Into the Fire

Recently I've warily delved into a few general market books, mostly suspense and mystery novels. I'm a third of the way into my last one for a while. Guess what I've discovered?

In Christian fiction sex is taboo. At least anything past "longing looks" and "deep kisses" and occasional thoughts of "possibilities" related to those longing looks and sensual kisses. Not only is sex left to the imagination, real sexual attraction lags somewhere in no man's land – or perhaps I should revise that to say no woman's land. Mention a slang term for breast ("boob") or even the real word for breast: breast, and nope, nada, and don't-you-dare use those words in a Christian novel! 

In the general market, as expected, sex is mostly detailed, slang terms are used for just about everything, men and women lust after each other, and sex appeal is often prominently displayed and acted upon.

So. What's wrong with this picture? Making love is a God thing. Having sex is a worldly thing. The difference between two individuals becoming one under the marriage banner (and those individuals aren't of the same sex) and those who randomly select partners to indulge the flesh present a huge gap. Big. Definitive. Separated in every possible way except in the way their bodies function.

Why am I bringing this up again? Because there's no escaping sex. It's everywhere. The enemy of our souls has taken something beautiful and perverted it into something meaningless, inconsequential, or depraved, lying about the effects of fornication, homosexuality, pedophilia, rape, and every other derelict use of bodies to provide sexual content. It doesn't matter that rape is about control and dominance – there is a sexual trigger.

Of all the different kinds of romance novels – and there are probably millions - in Christian fiction shouldn't sex be presented in honesty and beauty the way it was intended? I don't mean explicitly or with graphic descriptions, but there is much to be said for portraying the sexual attraction between a man and a woman. It's not just about longing looks and deep kisses. There isn't anything wrong with honest magnetism. And why shouldn't it be contrasted to the lusty version the world uses?

If nothing else, reading two of the three secular novels reminds me of the messes people create for themselves with their misguided pursuit of the male/female dynamic culminating in sexual favors, episodes, experiences. There's nothing there to hold onto. Not that a kind of human love can't develop, but without the stabilizing beauty of God's idea of lovemaking, people are reduced to mere physical beings. This provides temporary satisfaction, but that's all. It's an act. Like eating a meal. After a while, you're hungry again. Appetites flare. Dissatisfaction with the menu. An ongoing pursuit begins. Or continues.

And that, my friends, is the trouble with sex . . .   

Father, you made the act of love a holy experience. You created beauty in the two becoming one. You made all things good. I'm so sorry for the perversion and corruption of what the world calls sex. We're all desperate for you, whether we know it or not. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.