Why Christians Hate Feeling Sexy

Sounds Silly, Right?

I wish this was a BabylonBee article, but it's not.

QUESTION: Do you ever feel sexual urges outside of looking at someone of the opposite sex? Imagine your mind being randomly drawn to something that envokes such feelings as you are working or trying to do school. You feel your body being complelled to handle or manage these drives, and all too often, the drives are just a nuisance or a liability to what you are doing. Youth wrestle with this most often, but it doesn't always stop once you're in your 30s. In fact, it can keep on going...

So, the next question becomes: my body is telling me things that are outside my control... now what?

• Find my wife/husband and have sex?
• Get a wife/husband and have sex?
• Get a girl/boyfriend and have sex?
• Get anyone and have sex?
• Imagine/reed sexy stories or think sexy thoughts and masterbate?
• Look at pornography and masterbate? 
• Just masterbate?

Let's get into it.

Feeling sexy is all about relinquishing control to our base instincts. Many people tend to compartmentalize their lives for better control, so such relinquishings seem best done just inside a dark bedroom where there is perception of control.

NOTE: This is not about feeling sexual-urges with a spouse when procreation is attempted. Also, this is not about flirting with a member of the opposite sex.

This article is about the INDIVIDUAL and their own sexuality — something that is usually confiscated or downplayed by the Christian because we don't see direct verses about it in the Scriptures, and the age of grace has them worried.

The Motivation For Hating Our Biology

To be fair to them, there is a lot of motivation behind tying to cut out our base insticts, as both they are volatile and seem to be spoken of negatively in a number of passages throughout the Scriptures. Because of this, it makes sense that people would reject the confusion and chaos and individually choose to be islolated from it.

Honestly, this is the foundation of liberty. Those who do choose to figure it out must also suffer the consequences.

A quick read of these verses seems to present a concept that doesn't work with God's nature and his grace:

God messed up: Sensual things are bad. Spiritual things are good.

The Volatile Nature Of Human Senses Encourages Authoritarian Regulations

Physical pleasure seems to get a bad rap in the Scriptures. Why? People abuse them constantly, so it's completely logical to try and control them with a "don't do" list of actions, based on historical truth and practical experiences, that produce negative consequences. You and I do this every day with many, many things and it helps keep us safe.

Examples of things we tell our kids and ourselves:

• Never walk away with strangers.
• Never be alone with someone who has been drinking or taking drugs.
• Don't drink alcohol or do drugs.
• Tell someone where you are going so you can be found if you go missing.
• Never get in a car with someone who has been drinking or doing drugs.

Lists save lives. There isn't any doubt about that.

But, this leads us to the eternal wrestle of how granular we should get, and when it comes to embracing the senses and enjoying them, it also means revealing how much we want to prioritize the individual over the group.

Are You A Carona Mask Wearer? 

After COVID-19 ravaged the world, people started wearing masks everwhere. When it become apparent that masks didn't do as much to stop the spread of the sickness as originally communicated by the US CDC, many people stopped wearing them. At this point, it became a "you versus us" showdown in communities with people demonizing the individual who chooses to express their liberty to not wear a mask over wearing one to protect the group.

This is also how human beings manage and regulate our senses at a communal level.

Feeling Sexy Means Taking Off Your Mask

Yep. This means you are going to reveal yourself to the world you, at times, embrace your own pleasures instead of submit to the group. Yes, we are talking about individual processing of the senses, sensuality, and sexiness itself — not engaging a sexual partner or being flirtateous. In a sense, just like the LGBTQ community, you're coming out of the closet.

But, you're not coming out in a way that violates the nature of God. In fact, you're coming out to fully embrace the nature of God.

Ted Dekker writes in his book "The Slumber of Christianity" about the children of foretastes, the children of bliss, and the amazing table of bounty God has given us on this side of eternity. If you haven't read it, do so. Christians, as the children of bliss, have pushed our plates away from the temporal bountiful table of God's provision. We notice the food spoils, or you can eat too much and get sick or fat or die, or that people fight over it and abuse it, so we demonize the amazing gifts the Father has given to us, and storm away from the table feeling like abandoned children.

Nothing could be further from the truth! You're here at God's table, and it's okay to say "I like eating this amazing food!"

That's pretty much the reality we're trying to connect with, and in doing so, we will incure the wrath of the other children of bliss who have established moral guidlines for demonizing the amazing gifts on the table of plenty.

Feeling Sexy Means Letting Go Of Perceived Control

If it's not hidden in the bedroom, Christians don't like to talk about sexual-oriented sensuality. People have a psychological need to feel secure, and the chaos of this brand of sensuality subverts it, because living in an age of grace and the freedoms it brings isn't the easist thing to do.

Christians actually do that for most things they see as volatile.

When they realize there is a potential negative outcome, they tend to reject the physical and embrace gnosticism (spiritual things are better than physical), and have been doing such since the 1st century church. We find the food that spoils easiest at the table of bounty, and put a label on it that says "Good Christians Don't Go There."

The Table Of Bounty Has Beautiful Things That We Can Choose To Use Properly Or Choose To Misuse

Um... Is he using "table of bounty" and enjoying para-marriage sensuality in the same paradigm? Wait. Isn't that the opposite of pure and good? Don't bad guys want flesh and good guys want peace and to protect the innocent and vulnerable? Yes — in Saturday morning cartoons.

We try and paint the idea that our biological sense got through a metamorphosis after we commit to a single person in a relationship, and that all the good people wait until they get that one perosn. That painting is a utopian goal, and everyone of us has to fight to make it happen. It's an amazing, and simple thing to maintain.... physically, because sexual temptation is so powerful between individual people:

But this has a tendence to go beyond the physical and into the mental, where it starts relating with our biology and bringing condemntation to our senses... and then it reverse engineers itself into the life of the unmarried... hoping to prepare him or her for a life of wedded bliss. The problem here is, this human biological reality doesn't work along side this utopian abstraction.

Much like a society trying to outlaw dancing to help curb youthful promescutity, so limiting the senses is just going to produce conflict and chaos for everyone... because it doesn't work inside God's design.

For the Christian, the Law condems him or her. In this context, it is the Mosaic Law. Our flesh hears we shouldn't look at skin or sensuality, and then goes hog-wild, trying to produce all kids of lust and covetousness. But that doesn't mean the God-made biology is wrong. In fact, it's good. Really good. The reality is, investing in repetious licetiousness is damaging to our relationship with God... but feeling sensuality is wonderful! We were designed that way.

Put simply, if you constantly think about sex and sensuality, your mind becomes absessed with it, in or outside of marriage. So control it.

The idea of only having it being triggered by a specific source (a wife or husband) is a goal-oriented motivation to try and encourage couples to stay focused on each other, but, like the Mosaic Law that says "do not covent," it also stands as a type of law that can bring condemnation and damnation to our natural cosciences as our biology does its thing.

Regulating our natural biology, apart from submitsion to loving our neighbor, brings us towards condemnation and death.

You need to actually take charge of our mind and choose to control how you handle sensuality, enjoying it, but also limiting it.

When you saw the model for this this article's main image (the naked girl), your mind probably experienced a few reactions. They were both biological and psychological, tied to how your body naturally works and how your mind has been programmed through life's experiences.

This model chose to pose for us. She didn't do anything wrong, and you didn't do anything wrong by looking at her.

Now... what you do afterwards in the physical world is between you, love, the Law, and the flesh which wants to missuse this beautiful creation.

Are you going to use it to praise God in thankfulness and move towards marriage... or are you going to seek out your own gratification and hurt others?

The truth is, this young woman hasn't missused her body, and you haven't missused your eyes looking at her or feeling/enjoying the biological reactions your body produces by such observation. 

So, Why Do Christians Hate Feeling Sexy?

Once we make it past the idea that an expression of sensuality, whether a beautiful song, delicious food, or sexuality itself isn't wrong in and of itself — we can finally ask our burning question: why do christians hate feeling sexy as individuals?

1. They are fearful they won't be able to control themselves.
2. They are fearful their spouse will be jealous or someone else will disapprove.
3. They are fearful they did something wrong before God.

These three items cover expectations to the self, the group, and the moral, which pretty much make up everything we do in life. When dealt with according to the Scriptures, we can rock feeling sexy, but all too often, we try and force the presence of the Spirit through the instantiation of the Law.

Bringing in the Law to replace the Spirit might generate a temporal moral mutation away from habits of the flesh, but it doesn't actually heal someone and restore them to God through the transformation of Salvation He has asked us to partake in.

Does this mean we have a lot of moral nazi's running around in the name of Jesus forcing moral law instead of encouraging the indwelling of the Spirit as directed in the New Covenant?

Yes. Yes, it does.

Moral Law Sudo-Fixes Broken Things, But Not Really

Moral Law sounds a lot better than letting people explore volatile nature of our biology and finding out how to make it work with God's grace and love. It's easier. In the end, God cares much more about your heart and how much you are expressing HIS love to spread the Gospel of Peace than he does about if you are allowing yourself to experience the Table of Bounty in a way that glorifies Him.

So... What's Really Broken?

That's it. We confuse the chaotic beauty of the world with sin because the chaos isn't easy to understand and properly direct to give God glory... but it's worth it. Sensuality is of God, sex is of God, the feelings produced by these we have inside us are born of Him for His glory.

• Moral law says "Stay away! Unless these things are in the right context, they are wrong."
• God's nature says "I made all things good -- and I made you to enjoy these things, to drive you to me, and to find great joy and love with a spouse."

Notice there isn't contextualization?

Awesome! Let's Feel Sexy! Bring On The Sensuality?

Just as man of great appetite must put a knife to his throat if he comes to a kings table, so we too much know our limitations. This means personal responsibility. Maybe you and your hormones are a place where the slightest mention of sensuality, whether it be food, sex, or anything, brings on a wave of nearly unstoppable drive. Trust me, I've been there.

• That overhwhelming sensual wave isn't wrong. It's made by God for you!
• Your response to it might introduce a massive influx of callaries, or a great need for masturbation.

You've finally engaged the real battle. Staying "away from sensuality/sexuality" isn't the real fight. That's like trying to stay away from good tasting food so you don't think about it. It's deprogramming yourself to reject the natural and then start engaging and learning how YOU were created and how YOU can best deal with these things in a way that DOES NOT demonize or condemn your engineering.

For example, masturbation may seem like a way to manage things — but, in honest, it's basically saying your urgest are a mistake and you have to kill them.

I did that for years before I realized I was lying to myself and disrespecting my body as God created.

Can I Win This Battle Against Flesh By Myself?

You can do all things in Christ. Seriously. You can!

To win, you have to fight the right battle. Rejecting a good portion of your physiology isn't a battle that's healthy to fight, much less win.

• Instead, you need to be able to look at sensuality and sexuality and see God and give Him the glory. This will start the process of killing the hold your flesh has on your mind, and allow you to disconnect from any addictions.

I had nudity on my phone for an entire year and didn't use it to produce sensual or sexual thoughts. How did I do it? I started thanking God for how much beauty there was in every expression of such sensual humanity. It became a God-thing, and my flesh discovered it couldn't misuse it... and the incredible drives drifted away into nothing.

I absolutely love the beauty of the model attached to this article. She's just amazing, made by God for His glory. She shared a bit of it with us in this photo, and I'm grateful and use it to motivate me to pray for my wife and myself and also for my kids' future relationships.

So, Don't Hate Feeling Sexy, God Made It

God didn't mess up.

God made your body, God designed your sexual drives, and He made you appreciate the opposite sex in many different facets. So stop believing any of that is wrong.

Be true to the Father, always.

— Micah

Let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy. Let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy.