The TALK

I didn’t get “The TALK” until I was 14 and then what I got didn’t amount to much of a talk. My talk consisted of my father fumbling over a space of about 100 meters at 55 mph to explain where babies came from. Needless to say, we didn’t cover very much more than 100 meters. By then, I pretty much had learned everything I needed to know, or so I thought. By the time I was 14 I had learned that sex was awesome, that sex was something people did for hours on end in acrobatic positions, that sex was something I could start having just as soon as I could convince a girl to sleep with me, that I would be cool if I had lots of sex, and that the Church hated sex. That is to say, all Christians had sex because they had to in order to have children but they never enjoyed it and were adamant about warning others of the deep and lasting trauma that would befall those who actually tried to enjoy it. Needless to say, that message was less than enticing to me as a 14 year old boy and it certainly wasn’t something I was going to bring up hanging with the guys. I thought I had it figured out. Sex was great but only if you were not a Christian. There was just one problem. I was a Christian.

One thing I have discovered over the years is that the human mind is not very good at holding things in tension. We don’t do well when we try to hold two opposing thoughts and live out both of them at the same time. What usually happens is that one thought becomes the way we act on the outside while the other thought becomes the way we think on the inside. The result is that our outward behavior doesn’t match our inward thinking and our lives are filled with shame.  Sometimes we deal with the shame through the indulgence of our outer actions in an effort to quiet the inner voice which just deepens the shame. Such was my lot. On the outside I tried to hold to the “Sex is bad” message which I heard proclaimed regularly by the Church, but on the inside I thought that sex was probably pretty awesome. The result was that over the years I grew more and more bitter and resentful that what I felt was good was being withheld from me, and shame filled my life that I could never be as expressive as my friends. It may sound weird but I actually was ashamed that I didn’t have stories of sexual escapades to share with my friends, and I was angry about it.

Finally, I came to the realization that the tension had to be resolved. If I was going to find any release from the bitterness and shame of being a repressed teenager, one or the other message was going to have to go. As I tried to resolve them, I found that I couldn’t. The more I pressed into both areas, the more I discovered that both were in fact wrong. I came to discover that I needed a third way.

Finding a third way when there only seems to be two choices can be difficult. You end up forging a path and in the process you draw flak from everyone. I was convinced that sex was good but I wasn’t convinced that the way my friends were engaging in sex was good. Throughout college I saw too many of my friends ripped and torn by their sexual escapades. They were left emotionally bleeding messes. Certainly something so good couldn’t cause something like that. I was convinced that the Church held some truth about restraint in sex, but I couldn’t see how not having sex was the answer. Frankly, the people preaching that message seemed a bit too tightly wound and plastic to me. Nope. They needed more sex in their life, not less.

It took a while but finally I found a path forward. What it took was not someone preaching to me or urging me. What it took was experience. Actually, the experience of marriage and intimacy within it was what it took. In marriage I learned that sex is a gift and that it truly is awesome. I learned that it is powerful and wonderful, something that builds intimacy with your spouse and with God. I found that sex is not bad but if you use it incorrectly bad things can happen. In the context of marriage I learned a third path, a path I wish someone had shown me years ago. What amazes me is that this third path is actually the primary way Scripture talks about sex and yet I never knew it existed. I have given up trying to figure out why. Actually, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that my kids hear the truth from me, that they don’t experience one minute of a life in tension between two lies when it comes to sex. What matters to me is that the message of the third way becomes the primary message of the Church. What matters to me is that people experience God’s wonderful gift the way it was meant to be used. What matters to me is that people experience what God meant to be something powerful, something wonderful, something that builds intimacy with our spouses and with God. That matters. That is wonderful, and it is something worth spending more than a 100 meters at 55 mph talking about.

A fellow traveler,

Blake

What’s my next step?

We encourage you to consider engaging in the following as a way of handing off faith in your family.

Talk about sex: Talk freely and openly with your children about sex. As they ask questions, be honest and truthful. Speak about your mistakes and your victories. Teach them what Scripture has to say and consider modeling your own chats with your children on another father’s chat with his son about sex (Proverbs 5). In so doing, you teach your children a third path.

We encourage you to consider engaging in the following as a way of deepening your own faith.

Allow God to give you “The Talk”: This week consider allowing God to be the father who gives you “The Talk.” Consider reading Proverbs 5 this week devotionally, allowing God to encourage and exhort you as your heavenly father.