Notes on "Having Sex"

"Having Sex" is an expression that seems to say a lot, although it's often said without meaning very much.  "Having sex" is a convenient phrase; we use it because we assume everybody is already familiar with what we're talking about.

"Having sex" is generically used to describe and explain all sorts of human behaviors, in all kinds of situations and variations.  Like the "scientific studies" favored by magazine polls, for example:

- X% of college-aged women have had sex before age 16

- X% of men have had sex with N number of female partners

- X% of married couples have had sex with a partner besides their spouse, outside of marriage

- X% of unmarried people under 30 have had sex while under the influence of alcohol

- X% of married people have told lies about themselves in order to have sex

Ugh.  We're in debt up to our ear lobes from our national preoccupation with Having Stuff, yet based on the poll figures, we still find lots of time left over to daydream about ... you guess it ... having sex.

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Usually I read the NIV or Holman Christian Standard translations because my Elizabethean English is still rusty.  But Gem-E & The CTs (King James and the Codex Translators) scored big-time with their poetic rendering of sexual intimacy in Genesis 4:1:

And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD. [emphasis added]

- Genesis 4:1 (KJV)

Not "And Adam saw Eve and her navel, and pondering these things mightily, lusted and foundeth her hot as a furnace."  

Not "And Adam met Eve and Eve was lonely, withering for Mr. Right, and lo she lay her eyes on Adam and figureth, 'Why not?'"  

And definitely not "And Adam drew himself beside Eve, and having become smitten with her fineness, said unto her "Yea, I liketh the way thee ..."

OK, you get the idea.  

The world warps holy, sexual intimacy into self-satisfying sin ... and even leads believers into thinking Sex Is Ok If We Want To: We're in love, so what's the big deal?

The "big deal" is that sexual intimacy outside of marriage is a sin: God said so.  And I doubt God worries much what people think, or ever pays much attention to polls or to Cosmo.

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"Having sex" doesn't come close to describing what happens when a man and woman join in a Godly sexual union, because "having sex" overlooks any distinction between what happens when animals feel compelled to reproduce, and what God intended to be an imperishable communion glorifying Him: an intimate trust,  privately and uniquely shared; a life-long committment spiritually expressed between believers, in marriage.

Sexual intimacy outside of marriage is the shortcut we look for when we feel a vulnerable hole in our hearts ... instead of asking, and allowing God to answer and fill that emptiness instead.