About Sex

People are always talking about sex. I’m an ob/gyn doctor, so my job is highly dependent on sex. I have to talk about it all the time. I really do enjoy educating young people about it. I always like to discuss what sex was meant for. I mean, the world is full of answers and tips, but mostly it offers a bunch of lies. Sex, as portrayed by the world around us, seems so glamorous, but really it is a far less amazing thing that it was meant to be. It was meant to be great. But the twisted nature of it leaves it beautiful on the outside, but rotten on the inside. Distortion of it seems to span the globe, like an unacknowledged plague. Very literally bringing problems which, when combined, are like a plague. I see it here so much. The effects of the twisted, adulterated version are seen in the patients lined up for clinic. Sex was designed by God to be enjoyable, and there isn’t anything wrong with it – that is unless somebody uses it incorrectly. But when used in different ways than God originally planned, mercy, does it go bad.

-She comes to sit in my office at the age of 39 and have a conversation about how her cervical cancer (the only known sexually transmitted cancer) is inoperable. Then we will talk about what “inoperable” means. It means that this is what is going to take her life. Tears fill her eyes as she asks me what she will do with the children she is raising. How will they make it without her?

-She comes to the office and talk about how she’s been trying to have children for 12 years. She has had medications, and surgery, and healing prayer services, and witchcraft. But the baby won’t come. And I’ll tell her how the tubes are scarred. She wonders why. I respond it is from a sexual infection, often many years ago. Most of the time, she didn’t even know that it was waging war inside of her, but it irreversibly damaged her tubes. Now the egg cannot make it into the place where it should sit in the uterus.

-Or she comes in with an ectopic pregnancy. I open her belly to save her life. It’s tensely filled with blood. We are giving IV fluids, but her heart has a hard time keeping up with the active loss. That scarred tube caught the pregnancy, and it grew inside there until finally the tube could stretch no more. It ruptured open, began spewing blood, and  is now endangering the mother’s life. The next morning, I tell her that we had to take out the fallopian tube. She wants to know what made the scars. I have the STD talk again.

-Or, she really hasn’t done anything. But her husband is with 3 other women. She lives in fear of HIV. But there’s nothing she can do. Why not leave? Well, because the poverty around her is swallowing her up. She doesn’t have any way to make enough to support herself and her kids. He beats her. And she doesn’t get to choose whether she will have sex since she has little power as a woman.

-Or,  one of the prostitutes who usually don’t make it to my office. She wishes she could have a better life, but can’t get out. Her family needs money. Everybody needs money. There’s no other work. So, she decides to just try to be careful. But its only gonna make $2 with a condom, and $10 without one. I mean, $10 could really help…

-And I could list a thousand others with other sexually related problems, but I'll spare you.

And you read about them and think that they are people a world away. And yes, they are. Fewer resources, less opportunity. But many of the problems are still the same in my hometown and in this new town. Sexuality is idolized all over the world it seems. Perverted, and with the safety of the protective walls of marriage taken away, it leaves physical scars, emotional scars. It was meant to be unifying between two people, freeing them to a level of vulnerability within commitment that was unparalleled. It doesn’t make marriage perfect, or easy. But it is a symbol of the commitment within relationship. How far less it is to settle for a few moments of pleasure, when so much greater was the original offer. And how devastating to find that the easier road had so many unrecognized, painful consequences. God offers more to His people. He demands more from them. And His ways are infinitely better than this world can offer. We need to work to redeem the generations coming up. They are taught by the world that sex is ultimate. But Christ is ultimate. And thankfully, He has made a wonderful place for sex, but it is not going to satisfy outside of His intention for it.