Remember that old song? It goes way back, but then so do I. I can answer the question in one word-God. Yes, God wrote the book on love, but humans have perverted it in so many ways. We "love" chocolate ice cream, a movie, a sports team, our pets, the list is endless.
In the Greek, there are four words for love, each with a different definition. "Agape" is the highest form of love. It is God's love. It basically means, if I remember my Greek correctly, to want only the very best for the person you love, no matter how they respond. That may be why it's called God's love. He loved us enough to send His Son to Calvary to die for our sins. He lavished wonderful gifts on us. Food, shelter, beauty in nature, again the list is endless. Some people never respond to that and all of us fail at a grateful response at one time or another and yet, He still loves us.
It may come as a surprise to some, but He even loved us enough to create the gift of sex. Again, humanity has perverted it to the point it's hardly recognizable anymore. For one example, last week a homosexual raged at me for being a shameful person because he tried heterosexual love, didn't like it, and decided, therefore, that he was homosexual. Because I disagreed with him, I'm a bigot, among other things. The idea that sex is a teenage rite of passage, an eighth grade science experiment, or anything else other than the 4 purposes for which God intended it will eventually fail. Then, what?
Take a long look back to the sexual revolution. It started with people insisting they only wanted peace and love. Bob Hope said if you disagreed with them, they'd hit you with their peace sign. (Sound familiar?) There was a lot of experimentation going on back then-or so I'm told. I was married (happily) and living in Germany when a lot of that was going on.
After a while, casual sex began to lose it's appeal. Guys were hitting on younger and younger girls and the girls were trying harder and harder to prove themselves as women. Eventually that wasn't enough. So many girls who came to the crises pregnancy centers where I worked would say their boyfriend was so sweet until after they had sex. Then, the violence started. I asked my husband about this. He said it's a dominance issue. Men want to enjoy the chase, the hunt and casual sex made it too easy, causing boredom. Rapes began to become more frequent, or was it just that more women were willing to speak out and fight? Regardless, sex had become boring to many who were using it recreationaly. Homosexuality began to become a little more popular.
Down through history, it has enjoyed periods of popularity, usually in places that had too much free time and too much money. Then, it will go through a very dark period when they are hated and abused. Neither way is expressing God's love.
I'm told the Greek work for sexual love-eros-is not in the New Testament. Does that mean God does not want sex to occur? Hardly. He created it just for us, so it's pretty obvious He wants us to have it AND ENJOY IT.
Horrors! Enjoy sex? Yes, and I can use Scripture to prove it.
For the sake of alliteration, I have found 4 purposes for sex and will state them in an alliterative format. Procreation may come to mind first. We can't have babies without sex. Science may be working on it, but I'd just as soon have mine the old fashioned way, thank you very much. "Be fruitful and multiply," God told Adam and Eve. It's a scientific reason I disagree with homosexuality. Children can only be produced through alternative methods or by adoption. God said be fruitful and multiply, but they can't on their own.
I've mentioned recreation. Several years ago, I worked at a Methodist Mission in Steubenville, Ohio. There were several VISTA programs there. One of those programs was to assist AIDS/HIV patients. AIDS was still very much in the news in those days. The fellow in charge of that program was a devout Catholic who said God intended sex for procreation, but people were instead using it for recreation.
He's right about that. However, there is recreational sex in Scripture, but it's is nothing like what's being done today. In the first place, sex is for a man and his wife-no one else. When a husband and wife have sex, they're meant to enjoy it. Deuteronomy 24:5 says, "If a man has recently married, he must not be sent to war of have any other duty laid on him. For one year his is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife he has married."
Take a look at Song of Solomon 5:1 e. "Eat, O friends, and drink; drink your fill, O lovers." Most people know and understand that the Song of Solomon is about lovers. Some insist it's only to show how deeply God loves us. More about this later. For now, let me say it is to show that God wants us to enjoy sex-as husband and wife. By the way, in their book, Passion Pursuit, Linda Dillow and Dr. Juli Slattery state firmly that the heading above that verse is wrong. It's not friends who are watching, it is God. This verse is His blessing on married sex.
When I spoke to my co-worker so long ago about this subject, I told him there was a third purpose for sex. That would be communication. Sex is a physical bond that communicates a couple's love for each other. It's the greatest physical expression of the deepest love that a couple has reserved for each other and no one else. Science bears that out. A bonding hormone is released in a women when she has sex.
The fourth purpose is education. This may be the hardest to explain and the easiest to misunderstand. Song of Solomon and some people's understanding of it is probably the best example. We can't see God and we can't physically touch Him. In order to get a tangible, physical sense of what it like to love Him spiritually, and for Him to love us spiritually, he gave us sex. Married sex is to educate people who don't understand what it's like to have a close relationship with God. When our granddaughter toasted us at our 50th anniversary celebration, she stated that we were an example to her generation. Divorce and living together in short term relationships are rampant today, but it's not the picture she sees when she looks at us being together for 50 years. Although sexual and spiritual intimacies are different types, they're similar in that intimate bond, similar in purpose.
In that spiritual bond, we have safety, security, peace, joy, happines-another endless list. The marital bond is a covenant relationship in which two people have the same thing for and from each other and no one else.
Prompted by Love, my second book spells out the four purposes of sex and the accompanying Scriptures in greater detail, but that's for another blog. Stay tuned.
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