by Mark Gungor on December 2nd, 2009
It never ceases to amaze me how many times I get asked by people (usually, but not always, women) what they should do when the person they are dating is treating them poorly. And by poorly I do not mean that he was 10 minutes late coming to pick the girl up or he forgot what her favorite flower was. By poorly I mean guys who call these women names and talk to them in degrading ways, guys who look at porn, stay out all night with other women doing exactly what you think they’re doing, and on and on. Unbelievably, this is while they are dating! You know, the time when the dude is actually trying to win the woman; when he is supposed to be putting his best foot forward!
Honestly, I just don’t understand it. For the life of me I can’t imagine why a person would continue to date someone who treats them like dirt and with little to no respect. Is this really how they want to spend the rest of their lives? The fantasy world these women live in tells them that “he’ll change,” but the reality is, it only goes downhill from here! Generally, when I’m presented with this kind of scenario, I immediately ask one question: Are you having sex with him? And the answer is almost always: yes.
I finally came to this simple conclusion: sex makes you stupid. It really does. Having sex outside of marriage clouds your vision. People can’t see clearly and aren’t able to make a wise decision to save their souls. The potent spell of sex causes women (and some men) to tolerate and allow the most outrageous behaviors, continue the relationship into marriage, and then come to me a year, two or three into the deal and want me to unscramble the eggs. When I ask the obvious question, “Didn’t you see this before you got married?” they almost without fail say, “Yeah, but I thought it would be different when we got married.” It will be different, alright… it will be worse!
Becoming sexually involved with someone outside of marriage is a bad idea for many reasons. First and foremost a reason that not too many people, even Christians, actually consider is: because God said so! And when God says so, you think that would be good enough since the Almighty Maker of the Universe pretty much knows what he’s doing. If He says, “No,” it’s for good reason. God created sex and He also knows the power of it, and He knows that it will make you stupid! Stupid outside of marriage, but within the marriage covenant is another story.
This same phenomenon that makes men and women dumber than bricks when it comes to making the right decisions in premarital or extra-marital relationships, has extreme power when the sex is according to God’s plan. The very same idea that “sex clouds your vision” is wonderful and necessary in marriage. God has created sex to have this kind of effect so we can forget and overlook the faults and missteps, the offenses and transgression and forgive our spouse. It’s like a drug you can get a hit of that gives you selective amnesia. It’s also another reason why married people need to be having regular sex… so they can get a little clouded vision to overlook the everyday annoyances like toilet seats and toothpaste caps and sometimes the way bigger things that need to be forgiven. We should be “dumb” to those kinds of things.
The Bible tells us that love covers a multitude of sins. God has given us the gift of sex, one of the very things that will aid and enable us to walk out this kind of love. But it only works to our benefit if the sex is in the context of marriage. Kind of like the analogy of fire only being a good thing when it’s contained in a fireplace. God made sex to be the single most powerful force to bring a husband and wife together and to keep them together. But it has to be in marriage or it is the equivalent of taking the fire and putting it on the living room floor. No more warmth and benefit, just a disastrous inferno.
So it is with this wonderful, God-created phenomenon of sex. While husbands and wives benefit greatly from the “cloudy vision” of sex in marriage, we should not be allowing this “sex-brain” to impact us outside of marriage — where people are definitely making decisions under the influence of stupid.
