Reflections from Rikk Watts material I posted about a few weeks ago.

I say reflections because what follows is not a direct summary of Rikk’s material. A lot of the ideas I put here came from him but I have put them down in my own words and tossed in a few of my own thoughts as well. Again, I can’t stress enough how significant I think this material is and encourage you all to give it a listen.

Man is made in the image of God as male and female.

Humanity is fundamentally relational. He thrives in relationship.

The Fundamental relationship he is designed for is marriage and family.
Marriage for a person brings many benefits but having his sexual desires fulfilled is not central among them.

The benefits of marriage for a male include:
Having someone other than his own self to focus his energy on. He has to be protector, provider, educator, friend, lover, companion and example. He must spend his strength not for himself but for the welfare of his family.

In this context the man becomes the very best of what men can become. Nothing can teach him responsibility, humility, endurance, patience and love like a wife and family can. Nothing can mature him or build his character like the demands made by or the sacrifices required by a family.
Even sex within marriage is not about self-gratification but about self-control, mutual serving and giving.

For males their sexual desire does not help them in their marriage as much as it proves a problem.

A man’s wife will rarely satisfy a male’s every sexual whim and hunger. For most males their sexual hunger does not rest on only one person. Most males are attracted to multiple people and in a free world would want to engage sexually with as many of them as possible and often.

Marriage then, becomes about learning to transcend one’s sexual appetites and limit one’s sexual expression to a single monogamous relationship and this is very challenging.

Marriage does not provide freedom from sexual immorality because it satisfy’s man’s sexual hunger. It provides freedom from sexual immorality because it demands faithfulness and self-control and love. If you give it a proper commitment there will be little opportunity or time left for sexual relationships outside of it.

The idea of an “orientation” or “sexuality” is a fairly modern concept (Rikk goes into some significant detail about the history and proponents of this concept which is well worth hearing).

Modern society has put sexuality as the centre of human identity and stresses “good regular sex” as a human need or right for life and this idea is actually unrealistic as far as marriage (as a long term relationship) is concerned.

The modern church’s approach to sexuality when it comes to those who are same gender attracted seems to be to either advocate celibacy or monogamous homosexual “marriages”. But what ARE gay Christians meant to do?... does the bible have an answer.

We need to make sure we are asking the right questions.

cont...