I'm writing this at about 5 AM...I can't sleep right now. At first I couldn't sleep because of the recent invasion of my cozy little apartment by a stink bug...he's gone now, but I'm sure there must be more of his kind lurking around, thirsty for blood (yes, I just found out they bite) and vengeance. But now even that's (more or less) fading into the background as another issue takes precedence in the "keeping me up WAY past my bedtime" scheme. As some of you may know, I'm planning to co-write a book about dating and relationships someday. That said, I am *extremely* interested in all topics related to dating, courtship, marriage, sex, love, romance, and so on. Tonight (and for a while now) I've been researching and thinking about different kinds of sexual sin.
Sexual sin is...different...than any other kind of sin, somehow, at least for humans to deal with. I don't think any other kind of sin feels so shameful to us when we are at last convicted of our wrongs. As a result, Christians don't like to talk about our sexual sin. We keep it hidden. We don't discuss it, or if we do, it's in abstract terms about "oh, yeah, all men struggle with lust sometimes" or "purity in relationships is challenging." But we don't get personal about it. In my experience, the Church really doesn't even like to talk about sex beyond the occasional "hey, save that for marriage, folks." Lately I've been coming to the conclusion that this is one of the greatest and most tragic failings of the modern evangelical church.
I think that in God's eyes, sin is sin. Without the saving grace of our Lord Jesus Christ covering us, God sees us all as fallen sinners - not only the married man who has an affair, but also the six-year old child who disobeys her father when he tells her to go to bed and she refuses. I think maybe one of the biggest reasons that sexual sin is prominent in today's culture and so hard to conquer is that we treat it so differently than other kinds of sin. There is a certain stigma attached to sexual sin in the church that we don't really see with other kinds of sin, and I think this attitude is really screwing up the evangelical church (n.b. I think that in many ways, sexual sin is more difficult to recover from than other kinds of sin, but I think this is at least in great part due to our treatment of it, not just its inherent qualities...maybe I'll write more on this another time).
When a person commits any kind of sin, it is good and right for him or her to feel some sort of guilt - this is the work of the Holy Spirit in convicting us of our sins. But when a person commits a sexual sin, he or she usually feels something more than this true guilt the Holy Spirit places on our hearts. We as Christians view sexual sin as something so loathsome and dirty and shameful, that we aren't comfortable talking about it to each other. In doing so, we give this kind of sin extraordinary power over us. A sin will not disappear, no matter how many times we feel guilt and shame over it and pray for God to help us conquer it, if it remains hidden in darkness. It is only when we expose our sins to the light of the holy Scriptures and to Christian fellowship and to God's grace that we will ever be able to cast it out of our lives.
This is hard to do.
We in the Church are so scared of admitting to specific sexual sins. But until we do this, these sins will hold power over us.
In addition to losing their hold on us, we also need to expose sexual sins to the light as an example for our brothers and sisters in Christ, especially young believers.
Right now, the Church is failing miserably at educating its young people about sex. At least in the churches I went to growing up, we never really talked about sex beyond "having sex before marriage is bad.....now sign this abstinence pledge so we don't have to worry about you or talk to you about this anymore." People didn't talk about pornography and struggles with homosexuality and masturbation and the like. This is just tragic.
I've had several conversations in my life with guys and girls who struggle with sexual purity. I've definitely had my own struggles with purity at times. Our culture is completely saturated with sex and pornography and acceptance of giving in to whatever desires you have, so it shouldn't be surprising that so many people struggle in this area. The mainstream entertainment industry and the pornography industry are more closely related now than they have ever been before. The internet has made accessing pornographic materials easier than ever before. And yet the Church is still barely addressing these issues. So many of the people I have talked to about these things are confused - confused about how far is too far to go physically with someone you're not married to, confused about whether or not masturbation is wrong, confused about how to handle the ridiculous amount of sex the media is *dumping* upon us. And this is so, so disturbing to me. The Church is failing - it is letting its young people down, and so they remain confused and unsure about what is right and what is wrong, about what is okay and what is not, and so they falter and are unsure about what to do with all these situations which inundate them on a daily basis.
Satan is using this fear and discomfort and awkwardness and shame to deter the Church from its mission. The Enemy is so good at whispering lies to us, at telling us that what we have done is too bad for Jesus to save us, but this is not true! We need to understand that Jesus' blood covers a multitude of sins, even sexual ones! We need to comprehend that no sin is too great or shameful or dark or disgusting for us to be saved!
It's almost 6 AM now, and I have an exam in a few hours, so I really need to stop writing now. I'm sure I'll write more about this sometime, but for now, let me just say:
I *urge* the Church as a whole to step up on this issue, not to shy away from a topic just because it is uncomfortable.
I *urge* Christian men to take leadership in the fight for sexual purity and not to leave physical boundaries up to the decision of the women they date.
I *urge* both Christian men and women who have struggled (and/or continue to struggle) with sexual purity not to be weighed down with false guilt about their sins and forced by the Enemy into feeling like they need to keep their sins secret, but instead to speak without feelings of fear and condemnation (because of the Spirit, who gives life and freedom) - to openly share their struggles with the knowledge that Christ's power brings healing, as well as the understanding that it is only through talking openly about these things that we can make any progress in this realm.
