Christian Pastors Coming Out ?
November 17, 2008 by Marc Audet
Filed under Relationships
It seems that Christian pastors are coming out. No, they are not gay. But they are speaking out on a subject much tabooed in the church. S-e-x.
What else did you expect?
A Dallas Ft. Worth pastor Sunday challenged his married couples to a seven day“Sex-periment”. It isn’t only Doug Brown author of “Just Do It”, or the pastor who recently challenged his congregation to 40 days of sex. More and more we are hearing pastors that are teaching married couples in their congregations that sex in marriage is important in building strong healthy marriages.
Here is the link to the latest story: Sexperiment
For some reason sex became a taboo subject in America’s churches, including the discussion of sex in a monogamous one man-one woman marriage. I grew up joking as an adolescent about sex but can’t have a serious conversation on the subject as an adult. We recently were talking about how I can joke or kid about sex, even with another couple or others, but I avoid having conversations with Marye about our sex life.
It has been the same in churches and Sunday Schools. If you asked questions or needed counsel for your floundering marriage from your pastor or church leader they hemmed and hawed around the subject. Then they quickly steered the conversation to a more comfortable subject.
My former pastor met me at my request to meet with him about our marriage at a local Starbucks one Saturday morning. As the small talk was subsiding I brought us to the reason for our get together. I told him that we as a couple were having a major struggle in our marriage because of sex. “Well Marc, er, uh….you know…”
I went to work that morning frustrated that the big brawny retired soldier and pastor turned as squeamish on the subject as I was. Well, that was no help! I called and scheduled another get together and we talked about the War Against Terror and other military common ground; my son who is in the Air force, etc. It was going very well until I asked if he had gotten any insight or wisdom from the Lord for him to share counsel with me.
“Marc, I need to pick up my wife for her hair appointment” was the response.
I am ecstatic that there are men, godly men, who will spread this message from their pulpits. After all God used an entire book in his training manual for life, a.k.a. The Holy Bible. It is called Song of Solomon or Song of Songs depending on your translation of God’s Word you use. Personally from my linguistic background, Song of Songs may be the better translation. The book is about married love, and the translation of Song of Songs is a superlative or Best. The Song of Songs means that there is none better or will there ever be. Just like God’s Son, Jesus, God’s Word fleshed out is The King of kings. There is no king above Him.
It is written in the midst of the greatest love story ever told. It is written for married men & women of yesteryear, today and the future married men and women to come.
Bravo to God’s men to preach this message to God’s married couples!
image:morguefile
Also check out Mark Driscoll’s sermons on the Song of Solomon, titled The Peasant Princess.
http://www.marshillchurch.org
There are many ways of looking at this, and not just this but, just blink your eyes for a moment, clear out the lifetime of accumulated cultural emphasis on whats accepted, or, more to the point what one is conditioned to be seen as acceptable or not and where do you find yourself? Politics, race, religion, on and on…
You almost need the perspective of another culture or another time, perhaps, in order to see the oddities in one’s own.
For example, the topics of race here in the States make many, many people uncomfortable…squeamish…that is a unique oddity here. Most from outside the States, regardless of what region or country they come from, if they are ‘aware’ enough to notice and make comparisons, will tell you that we have a very odd way of looking at racial differences. It doesn’t ( there are exceptions, of course ) produce the kind of unease in other countries/societies that it does here. We are trained, in a manner of speaking, to be uneasy with it.
It is largely induced by the way in which the topic ( you could name several ) is handled by those we look to for our opinions – yes we are conditioned to look at those around us for the correct opinion to have, since we were children.
Thats more often than not, a good thing. Sometimes it isn’t.
I could go on with this, but I hope you get my point, even if I’ve made it circuitously.
My wife’d argue that I’ve lost her long time ago and wouldn’t get what I’m trying to point out, which is just if you understand how odd or even bad ideas about – political, racial, gender relations, etc get disseminated and absorbed by the populations of a given society over the course of time, thats more than likely why we have the same, bad info/need to demonize/uneasiness, etc about sexual issues.
Wish I could get the wife to post her own thoughts about your topic here, but, alas, she is uncomfortable doing so and would rather the nervous giggle and maybe a veiled wink – at least in a public forum.
She did say she was keen to read your articles Marc, so maybe this is a good place for her to start.
adios
Perhaps so. I guess I can understand.
I’m not comfortable talking about some of the subject matter either sometimes.
“…I wonder why I am here writing on Marriage Actually…”
Probably for the same reason you pushed yourself over ropes and logs and whatever else you have to do during basic or OCS – mostly cause it makes you miserable; and as one very admirable Uncle of mine, who just passed away, said to me once, “…your miserable; and the only way to conquer being miserable is to learn to like being miserable…”
My wife is very similar to you in what agrees with her and disagrees with her. She, unlike me, doesn’t like to talk about stuff, she just does it.
So now she’s putting herself through Toastmaster’s ( she hates public speaking ). something I’d never thought she’d do before.
I think she caught on, somehow, to the fact that you don’t like to talk it up and felt a camaraderie there, of sorts.
She normally has ‘no time for it’ when it comes to getting online and reading, responding to posts, especially of a personal nature. That was the first time I’d seen her do that.
I should probably do the opposite and quit talking about things I know nothing of, as you can see I’ve no shortage of hot-air. Not like that in person, though.
Our spouse’ are truly our better-halves – just don’t tell ‘em, that’s a BIG no, no, LOL.
This is such a great topic. It’s just so easy to let sex go by the boards, to get caught up in work, TV, politics, the kids – so many important things…and let ALL kinds of communication with your spouse get shallow. It’s so much easier to curl up on the couch together in front of a movie or a sports event, and call that close companionship and friendship, and just let the physical side of things go. Everyone’s libido seems low these days – what a great experiment, not only to get close again in so many ways – but to see if just doing it actually raises up your DESIRE to do it. Thanks for the post, Rori
Thanks for stopping by and for the comment Rori.