Are we sex addicts? Karl Marx said that “religion is the opium of the people.” But I think he was clearly wrong. Sex is the opium of the people. If you want to control somebody, offer them sex and they will do your bidding. Our culture is obsessed with sex. We think about it all the time. We get our haircuts based upon our drive for it. Our clothes are designed to provoke thoughts about it. Our movies are filled with it. Comedians joke incessantly about it. Public figures are scandalously involved with it. We sell it, we buy it, we trade it. Sex consumes our world. Which is another way of saying that sex consumes us! Does that mean that sex is working against us?
Opium addicts are crazy and violent. Sexual addicts are the same. Sexual addicts have no idea why sex exists in the first place. They never seem to stop and ask why they are pursuing this thing. They only know that they want it and they believe that they need it to be happy. This is why they constantly divorce from spouses, divorce from sexual identities, and divorce from offspring in order to pursue it. A sex addicts keeps chasing the next high regardless of what or who is killed or destroyed on the way. But after all the chasing, an addict is still anemic for lack of love and nurture. The violent lust for sexual heroin cannot get satisfaction. “Wretched man that I am. Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Romans 7:24-25a. Like other drugs, sex does serve a good purpose and is a good thing in its proper context. But outside of that context, it is powerfully destructive. How can we be free from the slavery of sex so as to be able to enjoy it properly again?
The only way out of sexual brokenness is to be born again. To be made a new creation and thus to discover what sexuality is all about. Saint Augustine famously wrote about God saying, “You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.” We were made for union and intimacy with God, just as sex was made for union and intimacy with your spouse. It is the lack of intimacy with God that has led the human race into sexual addiction, seeking the emotional and physical fulfillment that can only come through union with God. Emotional comfort, physical touch, security, acceptance, value, joy, pleasure, and many other things that we seek in a sexual encounter are things that can only be found when we are put right with God. Saint Augustine is right, God has made us for himself, just as God made one man and one woman for each other. We were created for intimate and exclusive intercourse without rivals. God is a jealous lover over us who will not tolerate rivals. Neither should we tolerate rivals to God. This is the first commandment: “You shall have no other God before me.” And this includes the sex god, Aphrodite. Are you a slave to sex? Do you worship Aphrodite by the way that you live? Do you need to be set free? The way out is simple and free. Repent. Come back to your faithful lover who made you for Himself. He will receive you, and He will forgive you, and He will embrace you. Don’t be restless anymore. Don’t be crazy. Come home to the lover of your soul.
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