Rachel Held Evans - at age 27 she left the church - At age 30 she reflects on why she is still gone
2. I left the church because when we talked about sin, we mostly talked about sex.
In a sexual saturated society - it is easy to become too focused on the one issue that seems to stare us in the face so often - SEX. We have plenty of scriptures to back up that sexual immorality is a big deal... but it is definitely not the only issue the church needs to address. I believe sometimes the issue is so private and individualistic in our churches (not our culture) that it is easy for us to point our everyone else's issues that appear to be so much worse than our own. I think we are guilty of only talking about the bad things about sex and fail to talk about the good things about sex.
This is not an issue that is going away anytime soon. With the national average age of marriage rising into the late twenties, people in their sexual prime will have even more difficulties staying sexually pure. Not saying it is not possible, just saying it is much different than in the Biblical days. When the Bible was written there were many differences in the culture - young ladies were married in their teens. Also remember that the only way a Jewish man could commit adultery in those days was to have sexual relationships with a married woman besides his wife. So with men writing the rules for sexual immorality there were some loop holes.
Often we are tempted to think that our exposure to sexual material has greatly increased through the years. But if you do a little reading about the city of Corinth and their worship of the gods through celebrating the woman's body and sexual acts... we may not be so different after all.
Probably our biggest issue in the world of sex is our treatment of homosexuality. But I believe we will have to wait until Reason #15 for that discussion.
Any suggestions of how the church can keep of Biblical view of sex and yet deal with a generation that believes we focus too much on the issue?
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