In order to avoid distorting this beautiful aspect of God’s creation, we must talk about it.
We live in an increasingly sexualized world. Whereas sexual content once had to be actively sought out, we now must work to actively avoid the same content. Issues of sexuality and gender have become ubiquitous topics of conversation. We, as the Church, are faced with a tough reality: the Church, in my opinion, is not at the forefront of these discussions of sex and sexuality. We have a responsibility to ourselves, our children, and the world around us to share the truth of God’s word in the area of sexual ethics.
If we are to share God’s truth on sexuality, the conversation must begin within the church. For one reason or another though, the topic of sex seems to be taboo within the body of Christ. I grew up in the church, not being educated about sexual ethics and what the Bible teaches on the topic. I, like many of us, therefore had an incredibly distorted understanding of all things sex. I was scared of the word. I thought sex was ugly, dirty, and nasty. I thought it was something that, as a Christian, I was supposed to avoid at all costs. I didn’t know that sex was actually created by God to be a beautiful and uniting part of a marital relationship shared between a man and a woman.
What if we in the church taught about sex and sexuality in healthy ways instead of making “sex” out to be a dirty word? What if we educated ourselves and our children about issues of sex so that we could have healthy discussion? What if, instead of keeping sex in the dark, we talked about it in appropriate ways and at appropriate times? What if we taught our children biblical truths about sex so they didn’t have to discover sexuality through the world’s eyes? What if we, as churches, tackled the various issues of sexuality (sex before marriage, healthy and appropriate sex, adultery, pornography, homosexuality, transgenderism, etc.) head-on instead of shying away from the topics?
In order to avoid distorting this beautiful aspect of God’s creation, we must talk about it.
Even if we spend more time talking about sexuality, sexual sin will still exist. An ugly truth is that, when it comes to sexual sin, because of the church’s inability to healthily speak about sexuality, sexual sin is unfairly categorized as a “worse sin” than many others. Make no mistake, sin is sin. However, culturally, sins such as gossip are given a pass as being more acceptable, while sexual sin is condemned more harshly when it is brought to light.
People caught in sexual sin are shamed, looked down upon, and publicly ridiculed. Yes, all our sins carry a component of consequence and repercussion, but why is sexual sin not afforded the same measure of grace as other sins?
This ought to be the joy of being the body of Christ: an opportunity for us as drunkards, adulterers, addicts, liars, homosexuals, thieves, prostitutes, pornographers, gossips and the like to come together as one and profess our fallen state before our merciful God who has saved us from those very sins through the death, burial, and resurrection of his son Jesus.
Above all, we must pray for humility, and ask God to grant us the wisdom to have healthy dialogue about sexual ethics. As with all delicate conversations, please remember that the best forum for discussion is within the context of relationship. God is good and faithful and he will continue to guide our path as we consider issues of sexual ethics.
