[This is part two of a series on Sexuality and Spirituality:  bypassing Christian rhetoric and examining the interaction between sexuality and spirituality with candor, honesty, and directness.  Tough questions are encouraged, controversy is invited, and the submission of differing opinions is welcomed -- so please feel free to comment as often as you'd like.]

Think with me for a moment about hot, passionate, meaningful, romantic, mind-blowing, sensual... and biblical... sex.  Perhaps that sounds like a bit of a paradox to you.  Most people think that the Bible -- like so many Christians -- is afraid to talk about sex.  Or perhaps they think that if sex is mentioned in the Bible, it's only brought up in a condemnatory, judgmental, legalistic way...

Actually, nothing could be further from the truth.

Consider, as a case in point, the words of Proverbs 5:18-19 -- which praise the satisfaction that comes from a woman's breasts, and which furthermore includes encouragement for lovers to "rejoice" and be "captivated" by each other's sexual love.  The first chapter of the Song of Songs (and, well, pretty much anywhere you look in the Song of Songs) reads more like a romance novel than what one would typically expect from a "religious text."  The metaphors from this section of the Bible are surprisingly graphic, and one definitely gets the sense that sex is something to be celebrated -- whether it be in the bed chambers... or at the dining room table... or in the green, green grass beneath a canopy of trees in the forest!  The third chapter of Ruth describes the way that a couple of the ancestors of Jesus Christ hooked up -- with a story of subtle seduction, involving a midnight meeting at the bed of a single man who becomes obviously aroused by the sense of invitation from a single woman… If you understand the context, it’s a pretty racy scene—and yet it’s also indicated as a story of righteousness and godliness!  And if that wasn't enough, 1 Corinthians 7:3-5 implies that something is seriously wrong if a married couple is not enjoying regular sexual interaction; in fact, to go without sex is to be "deprived," according to the words of the Apostle Paul.

Make no mistake about it—God created man and woman and designed sexuality as an integral part of their being.  Sex was (and is) God’s idea!  Consider the way a penis is designed and the way that a vagina is designed [just imagine all the search engine hits that this post is going to get on my "Amsterdam" blog now that I've included the words "breasts" and "penis" and "vagina" and "sex" all on the same page!]... One doesn't have to have a doctorate in anatomy to figure out the genius in the structure of our sexual organs.  Sex is supposed to be fun and enjoyable and meaningful and healthy…

So what happened?  How did we get from this full and fun picture of biblical sexuality to our modern-day misconceptions of Puritanical pragmatism?  How exactly did sexuality become so far removed from the rest of God and His people?  How has the idea developed that Christians are asexual repressed zombies?

We'll tackle these questions in my next post....