I’ll be checking my feedburner stats tomorrow to see how many people clicked on this post just because of the title. You know what they say, sex sells. Only, in this case it isn’t sex sells, but sex causes clicks. Including the title of this post, I’ve just used the word sex 7 times. I’m glad my mom doesn’t read this blog.

A few days ago I received the first chapter of a book entitled: Side hugs, metrosexual worship leaders and other stuff Christians like. The book is by Jon Acuff, author of the totally awesome stuffchristianslike.net, and the chapter, if you haven’t guessed by now, is about sex. 8 times. Here’s an excerpt.

…[W]hen you tell a teen, “sex before marriage is bad,” that’s not what they hear. Instead, inside their head they hear, “Sex is bad.” When you say those five words, their inner dialog tells them:

“Sex is bad. My parents will be disappointed with me if I have sex. Sex is a sin. Enjoying sex is sinful. God will be mad at me if I have sex. Sex is dangerous. God is against sex. The bible is against sex. If I were good I wouldn’t be so interested in sex. Something is wrong with me, because I think about it a lot. I better keep quiet about that.”

The thing that I really like about this chapter, and I’m presuming the entire book, once it’s finished, is that it offers solutions to the problems it uncovers. All to often books about the church are descriptive, not prescriptive. I love the way this chapter ends:

I started to think though, what if I’ve allowed the world to take sex ransom? What if sex is a hostage? A beautiful, perfect concept that was kidnapped long ago? What if sex is just waiting for people like you and me to go get it? To bring it back to the church. To bring it back to the bible. To bring it back to our marriages.

  • Can you imagine if sex within marriage became so big and so real and so important that the world’s view of sex felt empty and hollow?
  • Can you imagine if instead of reading a newspaper article about a minister caught with a prostitute you read an article about a minister leading some sort of holy sexual revolution?
  • Can you imagine if one of the reasons people liked being Christians was because the sex was so good?

Interested in reading the chapter yet? If you are, visit www.stuffchristianslike.net or send an email to Jon at theacuffs[at]yahoo[dot]com, tell ‘em Kevin sent ya.