Talking about sex isn't easy
By Mike Haynes
It isn’t
easy for Christian leaders to talk about sex.
Youth
ministers sometimes tackle it, as do singles leaders and marriage counselors. An
occasional courageous preacher uses the three-letter word from the pulpit.
But a local
Baptist pastor, pointing out that we live in a “sex-saturated culture,”
believes “we are all compromised in our sexual ethics.” So for the past four
years, starting with a summer course at England’s Oxford University, he has
researched the biblical view of sex, surveyed college students about it and
taught a prototype class seeking to guide young people toward the biblical
model.
Dr. Roger
Smith, 36, pastor of Pleasant Valley Baptist Church and my distant cousin,
wrote his
dissertation for Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas
City on that topic. His work, which capped his doctorate this May, doesn’t
paint sex as evil, like some in the church have done for centuries, or as an
inconsequential, physical act that only requires consent. It treats it an
important, intimate part of marriage but points out that scripture intends sex
to be practiced in that marriage context.
 |
| Dr. Roger Smith |
“Assessing
and achieving sexual purity requires that the church stop stigmatizing sexual
sin as somehow special,” wrote Smith, a guitar-playing husband with young
children. “Whether it is pornography, homosexuality or simply trying to help
marriages that struggle with sexual intimacy, the church must start approaching
this area of life as it would any other: with biblical love, wisdom and truth.
“As long as people who struggle
with sexual sins are treated as though they are somehow more sinful or simply
freaks when compared to everyone else, the church will continue to lose
ground.”
Smith had Amarillo
College students – some associated with Baptist Student Ministries and others
in secular classes – complete anonymous surveys with questions ranging from “My
spiritual beliefs influence my sexual decisions” to “Premarital sex is OK if a
man and a woman are truly in love” to “Pornography can be a part of a healthy
fantasy life and can help enhance sex.”
The surveys
showed that the “churched” students knew a little more of the Bible’s sexual
ethic than the other students but that the two groups’ sexual lifestyle was
about the same. In an eight-week class, Smith then refuted the “secular lies”
about sex of men such as Sigmund Freud, Alfred Kinsey and Hugh Hefner.
He also
showed how the sexual prudishness of early Christian leaders such as Augustine
went to the opposite extreme compared to what the Bible actually says.
“Through
the study of the scriptures,” Smith wrote, “we came to the conclusion that sex
is a good part of God's good creation that is often used in destructive ways.
Sex is a vital part of the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman.”
It is
corrupted in many ways, as described in Romans 1:24-25: “Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their
hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.
They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and
worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator....”
Turn
on a TV reality show for five minutes, and you’ll see proof of that truth. But
it isn’t just the hollow values of pop culture; it’s us, too. Who can say that
Jesus’ warning against “adultery in the heart” (Matt. 5:28) doesn’t apply to
them?
Smith showed fallacies in the romantic myth,
which says sex is “all about love and affection;” the pornography myth, which
says it’s “all about fun and personal fulfillment;” and the therapeutic myth,
which views sex “as a means to wholeness.”
He saw
shifts in the thinking of students who took the class seriously by writing
regular journal entries. He said several “claimed a sense of freedom and
control over their lives.”
Smith hopes
his research can help Christian leaders guide young people starting at about
age 14. He wrote:
“No
generation, no church, no demographic, no denomination will ever be free from
this battle, but that does not mean that the church is free to ignore the
problem because it is too big.”
* * *
Mike Haynes teaches journalism at Amarillo
College. He can be reached at AC, the Amarillo Globe-News or haynescolumn@hotmail.com. Go to www.haynescolumn.blogspot.com for other recent columns.
