8 / 80
8
christian counseling today
VOL. 22 NO. 1
I
t is no secret in today’s media and
technology-driven world that sex is
used to sell almost
everything
and
anything
. What God created and
designed to help illustrate that which
He considers beautiful and holy, Satan
has denigrated, demeaned, and used in
destructive ways. As we see the world
around us sink deeper into moral decay,
the boundaries of decency and restraint
are falling apart all around us.
Most of the statistics are very
sobering, even alarming… and in
many cases can feel overwhelming. For
example: there are currently more than
300 million pornographic Web pages
on the Internet, with an estimated six
to eight percent of the United States
population that could be diagnosed
with some level of sexual addiction;
there are an estimated 15 million new
cases of a sexually transmitted disease
(chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis,
HIV/AIDS, etc.) contracted every
year, which translates to about one
case every two seconds; of the top 11
reportable diseases in the U.S., five
are STDs; reports of childhood sexual
abuse have increased from 6,000 in
1976 to well over half a million today,
and most specialists agree that the
problem is far greater than the cases
reported; over 60 million children
have experienced some form of sexual
abuse before they graduated from
high school (approximately one out
of every three to four girls and one
out of every six to seven boys), while
the risk of developing substance abuse
problems in this demographic is nearly
400% greater; approximately one-third
of all marriages have experienced
an extramarital affair; the sexual
exploitation and trafficking of minors
has reached epidemic levels in our
country, with anywhere from 300,000
to half-a-million children at risk.
Sexual addiction is often defined
in terms of “false intimacy” and
magnified when individuals try
to meet a legitimate human need
(i.e., connection and meaningful
relationship) in an illegitimate way.
There are several factors that all
addictions have in common—they
provide a form of escape; they serve the
purpose of removing a person from his/
her true feelings; they always involve
pleasure; they override the ability and/
or willingness to delay self-gratification;
they involve psychological dependence
and obsessive-compulsive behaviors;
they lead to a system of denial and/
or minimization; they totally control
the addict and that control transcends
all logic or reason; they are destructive
and unhealthy in the long run; and
ultimately, they take priority over all of
life’s other issues.
Some believe the sanctity of human
life and the institution of marriage also
involve the sanctity of our sexuality.
Let’s take a closer look at the biblical
narrative. Sexuality was God’s idea.
We see in the creation story that “God
created man in His own image, in the
image of God He created him; male
Pure and Undefiled: Sexuality and Holiness
from the e-team