Sex.
For a three-letter word, it carries an incredible amount of baggage.
Pleasure. Love. Desire. Intimacy. Temptation. Marriage. Sin. Shame.
For many people raised in Christian homes, those last two words became attached to sex surprisingly early.
Don’t have sex. Don’t think about sex. Don’t look at someone sexually.
Cover your body. Control your desires.
Save yourself.
And depending on the church or family in which you were raised, you may have received another message…even if nobody actually said it out loud:
Good Christians aren’t supposed to enjoy sex too much.
But here’s the question that will guide this entire series:
Did God actually say that?
Not what our parents told us. Not what our pastor implied. Not what our denomination taught. Not what American culture decided was respectable.
What does the Bible actually say?
Because when we go all the way back to the beginning, we encounter something interesting.
Before There Was Shame
The biblical story doesn’t begin with human beings embarrassed by their bodies.
Quite the opposite.
Genesis describes humanity as created male and female and says that what God had made was “very good.”
Then comes one of the Bible’s most fascinating descriptions of the first couple:
“And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.”
— Genesis 2:25
Think about that sentence for a moment.
Naked. And not ashamed.
There is no embarrassment. No frantic search for clothing. No suggestion that their bodies are dirty. And importantly, this happens before the biblical Fall.
Within the story Genesis tells, the original condition of humanity isn’t bodily shame.
It’s bodily innocence. Something changes afterward.
Following their disobedience, Adam and Eve suddenly recognize their nakedness and cover themselves.
Christians have debated the theological meaning of that passage for centuries. It would be far too simplistic to claim that Genesis therefore endorses every form of nudity or sexual behavior.
But there’s something equally important we shouldn’t overlook:
The Bible’s first description of the naked human body isn’t one of shame.
Shame enters the story later. That should at least make us curious.
What About Sex?
Genesis also contains another statement that Christianity has repeated for thousands of years:
“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”
— Genesis 2:24
“One flesh” certainly has meanings beyond sexual intercourse. It describes a profound union between two people.
But Christianity has also historically understood sexuality as part of that union. And notice what Genesis doesn’t say. It doesn’t describe sex merely as a mechanical process required to manufacture children. Reproduction certainly matters. Genesis includes the command to “be fruitful and multiply.” But intimacy is also woven into the story. That distinction matters.
Because somewhere along the way, many Christians received the impression that reproduction makes sex legitimate while pleasure makes sex suspicious. But are reproduction and pleasure really opposites?
The Strange Relationship Between Christianity and Pleasure
To be fair to Christianity, the idea that Christians universally believe sex is dirty simply isn’t true. Christian traditions have celebrated marriage, intimacy and marital sexuality for centuries.
The Bible also doesn’t shy away from sexual desire nearly as much as many people assume. In fact, it contains an entire book that can make modern readers blush.
The Song of Songs, sometimes called the Song of Solomon, is filled with attraction, longing, kissing, bodies, fragrance, beauty and desire. Christians and Jews have long interpreted the book on multiple levels, including allegorically as a picture of divine love. But its literal imagery remains unmistakably romantic and sensual.
The lovers desire one another. They admire one another’s bodies. They long to be together.
Pleasure isn’t treated like an embarrassing detail that needs to be edited out of the story.
It’s right there in Scripture.
So how did so many people come away believing that Christianity and sexual pleasure are enemies?
Scripture, Tradition and Culture Aren’t Always the Same Thing
This is where our discussion becomes more complicated. Christian attitudes toward sexuality didn’t develop in a vacuum.
Over two thousand years, Christianity interacted with Greek and Roman philosophy, changing political systems, influential theologians, medieval ideas about the body, later Protestant movements, Victorian morality and countless local cultures.
Some influential Christian thinkers became deeply suspicious of bodily desire. Augustine of Hippo, one of the most important theologians in Western Christianity, wrestled extensively with sexual desire, lust and humanity’s ability—or inability—to completely control sexual arousal. His ideas profoundly influenced later Western Christian thinking about sexuality.
That doesn’t mean Augustine simply “invented Christian sexual shame.” History is rarely that simple.
But it does demonstrate something important:
What Christians believe about sex has been shaped by both Scripture and centuries of interpretation.
And interpretation isn’t the same thing as Scripture itself. That distinction will matter throughout this series.
Sex Has Boundaries in Christianity
We should also address something immediately. Questioning sexual shame isn’t the same as claiming the Bible has no sexual ethics. It clearly does.
Biblical writers condemn various forms of sexual behavior, including adultery, exploitation and other sexual conduct they considered immoral. Christian traditions disagree. Sometimes dramatically—about how particular passages should be interpreted and how ancient sexual ethics should apply today.
Those disagreements deserve serious examination.
But here’s the distinction I want us to remember:
Saying that certain sexual behaviors are considered sinful is not the same thing as saying sexuality itself is sinful.
Those ideas are frequently confused. Food provides a simple comparison. Gluttony can be condemned without food being evil. Greed can be condemned without money itself being evil. Abusive power can be condemned without all authority being evil. Likewise, sexual wrongdoing can exist without sexual desire itself being inherently shameful.
Maybe Desire Isn’t the Enemy
This raises an uncomfortable question for those of us who grew up hearing sexuality discussed primarily through warnings. What if desire itself wasn’t the problem? What if the ethical question was always more complicated? How do we treat another person? Are we honest? Are we faithful to the commitments we’ve made? Are we exploiting someone? Are we using another person’s body without regard for the person living inside it? Are we acting with love, dignity and responsibility?
Those are much deeper questions than simply:
“Did you enjoy it?”
Yet enjoyment itself has sometimes become the thing people feel guilty about. People can carry that guilt into adulthood. Even into marriage.
They may intellectually believe that sex with their spouse is acceptable while emotionally still feeling that wanting sex, or wanting something adventurous, is somehow dirty.
That’s an extraordinary contradiction.
We spend years teaching someone:
Sex is dangerous. Sex is dirty. Don’t think about it. Don’t touch. Don’t explore. Don’t desire.
Then after a wedding ceremony we essentially say:
Okay. Now enjoy it.
Human psychology doesn’t always change that quickly. Shame has a long memory.
And That Brings Us to Pleasure
This is where our next discussion becomes fascinating. Because if sexual pleasure itself is somehow contrary to God’s intention for human beings, the human body presents us with an interesting theological puzzle. Especially the female body. There is an organ in the human body whose recognized primary function is not reproduction. It isn’t necessary for urination. Its central known function is sexual sensation.
The clitoris.
And that raises a question worth asking, not as scientific proof of God’s intentions, but as a theological question for people who believe the human body was intentionally created:
Why would a Creator design the human body with such an extraordinary capacity for sexual pleasure if experiencing that pleasure were itself something shameful?
That’s where we’re going next. Because perhaps sex was never supposed to be merely tolerated for the purpose of making babies. Perhaps pleasure deserves a place in the conversation too. And perhaps before deciding what Christianity teaches about sexuality, we should do something surprisingly radical:
Read what the Bible actually says.
NEXT: PART TWO
If Sex Is Only for Babies, Why Does Pleasure Exist?
We’ll look at the clitoris, orgasm, sexual pleasure, the Song of Songs and one of the biggest assumptions surrounding Christian sexuality:
Was sex created only for reproduction—or was it also meant to feel good?