Sex is Good. And, yes, even I can KNOW that.

We are currently in the midst of our relationship series and we have asked students to text in questions to be able to get some feedback on what they think and give them some opportunity to participate in the messages. One of the topics is sex. Of the 34 questions we have received, 8 have asked if sex is good. Couple those questions with the one question, "How does Geoff know" and I am presented with a conundrum. A bit of a predicament it seems.

As it has been made clear, I am 24 year-old, single, virgin, talking about sex and relationships. Ironic, huh? Not really. But what is really ironic is that relationships and sex are two things that I am actually really passionate about (and not because I am desperate for either) both because they have been so misconstrued in so many ways for way too long.

See, I grew up understanding sex as something that was bad. I will accept personal responsibility as long as I can declare a few variables that I feel were influential in this mentality.

1) School told me so.
As much as schools seem to be taking a different approach to this, the school at its core was trying to tell me not to have sex. And if not having sex is "good," then having sex is "bad," therefore making sex, categorically bad.
2) Parents told me so.
In all reality, my parents never said, "Sex is bad." But they never really said that it was good. As a matter of fact, by telling me never to get near it, they were telling me that it was something to avoid. If you should avoid something, it usually means that it is bad. Ergo, sex was a bad thing.
3) Church told me so.
Again, the only thing that I ever heard the church saying, at the time, was that it was all bad. Clearly, this is easy to do as you are trying to help guide high schoolers in the path of doing right and wrong. And, of course, it's not God's plan that high schoolers have sex. So to say that, made sense. But it still meant that sex was bad.

I'm convinced that sex isn't bad. Sex is good. It is very good. As a matter of fact, the whole act of sex could be considered the ultimate in the best example of Christ's love. Genesis 2 shows us that sex is good. God was pleased. It was God's plan that we have sex inside marriage. God made it so that we would leave our father and mother and be joined to someone of the opposite sex to become one. Not only emotionally and spiritually, but physically. That means sex, boys and girls. And it was all good!

It brings me to the point: If we continue to color all sex as evil and bad, we don't allow students to understand how sex can enhance the marriage relationship. So, what are we going to say about sex? How are we going to help students understand it?


GC