God Loves Sex

Book excerpt: We live in a sexually mad world where God's gift of sex has been distorted through pornography, promiscuity, prostitution, abuse, trafficking, and rape. The church's position on sexual matters has been made clear throughout history: all sexual activity outside the boundaries of Christian marriage is sin. But rarely has the church honestly addressed the true needs of Christians who are struggling with sexual desires they believe to be counter to the Bible. So we hide our struggles and pretend to live above the erotic fray, or else we cozy up to the culture's redefinition of which sins are acceptable. But what does the Bible really say about sexual desire and sexual intimacy? God Loves Sex offers a truly liberating, godly view of holy sensuality by recovering the clear meaning of the Song of Songs as God-sanctioned eroticism. Then it uses that lens to answer questions posed by a fictional new Christian struggling with expectations of sexual purity. It asks provocative questions, such as What does it mean to be both holy and filled with rich sexual desire? and How can our sexual struggles take us deeper into the purposes of God? Pairing psychological insight with sound biblical scholarship, Allender and Longman bring it all out into the open, allowing Christians of any age and any marital status to discover sex the way God meant it to be.