Real Marriage_ The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together - Mark Driscoll [61]
Paul flatly stated in Romans 12:1 that worship is offering our bodies as a living sacrifice. In 1 Corinthians 10:7–8, Paul made this connection between sexual sin and idolatry, explaining what sounds like a rousing night at the ancient club: “Do not become idolaters as were some of them. As it is written, ‘The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.’ Nor let us commit sexual immorality, as some of them did.”
Sex is deeply spiritual.
Throughout history God’s people have maintained a very special view of sexuality. In the days of the Old Testament, most of their neighboring religions in the Middle East taught that God was to be experienced through nature, particularly through sexuality. Because of this thinking, many of these religions had sexuality and temple prostitution as integral components of their spirituality and religious ceremonies. In contrast, God’s people were strongly opposed to such thinking because they held that God could not be reduced to something He had created.
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More contemporary examples include Hinduism, which maintained temple prostitutes until quite recently. Hinduism’s Kama Sutra sex manual serves as one example of many such weddings of illicit sexuality and religion that can also be found in Islam, Buddhism, and Confucianism.
Greek and Roman societies also had sexuality as a major element in their worship activity. Their temples had male and female ritual prostitutes available for sexual worship. The temple of Aphrodite in Corinth was one such temple that was renowned for having more than one thousand temple prostitutes.
Conversely, God’s people have always held that sex was created by God, and for the glory of God, but did not serve as a means of reaching God. They held that sex was to be appreciated but never worshipped or elevated to the level of idolatry frequently found in other religions.
The worship of sex as a god is as passionate as ever. The Bible predicted this tragedy. In Romans 1:24–25, Paul wrote that people either worship God our Creator and enjoy His creation—including our bodies—or people worship creation as a god, and in sexual sin offer their bodies in worship. Paul went on to explain that those who worship creation invariably worship the human body and its pleasures through sinful sex, including homosexuality and lesbianism, because it is the apex of God’s creation.
The Porn Plague and Prostitution
The sexual revolution of the 1960s and '70s radically altered the sexual landscape of our nation, so that today sex before marriage and viewing pornography are the culturally accepted norm. Subsequently, we are in the midst of a sexual social experiment the consequence of which no one truly knows.
Only by seeing sex as a god we worship are we able to make sense of the porno plague. The statistics paint an ugly picture. Annual pornography revenues are more than $90 billion worldwide.1 In the United States, pornography revenues were $13 billion in 2006, more than all combined revenues of professional football, baseball, and basketball franchises2 or the combined revenues of ABC, CBS, and NBC ($6.2 billion).3 Porn sites account for 12 percent of all Internet sites.4 Every day 2.5 million pornographic e-mails are sent.5
A staggering 90 percent of children between the ages of eight and sixteen have viewed pornography on the Internet, in most cases unintentionally.6 The average age of first Internet exposure to pornography is eleven.7 The largest consumer category of Internet pornography is boys ages twelve to seventeen.8 Youth with significant exposure to sexuality in the media were shown to be considerably more likely to have had intercourse at ages fourteen to sixteen.9 The mean age of first intercourse in the United States is now 16.4.10
Porn