Wednesday, March 2, 2011

March 2 Sexual Taboos

Leviticus 18:24 Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled.

Smith makes this comment today: "Practices once thought outrageous and shocking by grandparents are but casual recreation for their grandchildren." Unfortunately, it did not take me much thinking or reflection to see how accurate this is. I just told a colleague that there are words and behaviors our students are very familiar with that I did not know at all in college. Now I am not sure if that is the culture during my college years - though I grew up during the hippie years, or the company I kept. But whatever the reason, my personal culture was not as defiled as the one in which my grandchildren live.

Smith also makes another very meaningful comment, "Because of the profound spiritual implications of sexual intimacy, ...." and herein lies the problem, I think. They have no idea of any kind of spiritual implications of sexual intimacy. Sexual intimacy isn't intimacy, at least not if you share that act with a lot of people. It has lost its impact, its purpose as a kind of glue that cements or makes intimacy between two married people. It has become little more than a pathetic act in search of momentary pleasure.

In this last few days, I have heard of second graders engaging in oral sex because they have seen it. Middle-schoolers know more and have probably experienced more than I had as a young married. And I do know that not all middle-schoolers have experienced sex acts, but more know more about it and more have experienced it than we could possibly imagine. However, I can promise you, they have not found what they are looking for.

So what do we do about this? God designed sexual intimacy for a husband and a wife, and it is in that context that it is at it is blessed. And sexual intimacy is way more than intercourse. God calls these sexual acts in Leviticus, and I think the sexual acts called normal in our twenty-first century culture, taboo and defilement. If our children do no see it that way, why not? Who have we allowed to have the greater impact on their thinking? And when do we begin talking to them about these issues?

I am thinking it is way before this - the age of the college students who make up my world. And I fear it is before the age of my middle-schooler grandson. In fact, I think of my littlest grandchildren, age four and almost three, when do we begin helping them understand what God desires in relationships - two married people enjoying blessed physical expressions of their love?

When do we talk to them about what they see and are surrounded by that are what God would consider defiled? I'm thinking it has top be pretty early because everything in their larger world will reinterpret God's will for them, telling them the lies that a pursuit of pleasure and excitement as defined by the world do not have any cost, even though we know different.

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