Raise your hand if you know what a healthy sex life is like for a married couple.
Bueller? Bueller? (It’s an old movie reference).
I won’t even venture to ask if you think your sex life is typical. I’d see even fewer hands.
The upside is that you can breathe a sigh of relief, you’re in good company. The downside is that as a body of believers, we’ve treated both the topic and act of sexual intimacy within marriage like we would a weird cousin who never gets mentioned at the family reunion. Our deafening silence on the matter creates the illusion that it doesn’t exist.
And that’s a major problem. Here are just some of the things that happen with Christians don’t talk about sex:
Marriages Are Isolated
If most of us don’t really know what a healthy sexual relationship looks like within a marriage, then multiply that uncertainty with a spouse, and that’s grounds for real dysfunction.
How often should sexual intimacy occur within a “normal” marriage? Who gives when a couple’s libidos aren’t equally matched? What’s off-limits and what’s in? Where do we go to find answers? Are we even allowed to ask these questions of our Christian friends and family?
I fear that too often, couples simply attempt to stumble through on their own, or worse yet, give up on growing the sexual intimacy in their marriage. Our lack of candid discourse leaves marriages on an island surrounded by embarrassment, fear, and conflicting modern cultural messages about the subject.
Someone Else Will Define It
And so they have. The “Sexual Revolution” of the 60s was really a pathetic retread of a continuous theme throughout history: Man’s desire to justify doing what we want to do. The same continues today. You can identify as anyone you want. You can love anyone (or anything) you please. YOU are your own master. Go ahead and eat the apple. No biggie.
In this milieu of ostensibly sexually liberated thought (which, ironically ends in slavery to our own biology), the Church is badly losing the public relations battle. Modern culture, with its “progressive” thought, has happily stepped in to fill the gap we’ve opened for them. Think of the last representation you saw of a normal, healthy, sexually intimate Christian couple portrayed in media. Chuck and Caroline Ingalls?
Fine. I Guess That’s Allowed.
If we know can’t fully trust what our culture is telling us about sex between a husband and a wife, why isn’t anyone in the Church talking about it? Is it bad? Should we not be doing IT, let alone thinking or discussing it? Do we have to refer to it in code as IT?
Maybe you’ve had a different sense, but on rare occasions in churchy (it’s a word) settings as a young man, the silence made sex seem like an inherently unclean act that was only allowed once you got married. Almost as if it were tolerated as opposed to celebrated and encouraged. Fortunately, God’s Word says it’s to be celebrated!
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Genesis 1:28
The TJK translation: Sex. Fishing. Hunting.
May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth. A loving doe, a graceful deer— may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be intoxicated with her love.
Proverbs 5:18-19
In other words, deer are awesome, and so are your wife’s breasts.
That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.
Genesis 2:24
Intercourse literally causes you to be one organism, spiritually and physically. Kinda makes choosing a spouse seem like a big deal.
How beautiful you are and how pleasing, my love, with your delights! Your stature is like that of the palm, and your breasts like clusters of fruit. I said, “I will climb the palm tree; I will take hold of its fruit.” May your breasts be like clusters of grapes on the vine, the fragrance of your breath like apples, and your mouth like the best wine. May the wine go straight to my beloved, flowing gently over lips and teeth. I belong to my beloved, and his desire is for me.
Song of Songs 7:6-10
And to reiterate, boobs are great. Wives, treat your husbands to them…frequently. Guys, be the kind of man your wife wants to give herself to. Enjoy your union!
The Joy is Robbed
But the sinister silence about sex is suffocating any helpful discourse about the subject for married couples, making the little sex that is happening hard to enjoy. Maybe it’s cast as a necessary evil. Maintenance. An unpleasant duty. So that which God has created to be enjoyed is ultimately sullied and devalued.
Without joy in sexual intimacy, it’s really hard to have any true intimacy at any level. God delights in Creation, and (I believe) the creative process. We were made in His image, so we should delight in it too!
What Can We Do?
One thing I’ve begun doing, with close guy friends whom I trust, is to share some of the challenges I face as a husband. True, it takes some vulnerability, but in my experience, my buddies are quick to jump in with their own struggles and are relieved to finally have someone to talk to, because, we all just feel so isolated and unsure of where to go to establish a “normal.”
Also, I think we have to be willing (in the right settings) to discuss issues of sex and sexual intimacy within the four walls of a church building. Imagine the light on a hill we could be in a culture bereft of a sexual compass if the Church reclaimed her rightful role as the instructor of God’s Word. That we not reserve sermons or studies about love for Valentine’s day alone.
We also need to reclaim a modest sense of humor about sex and not be so uptight. Admit it, you were utterly shocked when you learned about the mechanics of the act. I was…because it’s crazy and such an unlikely process, but the God we worship invented it, so it’s within our realm to appreciate all the bizarre incongruities.
Finally, I might get around to writing an article about the whole topic. You know, maybe throw it up on my website and bring some much-needed daylight to the topic. Maybe I’ll get my wife to help me with the research…
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