Saturday, December 5, 2015

Cheap Sex and How It's Killing Us

Yesterday, sweet Emily was asking me questions about her father and I and how our marriage started and when we got married. I try to be as forthcoming as possible about these things because I may be able to protect her from some of my mistakes by sharing them.

At one point she said, but you were living together when you got pregnant with Destiny, so you were basically married, right?

Wow.

I quickly corrected her. No, sweet girl. It's not the same. It's not the same at all.

I understand where she's coming from. I really do. She's seen A LOT of couples in her life that have chosen to live together without marriage. She doesn't want to think they're wrong. She doesn't want to think I was wrong.

But I can't have her holding that viewpoint. She needs to know Mama made a mistake.

Train up a child in the way he should go;
even when he is old, he will not depart from it.
Proverbs 22:6

First, (after more questions from her), I had to clarify that it isn't actually living with someone of the opposite sex outside of marriage that's a sin, but sexual relations outside of a marriage. Whether you live with someone or not, sex outside of marriage is wrong.

I highlighted Jesus's conversation with the woman at the well. He didn't say, Where's the guy you're living with? Instead he asked where her husband was, and when she replied that she had none, he said:

You have correctly said, "I don't have a husband," Jesus said.
For you have had five husbands
and the man you now have is not your husband.
What you have said is true.
John 4:17-18

It's just not the same.

So, we talked. We talked about marriage as a covenant and what covenant MEANS. Biblestudytools.com says this about covenants:
The covenants referred to above were between two equal parties; this means that the covenant relationship was bilateral. The bond was sealed by both parties vowing, often by oath, that each, having equal privileges and responsibilities, would carry out their assigned roles.
These contracts are important. In Genesis, even after God called Abram (Abraham), he still needed reassurance of God's promise. How did God do that? He made a covenant with him; a binding, unbreakable oath (Genesis 15).

Emily and I didn't have much more time to talk after that because I was dropping her off, but my heart was still heavy. It was my second conversation that day about sex outside of marriage, and I couldn't shake them.

What is missing in our conversations about sex and marriage??

The value of sex.

In our society and culture, sex is looked at in a lot of different ways: recreational, procreational (made that word up), or simply part of the "mate-choosing" process...like, test driving a car or trying on a pair of shoes.

We've devalued sexual intimacy to the status of shoe shopping...or even worse, shoe rental. We've perverted it's original intent.

It's kind of what we do best.

God created the world, and He placed Adam in the garden of Eden. He told them they could eat of any tree they wanted except for one: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The fruit wasn't bad. God created it, and it was good, but it wasn't intended for Adam and Eve...but that didn't stop them.

And typically, that's just what we do. We jump in over our heads, trying to make ourselves into our own gods, and we jack everything up in the process.

The same thing goes for sex. God created sexual intimacy between partners, and it was and IS good. We've just cheapened it.

The first real reference to sex (I think) in the Bible is IN Genesis 4:1:


Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain,
saying, "I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord."


Obviously, by "knew his wife" the Bible means they had sex because it led to conception. Oh, but it's so much more than the act.

The Hebrew word there for "knew" is the word yada, and it's not just used to indicate sexual intimacy but so many times throughout the Old Testament it's used to indicate God knowing us and us knowing him. It's indicative of a desire for a deep and meaningful relationship.

That's what God meant for sex to be: a deeply intimate exchange, one in which we are fully known.

And that, my friends, is why God would have us experience sexual intimacy only in the context of covenant marriage; it's such an intimate exchange, so dear and valuable, that to experience it outside of that is tantamount to going mudding in a Ferrari or rolling around in the mud in your wedding dress before the wedding.

Only WORSE...because what we dirty and destroy isn't a car or a dress, but our souls, our spirits. It's not outside of God's infinite mercy and grace, but like all other sins, the consequences leave scars far after our slates have been wiped clean.

So, my answer to dear Emily was, no. No, having sex and living with her father before we were married was NOT the same as being married.

My prayer for her, and all my children, is that they would know all the beauty and joys of sexual intimacy only as God intended. What that will mean, is that I've taught them not just to value the exchange, but to value themselves as they are valued...by me, bot more importantly, by God.

Because that's what God truly cares about: us. The act is sacred, but He created it because He loves the participants.