I love the Bible. I’ve read through it many times. I make notes in the margins, ponder passages, and enjoy the truth as it wells up in me. Both my heart and my brain tell me the Bible is completely true. There’s a big difference, though, between knowing the Bible to be true and assuming all that truth is clear to me.
In this chapter, we’re going to consider various biblical texts and how the mainstream understanding of them has changed over time. When God gave me the idea to analyze what the Bible says about sex, he used many seemingly unrelated texts to guide me.
This Bible study may seem challenging, and it might appear to have nothing to do with sex, but be open to God showing you the threads that connect these passages—the threads I believe he showed me.
Hard to Understand Texts
When I read about the many times God commanded genocide, I struggle to reconcile how the God I know could do that.[1] When the Bible shows a clear support of slavery, I wonder on which side I would have been fighting in the American Civil War. I come across so many verses that make me wonder. For example:
If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.[2]
What conclusion am I supposed to draw from that passage? Don’t mess with the package?
Many Bible verses baffle me. But that seems consistent with the world God created. After all, he made 350,000 species of beetles, which is more than all the plant and mammal species combined. Why did God go wild on beetle creation? We won’t find an answer in the Bible, and I’m fine with that…in fact I like it. I’d hate to live in a world that someone as silly as me could understand.
I know I don’t want God asking me the questions he mockingly asked Job.
Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone—while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?[3]
To understand the Bible’s message about sex, let’s study a seemingly unrelated topic: slavery. Please hang with me as we delve into slavery to glean the parallels to sex.
[1] Joshua 6:20-21, Deuteronomy 2:32-35, Numbers 31:7-18
[2] Deuteronomy 25:11-12
[3] Job 38:4-7