Christianity And Sex Not Mutually Exclusive

“The Christian perspective on sex”: I have to admit, it’s an intimidating topic—each word is just packed with subjectivity, argument, and confusion. And then, of course, there’s the general weirdness of a phrase that places “Christian” and “sex” in such close proximity to one another.

I think we Christians largely have ourselves to blame for the awkwardness that surrounds this subject. After so many sexually mute generations, when we finally started to break the uncomfortable silence in our homes and churches, we broke it using lists of rules, and corresponding lists of punishments for breaking those rules. And now, unsurprisingly, such Christian “conservatism” is hardly ever understood in light of the why—why our faith leads us to respond so oddly, so seemingly unnaturally, to something as clearly innate and desirable as sex.

I’m a Christian, and I’m a woman, and sometimes I wonder what it’d be like to really be as prudish as pop culture portrays me. The truth is that Christians want love, but not just love—we want love and sex and intimacy and passion and the feeling of knowing that we’re needed. We fear commitment and rejection. Sometimes Christian men are tempted to make themselves seem more devoted to us than they are, because they want what they want when they want it. Sometimes Christian women are tempted to take advantage of the lust that we know our guys struggle with because we want to be wanted. At the core of Christianity is the undeniable truth that humans are creatures of appetite—hungry and thirsty and longing for the things that satisfy.

There’s a story in the Bible about a woman who meets Jesus while she’s out drawing water from a well. Jesus asks her for a drink, and then, strangely, asks her to go get her husband. She responds quietly that she has none. I can just imagine the compassion in his very human, very divine eyes as he affirms, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

I like when people recount Bible stories in the present tense. It implies that what God says in the pages of the Bible are the words that he continues to say to the hearts of those who will hear him. “Everyone who drinks this [well] water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” My Jesus spoke these same words to me on the day that I committed my life to him, and he continues to whisper them whenever I find myself seeking satisfaction in the fleeting.

Along with my humanity comes my sinfulness. This was obvious ever since my parents found that they never had to teach me how to be selfish, how to hurt people, or how to lie. I was never instructed on how to squander my time, energy, words, emotions and intimacy on people I didn’t love, and whom my heart knew didn’t love me. Still, I think that every Christian becomes, at some moment in his or her life, the unnamed woman at the well, who finds that even after five relationships—after all the promises, compliments, passion and fuzzy feelings—she is left thirstier than ever.

New-age thinking, yoga, Oprah, and postmodernism would tell us that the solution can somehow be found within ourselves—in heightened spiritual awareness, in the connection between the mind, body and soul, in some hidden part of us that is awfully intuitive, intelligent, enlightened, or existential. But Christians are doubters. There was a distinct moment at which I actually began to reject my doubts about who this Jesus was. Eventually I admitted that it’d take more faith to reject him than to assent to what I knew in my heart of hearts—that is, that inside of me could be found nothing but humanity, nothing but a vacuum­—and that outside of me, wrapped up in Jesus, were true love, completion, security, fidelity, and escape from my patterns of sin, all “welling up to eternal life”. I consider myself married to Jesus—not awkwardly dating him, not constantly trying to work up emotions, not anxious that he might grow bored and leave me, not ashamed to lay my countless flaws bare before him, but established in a deeply committed relationship with him. Christianity is not a religion, but an unbreakable union—a marriage and a friendship—with the God that created both love and sex. I wonder if it’d be too adventurous to say that the Christian appreciates sex more than anyone. We know it’s neither evil nor shameful, but beautiful and right, something to be honored and treasured in the context for which God made it—in marriage. If God really values me so highly that he’d die for me, it only makes sense that he’d be interested in my future. And, resting assured that he loves me more than any human being ever could, I trust that God has someone in mind for me. By saving myself for marriage, I’m simply being faithful, both to my future husband and to the God who designed, sustains, and cherishes my body.

Now it’s my love for Christ, and my ever-increasing knowledge of his love for me, that motivate me to lead a sexually pure life. And these same convictions enable me to get back on my feet when I slip—both over the brand-new temptations that face me every day, and over the guilt and memories that linger from my past—for my God is a fountain of grace and mercy. Christ is all, and my life and heart are safe with Him.

The author is a Barnard College sophomore and is the treasurer of Campus Crusade for Christ.