2 of 3

The truth is that sex is hard work. Building a relationship that can contain the intimacy, vulnerability, joy, and struggles of sex takes effort. It also takes community, a network of friends, family, and believers who support the lovers in their marriage. Just like other kinds of labor—parenting, working at a job, caring for the ill, or volunteering—working at a marriage is God-blessed, fulfilling, and worthwhile. If a particular act of intercourse is spontaneous and easy, it's because the partners have worked to build a relationship within which such love can be expressed.

I informally counsel students on contraceptive choices and teach natural birth-control methods to some. One couple reported several months after their wedding that natural methods were working well, mostly because the discipline had enhanced their communication and respect for each other. "A woman is a beautiful thing," the husband said. "I am amazed at what God made." They worked for a year to build a courtship, studied for a few months to learn about fertility and the woman's cycle, and they continue to work together to maintain a beautiful marriage.

Another engaged couple I talked with struggled with imbalances in sexual experience. The fiancé worried that his wife-to-be would judge his lack of sexual experience. Now in her 20s, she regrets her one awkward and humiliating teenage sexual experience. She does not consider herself skilled at sex, but it was difficult for the two to work through this. A different couple accepted the high probability that his sexually transmitted disease, contracted from sexual partners in the past, would be passed to her. Both these couples chose abstinence during their courtships and received God's blessings in many ways, but both continued to bear the consequences of past decisions.

Christians too often perpetuate a white wedding story, as though we were all virgins when we married, and as though none of us have sexually transmitted diseases, past abortions or adoptions, or prior marriages. These assumptions come to light when we talk about "those people" (not us) who were sexually active before marriage, or "those women" (not us) who have had abortions or pregnancies outside marriage.

When we point fingers at presumably worldly people who bear the consequences of sexual sin, we often deepen the shame and silence of friends and family members who carry those consequences in secret. Silence and shame sometimes have more potential to damage a marriage than the sin itself.

The truth is that sex is costly. Even within marriage, making love is a high-stakes venture that requires a lifelong commitment to forgo other sexual partners and other sexual experiences, and perhaps even intercourse itself, should illness or disease make it impossible. It requires a willingness to give gifts of trust, vulnerability, intimacy, and honesty to one's spouse. It involves an openness to children, whether through human planning or God's providence. It requires a maturity to bear the other person's burdens—physical or emotional sexual trauma, the memories of sexual partners, sexually transmitted diseases, or side effects of medications, childbirth, or disease.

next page... |  2 of 3

share this page

November 12 2001, Vol. 45, No. 14