- “Unfortunately, we live in a society that constantly bombards us with images of sex that have very little to do with healthy sexuality.” – Healthysex.com
Since I am writing about sex in our culture, I was curious as to what is out there on the ol’ internet having to do with “healthy sex”. Honestly I could not agree more with this sentence. So much of the media that I have consumed throughout my life has included some sort of sexual suggestion. At 12 or 13 years old, littleBryanwas being shown very-close-to naked girls holding skateboards, or wheels, or selling shampoo. Really, after thinking about it, it doesn’t seem fair. When unclothed bodies are used to sell products, it takes away from the humanity of the body. One ends up disassociating the human form from personality, and instead we see that the body is a means to an end. If advertisers use the body to achieve their own ends, why can we not do the same? Although none of us may want to admit it, I think that this is at the center of much of the lust struggles in our society. It may be hard for us to discern healthy sex from the version of sex that we have learned through media and our culture, but the difficulty does not take away from the fact that it must be done. So what is healthy sex?
I’m going to go ahead and be a little cliché here and throw some bible verses at you. But they are fun ones, I promise. In Song of Solomon, 2:3, the woman in the story says, “Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest is my beloved among the young men. I delight to sit in his shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste.” Call me sick, but that sounds a little like a B.J. to me. So if I am interpreting this correctly, God is down with oral sex. Cool. We move on. Later on in chapter 3 she goes on to say “My beloved thrust his hand through the latch-opening; my heart began to pound for him. I arose to open for my beloved, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with flowing myrrh, on the handles of the bolt. I opened for my beloved…” Hmm, take a wild guess at what she is talking about my friends. I only bring this up to say that God, in the bible, is stoked on some super sexy sex. Throughout the whole book of Song of Solomon, the man and the woman are just gushing about each other, telling the other how beautiful, and handsome and perfect and strong etc.
This is not a couple that came together for a one night stand and never talked again. I believe that any sex outside of marriage and without love is not what it should be. It’s like eating a banana when it’s still green. One can only get the best out of sex when it is experienced the way it was designed to be experienced. Also I believe that sex is an expression of love. Love is luckily described in the bible as being patient, kind, protecting, trusting, hoping and persevering. Not self seeking, not proud and it doesn’t dishonor others. Now whenever we can apply these in the context of sex I believe it is our duty to do so. How would one do this? Well let’s take choking in sex for example. Choking is not a good example of protecting, or kind, using whips and clamps isn’t either. No one should ever feel pressured in sex and as long as you are looking out for what is best for your partner instead of yourself I believe you will be ok. We see a lot of things through pornography which we are told is normal sex. But the sex that God wants you to have actually looks pretty different from what our society will show you. God has already given us a good picture of what He wants sex to be, and if you follow that I believe that you will end up having a much more fulfilling sex life than anyone who disregards his guidelines would have.