10 thoughts on sexual sin from 2 Samuel 11-12

1. Idleness and boredom can lead to trouble.

2. Lust can be particular. David had many women with whom he could have legitimately had sex. He wanted Bathsheba.

3. David's sin in 2 Samuel 11 mirrors Eve's sin in the garden.  Both saw the fruit/woman, considered it/her delightful, took it/her, and then ate/had sex. In both cases, God confronts the sinner with their sin and the consequences.  The difference in 2 Samuel is that David repents.  Adam and Eve blame each other.

4. One sin leads to many more.

5. A friend who will unquestioningly help you cover you tracks is a bad friend to have.

6. We all have our weaknesses.  David had two: the habit of using women for his own purposes (cf. Michal in 2 Sam 3) and the inability to bring about justice in his own home and among his friends. These two weaknesses caused major issues.

7. It is interesting that what God speaks to David about is not his sexual ethics but his mercilessness. In the previous 2 chapters, David has been commended for showing the love and compassion (hesed) of God.  God was gracious to him, and he responded in graciousness to others.  It is his un-hesed like behaviour towards Uriah that he is rebuked for in chapter 12.  I am not wanting to trivialise sexual sin (it is not trivial), but it is not the act of having unwed sex that David is punished for.  It is his mercilessness to Uriah (in taking his one wife and having him killed) and lack of gratitude to God for all his blessings.

8. From #7, I wonder if rather than getting all worked up over the sin of lust, we would do better to combat it by working to have the love and compassion of God influence all areas of our lives.  Something like.... "You struggle with lust? Yeah, me too, but I'm not going to act on it because God has showed so much love to me and in response I'm going to show love to x,y, and z. Entertaining lustful thoughts won't help me do that."

9. If life is boring cause you've stayed home when you should have gone off to war (or work), you should busy yourself with thoughts of how you can be merciful to others.  This is what David did in chapters 9 and 10 and it kept him out of trouble. (Kind of.)

10.  God is gracious.  From the beginning, David deserved nothing from God.  God gave him so much and would have given him more if he had asked.  After the Bathsheba/Uriah incident, David deserved nothing but judgement.  (How many commandments did he break in chapter 11?)  But God forgave him as soon as he began to repent!  Bathsheba (who we have to assume is complicit in the whole sordid affair) was given another child - Solomon - who is particularly loved by God, incredibly gifted, and part of the family line of Jesus.  What other God would do that?

better sex apologetic = second best

"Even if our happiness is likely to be increased by keeping sex within marriage, this is the wrong question to ask. A Christian apologetic for marriage is settling for second best if it says to people, “Join us and live our way because you’ll probably be happier that way (and have better sex into the bargain).” They may or may not be happier in the shallow sense of having better sex. They may have no sex at all: Jesus didn’t. Instead, what Christians say to people is, “Learn that the glory and honor of God is far more important than your personal satisfaction and the fulfilment of your longings and desires. And learn to center your life on his glory and purposes so that nothing so fills your heart with joy as seeing his purposes fulfilled. Then you will have the deepest personal satisfaction and joy in the world, as you rejoice in the glory of God.” This is the most radical de-centering of human beings imaginable. But we must do this if we are to make sense of sex. Christopher Ash.

From here. (A continuation of this discussion.)

sex as the new apologetic

Anyone else over this?

Here's how the argument goes:

Many people don't want to become Christians because it would interrupt their sexual activities. Sex is the most important thing in life, so this is unthinkable.

So we argue back: Becoming a Christian will make your sex life even better. Look, Christians are all for sex, God made it, God knows best, he tells us how to have really good sex. See here? We've got a whole book of the bible about it. Song of Songs. Christian erotica. (And guys, it talks about things you only dream about...)

Now, I'm into sex as much as the next person. I enjoy it. I enjoy talking about it. I enjoy writing about it. But.

I think we come at the whole apologetic thing from the wrong direction. Why not help people to see that sex is not the goal of life? Life people's eyes up, away from themselves and towards something bigger. Is the good-sex gospel going to cause us as many problems long term as the much-money gospel?

A few points.

• sex outside marriage is fun because of the adrenaline rush it gives. It's fun because it's dangerous. If people (particularly christian people) are mucking around outside marriage chances are that when they get married sex will be worse. They will need to learn to get a kick out of sex alone, not out of the adrenaline rush.
• Sex can take ages to get good at. Women have to get over their hangups with their bodies, guys need to learn patience and control. They need to trust each other. This is probably going to take years and years. The true-love-waits stuff which promises perfect wedding night sex is going to lead to disappointment. Trouble is, couples (and particularly women) blame themselves for their fumbling and even link it to godliness. 'If I was a better wife I'd be more willing/able to....' Ideas about submission get thrown into the mix and pain and guilt and despair escalates.
• Pressure to have great sex is a passion killer for women. It makes great sex (or any sex) unlikely to happen.
• Have we stopped talking about patience and kindness and joy and self control in marriage? Perhaps these things matter too...
  
• Sex is not for everyone. Apart from being untrue, a good-sex gospel is unkind to singles.
  

Have I overstated? What do you think?

sex is trivial

An interesting discussion. Funny. Seeing sex as essentially trivial frees us up to use (or not use) it appropriately. It is not some transcendent wonder unlocking the secret soul of me.

"...If the One who, in his life, crucifixion, and resurrection defined and actualized for us the very definition of humanness, what does that say about humanness? Clearly it says that marriage, sexual activity, and bearing children do not have any central place in the definition thereof.

Let us be absolutely clear on this point. If Christ is truly the fullness and definition of authentic humanity, we must say categorically that marriage, sex, and parenthood tell us nothing whatsoever of ultimate significance about humanness. If marriage, sex, and parenthood are somehow the fullness of humanity we are forced to say that Christ, far from being the true human as the Christian tradition proclaims, was in fact, sub-human. To grant sexuality any sort of ultimacy with respect to the definition of humanness is to deny that Jesus is the true human being.

So, if we take a Christological defintion for the meaning of humanness, sexuality by definition tells us absolutely nothing about the ultimate meaning of humanness. It may, through the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit be comandeered and become in many and sundry ways a parable of the kingdom, just as many of the trivial aspects of human life are open to God’s interruption and transfiguration. But, insofar as the meaning of authentic human existence, sexuality tells us nothing. Not if we really believe that Jesus defines for us what it means to be be human. And, further to this point, only when we allow sex to be truly and wonderfully insignificant, to be trivial, will it be able to be received as a gift rather than gulpingly grasped in an idolatrous fit of fetishizing." by Halden at Inhabitatio Dei