A book I am reading

Late last fall, I went to a HUGE book fair and happened to pick up a book called Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage by Mark Gungor.  It sat on my shelf until this past Friday night when I decided we needed to laugh more in our marriage.

After looking at the table of contents, I turned to a chapter called "What's Sex Got to Do With it?"  I wish I could write out the entire chapter here.  As soon as I began reading silently, I laughed, which meant I had to read it out loud to Paul as well.  So, we had a fun Friday evening with me reading this chapter out loud to my husband.  The further I progressed, the more "Wows" came out of each of our mouths.  We both agree that every person needs to read this book, single or married, and especially young people.  I want to take some time in the next few posts to share some of the author's words and let blog readers ponder them.

"There are some so uptight about this subject (sex) that they refuse to even say the word "sex"!  Most pastors prefer to use the word "intimacy."  I've often wondered if it's not this Pollyanna approach that is most responsible for such statistics as 50 percent of Christian men are involved in pornography; Christian teenagers having sex and getting pregnant with as much frequency as those outside the Church; adultery between Church members becoming an everyday occurrence; or sexually transmitted diseases pouring into Christian families.  Maybe this is happening with greater frequency because we can't say "sex"!" (p. 144)

"The early Christian church was composed exclusively of Jews.  Over time, however, those outside of Judaism (the Gentiles) outnumbered the Jews and the Church became predominantly non-Jewish.  As the Church moved forward without their Jewish brothers, we lost something truly vital to understanding God's plan and meaning for marriage:  we lost thousands of years of Jewish tradition in which sex was viewed as something wonderful in God's sight.

As heathens turned from their pagan ways and joined the Church, they knew sex only from the perspective of lust, debauchery, perversion, selfishness, and even violence!  Heathens used sex in every sickening way of which they could conceive.  When people openly repented of their sins and were baptized, sexual sins where the ones most frequently confessed.  Viewing sex as something wonderful stayed with the Jews, however, and the Christian Church struggled with that concept for centuries.

History shows that the early leaders of the Church---priests and even popes---were married and had children.  Early on, marriage and physical lover were viewed as good.  But as time passed and the Church moved further and further away from her Jewish roots, she began to view sex as something pagan and dirty.  

The negative view of sex that has percolated during most of Christian history was never part of Jewish thought."

I won't go on, but trust me, Mark Gungor fleshes out his writing with hits and humor that bring to light the realities of how we have been duped in our thinking about the different aspects of marriage, AND how our Jewish roots shed much light on how things really should be done.  I look forward to more fun evenings of laughing our way to a better marriage!