I wept this morning as I read an article about a young woman selling her virginity to raise money for charity.
Here’s a girl who seems to have a good heart, wanting to raise funds to build houses for homeless in her community. Yet she seems to have bought into the prevailing lie that sex is no big deal, just a physical act.
The irony of this situation is that bids for her virginity top $155,000 so far. Obviously, purity is worth considerably more than most young people have been led to believe. This woman is auctioning off more than just a one night stand. Despite her good intentions of benefiting her community, no amount of money could ever restore what she will be sacrificing if she goes through with this.
In a recent workshop I attended entitled “Designer Sex”, the issue addressed was, “Is Sex Just Physical?” Here are some of the questions we were asked to consider:
~Why is it when a child is sexually abused, that abuse follows them the rest of their life–whether they realize it or not? Why is that betrayal harder to shake off than any other betrayal by an adult?
~Why is rape so much more devastating to a woman than being beaten up?
~Why is it that most men who struggle with sexual addictions often have uninvolved or distant fathers in their past?
~Why is it that promiscuity in most women correlates to an uninvolved or distant father?
~Why is it that if most people talked about their deepest regrets, it would be sexual?
Whether we look to religion, the Bible or simply to human nature for answers to those questions, the conclusion is the same. Sex isn’t just physical. It goes to the deepest part of our soul. All other animals perform the sex act for procreation. Humans are the only creatures who have the emotional ability to engage in sex for the opportunity to know & to be fully known. It’s called intimacy. When something so tender and sacred is stolen from us or we voluntarily give it away merely for physical gratification we risk losing the ability to be intimate. Sex becomes recreational rather than relational and over time we not only lose intimacy, we numb our senses, even become incapable of being tender and vulnerable with another.
Humans were not designed emotionally or psychologically to give our bodies to multiple partners. We were designed to unite with one partner for life. Becoming one is an act where two hearts become so intertwined separating them is impossible. Think scrambled eggs. Exclusivity is a gift that facilitates becoming one. It is not a sacrifice but an investment. Every time we say “No” to random opportunities for sex we are saying “Yes” to the One our hearts long to become one with. When we say “No”, we are in truth saying “Yes” to deeply soul-satisfying intimacy.
Despite what our culture is telling us, Sex isn’t just physical. It is rooted in the deepest level of my being, the level where I long for intimacy…to know and to be fully known.
Livin4Jesus 
I am tracking with your statement about becoming numb and losing the ability to be intimate. I used to be in a relationship with a guy who never talked about making love. It was always having sex. I never felt intimate with him. I don’t think he was capable of intimacy. It always felt dirty. I hated it after a while. Now I get that my soul was longing for something deeper.
DJ you are a brave one opening up like you did. Feels like I should apologize for the brotherhood but I doubt the guy you were involved with was part of true brotherhood. Real men know the difference between making love and just having sex. We’ve been sold a lie that it’s all about skill set, that’s what makes us men. But we don’t have to buy the lie. What makes us men is committing to love one woman for life and then doing just that. Loving her. With everything in us. Passionately. Tenderly. Completely. Exclusively. Therein lies intimacy beyond our wildest dreams. My wife went to her eternal rest knowing she was cherished and loved. Scrambled eggs indeed, Di.
Without any doubt, and you would agree Di, that young girl was part of the them that was in the words, ” Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” spoken through those dry lips of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
How important is the intimacy of physical sex? What if, married two years years and in bliss – your spouse has an accident which leave them incapable of performing sexually to your physical need? How bleak would your future look with the possibility of a fifty year wedding anniversary in store? What do we have to offer or expect when in the dependency of need? How important is physical sex then?
How important is any relationship? How healing is a good laugh shared by two friends – is that being physical in their intimacy?
What a waste if Life was not all intimacy, but purely on the clock, waiting for the weekend with little nooks and carnies to hide in for superfluous necessities.
In sex one gives their all, or hopes to, for a good return – that says a lot for Jesus Christ and His Church.
Jesus knows me, this I love.
Richard
Selling her virginity for charity? I believe selling sex for any reason is called prostitution.
I don’t know who to feel sadder for the girl who is loosing a lot more than virginity or the pathetic man who has to spend $155K to get some attention. I think who I really feel sorry for are all the people especially young teens who treat sex like its only physical and and casul and miss out on the beauty of really becoming one. I’ve made some mistakes in my past that I regret because some jack convinced me he loved me when he was really out for himself and what he could get. But I’m older now and can’t be fooled so easy. I wish someone had cared enough to talk to me about intimicy. Thanks for this post. I’m forwarding it to my girls.
If the highest bidder has any decency he won’t collect.
I have a somewhat different but same insight when I look at the word sin not only as “an offence” but also as a Hebrew prime root of that word “a miss” or “missing the mark”. I can say that I sinned or missed the mark most admirably and was very good at being dead to Life. I crowned the word Loser and followed the shepherd of lies until I was tangled in the briers of “whatever”.
Along came a person in my life as had so many, this one however, had an intimacy with the Living and only True God that reached out to me dynamically, as with fireworks. The Good Shepherd turned out to be my Big Brother, the one that lit every man and knew me before my members were fashioned.
God the Father saves us from creating Him in our own image as we pray “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done and give us this day our daily bread”.
As a friend of mine once stated, “All growth that is not towards God, is growing towards decay.”
Jesus Christ is enough; today, yesterday and forever.
May He show us His smile under all that grief in His assurance of Love.
Di, good insights. Good for me to read. I clearly understand you better. For that matter, I clearly understand intimacy better. I don’t think I’ve ever had that. I hope to change that.