We ended part one with a question: it’s easy enough to see why pagans might believe that all intimacy is ultimately the same, and all leads to sexual intimacy, but what would possess Christians to think that?
Fear, that’s what.
Some of it is fear of adultery. It’s a massively destructive sin, and sensible people don’t want to be anywhere near it. But then, sensible people don’t want to be in a house fire or a high-speed auto accident either, and don’t on that account cut off the electricity in their houses or refuse to drive on highways. Sensible people recognize that everything has risks, and if you think electricity is risky, reading by candlelight is not exactly risk-free. A 30-minute drive on the highway has its risks, sure, but the 60-minute drive it takes to stay off the highway also has its fair share of risk exposure. Our problem, in this case, is that we’re sensitive to the risks of one course of action, and utterly blind to the risks of the other.
Adultery’s damage is well-known. The damage done by fearing and avoiding meaningful interaction with the opposite sex is less well understood, but no less real. Lacking an appreciation for the benefits of healthy cross-gender interaction and friendship, we see nothing there but danger. We ought to know better, because our advice to just stay away from the opposite sex does not track with how Scripture tells us to behave (but we’ll get to that).
Part of the perceived danger comes from a mythology we’ve allowed self-justifying adulterers to build up for themselves. “I don’t know how it happened!” they say. “One thing just led to another!” Too many Christians take these ridiculous claims at face value, and we really ought to know better. It’s fairly difficult to have sex by accident, unless you’re already so far compromised that the final PIV detail hardly matters anyway. But foolish Christians buy this nonsense, and then build on it: since apparently nobody, not even the adulterers, really knows how adultery happens, they conclude that men and women just need to avoid each other. Any intimacy of any type is a threat, and so they treat all intimacy as the same thing. Ironically, their fear of becoming like the world is the very thing that causes them to become like the world (no surprise if you remember Prov. 29:25). But God has not given us a spirit of fear (2 Tim. 1:7), so let’s not forget what He’s told us about sin. We are not ignorant of Satan’s devices (2 Cor. 2:11).
Some while back, I sat in a marriage counseling session with a husband who’d cheated and a wife who was deciding what to do about it. “I don’t know what happened!” he said. You know what I told him? “You just blew a hole in the bottom of the boat that is your marriage, and you’re taking on water fast. You need her help” I pointed at his wife “or you’re sunk. You need her to believe that this isn’t going to happen again. ‘I don’t know what happened!’ doesn’t inspire confidence.” As we dug into it, what we found is that his initial “I don’t know what happened” response was a defense mechanism. He didn’t want to think about it. It was just easier to say “I don’t know what happened.” Part of my job was to help him do the hard work of facing what he’d done and excavating how it happened so they could prevent it in the future. Over the next half-hour or so, he faced his sin squarely, dug into how he got there, and then we made a plan to keep him out of similarly tempting situations in the future.
What we found, of course, tracks with Scripture (and common sense). He didn’t commit adultery by accident; both parties knew what they were doing. At a certain point, a decision gets made that involves a zipper, and nobody concerned is somehow unaware of the implications of that decision. Sexual arousal is designed by God to be the sort of thing that gathers momentum as it goes, a bit like a long, steep playground slide. When they’re already three-quarters of the way down the slide, it’s easy enough to see how “one thing led to another” until they ended up in the mud puddle at the bottom. But how did they end up on that slide to start with? Answering that question is where Scripture is a big help.
God tells us: “Each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren.” The process certainly is deceptive—hence the warning against being deceived—but it’s not a mystery. God has told us all about it: we need to police our desires.
The deception comes in not believing God about this. When the desire passes through your mind, it’s not just a harmless pleasant thought. If you find yourself thinking, “I can’t…but it would be fun,” you’re already in trouble. If you think you can nurture the desire without getting hurt, you’re deceiving yourself. It’s already hurting you. And then, if you think about it long enough, it’s going to infect your behavior, one way or another. The same lies will still be with you: “It’s not hurting anybody. Besides, who’s gonna know?” If you think you can play with the sin a little bit without anything serious happening, you’re wrong. Desire conceives and gives birth to sin; sin matures and gives birth to death. So the thing to do is address the desire.
Let’s take an example. Say a particular couple’s sexual relationship is on the rocks, no matter why. He’s out there in the working world, he’s sexually hungry, and an opportunity—a willing coworker who’s particularly interested in him, say—crosses his path. What is he supposed to do with this situation?
Say no, of course, but that’s not nearly enough. He needs to kill the desire. His desire for sexual communion is a good and godly thing, and there’s exactly one person he’s to fulfill that desire with. When that desire gets misdirected onto anybody else, the thing to do is starve it ruthlessly. Don’t toy with it; don’t think about it. Give it no occasion for expression, and pray until it dies. He should turn his attentions to his wife (cf. 1 Cor. 7:2-5), and if for whatever reason his wife cannot or will not meet his legitimate needs, then he should embrace the ascetic struggle and suffer like Jesus would rather than give the enemy a victory. Jesus’ legitimate human needs were going unmet in the wilderness (food), in the Garden (companionship and emotional support), and on the cross (physical safety). We should be prepared to follow Jesus; a servant is not greater than his Master.
But this is not to say that the man has to go it alone. Christians are meant to live giving and receiving daily encouragement. Particularly in times like these, a believer needs the support of his brothers and sisters. How does that work? Stay tuned.
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