By: Allie Joy Kapus
HEart breaking Research
I spent many hours during my junior and senior years of college researching postmodern sexuality. I pored over statistics, rates, and facts. I saw that divorce, hooking up, and pornography have come to define the way that many Americans view and approach sex. It became real to me that, for many people, the marriage covenant is a joke or a fairy tale or something they have long since given up on.
This makes my heart ache! I said this a few weeks ago, but it’s worth saying again: Do we realize that this depravity has become our standard?
What Now?
Since you and I are living in the midst of this corruption, where do we go from here?
This final piece in the series will help us to refocus and claim the truth that biblical sexuality is good news for postmodern sexuality. God designed the family to be the unit that allows society to function. Sexuality and intimacy within the commitment, security, and love of marriage allow this relationship to flourish. This entire arrangement ultimately reflects God in the sacrificial and unending love that Jesus has for His Bride, the Church – US!
But if this design is the truth, and the world around us champions an extremely warped version of this model, what do we do? How do we go about navigating this tension?
Living In His Beauty
First of all, I think we need to be intentional about recognizing and praising God for the beauty and intricacy in which He designed humanity to function. He made marriage and the family something amazing, and whether we have had good or poor experiences with these relationships in our own lives, God created them ideally to image Him. Let us praise Him for the extravagance of this design!
Living a life of sexual integrity in a world of sexual individualism is difficult, and each one of us, myself very much included, needs to choose to view sex as sacred, the family as foundational, and marriage as something that matters. In order to do this, we need to live our lives in a way that reflects these beliefs. Our thoughts, actions, and words should be aligned with a Christ-centered stance on sexuality. Jesus’ Good News needs to permeate our marriages and families.
The gospel cannot just stop with our speech; it must be experienced daily in the relationships that God has given to us.
Here are 7 things that will breathe life into our personal lives, families, and culture:
- Seek the Lord on a daily basis. Make time to be with Him in prayer and in His Word. When we spend time with God, He saturates our minds and hearts with His truth, which keeps us grounded in a broken world. Jesus calls us to this discipline in the Sermon on the Mount. He tells us that if we don’t seek God privately, we will not know Him publicly. Strive to know Jesus privately every day so that He can pour Himself into your relationships with other people.
- Pursue accountability with other Christians. We aren’t called to fight this war alone. In fact, our Master has ordered us to stand alongside others and never in isolation.
- Steer clear from practices that make sex into something casual and self-serving. Whether that means creating and holding yourself to a list of physical boundaries with your boyfriend or girlfriend, unplugging from technology, being mindful of the way you are clothing yourself, or cutting off an unhealthy relationship, do it! Living a life of purity is fundamental to this fight.
- Choose to love other people selflessly. Yes, this is difficult, but this is what Christ calls us to. Paul’s charge to the Ephesian Christians applies to us too: “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma” (Ephesians 5:1-2). Christ calls us to love and to serve the people around us. If we can begin to practice this on a daily basis, instead of pornography and hooking up, our communities would begin to drastically change.
- If you are married, fight for your marriage. Choose to love and serve your spouse every day, even when it is challenging. Fight to listen and to give rest to your “kingdom partner” (your spouse). Marriage is a lifelong institution, and it was designed to point the world to Jesus. Christ showed us the ultimate way to love: He served us to the point of death. Remembering and choosing to point others to the sacrificial love of Jesus is vital!
- If you are married or unmarried, again, seek to recognize and make others aware that the marriage covenant was intentionally and wonderfully crafted. Because marriage is the cornerstone for societies, when we take marriage lightly then we begin to take other relationships lightly, as well.
- Remember that this battle is a spiritual one. Protect yourself and fight back with God’s truth! (See Ephesians 6!)
A Great Battle, A Deep Love
This is a war, and we need to engage in it. If we sit back and allow the world to choke out the significance of God’s design, we will start to lose sight of the biblical standard and adopt a new one. Though we are called to love, we are to also stand for and speak truth (Ephesians 4:15). Remaining silent or telling people what they want to hear while we know it is destroying their souls is not love! Let’s hold to the standard that God set in place. Our own relationships and lives should evidence God’s great design and His great relationship with us, His Bride.
And ultimately, Christ is the only One who satisfies the deepest longings of our hearts. Without a relationship with Him, none of the brokenness around us and in our own lives, sexual or otherwise, will be fixed.
May we cling evermore to the great Designer and Lover of our souls.
This is part 4 of Allie’s series on Postmodern Sexuality. Follow these links to read part 1, part 2, and part 3.
SHARE THIS ARTICLE AND SUBSCRIBE TO continue getting articles!
Allie Joy Kapus is first and foremost a daughter of the King. She graduated from Liberty University with a Bachelor of Arts in English and minors in Spanish and Psychology. Allie completed her Senior Honors Thesis on the presentation of postmodern sexuality in short fiction and has also been published in two of Liberty University’s other onl