Ask a Pastor Ep. 81 - Why is Sex Such a Big Deal to Christians?

Welcome to Ask a Pastor, a podcast from Orchard Hill Church! Have you ever had a question about the Bible, Faith, or Christianity as a whole? Submit your question and one of our pastors will answer on the program. New episodes every Wednesday.

This episode, Dr. Kurt Bjorklund, Joel Haldeman and Emily DeAngelo sit down to have a conversation about why sex is a big deal in our culture and personally, how cultures throughout time have cheapened sex, and how the Bible teaches us to view sex.

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Podcast Transcript

Joel Haldeman: Hey, welcome to the Ask a Pastor podcast. We're going to explore some questions that you have sent in. As always, if you have questions, send them to askapastor@orchardhillchurch.com.

Joel Haldeman: Today, we're joined by Emily DeAngelo. Emily, what is your official title?

Emily DeAngelo: I get to serve on the adult ministry team in women's ministry and life stage ministry.

Joel Haldeman: That didn't sound like an official title. Director of?

Emily DeAngelo: Director of women's ministry.

Joel Haldeman: Perfect. We were just having a good conversation about health and caffeine and sugar. At the beginning of the year when we're recording this, we all like to make some of those decisions. Do you want to share what you were just talking about?

Kurt Bjorklund: Not particularly. I've been trying not to eat sugar to start the year, and by that I mean things that are obviously chocolate, sweets, stuff like that. But I have failed routinely since the year started, so that's been my foray in to improve my life.

Joel Haldeman: Yeah. I'm on a similar no added sugar, also no alcohol, and I'm surprised that I find my body reacting to the sugar most of all. Of all the things that have been cut out, it's the sugar that I'm... headaches, cravings.

Joel Haldeman: Yeah, so what happens when Emily doesn't drink coffee?

Emily DeAngelo: I have a rough day. I have trouble focusing. I get tired. I get cranky, and I feel like I want to go to bed. That happened to me Monday. Didn't mean to, but I accidentally drank decaffeinated breakfast coffee and ruined my day.

Kurt Bjorklund: Said, "I need a nap."

Emily DeAngelo: Right.

Joel Haldeman: What do you guys find is... We're in the doldrums of winter. How do you maintain just a healthy, active lifestyle when it's dark and 30 below... 30 or below?

Kurt Bjorklund: 30 below would be-

Joel Haldeman: That would be very cold.

Kurt Bjorklund: ... really depressing.

Emily DeAngelo: I still like to get out and briskly walk, sometimes run, but mostly walk. I don't mind bundling up and getting out. But the days are short. I don't prefer to be out when it's dark, so that's a challenge. Another thing I've done in the past... I haven't engaged with that yet. We're 10 days into the month... but morning yoga helps me to stay active, because I can do that in my own home and stretch and relax and meditate on Scripture. That keeps me somewhat active, or at least moving and stretching. But we walk very regularly, probably five, six days a week.

Kurt Bjorklund: Okay. Oh, wow. What do you do, Joel?

Joel Haldeman: Well, other than our morning yoga routine? Yeah.

Kurt Bjorklund: Yeah, in the office, you usually find Kurt and Joel. Yeah.

Joel Haldeman: I've been doing a little bit of running, jogging. If it's 30 degrees or approximately 30 degrees or warmer, I'll go outside and run. I like to do it first thing in the morning, so it's dark. Other than that, every now and then we put on a 20-minute YouTube workout video and do that in the basement. Sometimes the kids join in, and it's funny.

Kurt Bjorklund: Yeah, it's fun with young kids because they mimic the moves, and then you realize how your body does not work like their bodies, where they can do stuff and you think, "How can you do that so easily?" Yes.

Emily DeAngelo: When Abby Jayne was visiting over the holidays, she does a seven-minute workout every day, so she engaged all of us. She's a dancer. It's her profession, so she's got to stay fit. But she engaged all of us in the seven-minute workout. You should've seen us on our back deck.

Kurt Bjorklund: Were you sore after the seven minutes? Did it push you?

Emily DeAngelo: It did. Yeah, I engaged my abs, which I wouldn't have done otherwise. We laughed a lot. It was fun.

Kurt Bjorklund: Have you kept doing it?

Emily DeAngelo: I have not. I downloaded the app, so I'm one step closer to doing it.

Kurt Bjorklund: Because seven minutes sounds so easy.

Emily DeAngelo: I know, right? The exercises are not easy, but it's good. It's conditioning and get your heart rate up. She does it every day.

Joel Haldeman: Our topic for today is on the subject of sex, and the question is, why is sex such a big deal to Christians? It's one of those things that Christians are always associated with as something that they care about. Just broadly speaking, Emily, why is it such a big deal to Christians?

Emily DeAngelo: A big deal to talk about or a big deal to engage in?

Joel Haldeman: It's something that the church is just known for caring about, talking about a lot.

Emily DeAngelo: Okay. I had an interesting conversation with a young married woman recently. She was saying she was raised in the church, and she was raised with a taboo about sex through high school and college. She felt like it was such an important message that people were giving her that it gave her maybe not a healthy view of sex, and then when she got married, suddenly she was expected to be a tiger in the bedroom. She said she's really had a conflict with this and really felt like she would like the church to talk more openly about the intentions and what God intends for sex in marriage.

Joel Haldeman: She actually felt the opposite, that the church didn't talk about it enough.

Emily DeAngelo: Or just said, "Don't do it." That was her message, before marriage. She would've liked more wisdom and guidance going into marriage, and she's thinking that now.

Joel Haldeman: Yeah, interesting. Kurt, what was your experience being a teenager in the church just learning about sex? It was in your teens that you-

Kurt Bjorklund: Yeah. I was part of a church when I was in late high school. Certainly, the teaching was very much geared at that point to abstinence before marriage, which I think was helpful to have that be taught, and not just abdicate conversation on that, but to talk about it. I didn't think the teaching was particularly negative. When I look back, I felt like it was "Sex is a good thing. Sex is God's gift, but it's best in marriage, period." Yeah, so that was my early take.

Joel Haldeman: Okay. I probably had a similar experience to the one that you just discussed that this person shared with you, where it was... Maybe I could overstate this, but there was certainly a lot of purity rings around and that sort of thing. It did feel overly about the negative, "don't," instead of communicating the positive. But there's always this conflict of how do you do that when you're speaking to... I felt this as a youth pastor. How do you even do that when you're speaking to a group of middle schoolers, tell them how positive sex is, but none of you are going to get married for 10 to 15 years? There's always that sort of thing.

Joel Haldeman: The Bible has a lot to say about sexuality. Why is sexuality something that matters in our faith? Why is it something that God cares about? Why can't it be more of a hands-off subject?

Kurt Bjorklund: Well, you said something in your first question, why is it such a big deal? Because it is. It is in our culture, and it is personally for people. It is a big deal. To not address it is to miss something that's part of being human, and a substantial part of being human. When then you say, "Why doesn't the church just take it hands-off and say, 'Hey, do what you need to do. Live your life'?" we would be, one, not faithful to the Bible, the fact that it does address it, addresses it strongly and repeatedly, and again, you're not offering the alternate perspective.

Kurt Bjorklund: I probably taught a message like this years ago, but this stuck with me because it helped me think about it. I think we can make two mistakes that are really easy to make when it comes to sexuality. One is we overvalue it, and by that we almost worship it and turn it into the ultimate thing. Or we undervalue it, and we cheapen it. I think the church can do either of those in terms of what it does. When I say overvalue, you're like, "Well, how do you overvalue that?"

Kurt Bjorklund: What happens sometimes is a church community will make it the ultimate thing, and even just in terms of romance and marriage, so that somebody doesn't feel like they can be a full person in the 10 to 15 years from middle school until they're married, or if they're single or if something happens. I think as a church culture what is healthy is to say, "We value this. This is important. It's part of how God made us, but this isn't the ultimate thing," and to be able to live in that. We often spend time talking about the undervaluing of our culture, where it's "Let's cheapen it and make it just all casual encounters," but the flip side can also be there.

Joel Haldeman: I want to come back to this full personhood topic here in a second.

Joel Haldeman: Emily, my wife recently had a conversation with someone, new believer, didn't even know some of what Scripture teaches on sexuality, so could you just briefly lay out what is God's standard for believers when it comes to sexuality?

Emily DeAngelo: Sure. I think we go back to the very beginning of the pages of Scripture to Genesis, and we see man and woman, Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden. They were naked and unashamed, and God gives them the command to be fruitful and multiply. I think in that picture in Scripture, we see that God has multiple intentions for sexual intimacy, and it's pleasure and procreation, but it's also meant for husband and wife, man and woman. I think we see that clearly throughout the pages of Scripture, and so we can go back to that as not our standard, but God's standard for sexual intimacy.

Emily DeAngelo: I think outside of the bounds of that is where we get into trouble and discomfort in our culture. I was reading in, it's an old book, but it's a classic, Dr. Ed Wheat's Intended for Pleasure, and he talks about how there was this idea of casual encounters lead to a feeling of loneliness. People go into maybe a sexual encounter thinking that's going to satisfy a feeling of loneliness. But through the history of mankind, there's this old Roman proverb... I won't try to say it in Latin, but it basically says that after a sexual encounter, man feels every bit as alone as he did before if it's outside of the confines of a marriage relationship in which the sexual intimacy is intended to refresh, restore, satisfy, and maintain the marriage relationship, that it's more than just an encounter is what I'm saying.

Emily DeAngelo: I think our culture has glorified sex. You were talking about that a little bit, that sometimes it's made too much of, and cheapened it, in a sense, by letting it just be an encounter to try to satisfy pleasure, but not with the intention of maintaining a marriage relationship.

Joel Haldeman: Can you speak more to this idea of how our culture has cheapened sex?

Emily DeAngelo: Well, I think that we can see it anytime we turn on a screen. That cheapens it. It is an intimate encounter, I think as God intended, between husband and wife, not meant to be displayed for others to watch. I think that's one way we've cheapened it.

Emily DeAngelo: Another way that we've cheapened it is in movies and books and stories of just being outside of commitment, that it's just for pleasure and just for a way to get to know someone. I think that cheapens it, as well.

Kurt Bjorklund: Yeah. What do you see, Joel? What do you see as the cheapening?

Joel Haldeman: I was just trying to think of something that's comparable to that, a way in which culture cheapens things in us. I don't know, violence and death is probably a good comparable in that we see so much of it that we become desensitized to it, that it becomes... I think when it comes to death, we maintain a separate digital experience of it. Because of that, my kids will run around the house shooting each other with Nerf guns and play guns and pretending to kill each other, but it is separate from our real-life experience of it. I'm just trying to understand... I agree with you, that what we take in through media, it cheapens our view of it. I'm just trying to understand how those two things relate.

Kurt Bjorklund: I have a take that might be a little different on this, too. A lot of times, you'll hear Christians talk about how the culture is cheapening it and putting all this pressure on it. As I look back at history, I'm not sure that our culture cheapens it any more than any other culture. You read First Corinthians. They cheapened it in the Corinthian culture. I think maybe there were some cultures that weren't.

Kurt Bjorklund: When you talk about most people who are alive today were young adults, at least, in the '60s, and culture was... Yeah, there's some things with the internet and screens and things that maybe accelerate it, but I'm not sure that it's that much radically different than it was that many years ago.

Joel Haldeman: But would you agree that society... I see what you're saying about comparing generations... that society as a whole, across the board, cheapens something that God intends to be-

Kurt Bjorklund: Oh, absolutely. What I'm saying is I'm not sure it's substantially different in this generation than it was two generations ago or 100 years ago. It's just in different ways. Certainly, people will look back at America and say, "Oh, there was a time when marriage was more sacred," but certainly there was cheating. You read things from the 1800s about slavery and some of the things that were going on there, and you say, "There was a horrific cheapening of sex in that culture." That's my point, is just to say I think it's such an internal issue that there will always be a tendency to not want God's standard, but also to romanticize it.

Kurt Bjorklund: I think that's probably, when I say the overvaluing, undervaluing, it's a hookup culture in some ways while simultaneously overly romanticizing that there's this ideal person or thing that will happen that will fill me. I think that's what you're alluding to. It's "This will finally meet my need for loneliness, if I find that person, that experience, that getaway, then all will be right." That probably is the myth that is perpetuated, and maybe accelerated because of movies and TV and Netflix, whatever.

Joel Haldeman: Yeah. God's standard is that sex is something that happens within marriage. Why? What is the purpose of that? It's one thing to say this is God's standard, which is enough, to say that this is God's standard and so this is why we follow it. Why does God want us to keep sex as something that happens within marriage? Emily?

Emily DeAngelo: I think I spoke of this before, but it's to restore and refresh and renew and keep the relationship healthy. That's part of why. It's intended to be within those confines because it is so intimate, and it's not meant to be shared outside of that. I think that the commitment of marriage makes the sexual intimacy special because it's almost like you're making an investment as opposed to getting your treat before you've put in the commitment and the work of marriage.

Joel Haldeman: Yeah. I think there's a sense in which sex reflects our Creator. I feel that that must be true. There's a couple ways that I think it does reflect our Creator, and maybe there's more that you can think of. But it is that intimacy. It's a strengthening of a relationship. There's a vulnerability and a uniqueness, that I'm sharing with you what I don't share with anyone else.

Joel Haldeman: I think this is actually a really beautiful thing about Christianity. There's a sense in which we can enjoy that, just like a good meal or a nice wine. You can enjoy those things, and you could just enjoy it. Or you can enjoy it and let your enjoyment be an expression of worship to God, because you know that this is a gift from God, you know it's a reflection of who He is. It's First Timothy 4 that says, "Everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, and it's made holy through the Word of God in prayer." It's through our enjoying that thing, but turning it around and making that a prayerful act of worship, "God, thank you for this," that that becomes this engagement in worship. Does that make sense?

Kurt Bjorklund: Yes. I think, without a doubt, seeing that as one of God's good gifts and engaging in that. Your original question, why is the gift just for marriage? If there's a wine or something that's a good gift, you don't say, "Well, I can only enjoy it in February, never in January." You might do dry January, but that's a personal choice, not a God thing.

Kurt Bjorklund: As I've thought about that, I think that the real essence of that is covenant versus contract, which is really one of the most helpful rubrics for marriage, and I think does go back to reflecting God and His character. God made a covenant with people. When you go back early in the Bible, First Abraham, and then moving through the Scripture, Noah, David, the new covenant, Jeremiah. It's always His one way, "I'm making a commitment, regardless of what you do or don't do."

Kurt Bjorklund: What marriage is it's saying, "I'm in, regardless of what you do or don't do," and it's saying, "I'm going to be vulnerable to you financially, socially, in every way, as well as sexually." What happens when we take the sex out of that is we move the sex into a contract area, where we say, "I'll be with you as long as it's good for me, but I'm not going to expose myself financially. I'm not going to be relationally tied to you. I want to use your sex to satisfy me, without the commitment and the safety that comes in the beauty of a covenant relationship." That is the essence of it.

Kurt Bjorklund: So often, again, in our culture, and not just our culture, but actually culture all through time, so that's my caveat, that I don't think it's just our culture is bad, but I think the human propensity is to take any good gift and want to use it beyond its beneficial point for us. Take food and gluttony, if you're looking for an analogy. Food is God's good gift to enjoy, be enjoyed, but there's a tipping point where, if I eat everything I ever want, now I start to have negative consequences. Why did God create food that way? I don't totally know, but it's self-evidence. Anybody knows that's true. If I eat anything and everything I want, at some point I won't have function. I'll be too big to walk up a set of stairs and function, or my knees will start to hurt.

Kurt Bjorklund: God has created things often with a boundary to say, "Here's something good to be enjoyed, but if you go past those boundaries, it will become a negative in your life." I think sexuality fits in that. But as a culture, and again, not just our culture, any culture, we want to say, "Well, this one doesn't have boundaries. This one can just be enjoyed anywhere at any time." Yet we accept it in other areas.

Joel Haldeman: Yeah. I think you made an important statement relating to personhood, that we've come to see sexuality as what defines as, as what makes us human. What's a correction to that, or maybe how have you seen that myth perpetuated by people?

Kurt Bjorklund: That's an interesting question. Emily, what do you think?

Emily DeAngelo: I was really looking forward to what you would say.

Kurt Bjorklund: Well, we'll come back to Emily on this. I won't put you on the spot like that.

Kurt Bjorklund: I'm not sure that it's wrong to see it as part of our personhood. God created them male and female, Genesis 1. Part of our creation was being created male and female in our sexuality.

Joel Haldeman: Having sexuality-

Kurt Bjorklund: Having sexuality, and that being part of us. I would probably push back just a little bit on saying, "Oh, it shouldn't define us at all." What shouldn't probably define us is "Well, I have this orientation" or "I am defined by how frequent or the quality of," or something like that. That becomes now I'm looking to that.

Kurt Bjorklund: Really, in a lot of ways, it's a worship issue. A lot of things can come back to worship issues. In sex, what happens is a lot of the searching for sexual encounters is really a form of self-worship. It's wanting to be the center and wanting other people to serve or please us. That's self-worship rather than saying, "I worship God, and I engage in sex that's bound by Scripture in marriage as a self-giving act, as an act of worship, as an act of service, rather than as a meet my needs and satisfy me," when we get outside of that.

Kurt Bjorklund: But in that context, that's a healthy thing. Even if it's part of our definition of ourself, that's a healthy thing to say, "I do have needs, desires that are God-given, to be celebrated, to be nurtured," and to say, "A spouse has needs that are God-given, to be satisfied." I don't know if that's... Emily, what would you-

Emily DeAngelo: I think it's also an issue of identity. I think that people want to identify who they are, and instead of identifying by gender, we identify by what we practice. People are identifying their sexual orientation by what they do or what they choose to do, not by who they were created to be, to do. I think that we're a bit confused right now in this arena, we as in our greater culture.

Joel Haldeman: Yes. I think this is... I think you made a really good point there about it defines us in that we are sexual creatures, but the fulfillment of it shouldn't define us. If we let that define us, then circumstances change, whether that's not being married or never getting married or losing a spouse. We can't allow those...

Joel Haldeman: I think Paul said something that was just almost mind-blowing in our day, who was not, certainly when he's writing First Corinthians, not a married person. He's celibate. First Corinthians 7:7, he says, "I wish that all were as I am," referring to his not being married, not engaging in sex.

Joel Haldeman: I feel like that's a concept that we can't even grasp in our day, that he would say that there's some real benefit to not being married, to not practicing any sexuality. Not that we're all supposed to pursue that, because sex and marriage is held up as a good thing. So what do we even say to someone who's not married, maybe they want to be married one day, maybe they'll never be married?

Kurt Bjorklund: Before we come to that, that passage in First Corinthians 7 goes on to say that the reason for it is so that he could give himself wholly to the work of the Lord, and that he sees that as a higher good.

Kurt Bjorklund: I think, again, what's happened is that our culture, and Christian culture as well, says the only way you can be fulfilled is if you have a family and you're married and you're sexually fulfilled in that, rather than there's a calling to be celibate, to be single, where you can give yourself fully to God. I think the passage actually goes on and says the person who's married spends their time pleasing their spouse, attending to the matters of the world as opposed to the kingdom. There's no doubt that's true. If you have family, you spend a lot of time-

Joel Haldeman: They spend time.

Kurt Bjorklund: ... dealing with your family that otherwise you could use building the kingdom. That's really what First Corinthians, I think, is driving at. This goes back to the overvaluing of sex and family and marriage, because there's a lot of people today who feel like, "If I'm not married, if I don't have a sexual partner, if I don't have a family, I can't be fulfilled." What Paul, I think, is doing is he's saying, "No, there's fulfillment even without those things." But if you need it, go ahead and do it, is what he says, but it's okay.

Kurt Bjorklund: The reason I said let's just talk about that for a second before the question, "What would you say to somebody who's single and wants to be married, or somebody who's in that place?" the important thing is to say you're a whole person without that, created in God's image, and your life can be completely fulfilling without a sexual partner, without family, without marriage. Now, that's easy for me to say. I've been married a long time, and hope to be for a long time. But based on what that says, I think that's an important affirmation. What I would hope would be true is, if something happened to Faith and I was single again at some point in my life, that I would be able to say, "I can be as fulfilled as a single man as a married person." That goes so counter to our culture.

Joel Haldeman: Yeah, it does.

Kurt Bjorklund: And Christian culture.

Joel Haldeman: Yeah. You're right, the subject is not just sexuality. It's worship, and it's "Where do I derive my joy from?" I have to come to the conclusion that I have a purpose in this life that is greater than myself, my own pleasures, whatever those might be. My fulfillment in life is not going to come from that. It's going to come from knowing Christ and loving Christ, and it's going to come from the enjoyment of serving Him and serving His purposes. That's just a game changer in how we think about sex and food and alcohol and all of these different things, tourism or whatever a person's thing is.

Joel Haldeman: First Corinthians, of course, has lots to say about sexuality, First and Second Corinthians, because it was a sexually dysfunctional church. First Corinthians 6 is amazing on this. First, I think, before I get to these words, there's this part here that says, it lists this laundry list of sinful stances that people lived in, and one of them is sexual immorality. It comes to this point where it says, "And such were some of you, but you are washed, you are sanctified, you are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God."

Joel Haldeman: Before going on to that next part, what do you say to somebody who is probably the average person listening to this, who has sexual sin in their past?

Emily DeAngelo: Oh, wow. I would say there's forgiveness for that, and there's a way forward. If that's the conviction of the Holy Spirit in their life, to move forward into purity, there's a way forward. I've heard countless stories of people who come to a place that they are maybe living together because they didn't know otherwise, was convenient, the culture said it's perfectly fine, and they come into a place of mutual conviction that maybe this isn't what's best for us now, and they've made other choices until they got married. That's admirable. It's not common, but it's admirable, and they tell the story years later of that's what God did to reorient them back to Himself to follow Him in obedience. I think I would be encouraging to the person, that there's nothing under heaven that can be done that is unforgivable, that God would forgive them and welcome them back into a right relationship.

Kurt Bjorklund: Yeah, that's absolutely true. I think a lot of times the issue isn't forgiveness as much as it is feeling like damaged goods, saying, "Now that I've been down this path, I'm not sure that I'll ever have the ideal, so I might as well not try." I think the "Such were some of you. You've been washed," that idea of saying, "God delights in taking what's broken and renewing it and restoring it," and so don't fall for the lie that says, "Because I have, I might as well keep going, because there's no hope now."

Kurt Bjorklund: Instead, say, "No, there is hope, and God can do something beautiful, but it starts today, not later." Every time that you make a choice to walk away from God's best plan in this area, you walk farther away from His beauty. Every time that you make a choice to say, "I'm going to choose that, even if it's unknown, inconvenient, unpleasant," you take a step toward His beauty.

Kurt Bjorklund: Probably a great example of this is when you think about somebody dating in college, and they're dating somebody because it's convenient. They kind of like the person, but they know they're not their long-term dream, and they keep dating the person because, well... What did you call it before? It was a treat. The treat was there. That was a phrase coined by Emily DeAngelo on this podcast.

Emily DeAngelo: It is a treat.

Kurt Bjorklund: You stay in it, and all of a sudden you meet somebody who you really would want to be with. Your steps along the way have actually taken you from the beauty of a long-term good relationship, but because you're in it, you say, "Well, I might as well keep doing it because I'm there. What difference does it make now?" It makes a lot of difference. I think that's an important piece, as well as there's forgiveness, is to say God's plan really is best. But in order to experience it, it takes you, on faith, saying, "I'm going to trust in this and take steps toward it, even when I can't see the other side."

Joel Haldeman: Yeah. That restoration is just such a key word in that all of our sin, involving sexuality or not, all of our sin wrecks our lives and it has consequences that live on long beyond after the sin is finished, but God is in that process of restoring us. I think the decision alone to say, "God, I'm going to trust you. I'm going to turn from this, and I'm going to head towards you," I think that moment is one of the most key restoration points in all things, because we have this moment of saying, "I'm not going to put my identity in sexuality. I'm not going to value physical pleasure over the pleasure that I get from serving God." In that moment, it's like we've taken our allegiance from something that will never live up, and we're putting it on Christ. I think that's one of the most important parts of that restoration process, one of the most significant steps forward anyway.

Kurt Bjorklund: Absolutely. For most people, there is a moment, but then there's hundreds of moments, because it's... If I could say something else just about this, too, I think it's important to say this for somebody who feels like they're caught in or struggling with something right now. That doesn't have to define you, even with God.

Kurt Bjorklund: I meet with guys from time to time who are struggling with this area and finding satisfaction outside of God's plan, and soon it becomes their whole barometer for what God thinks of them, "I had a clean week. God likes me," "I had a dirty week. God doesn't like me," kind of a thing. Even that phraseology, clean, dirty, is not the categories that I think God uses. "You were washed. Such were some of you." As soon as we confess it, it's gone. That doesn't mean that you don't battle, but what it means is you don't make this, again, the primary thing of how you relate to God. You say, "This is a thing, this is a big thing, but this isn't the only thing that God relates to me on."

Joel Haldeman: Yeah. Let me throw out a couple questions here, just to give a little bit more... I think these rapid-fire questions are going to take more than a minute. What advice would you give to someone who's in a marriage, and that marriage is, from this person's perspective, does not have enough sex in it, maybe there's some sort of turmoil between the couple, and this person is actively considering finding sexual engagement outside of that marriage? What advice do you give to that person?

Emily DeAngelo: Well, I would most likely be talking to the woman, so I'll give it from the woman's perspective. I would encourage that woman to stay committed to her marriage and to initiate sexual intimacy with her spouse, even if she didn't feel like it, and see how that changes things, because it does. It restores. It renews. It maintains a relationship. I would encourage her to see a marriage counselor, because that was helpful in our own life, and I might invite her to marriage ministry, which we have here at Orchard Hill, to join a group and begin working through the hard stuff of marriage, which includes a chapter a week on sexual intimacy. We talk about the realities of that in marriage.

Kurt Bjorklund: What would you say?

Joel Haldeman: I think to complement your advice, I would say that what I'd suggest to the men is to, even if you don't feel like it, to be emotionally engaged and supportive to your wife. Take her on a date and say all kinds of positive things. Similarly, as you said, see where that leads, I'd say to that man. See where that leads. That might not be the total solution to their problem, so I think counseling is most... Is it fair to say that most couples seek out counseling too far down the road, that if they'd seek it out earlier, that it would be much more helpful? Things generally have to get pretty bad before somebody seeks it out a lot of the time.

Kurt Bjorklund: Yeah. Certainly, I'm pro getting help. I think we stigmatize it, like "Oh, you've got to go to somebody." But if this really is the most important human relationship you have, why wouldn't you seek help to navigate that the best you can?

Joel Haldeman: Yeah. Another question here is, what business is it of Christians how non-Christians utilize sex? The question is, should we be concerned about our culture as a whole outside of Christianity?

Emily DeAngelo: Of course, we should be concerned, because as we grow towards knowing who Christ is and what He's done for us, we take on what He's concerned about, and He's concerned about all people. If we are raising children, we want them to be influenced well in this culture, so we should be concerned for sure. Do we expect people outside of the faith to behave or follow the rules or the guidelines of Christianity? Perhaps not.

Kurt Bjorklund: Yeah. I might take a little different take on that, and that is I think too often the church leads with sexual issues, and the issue is the Gospel. I think you just alluded to that. To expect somebody to live by Christian values or standards who hasn't had the heart transformation misses the whole point, and it's almost counterproductive to somebody coming to faith and then embracing the value. I'd say the same thing with a lot of issues.

Kurt Bjorklund: That doesn't mean that the Christian community shouldn't have a voice in sexual ethics. I think that's a different conversation. I think there's actually two answers to this in the sense of, if the Christian community says, "We don't want to speak into the public issues of our day," we're sidelined, and that that's not a right stance, but I think when it's the individual conversations or issues of trying to say, "You should or you ought to behave in certain ways," that I'm not sure are ultimately the best starting point for conversation with people around issues of faith.

Joel Haldeman: I totally agree with that. I think the problem is it's never that clean.

Kurt Bjorklund: Absolutely.

Joel Haldeman: The way the people that we vote for are going to stand up and say, "This is my stance," then people are going to see that and say, "The church only cares about sex." Yeah, I don't know that there's a good solution to that, other than this is part of the murkiness of being a Christian and called to be otherworldly and living in this world.

Joel Haldeman: Anything else that you want to add?

Emily DeAngelo: I don't think so. Thanks for engaging me with this conversation.

Joel Haldeman: Yeah, good conversation.

Joel Haldeman: Well, thanks for tuning into Ask a Pastor. Again, send in your questions to askapastor@orchardhillchurch.com.