This article and the ministry discussed in it shows us that married Christian couples don’t really know as much about sex as we think. This is true of what is permissable and how to go about it. (Before somebody reads the whole thing and gets in a tissy, I don’t agree with or endorse everything in this article. The ministry concept is good, but I think the presentation of what is good and right lacks much that Mark Driscoll gets right in his sermons on marriage and sex.)
Why are we so afraid to talk about this and/or why do we get so upset when others do talk about it?
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That is the truth of the matter that leads to the necessity of churches to preach on this openly, publicly, and often. Had the church been a faithful steward of the teachings in scripture in this subject in the past it wouldn’t be necessary to be so loud about it now.
True for everything we should be teaching that gets set aside.
Let’s see – four out of the last six posts are on sex. Let’s move on now to personal hygiene.
Actually 4 of the last 6 posts are about individuals who believe its wrong to teach what the Bible says about sex in church.
Rick, I agree with Tim’s response to that.
But you bring up an interesting thought. What does the Bible say about personal hygiene? If it has something to say, why shouldn’t we talk about that when gathered together?
Rick,
Plus, it’s only been a few days. I don’t know about you, but I don’t stop thinking on and trying to learn from/about a topic in a day and then move on. For example, I thought quite a lot on Chris L.’s posts on Christmas (even well beyond Christmas).
I believe that growing from interacting with the Word and with each other requires more than just listening to/reading something and making a comment or making up our mind about it.
Is it sweeps week? I mean all these sex articles as of late…
iggy = )
So would you say that we are too sexy?
I agree, the church should talk about sex, except sex that is a sin and might lead someone to hell. That sort of sin must be quietly ignored. Right? Couldn’t help myself. I have been married for 17 years and never once did I need a preacher to tell me how to have sex with my wife. We learned together by practicing. That’s just me though.
**yawn**
OK.
Married – do it.
Not married – abstain.
Now, where did Cain get his wife?
Well Jerry, I think that’s the best way to learn…
But many Christian couples have fear and guilt (some people have those feelings from the idea that sexual pleasure is bad, no matter who it’s with.) And although your experience seems to be a good one, we know that experience does not equal doctrine, nor is it necessarily the majority experience. Actually, I don’t have a clue what the majority experience is because nobody talks about it in the church. It doesn’t have to be vulgar or in detail. Nobody says whether they are happy or dissatisfied in bed. They don’t talk about their fears, guilts, frustrations, or enjoyments. Some of the problem is that they don’t talk about those things with their spouses.
I understand completely that something like this can be overemphasized and overtalked about. But most of the churches that are doing a good job with this include conversations and teachings as a part of their overall plan and community environment. It doesn’t become something that is overly talked about in those communities.
If you’d like a single person’s perspective on this, here it is.
I am not married.
Sermons about sex in church drive me crazy, because they really should be for married couples only. They are neither useful or helpful to me. There are some things that I as a single person just don’t really want to hear about. Pretty much the only thing I get out of anything I’ve heard is lust, which is a sin.
I agree with Rick, there are many things that don’t get taught in church. Hardly any churches go through the entire Bible. They don’t do any in-depth studying on subjects such as astronomy in the bible, science, hebrew culture, etc. There are endless subjects that I’d be interested in studying in church.
Sex is an important topic, but I have yet to hear anything about it that helps me grow in my relationship with Christ.
Christian,
Good points in your last comment especially. I really don’t think this issue is being overemphasized- I think it’s being spoke about for the first time by many groups of people. All I ever heard growing up was ‘no sex before marriage, and have it after you’re married.’ That doesn’t provide much instruction, expectations, anything…
Though I guess we could just not talk about it and people can get all their information from ’secular’ sources.
Merry,
I understand that you would be frustrated… but if you’re married, it does help you grow in your relationship with Christ. If anyone would like to throw the heretic ball at me now, go ahead.
“but if you’re married, it does help you grow in your relationship with Christ.”
That’s why I would suggest Sunday school classes for married couples only, and marriage conferences and seminars. Not sermons during church services.
Merry, the only situations I would agree with you in would be those that plan on not marrying.
We teach on lots of things in the church that don’t fit everybody’s situation. There is still value for the community as a whole. Plus, teaching on any subject before a person encounters that situation is a usually a good thing. I learned a lot about marriage and parenting from my parents long before I was even allowed to date, let alone get married. Please don’t write off sermons on sex (most aren’t about the how tos and sermons shouldn’t be). They really can be beneficial to you. And even sermons that are about sex are often not about sex itself but about the relationship between a husband and wife (which is a wonderful picture of Christ and the church). But talking about these kinds of things from the pulpit helps create an atmosphere/environment of trust and openness.
“They really can be beneficial to you.”
Oh, I don’t doubt that, and I agree with your comment, Christian. I do hope to someday be married. It’s just that the sermons on sex that I have heard in my life thus far were a bunch of fluff and only useful to married people. I’m definately interested in learning, if the teaching is really good and insightful.
It just annoys me when churches send out ads in the mail and make big to-do’s about their sermons series on sex. It does seem a bit . . . obsessive. I know it’s probably not meant that way, but it seems like churches have gone from opposite extremes– from not talking about it at all to almost (almost!) dwelling on it.
I guess it’s not just sex, it’s sermons full of fluff in general that gets to me. I’m ready for some hard-core teaching and studying, and I don’t get it at church.
Merry, I read your post again and thought about it some more. Don’t take my last comment as being all inclusive. Clearly you haven’t had the opportunity to hear anything beneficial and healthy for you on this topic. A preacher that can’t treat the subject appropriately should find other means to disciple the congregation in that area (conferences, seminars, classes, etc.). And of course there is always the idea that if you have a lot of kids present, don’t go into details. I think part of the problem in this discussion isn’t just whether we are married, but what teaching we’ve had in the past.
I agree with you on all that, Merry.
Henry asked:
Well, where did *any* of Adam and Eve’s children get their husbands and wives? Obviously, it had to be their own brothers and sisters. The gene pool was pretty uncorrupted until the time God forbid marriages within the immediate family.
Obviously he married the other humans God made in chapter 67 of Genesis: The Lost Chapter.
Come on, everyone knows incest is naasty…I thought God never changes? That whole Immutable thing? Right?
“Where did Cain get his wife?”
I think the real question is, “Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?”
Where did Cain get his wife?
I think Rick was being facetious here…
but the fact that people actually have given though to it…
the answer is the same as Augustine’s when asked what God was doing before he created the earth:
He said:
Creating hells for people who ask such questions.
Luther put it:
Cutting switches for the backsides of the ignorant.
nice.
Off topic I guess, yet it is thought that Cain took one of his sisters as his wife… The book of Jubilees states her name is Awan.
I have never felt comfortable in this line of thought… though I can see it as “justified” in that incest would not result in birth defects as the gene pool was still pure. Yet, still knowing the damage that incest plays in families, I still do not like that as an answer… how do you justify this story to a victim of incest?
I often wonder if there was a bigger story, yet the relational story of Adam and Eve and their family with God is the focus… to show how the relationship with God was destroyed by sin.
Though I still take this as literal… I often yearn for the more allegorical understanding…
iggy
Didn’t God say somewhere in Exodus or Leviticus to no longer marry close relatives? Before that it was fine, and God made it off-limits after there were enough people spread over the earth.
Abraham and Sarah were half-siblings, and Jacob married his first cousins. After the flood, when God said to be fruitful and multiply, Noah’s grandchildren would have had to marry their siblings and cousins . . . there was no one else alive!
I never thought about it being offensive to anybody; it was such a long time ago, the gene pool was pure, and society was much different.
Now the Nephilim . . . what happened there?
Unless, of course, there wasn’t an Adam and Eve in the literal sense.
Where did Cain get his wife?
From his mother-in-law.
Oh boy! I’m glad somebody said it before I did!
I just found out that Jazz is a chess player and so am I. Are any of you guys chess players and interested in internet games?
I had always assumed you guys were of the checkers variety!
Actually I envisioned Chris L. an expert Chutes and Ladders player!
No, I play collectible card games, LotR CCG, specifically…
Chris, you are such an adolescent in an adult body!
Friends,
Has anyone compiled a list of what the Bible says about sex? I’m thinking of a couple of NT passages, let’s see if we can make a big list. Maybe College Press published a ‘What the Bible Says about Sex’ book or maybe Herbert Lockyer published ‘All the Sex in the Bible.’
Hebrews says: Keep the marriage bed pure.
Corinthians says: We should only give up sex for a little while so that we can pray, and by mutual consent, and then come back together again. I think Paul said celibacy is good if you are called to that sort of life (as he apparently was) but that it was not for everyone.
Jesus says: God created marriage that divorce should only be because of infidelity. And I suspect that even then there is room for forgiveness.
Paul wrote in Corinthians a whole bunch of stuff about virgins, marriage (which is, too, a charis), incest and excommunication. Of course Corinth was a whack place to live anyhow.
Ephesians talks about marriage being a symbol of the relationship between Christ and His church.
Jesus went to a wedding party once (at least).
Romans says that humans have a tendency as they move away from God to move towards sexual perversion.
Feel free to add to the list. My point is that the Bible, being about Jesus as it is, really doesn’t have much to say about sex. I don’t think. Do we need a ‘theology of sex’ more than: ‘Do it in Marriage; don’t if you are single’? Unless we are going to revisit those passages in Leviticus that tell us people shouldn’t be perverted and amoral sexually, that is. I remember learning about sex one time in youth group, I was, oh, 14 or so. The youth group leader said: You can do anything (sexual) within the confines of your marriage. Perhaps this was overstated, but the point was that sex was confined to marriage. Maybe we could teach this stuff in youth groups to kids or in small groups to the young (and old) who driven by their urges and hormones and lust. The point about my learning in marriage was just that. Sex is a very private matter–even if the public makes it a very public matter.
Maybe the Little House on the Prairie version of sex wasn’t too bad after all. We know they did it, but we never saw it or heard about it. (Maybe that’s just naiive.)
I agree with the first thing Merry said about single people and hearing sermons about sex and being uncomfortable. But what also about the widows in the church (oh, right, Paul counseled them too). Do they want to hear about all this stuff?
(Besides, my wife tells me that I wouldn’t be a very good teacher when it comes to this stuff. She says I should stick with stuff I know like…well…uh…well, you get the point.)
your friend,
jerry
ps–I hope we are allowed even a bit of tongue n cheek around here. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out which is which.
Jerry – You make some great points. Besides the New Testament verses that deal with sex being minimal, the verses themselves are of a general nature and are centered around the moral rightness of its practice. I believe the Creator assumes a natural knowledge and practice of said behavior and He also knows we need some moral and righteous guidance.
It is not coincidental that as the western world obsesses about sex the church as well begins to focus on it. They do not preach on it in China (its obvious they know all about it), no preaching in Korea, and in reality it is the American church by and large that has bought into the circus.
There are numerous commandments in the Old Testament about the morality of it, but using the Song of Solomon as proof that God wants us to teach about the specifics in the bedroom including frequency is incredibly self serving and misinterpreted and wholly without Biblical substance.
The average pew dweller has no grasp of the sacrificial system in the Old Testament and its forshadowing of the New Testament, but he is drawn to the sex series.
Rick, I thought you were tired with this and wanted to move on.
Jerry, No humor, sarcasm, jesting, etc. We’re stuck up prudes that are too proud. We do allow self-deprecating humor though, especially from commenters that annoy us or don’t agree with us.
Look, sex by no means consumes the bible as a topic. Song of Solomon is not the reason to teach, it is a tool in teaching. The N.T. letters show that whatever the church is struggling with is important for discussion. Why do you guys assume that by taking two weeks or creating an environment of openness on sex in the church, that that means you have to cut out teaching/preaching on the rest of scripture? Isn’t that one of those logical fallacies we don’t like around here?
The church is about interacting, communicating, learning, growing, helping, encouraging, teaching, loving, serving, etc. If everythings going hunky dory for a couple and they don’t need any help in their relationship, that’s fine. But that’s probably the couple that should be mentoring another couple that is having problems. What makes that even more beneficial is when you have a community of people who can share their problems and struggles and their victories and wisdom. Like I said before, the pulpit helps create a church atmosphere on any and every subject. I’m pretty sure our people don’t have any problem talking with eachother about the sacrificial system in the O.T. (yes we still need more teaching, this particular point is on atmosphere) but they do have problems talking about marital issues (including sex), money, emotional struggles, and more.
FYI – Mark Driscoll’s current series at Mars Hill (WA) is answering the top 9 questions asked by and voted on by his church (which is 50% single) – 3 of the 9 topics were about sex:
In Week #3, he had a good number of things specifically relevant to singles – about those gifted with singleness who do not desire to marry, and on how a Christian should approach the entire subject of dating.
In Rob Bell’s book, Sex God, he has an entire chapter devoted to people who are single (and want to be that way), and the unscriptural way many of these folks are treated within the church.
Last November, my own church had a particular sermon devoted to topics of a sexual nature, covering parts of the the three questions Mars Hill (WA) is covering and some other related topics.
I agree with Christian P – it’s not an either/or, but it is a subject that we should not be afraid to broach or talk about in a forthright manner beyond simple do’s and don’t’s (as those are not necessarily where the real questions lie)…
Interestingly, in Mars Hill’s (MI) first sermon series, Rob Bell taught though the book of Leviticus – every week they had to find/make more room for more people than the previous Sunday…
Also, interestingly, a friend of mine from a church I attended years ago (in another city) said he knew it was time that they needed to talk about sex from the pulpit when he heard about two different couples (who grew up in the Catholic church) saying that Christians should not use birth control.
I just think small groups would be a better place to discuss it that is all. Or from parents. Or in health class at elementary school
. Excuse me while I scratch my ears!
Jerry
Jerry,
I agree that small groups would be a good place to discuss issues-people can pick topics that apply to them. I also agree that parents are a good place to start-but surely you don’t think that needs to be the end of talking about sex?
I do think the church needs a theology more than ‘don’t do it while single, do it while married.’ I really don’t think it cuts it anymore. When we’re still telling people not to have sex until they are married, but hey don’t get married until you’re in your thirties… that leads to sexual sin. The church needs to address sexual sins, the fact that married sex is worth waiting for, birth control (Tim and I had several people attacking us when we were married while in bible college and did not want kids yet.)
I think Mars Hill is a good example- obviously that’s not all the church teaches on, but things do need to be addressed.