Sex to die for

Preface
I get asked to speak to college students/young adults once in a while. Last week I was invited to a college group to do a talk on pre-marital sex. Not how to have it, how to respond to the inevitable urges we have as human beings and how manage those urges from a Christian worldview. Like I told them last week, if you take nothing else away from the talk/article you need to take away the “one big question.”

If you’re a parent, use the info below to talk about sex with your child. It’s too bad that it’s something most parents leave to self-discovery. In the words of Crosby, Stills, and Nash…”teach your children well.”

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Sex to die for

If you grew up in the Southern religious culture that I grew up in, sex as a subject was treated more as a sin than as a gift from God that a husband and wife share. The word “sex” was never even mentioned by any pastor that I ever heard preach. Okay, my Dad (a pastor) did talk to me about sex but it was pretty much “don’t you ever get a girl pregnant.”

So I grew up thinking abstinence was the best way to handle pre-marital sex. Mainly because I thought my Dad would kill me if I did anything otherwise.

Southern religious culture, and I’m guessing most other Protestant and Catholic religious cultures, talk about sex from a sexual immorality point of view as their default setting. We pound out the virtue of abstinence with a sledge hammer of “don’ts” and “thus saith the Lord.” Okay, fine. It’s a sin to have pre-marital sex. The problem is, when you mix humans and religion, one tends to get a legalistic view of things when the subject is charged with social tension.

When God says something is a sin, I usually think that there’s got to be a good reason that he’s giving us a warning. He’s infinitely smarter than we are, right? So why not look at his command that tells us not to go there, to not have pre-marital sex? Let’s do…

If you’re not religious or a Christ-follower and you’re reading this, humor me for a bit and keep reading.

Humans were created in the image of God. There’s a lot to unpack there. Suffice it to say that we were created to be spiritual beings with a physical existence. Then God says to have sex. When God told us to “be fruitful and multiply” he didn’t mean eat healthy and score high on the math section of the SAT. To make more humans, there had to be sex. So God created human beings to have sex. In the perfect setting of the Garden of Eden, God saw that everything was good. (You can read the whole story in Genesis 1.)

Humans damaged our relationship with God by being prideful. That, in turn, damaged our spiritual connection (Gen. 3:1,7,23) with God and our emotional (Gen. 3:15) and physical existence (Gen. 3:16-17).

When God introduced himself in human form, we were given the opportunity to be healed spiritually, to enjoy more emotional health, and to understand and live with our physical maladies. (This is a long post so to find out how Jesus Christ came to make your life better by reading this book and this book for starters.)

Since human beings were created to be with both God and other humans, we crave being connected. When we’re missing a healthy spiritual and/or emotional connection we try to connect the only other way we know how…a physical connection. We often try to fill the spiritual/emotional need by connecting physically, often with sex. The results end up being an epic failure. It’s a crappy part of life in a world damaged by pride and selfishness.

When pre-marital sex happens, affairs happen, babies happen, abortions happen, divorces happen, STDs happen, and lack of trust between humans happens. Small wonder that God says that sex before marriage is unhealthy and dehumanizing.

By the way, there’s a screwed up belief among Christian teenagers and young adults: That you’re not having sex (and therefore not committing sin) if you don’t have intercourse. They would rationalize that anything leading up to intercourse is perfectly fine. Don’t be stupid. Read Jesus’ human ethics discourse in Matthew 5. Saying it’s okay to go past “third base” as long as you don’t go “all the way” is just a different twist on the legalism most young adults hate…making the Bible say what you want so you can manipulate people and get away with something. Read the previous paragraph again. Then read the next one.

Sex isn’t just a sensual, physical thing. It’s tied to the emotional and spiritual parts of us as well. From a Christian worldview, there’s no way to extricate sex from being a spiritual occurence. The unity of spirit, soul, and body are clear (1 Thess. 5:23). To live as redeemed humans we should guard our lives and others by refraining from engaging in less than human behavior (1 Peter:13-25). If anyone wonders why they still feel empty after pre-marital sex, that’s why.

Sex, in all of it’s pleasure and goodness, was designed to take place between a man and a woman that are married (Gen. 1:27; Mark 10:8). That’s why sex was intended to be shared as a physical, emotional and spiritual union with one’s husband or wife. Since the Scripture teaches we have spiritual/emotional/physical unity and a husband and wife become “one” (Mark 10:8) when they’re married, the clarity of sex only inside of marriage emerges.

The “one big question”
When I was reading that a husband should love his wife like Christ loved the church (like, he should be willing to die for her), I came up with the one big question that I think people should ask before they start having sex…especially pre-marital sex.

Christians need to honestly ask themselves if the person that they’re going to have sex with is the person that they’re willing to become “one” with for the rest of their life. Before they start getting all hot and bothered and taking off too many clothes, maybe they need to ask the “one big question”:

“Am I willing to die for the person I’m getting ready to have sex with?”

Question: Anyone have a better question/technique they use?

Two great books to read:

Sex God by Rob Bell

From Eternity To Here by Frank Viola

Affair-proofing your marriage

What a jerk
When you hear of someone that’s had an affair, typical response are, “They should be shot” or “You can’t be serious” or “That sorry…………” Fair enough. I’ve had two close family members suffer affairs. I’m not going to lie, I wanted to beat the living daylight out of the perp. They had wronged someone close to me and I wanted retribution.

Jerk. Self-centered jerk.

Someone that’s had an affair has made some very self-centered choices. They’ve chosen to meet their unmet emotional needs with quick fixes that seem to be the best or easiest option available. Unmet emotional needs puts them in a fog of unhealthy beliefs, rationalization of actions, and denial that a problem exists. So they keep driving through the fog and end up wrecking their life and the lives of their spouse, kids, in-laws and causing damage to friendships.

It takes two, baby
So who didn’t meet the emotional needs of the person that had the affair? We’re always quick to vilify the person that’s had the affair. What about the spouse that, for whatever reason, was being self-centered in their own right by not meeting the emotional needs of their mate?

To be clear, having an affair is wrong, injurious, narcissistic, and short-sighted. However…if a couple is going to thrive together they have to meet each other’s emotional needs. Meeting each others emotional needs is how to affair proof your marriage. Here’s a few to think about:

• Schedule time to talk with each other. You’re busy. You schedule everything else. Communicate with your spouse or they’ll find someone who will.
• Be the safest place for your spouse to rant. Emotional vomit is hard to handle but it doesn’t smell as bad the real stuff when you’re cleaning it up. When your spouse is hurting you have to be a component of their healing.
• Ask your spouse how they’re doing. We all like to talk about ourselves. Ask your spouse how their doing and be willing to listen.
  

• Have sex as often as necessary. If you don’t, your spouse is more likely to find someone who will (1 Cor. 7:1-2). If you do, you’re choosing a healthy view that’s the opposite of being self-centered (1 Cor. 7:3).

How have you affair-proofed your marriage?

For GUYS only: 30 minutes to better…

Communication. We all know that it’s the key to a healthy relationship. When I’m talking to guys about communication they say, almost to the man, “I suck at communication.” Their wives chime and and say, “Yep, he sure does.”

For some reason guys hate to use the word ‘communication’ in the same sentence with ‘wife.’ For some reason guys think that engaging in or mentioning communication is going to instantly make them metrosexual or something.

That’s not true. If you get a pedicure and talk about your wife’s day then…just kidding.

Guys, listen up. You can revolutionize your marriage if you’ll take 30 minutes a day to ask your wife about her day. When you take 30 minutes to ask about your wife’s day a lot of things get better. Her stress level goes down. You’ve become a better human being and husband. You actually begin to understand and “get” her world. You begin to communicate about more things like money and how you should discipline as a couple. Trust me on this one. The more you talk to each other, the better your whole marriage gets. Yes, even sex. But that’s another blog post. Maybe.

The Question
So here’s what works for me and Michelle. On her way home or my way home, one of us will call and ask The Question…

“So, how was your day?”

This is The Question that can revolutionize your marriage. Commit right now to asking this question to your wife at the end of each day. Right now. Repeat after me… “I will ask The Question.” Your wife will thank you and, well, you know that calling your wife on the way home is safer than texting or Twittering while you’re driving.

So here we go. Guys, when you call and ask The Question you have got to be ready. She’s gonna unload the wagon. She may not take a breath. You may think that it’s not humanly possible to unload that much information in that short amount of time. It is humanly possible and she will love you for it.

Just do the following while she’s talking. At key times, respond with an appropriate “Yes” or “I understand.” But the key phrase that you must say is “So what you’re saying is…” When you say that phrase, it proves that you’re really listening. When you’re not listening and trying to catch what Hannity just said, she’ll bust you.

When you actively listen by using the techniques above, you’ll prove that you’re no metrosexual. You’ll prove to her that she’s married a loving, caring, interesting and sexy hunk of burning love.

Communicate guys. That’s what studs do.

If you’re a phone nazi and won’t talk on the phone in your car then carve out the first 30 minutes you’re with your wife and ask her The Question.

"My marriage hasn’t turned out like I expected…."

If you walk into the magazine section of Kroger, Publix, Albertson’s, Winn-Dixie, Barnes and Noble or Borders you’ll find a huge selection of bridal and wedding magazines. In one of the those zillion mags, women everywhere begin their quest for the perfect wedding. The perfect wedding consists of the perfect dress, the perfect venue, the perfect caterer, the perfect cake, the perfect photographer, the perfect tux, and the perfect bridesmaid dresses. Sorry, I forgot the perfect reception. In one of the zillion bridal magazines they find the perfect bridal show to attend so they can make sure their selections are…you guessed it…perfect.

That’s because the bride to be has found the perfect husband…

The groom to be, on the other hand, buys into the whole “perfect” thing because his perfect wedding (remember this is hypothetical) will end in a raucous round of perfect sex. He dreams of the perfect beach, or the perfect cabin, with the perfect adult beverages (non-alchoholic of course), and more perfect…….you fill in the blank for the guy.

That’s because the groom to be has found the perfect wife…

So we find the perfect couple after the honeymoon…a few weeks, months, years, or a couple of decades after the perfect honeymoon having an identical conversation with their friends (seperately, of course) that begin with the phrase, “My marriage hasn’t turned out like I expected….”

Small wonder, if you ask me. Our culture has created a fantasticly idealist perception of marriage…with the hope of the perfect wedding, the perfect spouse, and even the perfect family. No pressure there, right?

So married couples try to live up to that culture induced expectation and, at all cost, look marvelous on the outside, but live miserable lives trying to figure out why marriage hasn’t turned out the way they expected.

So they sit down with a counselor and they hear the phrases idealistic perception and unmet expectations and begin to see how they set themselves up for the perfect disaster.

More on that in the next post…

Welcome to Holy Freaking Matrimony…

I’ve been thinking about doing a marriage blog for a long time. It seems that there’s a need for a good marriage blog. I mean, who doesn’t want to check out or subscribe to a blog that has the ability to at least nudge you to at least think about maybe doing something to make your marriage better?

So…here it is.

Hot topics? You bet. Worth coming back for? Probably. Another Christian sub-culture site with a bunch of fluffy cliches? Nope. This blog is for married people. With or without kids. First, second, or third marriage. Blended, dysfunctional, or Ward and June Cleaver.

Irreverent? Only to legalistic religious types. They probably alread hit the back button on their browser when when the name of the blog popped up in Google anyway.

The content: Marriage (no kidding), parenting, sex (it causes the whole parenting thing), divorce, who gets the remote, adultery, finances, communication, and commentary on anything that has to do with being married. All this through the filter of lessons I’ve learned from being married for over twenty years and being a pastor for over fifteen…and two kids…and a dog.

Hope you come back. Posts will be at least once a week.