way it is. My wife is not going to be the one to suffer.”
As Christians, we must be willing to swim upstream against the world's current of prevailing immorality. Such an upstream response from one who travels in NBA circles seems heroic. But it's the same response every follower of Jesus Christ must have. While there are dozens of reasons why we want to remain pure, the main reason far surpasses all the others: because Jesus was pure!
With a swelling flood of impurity around us, we need to make firm commitments and we need to fill our hearts in such a way that we can keep those commitments. We need to set ourselves in a direction and stick with it. And Jesus has a direction for us: upstream!
Are you up to the challenge?