God Loves Sex
- World Religions
- Marriage, Family & Relationships
- Publisher: Baker Books (Baker Publishing Group)
- Published: 2014
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Publisher's Description
We live in a sexually mad world where God's gift of sex has been distorted through pornography, promiscuity, prostitution, abuse, trafficking, and rape. The church's position on sexual matters has been made clear throughout history: all sexual activity outside the boundaries of Christian marriage is sin. But rarely has the church honestly addressed the true needs of Christians who are struggling with sexual desires they believe to be counter to the Bible. So we hide our struggles and pretend to live above the erotic fray, or else we cozy up to the culture's redefinition of which sins are acceptable. But what does the Bible really say about sexual desire and sexual intimacy? God Loves Sex offers a truly liberating, godly view of holy sensuality by recovering the clear meaning of the Song of Songs as God-sanctioned eroticism. Then it uses that lens to answer questions posed by a fictional new Christian struggling with expectations of sexual purity. It asks provocative questions, such as What does it mean to be both holy and filled with rich sexual desire? and How can our sexual struggles take us deeper into the purposes of God? Pairing psychological insight with sound biblical scholarship, Allender and Longman bring it all out into the open, allowing Christians of any age and any marital status to discover sex the way God meant it to be.
Endorsements (6)
“It’s rare to find a Christian book about sex that is real and helpful and honest. God Loves Sex is all of that and more. I’m grateful the authors tell the truth about a subject so complex and beautiful and ultimately give us hope and guidance to redeem the power of intimacy in our own lives.”
“Wise. Playful. Sacred. Surprising. This is not your average Christian book on sex. This is something better—and it is going to bring clarity, healing, and hope to a lot of people. I loved it from the first chapter.”
“I have always loved the Song of Songs, but this book gives me a rich picture of how it can help us to something deeper in our marriage. A really good book. So healing!”
“In a world that has gone sexually insane, where sex most often lives in confusion, perversion, compulsion, guilt, and shame, it is wonderful that Allender and Longman use the Bible’s sex song to restore sex to its original created beauty. Along the way, with refreshing and liberating honesty, they break the church’s code of sexual silence and offer us sex wisdom that only comes when we stop being afraid and start listening to the God who fashioned sex for his glory and our good and who meets us in our sexual struggles with remarkable grace.”
“God Loves Sex is a rare gift from a masterful joining of an adept Bible scholar and a prominent Christian therapist, author, and professor. With the use of both commentary and fiction, Longman and Allender invite us into the ancient, erotic love poems found in Song of Songs. The Song invites us to desire, enjoy, risk, struggle . . . and to consider ‘how our sexuality—holy and broken, beautiful and bent—is used by God to draw us deeper into his love.’ This book literally took my breath away.”
“It’s precisely because God loves sex that the Enemy hates it—turns it into a Mirkwood of entangled abuses and heartbreaks and compulsions, a dark place better skirted than braved. Enter Dan and Tremper, old comrades tenderly fearless enough to open sexuality to a little light and air, to name our shames in a way that relieves us of them and woos us to godly desire and play. Their machetes—the Bible at its most scandalously sexual, and professional psychology (fictionalized in Malcolm!) at its most scandalously Christian. There is probably no one who cannot find herself or himself in this book and therein find new hope.”
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