Sex and God

“Let your fountain be blessed,
And rejoice in the wife of your youth.
Like a loving doe¹ and a graceful mountain goat,
Let her breasts satisfy you at all times;
Be exhilarated² always with her love.”
1. a female deer, 2. Lit. intoxicated
Proverbs 5:18-19 (NASB) »

From the article

“Sex is God’s idea. He made it not only efficient for making babies, but pleasurable and deeply satisfying. He designed men’s and women’s body parts to complement each other. He created hormones to make everything work right and make us want to be sexual. Unlike animals, whose mating behavior is purely instinctive for the purpose of reproducing, human sexuality has several wonderful purposes. God means for all of them to be contained within marriage.”

“[Sex] is so powerful that it is only safe within a committed, covenant marriage relationship. It’s like the difference between the wild energy of lightning compared to the harnessed power of electricity. God knew what He was doing when He limited sex to within marriage!”

“… intimacy really means ‘into-me-see.’ It is only safe to reveal the fullness of who we are, ‘warts and all,’ to someone who loves us and has committed to be faithful and supportive ‘till death do us part.’ The fullest experience and freedom of sex is found within the marriage bed, …”

From the article

“I recently Googled the Internet, looking for articles on dating. Specifically, I was searching to see what advice sources offered up as to when a young person should have sex.

One article that Google offered suggested this:

‘The age-old question is, how long do I need to wait before taking him/her home and getting down to business? Pop culture has settled on three dates. Don’t ask me why because I don’t believe there is an actual reason for it. It’s pretty much an arbitrary waiting period. The first date is too soon because it’s the first date. The second date may make you seem too eager or promiscuous. By the third date, you run out of reasons not to sleep with them.’

Excuse me. Did I read that right?

You must sleep with someone you date because you run out of reasons for not doing so????”

The article indicates that every normal person would like to have sex only when it was accompanied by (real) love, and unravels a number of arguments that are often used for justifying sexual activity before and outside of marriage (i.e., a loving and committed relationship), categorized by the authors as the biological argument, statistical argument, proof of love, psychological argument, experiential argument, compatibility argument, contraceptive argument, and marital argument.

Some people think it can actually help a relationship last. Others believe that it can destroy a relationship before it even began. But what does the science say about having sex before marriage?
In this episode of Relationship Radio, Dr. Joe Beam and Kimberly Beam Holmes talk about how having sex before marriage can affect the future of the relationship.

From the article

“The pornified brain sounds a lot like Mick Jagger; it can’t get no satisfaction.”

“Pornography, Doidge writes, hyperactivates the appetite system. But the satisfying system is left starving for the real thing, which includes actual touching, kissing, caressing, and a connection not only with the body but also the mind and soul. The satisfying system releases oxytocin and endorphins, and bellows, in the words of Marvin Gaye, ‘Ain’t nothing like the real thing, Baby.’ ”

“Pornographers want people to believe that viewing porn is harmless entertainment and that it can even spice up one’s love life, but the opposite is true. Rather than encouraging intimacy, research shows that porn steals it away. Porn encourages selfishness rather than an exchange of intimacy.”

From the article

«The Church’s long history includes teachings that condemned sexual desire. One of the pesky parts of our control-loving human nature is to place shame and condemnation where God did not intend.

The medieval Roman Catholic church, for example, believed that one could not have sex without sinning. The church taught that virginity was better than marriage, that sexual contact between a married couple was a “necessary evil” to continue the human race, and that passion was inherently sinful. We’ve all heard stories of monks who repeatedly whipped themselves for thinking sexual thoughts, as if their flowing blood would both adequately punish and redeem them. Though self-punishment, to us, seems to make sense, I think it makes God sad. Only God’s grace can cover our sin.

The Puritans, English Protestants who lived in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, were among the believers who rejected these teachings. Most of us hear the term “Puritan,” and we picture a religious person who is prudish about sex. Ironically, there was nothing prudish about the Puritans. They fully embraced the joys of sex! In fact, the Puritans believed and taught that it was a married man’s duty to provide sexual pleasure for his wife. There is at least one case on record in which a husband was excommunicated for “neglecting his wife” by not having sex with her for two years. And Puritan women in New England had the legal right to divorce their husbands if they proved impotent.

While that last bit isn’t biblical, the Bible does tell us that God designed sex to be fully enjoyed inside a heterosexual marriage. The book of Song of Solomon, for example, gives us a peek at the sexual delight a married man and his wife take in each other.

This poetic book also reminds us to view our spouse with perfect love, overlooking his or her flaws. No one is perfect, of course, but maintaining a commitment to see the best in our spouse goes a long way in overlooking the “little foxes that spoil the vineyards” (Song of Solomon 2:15) and ruin a marriage. God’s grace extends to forgiving us if we do divorce, but God hates the pain, suffering, and disruption that divorce dumps on us.»