Successful Living > Foundations For Success > Seventh Commandment: Be True To Your Mate

Foundations For Success

7th Commandment: Be True To Your Mate

The Prerequisite to Great Sex

When it comes to sex, religion in general and Christianity in particular has earned a lot of negative reviews. You would think that the devil created the ability to have sex and anyone who actually enjoyed it was committing a sin! (In fact, many churches taught this) Yet the Bible is clear here. God gave us a truly miraculous capacity for sexual pleasure. In other words, sex is a gift from God!

Read the Song of Solomon. Notice the desire, the sexual tension, how the lovers describe the body of the one they love: it is all there for anyone to read. Of course, some try to cover over what they read as soft-porn with a lot of talk of symbolism and the love Christ has for His Church, His Bride. Yet I believe we lose so much insight into how God wishes for us to relate with our lovers when we over spiritualize this book.

From time to time I hear Christian ministers trash Hollywood's version of romance. My concern is that these well-meaning people often overreact and misrepresent God's mind on the matter. It is one thing to speak out against sleeping with a different partner every week. It is quite another to speak out against romance altogether. Some of these ministers make romance and sex exclusively about performing one's duty whether he or she likes it or not. God forbids romance, fun, pleasure or ecstasy as it enters the relationship. But this is demonstrably not a biblical idea.

God is not against pleasure. More specifically, God is not against romance or sexual pleasure. Further, He is not only not against it, He is for it! "Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be as the loving hind(doe) and pleasant roe(deer); let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love." (Proverbs 5: 18,19) Does this sound like God is against sexual pleasure? Does this sound like He is ambivalent toward romance? Or does it sound like God intends for us to enjoy our partners?

The notion that bodies and the physical world itself are evil is an ancient Gnostic/platonic error that the Church has always had to fight against. God created us humans, looked at His work and saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:31) And in this same passage, He declares that one of our callings as humans is to replenish the earth. Obviously this will require sexual relations which is included in what He saw and said was "good" about His craftsmanship.

Granted, the human desire for sex can become perverted and men and women thereby fall into all sorts of pain and sorrow. But do the actions of such people negate what God has clearly said about sexual relations? The desire for food can be perverted, does this lead us to speak out against eating as dangerous or evil if enjoyed? Power can be mishandled: do we therefore eschew power in all forms?

The prohibition in this commandment is not against sex, but concerns with whom we may have sex.

Loyalty

For sex to be fully appreciated and enjoyed, for it to be all that God intended, it must be restricted to those in a mutually binding and mutually protective contact (i.e., marriage). Going back to the passage in the book of Proverbs I quoted above, it followed with this warning: "And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?" (v.20)

Ever increasing sexual pleasure requires ever increasing degrees of vulnerability. Vulnerability requires trust. When two people go to bed with one another it is not simply their bodies that are naked but their souls. When you give yourself to another you are giving not only your body, but your soul as well. This gives your partner incredible power over you with which to do you good or evil. To maintain a healthy giving and taking relationship there must be trust. And for there to be trust there must be loyalty.

When loyalty is absent, and partners are free to leave each other whenever someone more attractive comes along, one partner is always emotionally injured - sometimes quite deeply. Even the one usually "doing the leaving" will, if they play the odds long enough, find themselves rejected, abandoned, "thrown away" like yesterday's stale goods. With each new injury comes more emotional scar tissue leaving many of us ever more hostile, bitter, jaded, weary and leery of ever truly trusting another human with our love. Our vulnerability becomes so covered with multiple layers of "scar tissue" we are often unable to give - or receive love, even when we desperately wish it. This is exactly the sort of hurtful, tragic, life denying predicament this commandment was designed to avoid. Truly it is for our own protection. God is not a cosmic "killjoy", but a truly wise and loving parent who knows what's best for His children.

So, loyalty needs to be in place if there is to be a healthy sex life. But the loyalty required is not just about having great sex. A healthy sex life requires a healthy relationship. Marriage involves more than sex: it is about community, family and friendship. None of these experiences are possible without loyalty.

When a man or woman betrays their vows they are saying that their desires and feelings are more important than their family, than their vows, than the requirements of God's law. Such a mindset will destroy the family, which in God's economy is central to the health of the church and of society at large.

Keeping one's promises-in biblical language, keeping one's covenant-is necessary to a healthy, happy, God-honoring life. It is one of those ground rules that all of the major religious traditions agree upon. People who do not keep their promises are rarely successful people. And if they do experience some degree of success, it doesn't last long. How could it? Success requires the trust of other people and who will trust someone who fails to keep his promises? And think about this: what will our children believe, how will they behave in the future, if they see their parents treating their promises with very little respect?

Read The Next Commandment:
Be Honest