Return of the Son of Sex for Christians

So first of all, ick to this:

Sex was the topic of the night at Hillsong NYC’s midweek eXchange service, and guest speakers Ed and Lisa Young—the Texas megachurch pastor and wife who attracted international media attention at the beginning of this year for spending 24 hours in bed on the roof of their church—preached to the young, hip congregation about God’s plan for intimacy. “It’s all about context: the marriage bed, a God-given gift and a God-united covenant,” Pastor Young declared, sitting on the bed and looking at his wife. “When the content—sex—is in the right context, we’ll discover God’s destiny for our lives. But when we take the content out of context, the result is ultimately going to be chaotic.” And the group responded: “Wow. Yes, that’s good. That’s good.”

[...]

The Youngs, in a well-rehearsed shtick, were publicizing their book, Sexperiment: 7 Days to Lasting Intimacy With Your Spouse, in which they challenge husbands and wives to have sex every day for a week straight. They are the latest in a line of pastors—Mark Driscoll perhaps the most well-known among them—who claim that society has taken sex too far, and that the church hasn’t taken it far enough; that culture has hijacked sex, and that God has been left out of the discussion for too long. By openly promoting sex—among married heterosexual couples—they are trying to distance themselves from the prudish attitudes commonly associated with conservative Christians and working to reach a generation of hip, culturally savvy, young evangelicals. (Although as a recent Religion News Service report indicates, more direct sex talk is a growing trend even among traditional evangelicals.)

You know, there's a way to talk about sex, irrespective of context. And there are about half a billion ways not to talk about sex. One very good way not to talk about sex is by letting the world know just how grrrrreat your sex life is, and how they should have just as much sex as you do (in Church approved ways and with Church approved people).

I get that evangelicals feel like they're losing the sex war, and that the way to get it back is by trying to convince people that they don't really hate sex, just the wrong kind of sex. But the reason that evangelicals are losing this war isn't because of what they say they like about sex, but because of how vocally they remind the world of what they don't like about it.

The degree to which they enjoy their own intercourse is really not relevant to the conversation. The degree to which they want to make sure other people don't enjoy it is. And the more they engage in this kind of cringe-inducing spectacle, the less relevant they are going to seem.

Comments

[A Facebook User]

Exactly! Ick! For all their talk of healthy sex, they still refuse to address their deep fear of sexuality in general. They focus on kosher sex, but don't seem to realize how far removed legalistic kosher concerns are from the kingdom of God. So petty, so small...