http://m.relevantmagazine.com/life/relationship/blog/27747-is-sexual-sin-communal-sin
Hi, my name is Jen, and I'm a recovering individualist.
What the heck does that mean?
Well, it starts with the basis of this article; that there are many baby steps between the knowledge of the differences between sexual individualism and sex within a covenant relationship - between porneia and agape (read the article to understand these terms).
I used to believe - as society teaches us - that I am the center of my own universe and my primary objective in life is to serve myself; to gain more, to be more, to grow more, to learn more. And I applied this to my relationships. I deserved to be happy. Fulfilled. Loved. Respected. And any relationship that did not conform to that was disposable. My sense of entitlement shaped every facet of my life, dictating the choices I made with the primary goal to be to improve the quality of my existence. But as this article illustrates, it is when we individualize our existence and remove it from its connectedness to others, we corrode the very foundations of our society; and our individual decisions have an effect not only on ourselves, but upon humanity as a whole.
Last year, I went through a complete transformation through the Holy Spirit. And it was during this time that I went through my own baby steps from believing in, practicing, and engaging in sexual individualism to a commitment of abstinence outside of the covenant of marriage. Last summer, I was having a discussion about this topic with someone I was having sex with. I was grappling with my changing heart on the matter and trying to relay that to him. As I tiptoed around the topic of abstinence, he finally asked if I was going to become a nun or something.
The tone in his voice had a twinge of mockery and sarcasm in it that left me embarrassed at the thought of it; that it was so far off the left field of societal norm that I couldn't possibly ever take it seriously. And being still in the infancy of my walk with Christ, I did not defend that idea because I wasn't fully won over by it. My readings of the bible told me that sex was only to be experienced between husband and wife within the covenant of marriage, but the chasm I had to cross from sexual promiscuity to abstinence was too big to cross in one fail swoop. Thus began my journey through these baby steps.
My first baby step was taken before that relationship - it was when I made a conscious choice to stop sleeping around. At the end of a marriage riddled with intimacy issues, I found myself emotionally starved and my sexual attractiveness challenged. I was wounded, broken, empty and in no position to even consider a relationship; yet my emotional starvation compelled me to seek out what I needed through sexual encounters. Six months of that and I found myself in worse shape than when I'd started; on the brink of an emotional meltdown. I knew nothing except that what I was doing wasn't working. So my first baby step was made more out of desperation than out of any sense of morality.
My second baby step was put into action when I met someone, like myself, who needed intimacy and companionship but wasn't ready for relationship. We engaged in all the levels of intellectual, creative, physical and emotional intimacies that a real relationship is supposed to have, but without the commitment. This is commonly referred to as friends with benefits.
The third came about around the time of our conversation (about the nun). As I read the bible, I began to be aware of what it said about sex; and because I couldn't make the stretch to abstinence outside of marriage yet, I compromised in my heart and said to myself that sex within the boundaries of love was ok. That God couldn't possibly condemn me for being intimate with someone I was in love with. And it was during this time, that playing house with him turned into reality for me. But he wasn't where I was at, and didn't want to be; creating a conundrum that threatened to rip through every facet of our lives that we had unintentionally woven together.
Step four was when I discovered the flaw in that - that me loving him didn't mean he loved me, that it was a counterfeit for the real thing and the pain I was suffering was a result of me settling for the counterfeit. And step five came when I accepted fully in my heart the biblical definition of relationships, sex and marriage and made a commitment to God and myself not to give myself to anything less.
You may never go through the same steps I did; you may not understand what I'm taking about or can relate to it at all. But the importance of the evolution of this in my heart, my mind, my life is screaming at me at the top of its lungs - and its message is my commission from God, to share my perspective on it with others.
From the article: "Think about the sexual ethic that dominates our airwaves, billboards, bars and bedrooms. We are a society that believes in consequence-free sex; in sex that is first and foremost fun; sex that is removed from communities and severed from reproduction and children. At the center of sex lies not the family or even the couple but the individual, and what is paramount is that the sexual needs of the individual are met. Like any other application of rampant individualism, such a self-centered sexual ethic finds its ultimate destination in abuse and exploitation. We damage not only ourselves, but those in our midst: using people, hurting people, raping people, abandoning people."
The message of truth in this is the same message that resonates throughout the whole bible: that the freedoms we allocate to ourselves outside of the will of God become our prison, giving us enough rope to hang ourselves. It is the same idea behind the meek will inherit the earth; that in order to have power we must willingly relinquish our own; we must give more to have more; me must go lower (humble ourselves and serve others) in order to go higher (to be exalted at the right hand of the father with Jesus). The more we choose God's way over own own, the more freedom it brings. It's a paradox.
But for our choices to stand against the temptations of this world, they must be made through wisdom and knowledge gained from learning about God. The reality is, most people believe they have a right to be loved, appreciated, sexually satisfied, and adored, and want a relationship that can give them all of these things. But the disconnect comes in the reality of what it takes to achieve it; that we ourselves must be willing to unconditionally give these things (without the expectation of having them returned) in order to unlock the mystery of the bliss of covenant love. And we have bred the idea of marital bliss right out of our society to the point that even mentioning it as a viable option is laughable to almost everyone.
We convince ourselves that the message concerning sexual ethics that society feeds us is accurate; that to have freedom, we make choices based on self-satisfaction and entitlement. But by doing so, we contribute to the brokenness of the family unit, the increase in the acceptance of abortion and children out of wedlock, we increase the instances of the fatherless, and we increase and unlock a culture-wide hunger for deeper and darker levels of sexual immorality to include the exploitation and demoralization of the value of women and increase the boundaries of sexual appetites to include our children, in both, through the marketing of sex to them, and in the inclusion of them to satisfy mans' sexual appetites.
Think about it. Just 60 years ago, divorce was an abomination in our society. And just 50 years ago, having a child out of wedlock was heresy; 30 years ago pornography was considered perverse. And in the past 20 years, divorce has become the new standard for relationships; in the past 10, pornography, sexual slavery and the sexual exploitation of women and children has become the world's biggest cash crop; and in 10 more years, the likelihood of child pornography becoming an extension of pop culture is a stark reality.
And as the contrast between these lines become ever more blurred, we must soberly ask ourselves how our individual actions are contributing to the annihilation of the sanctity of the family unit. Because everything matters, and every choice has a consequence. Every relationship we bail on in favor of a more suitable one contributes. Every time we look upon members of the opposite sex as tools to use for our own personal gratification, we contribute. Every time we gaze upon and lust after someone's body (that we're not in covenant relationship with), we come into agreement with the sexual exploitation that dominates our society. And in our abounding lust, as we seek out ways to satiate it, we engage with society in helping to blur the lines between childhood and adulthood; with more and more girls dressing and acting in adult ways at younger and younger ages, with more and more instances of older women seducing underage boys.
These are becoming the new norms. It's ok to make sexual passes at minors. It's ok to lust after high school girls or boys. After all, if they are presenting themselves as knowledgeable in the arena of sexuality, they are fair game, right? Because it's all about the self; my experience, my entitlement, my wants, my needs being fulfilled, regardless of the impact my actions have on society. And every time we fall victim to these norms, we are teaching those same children that there is no longer a "we", only an "I", that sex is the new love, and that FWB is the new marriage.
You may think that by me bringing this up, I am placing myself in a position of superiority; perched on my self-righteousness, looking down on you with pointed finger. And that is the devil's plan for every person; turning truth into judgement, evoking resentment and resistance instead of an epiphany and curiosity to explore the truth. The reality is, I'm a recovering individualist. My words come from a place of humility and desperation, knowing that on the path to truth in God I am only a few baby steps ahead of you. The humility comes from knowing not long ago, I had no knowledge of any of this and how much that lack of knowledge affected every sphere of my life. The desperation comes from knowing the urgency of the hour in which we live, and in the knowledge of knowing first hand the distance between an intellectual introduction to this and a mature heart connect with its truth.
What baby step are you on? Are you practicing sexual individualism? Or are you experiencing the full blessing and joy of love and sex within a covenant relationship, and actively engaging others in our society who desire to form a community of others who are doing the same? More importantly, which do you truly want for yourself, and what does the fruit of your actions say about your path to achieve it?
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