Overcoming Lies About SexSýnishorn

Sex Is Not Dirty

Driving on icy roads can be treacherous. Safety experts say that if you ever find yourself spinning on one of these roads, it’s best not to turn your wheel against the spin. Instead, they suggest, gently turn into the spin until your car stabilizes. In a spin, our impulse is to overcorrect, but it’s best to ignore that impulse and lean into the discomfort. On the less than comfortable topic of sex, it’s often been the church’s impulse to overcorrect—either by not talking about sex at all, or by talking about sex as something bad or wrong. The church’s intentions may have been good: to push against the wider culture’s obsession with sex and to keep people from spinning into sexual sin. But such strategies have not helped Christians navigate the treacherous roads of temptation well at all. They have only led to wide acceptance of the lie that sex is dirty.

For the record, sex is not dirty. To reiterate the point made yesterday: sex is a good gift from God. In a misguided attempt to encourage abstinence or in response to their own negative sexual experiences or sexual shame, some spiritual teachers have taught that enjoying sex is bad, wrong, or dirty. In the biblical context, it is neither of those things. We can look back as far as Eden, a place that represents God’s ideal for all of creation, and see that God Himself invited man and woman to enjoy the special intimacy of sex. He even made sex pleasurable by design. It didn’t have to be that way, but God gave sex as a good thing for us to enjoy (in the loving context we described yesterday).

Genesis isn’t the only place that we see human sexuality as something blessed and endorsed by God. All throughout the book of Song of Solomon, we read about a couple’s vibrant love for each other. Their love is fully expressed on their wedding night when they engage in sex, enjoying each other and the pleasure of their sexual union.

If you’ve heard messages from the church or from Christian teachers that make sex sound dirty or bad, please look again at what the Bible has to say. You might be surprised at what you find. God has blessed us with a capacity to love deeply and has given us sex as a way to express that love through intimate connection in the context of marriage.

Thought of the Day: We serve a good God who gives good gifts. Whether married or single, we entrust ourselves to God, who created us. He knows our innate sexual desires and calls us to wholeness and holiness.