I had a long drive yesterday to pick up tile to finish the fellowship hall. Flipping through radio stations, I stopped at the Oprah Channel and listened to a show with Dr. Laura Berman. The topic interested me because she was going to interview 20 something women on issues of sexuality.

It wasn’t long into the show before I was very saddened by what I was hearing. In modern-day sexuality of friends with benefits and one night stands, where does that leave a young women? I heard these young women make comments like, “All my other sexual partners…”, “How do I tell him that I find (fill in the blank) strange?”. It wasn’t that I was thinking they’d had so many partners, it was that I saw the discomfort. On the one hand, they are having sex, the most intimate thing you can do with a man, and they can’t talk about their feelings. One woman said she was able to have multiple partners because she was able to emotionally detach.

Yet, the thing the that blew me away was that sex wasn’t about pleasure for them. In the group only one woman had achieved an orgasm. Dr. Berman said this is typical and meets the studies. Although it wasn’t spoken, it sounded to me that it was more about expectation than it was about anything else.

While there are some who read this site that will think this isn’t a topic for Christian site, I disagree. I don’t think the women in the church do much better in this area, but if we keep quiet it will never get better. Teaching why something is the way it is makes it understandable. If we keep pointing to scripture without explanation it will never get better. I believe we have to explain why.

Sex sells, no doubt about it, from perfume to hamburgers we are inundated with sexual images in the media. When sex becomes casual and not profound then you begin to detach. When you unlock doors prematurely, with images brought on too early, desires awakening before they are understood, pressures from society that tell you sex is no big deal and love that awakens before it so desires, Song 2:7, 3:5, 8:4, through consent or through pain, then you begin to shut off emotionally. This is how we are able to emotionally detach. I don’t think these women were bad, I think these women are asking questions and trying to figure out where they fit in. I don’t think they understand the why of things any better than most.

God put sex in the confines of marriage because it is emotional. Sex is intimate, pleasurable, or should be, sacred and profound. It is not just for having babies, it’s for relationship with your spouse. I know that sounds old-fashioned but the purpose is to save us heartache. God didn’t put sex in marriage to punish us but to protect us. He made woman the last thing he put on earth because she was to be the crown of creation. She was the one who brought peace to man who had discovered there was no mate suitable for him. She was brought on the scene to be the finishing touch, the answer to his longing. Had she been brought on earlier she would have been abused by a man who didn’t understand her purpose, not because men are abusive but because he would not have known better. God brought woman to a man who understood her worth. I can’t imagine not being able to look at my husband in the eye and tell him my desires because we have intimacy and a bond that makes comfort possible.

Sex is a big deal. It’s leaving a part of you with someone else. God isn’t being punitive, he protecting his children from the misunderstandings of a great gift opened too early.