“When the church whispers about sex
and the culture yells about it,
who’s voice is gonna be heard?”
(Prostitutes and Polygamists, p. 19).
Parents, children, pastors, teachers, all of us feel a bit uncomfortable talking about sex, sexual sins, and sexual scandals. We avoid the subject, or when we do discuss it, we whisper. But avoiding doesn’t make it go away (think of the proverbial ostrich).
The Bible doesn’t avoid it. It talks about it in the beginning. God’s first command to the freshly made humans is basically, “Have a lot of sex” (my paraphrase of “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth”; Gen. 1:28).
And the Bible talks about Abraham pimping his wife Sarah in Egypt, Judah hooking up with his daughter-in-law Tamar, who’s pretending to be a prostitute, David’s affair (I call it rape) with Bathsheba, the gang rape of the Levites concubine (read my take on Judges 19 here). And what’s up with all that polygamy and incest?
For some subjects like homosexuality, it seems like some churches are yelling, but generally I think they’re sending the wrong message. I discuss homosexuality in the context of the story of Sodom, and you might be surprised by what Scripture says about the story of Sodom.
The Bible talks about sex and sexual scandals a lot. We need to talk about these subjects because the Bible talks about them, assuming we think all Scripture is inspired and profitable for teaching.
Our culture talks about sex all the time, perhaps Christians need to start teaching these overlooked, ignored sexual scandals of Scripture. That’s what I try to do in Prostitutes and Polygamists. Check it out.