Sex: What the Bible Actually Says!

By Lance Chambers

Today, more than ever, we hear from preachers and evangelical Christians that the only type of relationship allowed in the Bible is "One Man. One Woman". The reality is that it is not that simple.

The Bible supports many differing sexual relationships and has even rewarded incest, prostitution, multiple partners, rape and other types of sexual congress.

Is it any wonder that those pushing modern morality based "Traditional Marriage" do not talk about "Biblical Marriage" when God doesn't demand the sexuality they preach.

The reasons, as you will discover in the book, is because "Biblical Marriage" has absolutely nothing to do with "Traditional Marriage" at all.

The Bible suggests that sex is one of God's greatest gifts to be enjoyed in many different types of relationships. It is not to be a reason for guilt or shame. It is to be revelled in and enjoyed as one of God's greatest gifts to the human race.

Find out the truth in this book where all the relevant passages in the Bible are referenced so you can find the truth for yourself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lance Chambers
• Release date: Aug 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476076652

Lance Chambers

British/Australian male born in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) in 1949.I have a degree in Marketing from Purdue Uni in the US and an Engineering degree from the Uni of South Australia.Have been a lecturer to Business Grad students, worked as a labourer, for the Government as a Strategic Planner, have picked hops and apples in England and grapes in France while on my 2 and a half year gap year.I have also run a writing course at the Western Australian University during their summer schools.Travelled back to Australia from Europe overland which was easy in the 70's and great fun. Wouldn't try that today.Have run my own consulting company, made money selling all sorts of stuff online. Am married to a really incredible artist and have two kids (one of each).Have written five technical books with CRC Press of Boca Raton, Florida. Have had another printed by another company I've forgotten the name of and two books on small business by an Australian publishing house for local Australian consumption.I have dabbled in writing fiction but have struggled but non-fiction now that's great stuff.Been an avid researcher into biblical history for over 30 years - incredibly interesting.Well that it about me.

Book preview

Sex

What the Bible Actually Says!

By

Lance Chambers

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Smashwords Edition

Published by Lance Chambers on Smashwords

Copyright 2012 by Lance Chambers

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Please note that I use Canadian/Australian/English/New Zealand/South African spelling throughout. You will see doubled letters (e.g. focussed), ou’s (e.g. colour) and ‘re’ (centre) as well as a few other differences from American spelling. Please be patient with me.

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I am tired of watching those who are supposed to care about the Bible reduce its stories and its teachings to slogans. The only way the Bible can be regarded as straightforward and simple is if no one bothers to read it.

J. R. Knust, Unprotected Text, pg 10.

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The chorus of calls for sex to only be practiced in a traditional marriage comes from those who don't know their Bible or who, for reasons of their own, have decided what is right and wrong without comprehensive reference to the Bible.

The Author

Table of Contents

Introduction

A Short Summary of Conservative Views on Sex and Marriage

A Short Overview of Relationships Allowed in the Bible

What Constitutes Traditional Marriage

The Song of Solomon

What was the Sin of the Sodomites

Incest and the Evolving Morality of God

Biblical Marriage

God, Jesus, and the Angles—Sexual Beings?

The Conversion of the Gentiles

Is This Sexual Act Acceptable?

Fear Mongering Preachers

Bible—References

A Closing Note

Introduction

Sex is an integral part of the Bible because sex is an integral part of the lives of all living things. How else can we fulfill God’s command to be fruitful and multiply if we do not have sex?

The Bible doesn’t want to tell you pithy, pointless or simple stories about life—it tells you the truth however hard it may be, at times, to understand. It is there to offer you guidance in how to make the most of the gift of life that you have been given and chastity is not one of the gifts or one of the demands laid down by God.

This book works on the basic premise that if you want to call yourself a Christian then there are specific requirements laid down in the Bible that you MUST comply with. There is NO choice in this—to be a Christian you cannot pick and choose the bits you like, or that make your life easy, or that suit your particular values. It's all or nothing and if you don't live your life the way that the Bible requires of you then you're just a sham Christian and not living as God demands.

Having said that, working out what the Bible does require of you in many areas of our lives is not easy. The Bible tells us one thing in one place, something else somewhere else (I'll highlight these conflicting ideas where they occur), and there are also events where people disobey clearly stated commands made by God and remain unpunished and, often, rewarded instead. It is, therefore, not surprising that the early Church fathers strongly supported the idea that common people should not be allowed to read the Bible! The reason was that they would misinterpret too much and this would lead them into confusion and error and, in the worst situations, heresy. In fact there was a long period during which reading the Bible, if you were not an ordained minister, would see you condemned to death by the church and the execution would be carried out by the secular authorities.

Too many of us read and follow the ‘nice’ bits in the Bible and work very hard to forget the rest. There are some dramatic instances in the Bible where people are commanded to kill and murder, in others told to sin and others that encourage intense sexual pleasure. Pretending these passages don’t exist will not make them disappear. They are part of THE BIBLE and need to be read, understood and become a part of your understanding of what God seeks from you.

Following the passages we like and ignoring those we don’t will not change the demands God makes of you—it will just make you a non-Christian and being selective in what you believe will not help each of us understand what we need to understand to be a true Christian.

The Bible is not a simple easy read. It is horrifyingly complex, flexible and, at times contradictory. It is these attributes that allow some people to demand that slavery is, even today, a God given right and the right way to live while others can use the same Bible to fight against slavery. The Bible can be successfully used to push for ‘traditional marriage’ as the only acceptable forum for sexual intercourse while others can point to passages that proclaim the exact opposite.

It wasn’t the Bible that freed the slaves and it wasn’t the Bible that now allows for divorce and it will not be the Bible that will determine the sexual ethics in the future.

It will be how our communal values change with time, with education, with growing understandings, with advances in ethics and by bringing to the fore our innate understanding of how to live a truly Godly life devoid of corrupting influences of well-meaning but misguided people, preachers and evangelists.

There is a famous poem that describes two lovers burning with desire for each other. This mutual obsession is base, sexual, carnal, and totally erotic. The poem is full of vivid descriptions of their physical and emotional attraction and the sexual fulfillment of those emotions. The man lingers over his lover’s eyes and hair, on her teeth, lips, temples, neck, and breasts, until he arrives at her mount of myrrh.

The girl returns his feelings of lust with her own, just as powerful as his. There is total equality in this torrid relationship. Each is as willing to participate in all sorts of acts that many Christians today would be shocked to think about let alone be a part of. Is this just cheap pornography? Is that we’re talking about here?

Actually it’s NOT unless you count the Bible as a work of pornography!

This poem is the Song of Solomon, a poem whose origins in all probability go back to the pagan love songs of Egypt more than 2000 years before the birth of Jesus. It was one of the holiest books of Jewish and pre-Jewish religions and because of the reverence in which it was held was included in the Torah and from there found its way into the Old Testament and the Christian Bible.

Biblical interpreters have, through the centuries, attempted to evade its descriptions of highly charged non-marital personal sexual behaviours by arguing that it needs to be interpreted within a completely different context—the context of God’s love for Israel or it is about Jesus’ love for the church—which makes no sense as the church, as we know it, didn’t exist in Jesus’ time and certainly not 2000 years before his birth when the poem was first written.

But whatever other layers of meaning may lay beneath a surface reading, the Song of Solomon is, at face value, an ancient work of simple erotica about a couple’s sexual desire for each other and how they fulfill and consummate that desire through a total immersion into unbridle sexual intercourse and other sexual acts.

The most disturbing thing in this love poem for conservative Christians is that the couple are not married and there is no suggestion that they are even in a long-term committed relationship. Here, in the Bible, is a poem about two single people who are brought together to consummate their love and lust for each other and at no time is there any statements about how evil, corrupt, or inappropriate that behaviour is. The Bible puts forward a picture that highlights the unbridled joy and pleasure of non-marital sex with Gods total and unabashed support.

What does the Bible really say about sex?

Practicing and non-practicing Christians alike will probably be very surprised at the amount of sexual material in the Bible but should they be? After all the Bible was written as a book about how to live life in the right and proper way so is it really any surprise that it covers sex—a subject that most healthy people think about every day.

Christians who insist that the Bible incontrovertibly supports sex within the constraints of traditional marriage, may be very surprised at the combinations of relationships that would not be recognised today as being a part of a traditional marriage that are, not only, allowed but actually blessed in the Bible.

The Bible is full of strange and amazing tales about sex—

* Jephthah, who sacrifices his virgin daughter to God;

* Naomi and Ruth, who vow to love one another until death,

* Lot who passes his daughter over to the crowd so they can know them,

* a man who refuses to impregnate his sister-in-law and is killed by God for his defiance’

* a bisexual heroic Jewish King who God smiled upon and blessed.

All show that the Bible’s teachings on sex are not as coherent as a number of religious commentators would have us believe. If you do not know what the Bible says on a subject or refuse to transmit the truth how can you call yourself a faithful Christian preacher?

And sex in the Bible is one of the areas where even the most devout are often totally ignorant. The reason’s are, I believe, that these parts of the Bible are rarely, if ever, discussed, talked about, or read because in some way they are considered ‘not right’, ‘dirty’, or ‘obscene’.

Now I need to ask you a very serious question—Do YOU honestly believe that any part of the Bible is 'wrong' or 'obscene' because if you do then, can I suggest, you probably have a serious issue with Christianity and the faith it requires and the demands it makes of you.

The author of Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire, Jennifer Knust says,

I’m tired, of watching those who are supposed to care about the Bible reduce its stories and teachings to slogans.

Conservative Christians say that reading the Bible in the context of Christian tradition, maintaining an awareness that the text is divinely inspired and given to people directly by God and that a true believer can come to only one conclusion on questions of sex and marriage.

Sexual intimacy outside of a public, lifelong commitment between a man and woman is not in accordance with God’s creating or redeeming purposes, says Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, USA.

Also conservative religious scholars generally say things such as:

Liberal Christians may wish the Bible were more permissive on sex but it’s not.

But I would ask you to hold off making a decision on these very particular perspectives until you have read more of this book and have checked the references with your own copy of the Bible. You may be very surprised at some of the things you have been told to believe during your life as a Christian.

But battles over the right interpretation of biblical texts are, of course, as old as the Bible itself. In today’s culture the Bible—specifically a one man, one woman argument from the Book of Genesis—is employed by the Christian right to oppose gay marriage. This fight, as well as those over the effectiveness of abstinence-education schools and disagreements as to the proper role of women in church-leadership, has led many people to believe that the Bible doesn’t speak for them in any meaningful way.

Ms. Knust, a religion professor at Boston University, is also an ordained minister in the American Baptist church says:

The Bible doesn’t have to be an invader, conquering bodies and wills with its pronouncements and demands. It can also be a partner in the complicated dance of figuring out what it means to live in bodies that are filled with longing.

A Short Summary of Conservative Views on Sex and Marriage

The Bible is an ancient and holy text passed directly from God to man and is applicable in every way in the modern world—especially when it comes to marriage and sex.

I have to disagree. The Bible is full of differing forms, practices, and activities that do not conform to, what today, we would call 'traditional marriage'.

In the Bible, traditional marriage doesn’t exist. Abraham fathers children with Sarah and his servant Hagar. Jacob marries Rachel and her sister Leah, as well as their servants Bilhah and Zilpah.

Husbands, in essence, owned their wives, and fathers owned their daughters. A girl’s virginity was her father’s to protect—and to relinquish at any time of his choosing. Thus Lot offers his two virgin daughters to the angry mob that surrounds his house in Sodom. Deuteronomy proposes death for female adulterers, and Paul suggests that celibacy is better than being married but if you have to marry then do so but as a way of eliminating lustful thoughts not for any other reason such in the modern idea of love.

The real problem with isolating specific verses from the Bible without ensuring that you incorporate all relevant other material is that the Bible can be very confusing as you will discover in this book as you read it.

To pull only one or two passages to make appoint or reach a conclusion will often have you overlooking passages that tell you something else and if you do not reconcile these different points of view you will get it wrong!

The paragraph above that discussed the traditional marriage issue is a case in point. Is it right for a man to father children with his wife and servant, what about two sisters and/or their servants, should we all remain celibate or should we marry just one person and no other?

Many of those who would try to convince you will state that what the Bible says about sex and how to relate in a relationship from a sexual point of view is very obviously stated in the Bible.

I would content this is simply not true. Sex in the Bible is often hidden,

Reviews for Sex

[Aris · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I do not recommend this book. The bible has been taken out of context.
This author is lost and needs to learn how to interpret each verse before assuming things. But what he needs most is to be saved.