Most folks feel the Bible can be pretty Puritanical when it comes to sex. Does God hate sex? Or did He just have different intentions about its purpose? Is it possible that sex has been misappropriated by broken people with selfish or incomplete agendas? What does the Bible say about sex?
“I belong to my beloved, and his desire is for me.” (Song of Solomon 7:10, NIV)
Wait. The Bible Has Something Good to Say About Sex?
In the Bible there are many warnings about indiscriminate sex, and prohibitions against all kinds of sexual activity. In our world today, there are those who call such values outdated, Puritanical, repressive, and even hateful. So why is there a book smack dab in the middle of the Bible that rejoices in sex, that celebrates intimacy between a man and a woman, and that sets Biblical prudishness back 3,000 years? Have you read the Song of Solomon lately? It’s a racy dialog between two lovers, whose intimacy is anticipated, sung about by friends, and broadcast across the pages of the Bible for all the world to read wherever Bibles are sold.
From the way these lovers rejoice in blessed carnality, the way they adore each other’s bodies and feast among each other’s lilies, one might actually get the idea that the Creator actually also created SEX! And that it can be guilt free, pleasurable, and downright HOT. There seems to be only one catch: it was designed to function best in a relationship between a husband and wife.
Lots of Choices
People have been having other kinds of sex (and seemingly getting away with it) ever since man left the garden to live in a fallen world. Noah’s generation was licentious and wild. Lot’s neighborhood was downright depraved. If you look around today’s world, we are encouraged to have more kinds of sex than ever before. Our current generation has ramped things up by adding transgender, which blurs lines to suggest even more sexual possibilities. In our “modern” world, sex can be had in just about every way imaginable. A partial list includes premarital, extramarital, same gender, swinging, wild, experimental, prostituted, BDSM, who-knows-what online, and all kinds of casual, temporary sexual activity.
All of these, we are told, provide pleasure and possible fulfillment. I’m sure that, to some degree, they do. And yet, somehow, there is a lot of hit and miss in those promises. Apart from temporary, transient pleasure, casual sex has a lot of downside. Those activities can result in low self-esteem, “the walk of shame”, humiliation, VD, or the abortion clinic, where the pleasure seems far away and the residue of lust seems lonely and incomplete. Every one of the hook-ups on “Friends” had results they never covered in the script. (And those are just the results from consensual activities. As the “Me, Too” movement illustrated, there are lots of tragic non-consensual possibilities in our “modern” sexual world…)
Not the Whole Story?
Folks who have engaged in even just the consensual pursuits often end up feeling used, broken-hearted, lonely, bitter, and empty. Guys try to make a clean getaway while girls wonder, “What’s wrong with me?” What if we asked the world to say, “Me too” if they’ve experienced that? We see couples on TV hooking up on almost every show we watch, and we hear about the promised thrills a lot—but not so much about the failed relationships, broken hearts, and the emptiness of the morning after…
Great sex, according to the Bible, is hottest when two lovers belong to each other. It has intimacy based on the fact that it represents the union between us and our creator; it has spiritual depth because it represents not only carnality and passion but caring and compassion.
The Song of Solomon says that God wants lovers to have great sex— just not cheap, selfish, abusive, or temporary sex. You’d think the creator might know some secrets about the creation. I bet if you asked Him about kissing, He’d tell. He’d probably even write a little something down about it, and it would have way more than 50 shades. Read the manual, and you’ll know a lot more about how to drive the car…
Fifty Shades of God
Doesn’t God hate sex? The Bible tells us not to do it,
Doesn’t God prohibit sex and all that there is to it?
I’ve heard, when sex is talked about, that God is just tyrannical,
And that the Bible’s stance on it is somewhat Puritanical…
And yet the Song of Solomon presents two smitten lovers
Who obviously enjoy themselves while underneath the covers!
It celebrates their intimacy in waves of carnal pleasure,
And God says that their love should be expressed in fullest measure!
They feast among the lilies, and they frolic in the glades,
Enjoying Godly intimacy in more than Fifty Shades!
When sex is blessed by God, it seems that nothing is forbidden;
When love unites the lovers, God says nothing must be hidden!
There is some ancient wisdom on it: go and take a look;
Just check with your Creator. After all, He wrote the book.
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