sex and shotguns

"And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done."

Romans 1:26

One of the things I love about Paul's letter to the Romans is that, when reading carefully, you can't help but reconsider what words like "faith" and "righteousness" mean. You can grow up in a church and hear those words over and over again and still be shocked or confused by how they come off of Paul's pen. And the reason for that is the fact that those words go a whole lot deeper than we really know.

The cool thing is, when we follow those words down the rabbit hole we end up finding ourselves in an incredible space.

And in addition to those words we can add the word "sex" as well. No, Paul doesn't actually use the word itself all that much in his letter to the Romans, but it was definitely on both his mind and theirs as he wrote. It would be an understatement to say that the Roman Empire was not shy about sex. The follower of Christ in Rome or Corinth or even Tarsus lived and worked in a culture of which sex was an essential part, and not always in a good way.

Sex is one of those topics with the potential to offend a lot of people. We all have our own opinions about it, and most of us don't want to be told what we should or shouldn't do. But, and I mentioned this during worship this past Sunday, sex, like a shotgun, is a powerful creation that needs to be experienced with guidance and wisdom. In Rome, there was no guidance around sex, and the result was a culture in which rape was pretty much the norm (the categories of partners not being male/female, but active/passive or strong/weak).

I believe that God was so happy when he created sex because he knew how awesome it was going to be for people. But we've got to remember that, especially with something so awesome like sex, we've got to seek his wisdom and guidance regarding it. We've got to acknowledge him.