#sexuality

Beware (and Embrace) the Power of Story

There’s a new gospel in town, and it has recruited cadres of evangelists. This new gospel heralds peace with God and man, it proclaims enlightenment through acceptance. Yet it’s not acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, but acceptance of a new morality, the embrace and endorsement of what Christians have long understood to be forbidden. It’s a popular and powerful gospel and someone is going to proclaim it to you very soon. They will proclaim it and call …

Two Different Ways to Think About Sex in Marriage

You have no right to a secret sex life. If you are married, you have no right to do anything outside the knowledge and consent of your spouse. That includes adultery, of course, but it also includes sinful fantasies and all manner of self-gratification. It’s simple. It’s obvious. It’s biblical. But it’s widely ignored. You have no right to a secret sex life because you do not own the rights to your body. The first right of ownership is God’s. …

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Control Your Sexuality

This whole series titled “Run to Win“ had its genesis in a number of real-world conversations. In one, a woman told of her struggles with her husband. She considered herself a caring and attentive wife who over many years had done her best to respond to her husband’s frequent requests for sex. Yet even when she responded positively, she found his desire was rarely quenched, and within hours he would be after her again, grumbling and dissatisfied if she declined. …

Ask Me Anything (Calvinism, Erotica, Giving, Church Libraries, and Sex Before Marriage)

Ask Me Anything is an opportunity for you to submit questions that are related or unrelated to things I’ve written, and for me to take a shot at answer them. This week’s questions concern Calvinism, a husband who wants his wife to read erotica, pastors who give to their own church, the usefulness of church libraries, and conundrums in dating relationships. Do you believe that God calls everyone? In other words, that He takes the initiative in drawing all people to …

10 Ugly Numbers Describing Pornography Use in 2017

We all know that the world has become pornified, that the internet has made available to all of us an entire universe of pornographic content. Yet many of the statistics we rely on and commonly quote have become outdated. As technology changes and as new generations grow up, the pornographic landscape inevitably changes. I went looking for updated numbers and want to present some of them to you today. All of these are based on credible studies carried out in …

Letters to the Editor (Sex in Movies, Jesus Calling, Financial Temptation)

The past few weeks have brought quite a number of interesting letters to the editor. These are letters written by readers in response to something I’ve written. I hope you enjoy them! Letters on Sex on the Silver Screen The first few letters deal with the few articles I’ve written on the subject of sex and nudity in movies and television shows. I really enjoy your perspective on a wide-variety of topics. I currently work as a screenwriter and an …

Sex on the Silver Screen – Outsourcing Depravity

I once read a memoir by a man who, as a teen, had been a Shabbos goy. A Shabbos goy is a non-Jew who performs some of the Sabbath-day functions that that are forbidden to the devout. Traditionally, a Shabbos goy would extinguish candles and lights, or he would stoke up a fire on a cold Sabbath morning, all actions considered work by strict interpretations of Jewish law. But since those regulations pertain only to Jews, some would hire Gentiles as a means of circumventing the law. The primary task of this young man was to sit in an elevator and push the buttons. Pushing buttons involves closing an electrical circuit and this was considered a violation of the Sabbath within that community. They outsourced the work to him.

God Hates Sexual Immorality

Those who love must also hate. Those who love what is good, what is beneficial, what is honorable must hate what is evil, what is harmful, what is deplorable. We are defined by the things we love as well as the things we loathe. And what is true of us is true of God as well (or, said better, what is first true of God is subsequently true of us). For God to love he must also hate. The Bible …

Sexual Revolution, Same Old Revolution

We cannot understand human history apart from its conflicts, its revolts, its revolutions. This is true of world history, political history, social history, religious history, and undoubtedly any other kind of history. For good or for ill—and humanity’s long past has many examples of both—, we humans are revolutionaries, always primed for a conflict. But we are confused and inconsistent revolutionaries who sometimes revolt away from a great injustice and sometimes toward one. Today we are watching people all around …

Set an Example in Your Purity

There is a lot to love about the Bible. I could go on for hours about just how amazing, just how unique it is. The Bible offers us something so different from what we get anywhere else, something so opposed to our all-too-human expectations. When we live by the Bible, we live lives that are completely, radically counter-cultural. Today I am wrapping up a little series I’ve written with younger Christians in mind—people in their teens or twenties, people in …