Sex
After long deliberation, Ruth and I came to the conclusion that this book on ageing should include a chapter on sex. That is to say, I came to the conclusion. That is why there was a long deliberation. Actually Ruth's reaction was "The world may be waiting for a chapter on sex, but I'm not sure that I'm all that ready."
So allow me to explain to you and to her the theological reasoning behind this decision.
First, I felt it would help to sell the book. On this point I received substantial support from my publisher.
Second, specific Christian literature on sex is not very extensive, and Christian literature on sex among older people is practically non-existent. Therefore, this chapter could very well come under the heading of original research.
Third (and this reason is clearly theological), I am adopting the premise that we Christians are far better qualified than most people to discuss sex because
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we know the One who invented it. We make this claim modestly, with full recognition of the massive secular research being conducted in the field. But we not only know who invented it, we know why He invented it.
We know what human sexuality is designed for and what it is not designed for. It is designed to give us joy. Not just to propagate the race, not just to alleviate concupiscence, not just to follow some blind primitive instinct, but to provide us with a touch of ecstasy and a foretaste of Heaven. God never intended sex to be an instrument for self-gratification, or immorality, or unnatural practices, or crime.
God is a God of love, and love, unhindered, always expresses itself in joy. Thus in God's ordered universe, evil activities invariably cause their own misery and punishment. The terrible current scourge of social diseases is, whether we want to admit it or not, a silent witness to what happens when God's design is violated.
Yes, we Christians know where it all started and where it will end. Where did it start? In the Garden of Eden, somewhere in Iraq, in the area that used to be called Mesopotamia, or the Fertile Crescent. It must have been a beautiful setting, since it was specifically called a garden. Probably there were tall, waving palm trees, a charming brook bordered by yellow daisies, with butterflies and multicolored birds flying about. Imagine a shady grove in the midst of all that beauty. In the late afternoon a small table is set with a white tablecloth. On it are a pair of
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lighted beeswax candles in golden candlesticks, two crystal goblets, and a bottle of sparkling cider. There are two chairs, and seated in them are a man and a woman. Soft music is coming from somewhere in the background. The couple are facing each other and holding hands. She is attractively dressed in a summer frock of white muslin. He is wearing tennis shorts and a T-shirt that says "Surfers of the World, Unite!"
That's not the way it was, of course, but the point is that the people who lived in the garden were happy. God saw to it that something was going on in that garden, and it wasn't tiddledywinks.
For centuries the world has had the wrong impression about God, Christianity, and sex. For example, many people claim the Bible teaches that sex is wicked (though how they could arrive at such a conclusion after reading the Song of Songs is beyond me). They believe that when the preacher tells people to repent of sin, what he really is saying is "Repent of sex." We Christians are supposed to shy away from sex, to treat it as a no-no, an unmentionable subject, something we put up with in order to have children. We older ones especially are supposed to put away childish things such as sex, and content ourselves with sitting in our rocking chairs, knitting sweaters for our grandchildren, and watching television, or (if we are male) pulling hairs out of our ears and reading the paper.
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I'll be honest and admit that some believers may seem to talk and act that way. It makes you wonder how, with such a doctrinal handicap, Christians ever managed to populate such a large section of the earth's surface. Perhaps the truth is that over the centuries most Christians have been laughing up their sleeves at the bad press some theologians have been giving the subject of sex. They (the Christians) have just gone to bed and enjoyed it, and not talked about it. In doing so they fulfilled God's original purpose, which was that they should be fruitful and multiply. They created families, built homes, reared sons and daughters, and ignored the "saints" who insisted that the whole depraved sex system was built on original sin. And what is more, they kept right on enjoying it long after anyone suspected they were capable of it.
That leads us quite appropriately to the subject of sex and ageing, which is the primary interest of this chapter. Because of the exalted nature of our discussion, I will not attempt to quote statistics, but rest assured they are available in any bookstore or public library. If you want to investigate, you can find surveys conducted by psychologists of married couples in their seventies, eighties, and nineties, all of whom appear to be willing to contribute their personal experiences to the sum of human knowledge about sexuality and ageing. What can I, a retired and ageing journalist, possibly add, particularly since I have no great love for surveys?
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I shall defer all questions to my wife, to Dear Abby, and to Moses. My wife respectfully declines to comment. Dear Abby recently carried a letter in her newspaper column about an eighty-seven-year-old husband and his seventy-something-old wife who were having a frequent, satisfying intimate relationship. And as I mentioned earlier, the Holy Scriptures give us the facts about Moses, who at the ripe young age of one hundred and twenty years was thus profiled in the original King James translation: "His eye was not dim nor his natural force abated."1
Let the record show that the Bible further relates a number of rather amazing stories of sexual activity among aged people, and as one who accepts the Bible without reservation as the Word of God, I must say that I have no trouble believing those accounts.2
Some say the biggest error caused by the modern sexual revolution has been the openness with which society now talks about healthy and legitimate sex. But that is not an error at all, nor is the new openness contrary to biblical teaching. There is modesty in the Bible, but the prudishness of the Victorian era is nowhere to be found, for the Bible teaches that sex is a creation of God and an excellent thing to be enjoyed within the bounds God has set for it.3
Neither is there any error in removing the cloak of shame that we (not God) have thrown around sexuality. Sexual activity outside of marriage does deserve shame, because it is a sin
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that flaunts God's love, violates His commandments, and stains the purity of the wedding vow to "cleave only" to the beloved. The Bible calls extra-marital sexual activity "fornication." I have heard Billy Graham say that God especially hates this sin because it takes a person's mind off the things of God faster and more thoroughly than anything else we do. With that I agree.
Sex, however, remains a living force in God's good creation to be used or misused. To speak of misuse, the really gross error of the sexual revolution has been its separation of sex from true love between human beings. This bifurcation has caused the human race unimaginable distress and suffering.
The Darwinian revolution, rather than the sexual revolution, may be ultimately responsible for this tragedy.4 By classifying homo sapiens as a creature descended from primates, certain protagonists of the evolutionary hypothesis on our anthropological faculties are encouraging people to regard themselves as little more than animals. It's true that we are possessed of certain animal characteristics, for which we can also thank God. Many Christians, however, have come to recognize that sex remains one of the clearest evidences of the working of a divine hand in the creation of human life. In other words, in the glory, the joy, and the miracle of the sexual relationship we have evidence that humankind is not only a work of the Creator HImself, made and shaped in His image, but also
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that God continues to be involved actively in the workings of His creation.
What impels a raccoon to have sexual intercourse with another raccoon, I am not prepared to say, but defer to the specialists in animal husbandry. Everything, however, that I know about sex among human beings tells me that the sexual relationship goes with love or it doesn't belong anywhere. In fact, it goes bad. Here is where the divine hand can be seen at work. God, as the traditional marriage service declares, established marriage for the welfare and happiness of humanity. In His wisdom He put a strong band of protection around sex to make sure it would be an instrument of joy and not of misery and that it would produce good fruit. That band of protection is known today as a wedding ring.
The ring itself is not a sign of legality. It is not a government stamp. Many years ago a Seattle superior court judge told me, "I'm not married to my wife because the state of Washington said I could be." In other words God established marriage; the state merely confirms it. The wedding ring is actually a signet denoting God's welcome into the bliss and promise of the married state.
It's pitiful to see and hear of millions of people attempting to find what they call "sexual fulfillment" in every kind of relational activity imaginable, but never discovering real happiness. Instead, by engaging in free sex, they so often open a Pandora's box of horrors compounded by guilt, jealousy, cruelty, revenge, crime, disease,
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and increasingly in recent years, death. Every night on the newscasts we see the frantic responses of people who are trapped and harmed by their own sexuality.
As long as sex and love are separated, the Devil has a holiday. Love between a man and a woman is in fact the only guarantee of "good sex." In this context I am discussing love within marriage as God ordained it. Yet even within marriage, unless love is present, sex can be frustrating and disappointing. Unless there is tenderness and affection and responsiveness and trust and mutual caring, sex can be about as worthless as a bag of peanut shells, a drag.
What good are all the directions about foreplay and afterplay and in-between play if down inside a husband is nursing a bitter grievance over some nasty remark about his behavior made at breakfast? What good are taking showers and trimming fingernails and dimming lights if a wife cannot forget how her husband insulted her in front of friends? All the sex instruction books in the world cannot turn a black eye or broken ribs into a loving heart. All the psychological remedies for impotence and frigidity are ineffective against the damage done by mental or physical cruelty in the home.
As people grow older their tempers calm down. They are not upset as they once were, nor do they react to things the way they did when they were younger. Perhaps that is partly the reason why today, secure within the bonds of Christ, ageing married couples by the thousands are finding a
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continuing and increasing source of joy in their sexual relationships.
I am not going to underrate sex. Of course it's fun, but fun cannot begin to describe it. Sex is a wonderful experience that cannot be compared to anything else. No poet has adequately reduced it to iambics; no music can truly convey its quintessence. And yet from everything I learn about the subject, millions of people never come near to knowing, sensing, or feeling its magnificence. For many it has become a quick fix, a ten-second high, or a casual, routine, and often boring exposure to what one woman described to me as "stifling intimacy." Sex is thought about, talked about, dreamed about, and written about as no other subject; but for all that it remains for a host of people, including older people, a fleeting goal, a disappearing rabbit, or else a rainbow whose pot of gold was never found.
But there is hope!
Amid all the sordidness and pain and misery brought about by the sexual revolution, one change for the better has taken place. Bookstores, particularly Christian bookstores, are now carrying excellent manuals on sex and marriage that offer factual information and practical guidance to young and old who are planning to marry, or who are already married and feel their sexual relationships need improvement. Never doubt that there can be improvement! Sex should never fall into a rut. Married love can be an increasing source of new pleasures, even for older couples.
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If you have not found them, start looking now.
Much of the help needed can be found in simple applied Christianity. For example, both the wife and the husband can begin thinking of each other rather than of themselves and their own inhibitions. Believe it or not, most husbands would like their wives to be bolder and more aggressive during the time of wooing. Most wives, on the other hand, would like their husbands to think of something besides their own pleasure while making love — in other words, to show real love by taking time to give the wife her enjoyment. A male chauvinist of a few decades back said that wives shouldn't expect pleasure from sex; they get their pleasure, he explained, from their children or from being mistress of the home. What a delightful bedmate he must have been!
It works in other marital relationships as well. Right now, what would be most pleasing to the other party? Ask yourself, what can we do together that would cement our relationship? Perhaps there is something about your spouse's behavior that is particularly bothersome. What can you do about that? I'll tell you: Shut up about it! Learn to live with it. Pray about it. Nobody is perfect. "You can't change anyone," I was told years ago, "but God can change you." There are things you do that bother your spouse. If you keep quiet, perhaps your spouse will not mouth off about you. Then you can get back to sweet talk and hugs in the kitchen. It's worth a try.
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If any one thing will kill sexual pleasure fast, it is a domestic argument. There are no arguments in our house. I just give in. (Copy editor, delete that last sentence, I was kidding.) The truth is that Ruth and I are having too much fun to argue. Anyway, arguments are a waste. A jingle I heard years ago put it right:
I'm a lover, not a fighter —
kind of like it that way;
If you want a sparring partner
why don't you live with Cassius Clay?
God made us for love. While we are on earth He provides us with sex and holy matrimony to enjoy as part of that love. They are not for sale and are not for everyone. Many celibate people live wonderful lives. Jesus was a celibate. My wife, Ruth, was single and celibate for sixty-one years before we were married.
"Did you feel you missed out?" I asked her once.
"No," she said quietly, "God had other things for me to do."
Strange developments are taking place among older people in today's society. Financial considerations are such that single men and women are living together without marriage rather than take a drop in individual incomes that marriage would cause. I understand that certain churches are thinking of blessing these arrangements. I question very much whether God is blessing them. Scripture cannot be broken,
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and Hebrews 13:4 states, "Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled." The Greek word for "bed" here is koite, which doesn't mean "bed" at all; it is identical with our coitus, and the dictionary defines coitus as "the act of sexual intercourse." However, my calling is not to judge any more than it is to argue. My business is love, and so is yours; so let's get on with it.
I told you at the beginning that we Christians know where the sex relationship will end. We have it on the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ that there is no marriage or giving of marriage in heaven.5 That may well rule out sex. Does it trouble you?
Relax. Heaven is going to be so much better, so much richer, so much more thrilling and enjoyable than anything we know here that you won't miss a thing on earth. As the apostle Paul reminded the brothers and sisters in Corinth, in 1 Corinthians 2:9:
Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
Nor have entered into the heart of man
The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.
Chapter 13 || Table of Contents
1. Deut. 34:7 KJV
2. See Gen. 5:3 and 21:1
3. See Solomon's Song of Songs.
4. Two excellent critiques of Darwin's evolutionary hypotheses are Robert E.D. Clark, Darwin, Before and After (London: Pasternoster Press, 1950), and Gertrude Himmelfarb, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution (New York: Norton, 1968).
5. See Mark 12:24-25.
