No Matter How You Look At It

This topic has been floating around in my head for quite a while, but I just didn't have the words or gumption yet to put it out there. Well, I think I'm ready at last to clear my head and blog about it. So bear with me here...Mel is about to leave her G rating.

Besides the Olympics, I haven't watched a lot of TV or movies lately, but recently I sat down to catch up on a couple of shows on my DVR. I was watching an episode of Bones (a crime drama). The main character (aka Bones) was talking to another woman about her love interest. He was seeing lots of other women and had quite the reputation, and by seeing other women, I mean he was sleeping around with multiple women. So Bones asked the other women if it bothered her, and this second woman said, "No. It doesn't bother me. A woman wants a man with lots of experience."

I actually started choking on my baked tortilla chips and salsa at that point. I felt like I was going to throw up. It really bothered me. I paused the show and ranted and raved for a few minutes with my house plants as my audience on how disgusting that thought was. Yes, my debating skills were lost on my house plants, but I just had to talk to someone. I actually felt like I needed to take a shower after hearing that comment.

Really now!! Why would you want to be with someone who has been with so many other partners? I don't understand that. I know that the world and Hollywood would have us believe that you have to try out your partner before you get too serious. To the world, it seems too risky and silly to save yourself for marriage. You have to experiment with multiple partners to find the right match. Movies like the Forty-Year-Old Virgin and others make fun of those who wait. Everyone is doing it, after all. It's the "norm" now. Times have changed, and we have to change with them. Or do we?

Just because some of our culture accepts unmarried sex does not change the fact that it is sin. Yes, we live in a sex-obsessed culture. And for the Christian, it means that there are ever-increasing temptations around us every day, but GOD hasn't moved on the issue. This isn't a gray area to GOD at all. HE still calls the unmarried to purity and the married to fidelity with their marriage partner. No matter how you look at it, it is sin to act otherwise.

Hebrews 13:4 Let marriage be held in honor (esteemed worthy, precious, of great price, and especially dear) in all things. And thus let the marriage bed be undefiled (kept undishonored); for God will judge and punish the unchaste [all guilty of sexual vice] and adulterous. [Amplified Bible]

I also like the directness of the same verse in The Message:

Honor marriage, and guard the sacredness of sexual intimacy between wife and husband. God draws a firm line against casual and illicit sex.

GOD did not create us for casual intimacy at all, and yet our culture is saturated with it. Almost every magazine, TV show or movie has something about sex in it. I was sitting in my doctor's office a couple of months ago flipping through a magazine while I was waiting, and I found myself flabbergasted at what the Ladies Home Journal was telling me.

I know it's hard out there. Sexual purity is NOT just something that men struggle with. This is an area where women struggle, too. Both sexes were created with a desire for intimacy. I don't fully comprehend it or understand how to keep that desire in check as a single woman ALL of the time. GOD and I have conversations about this very thing quite often, and there aren't always easy answers.

I recently started rereading Elisabeth Elliott's Passion for Purity. [OK, rereading is probably a bit strong. I never made it all the way through her book the first time because I got hung up on her writing style. It's not my favorite, but I've heard good things about this book again recently, and thought I'd try it once more.] So, anyway, I started reading her book again, and this time, GOD has adjusted my editorial attitude and is teaching me through her book. She doesn't give the reader 5 steps to keep your mind fixed on GOD or the 4 steps to keeping your thoughts pure. The teaching she gives is simple: turn to HIM, rest in HIM, surrender all to HIM. Don't give up! Don't trick yourself into falling for a momentary pleasure. Don't deceive yourself that this is as good as it gets.

As C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity:

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

GOD is faithful. HE is sovereign. HE called me to HIMSELF. And to honor HIM, I need to obey HIM in all things. LORD, keep me close.

I'm weak
I'm poor
I'm broken, Lord,
But I'm your's
Hold me now...*

*Taken from "Hold Me Now" by Jennifer Knapp