Sexual relationships are a big deal!
Every day we're reading or listening to part of the Bible together and sharing thoughts with you. Today Mal Calladine gets into our second monthly chunk of ‘Practical Proverbs’, nuggets of knowledge that have loads of life application.
What did I like about today’s passage?
Today I got more than I expected! The readings start in Chapter 4 with more encouragement towards wisdom and instruction, with the need to ‘guard my heart’, because that is life and health to me (4:22-23). What I wasn't expecting was that the first application of that (in Chapters 5 and 6) is about that thinking being applied to sex and relationships! How reflective of what we see in our world! That sex in our media-driven world is the first place of promotion, inspiration, and temptation.
Chapter 5 is all about how to stay in a good place in relationships, “keeping to a path far from” sexual temptation and the places and people that bring that on. And the beautiful, unexpected and rather X-rated imagery of choosing to invest in the covenant of marriage - even when you’ve been in it a long time (5:15-19). Now they are some verses to memorise!
There is a pause to look at laziness and passivity in early chapter 6, which interested me it being added here, as it seems to reinforce intentionality in the context of ‘doing relationships’ and working at it, before the final real kicker in Chapter 6:20 onwards! Where I saw stuff I’d never connected before…
What struck me was that the writer is Solomon. And he’s encouraging the next generation to keep their father’s command and mother’s teaching, to prevent losing the plot relationally and destroying their very life, specifically around adultery. My wow moment was thinking about his context and story - the connection I made for the first time was that is HIS own story in writing this! He was the result of an adulterous affair! His father is David, and mother Bathsheba – the wife of Uriah, a soldier in David’s army. David saw her bathing, and they then had an affair and got pregnant. David had Uriah killed in battle and married his widow. Their first baby died, but Solomon was then born later.
So David we think of as a ‘man after God’s own heart’, but Solomon is saying to his son: listen to me - your parents - because I carry the pain of what it is to know the breakdown created by adultery. ‘This stuff is real for me; and I am motivated to tell you that the results of this way are thinking are really bad for you, because I experienced it.’
What did it show me about Father God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit?
The readings made me make connections about the goal being “life” (4: 22-23) and that is found IN Jesus. He IS life (John 1:4). All things we see have Life in actually reflect Jesus; which is interesting when the first application of this is about doing sex right relationally!
The whole thrust is about ‘making good choices’ – but the first application is how we think about sex. So this really re-affirmed to me that relationships done well, and sex as an expression of that, are central to God’s heart. Corinthians differentiates sexual thinking and action as being different from all other human choices – that they have a greater internal effect than all other things we do (1 Cor 6:18). And these chapters highlight that sexual error is a big deal and stops the purposes of the Father’s heart for us.
And in Solomon’s story it struck me that God changes the emphases of a family line in a generation and brings redemption (and hope of how to live) from where there was pain. The Father’s big redemptive story is focussed generationally (e.g. Deuteronomy 28).
What am I going to do differently as a result?
It encourages me to be even more unashamedly positive talking about sex and relationships. Is it a religious spirit if we get prudish about these things rather than celebrate that which God instituted to be SO good? It only loses that when the context changes to relational disloyalty.
And to affirm those who have experienced family breakdown and pain, that redemption, and strongly held conviction of what is right, can happen in a generation as people make good choices. My challenge then is to cultivate that hope.
Who am I going to share this with?
Definitely my wife; and ask if there are more ‘outside of the box’ ways we can invest in our relationship. I love the creative vistas that can open up when I ask, “Are you happy?” or “What can I do to make you happier?” Investing in ‘drinking from our own wells’. I want to ‘rejoice in the wife of my youth’ today!
The more ‘high bar’ challenge is to seek opportunity to share the warnings of these chapters appropriately with those I know where their covenant relationship is hard. Am I culpable if I stay quiet as people I know embrace thinking where the promise of scripture is that they ‘destroy’ themselves, if they live into the consequence of their thoughts and actions?
And to families and households I get to journey with that have known pain: that there is hope, and the potential and precedents of redemption within a generation! Both in Solomon’s story, and in mine.