This morning I picked up an old book by Francis Schaeffer and was really moved by something he wrote. I think it is a great warning to a young Christian before he or she falls in love for the first time (or for subsequent times):
“Two great drives are built into man. The first is his need for a relationship to God, and the second his need for a relationship to the opposite sex. A special temptation is bound up with this sexual drive. How many young women are there who are faithful as Christians until they come to a certain age and feel with their whole being, without ever analyzing it, the need for marriage and are then swept over into marrying a non-Christian man?
“And how many men are there who are faithful until they feel the masculine drive and give up their faithfulness to God by marrying a woman who carries them into spiritual problems for the rest of their life?
“I look upon such young men and young women as I see them going through this, and I cry for them, because in a way there is no greater agony than suddenly to fall in love and then to realize that one must say no to this natural drive becuase it leads in that particular case to a severing of our greater relationship- our relationship to God.
“While what happened in the Garden of Eden was a space-time historic event, the man-woman relationship and force of temptation it must have presented to Adam is universal.”
(Genesis in space and time, Francis A. Schaeffer, (1972) Hodder and Stoughton, Toronto, p. 86) Link to book at Amazon
This really needs to be said to our young people in a clear, understandable way, don’t you think?
Boyd
Filed under: General | Tagged: Add new tag, dating, marriage
Boyd,
I appreciate and agree with the warning and note additional harmful approaches to satisfying this relational urge: seeking sexual satisfaction from some thing (pornography) or other substitute (i.e. chat rooms, romance novels, or other vicarious fantasy.)
Any thoughts on a remedy beyond “just say no?”
Michael, I find in my own life that my imagination turns to illicit thoughts at the time that I am “down” – when I have let myself become idle or depressed, when I have slipped back into Eph 2:2-3, which happens when I do not intentionally keep myself before the Lord; when I do not “take every thought captive unto Jesus”.
So, the remedy beyond “just say no”? It is the “pro-active” stance: “Abide in Him”, “Fall in love with Jesus”.
Or maybe the best way to say it is what C. S. Lewis says: “we are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
Oh how my soul resonates with “Yes!” to that statement, but my life shows a tendency to go back to making “mud pies”.
“Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Rom. 6:24-25
Amen.
Boyd