We live in a sexual minefield.

Pandora’s box has been cracked since Eve decided to eat the fruit from a certain tree, but with the sexual revolution of the 1960’s, the lid was completely broken off it’s hinges. It’s not that immodesty, sexual promiscuity, adultery, pornography and their kin did not exist before the dawn of feminism; there is nothing new under the sun regarding sin, and the human heart has not radically changed since that fateful day in the garden. However, with the dawn of a new day of sexual liberation, sexuality without bounds has become not only normal but celebrated and expected.

A pansexual society is the reality that my generation and the generations that have since followed were born into. Most of us don’t even realize we are living, playing and working on an active minefield because we don’t know any different. This is the water we have always swum in. It takes detonating a land mine personally or watching someone you love deal with the shrapnel of sexuality gone awry to notice the vicarious sexual situation in which we live and move and have our being.

We protect what we value; we build fences and elaborate security systems in banks and casinos because money is our treasure. Likewise, God, the One who thought up sex and gave it to humanity as both a gift and a pointer back to Himself, built high fences around this valuable gift. He created the boundaries of a covenantal, for richer or poorer, in sickness or in health, until death to us part love between a man and a woman to protect and enhance the gift of sex. His plan was for humanity to experience the beautiful intimacy of explosive sex. Yet, when taken outside of the protective boundaries, sex becomes a dangerous explosive.

In her book Sex and the Soul of a Woman, Paula Rhinehart describes the generational carnage that is the wake of the sexual revolution.

“For as long as there had been wedding vows, sexual intimacy had been something set apart, sacramental, reserved for the realm of lifelong commitment between a man and a woman. Not so for my generation….We pushed until we cracked open a door that had been shut for good reason. Those who follow now rush headlong as though the door no longer exists. Inside the room there is pleasure, to be sure. But there is also a cache of sexually transmitted diseases and a truckload of heartache. The truth is that my generation owes the following generation an apology – a profound one.”

We work closely with college students deeply scarred from either multiple “casual” sexual encounters with multiple men or one deeply scarring series of sexual encounters with one person outside the safety and security of lifelong covenant vows. This generation realizes that sex as our society sells it does not satisfy. They are starving for truth and health and boundaries. Many of them, if they are being deeply honest with themselves, want a way out of the sexual minefield.

Our deep longing is to winsomely tell the upcoming generations the true story of sex, to offer them explosive sex rather than sex as explosive.

There is a playground that exists in the middle of the minefield, a place of safety and security and intimacy and protection. We don’t have to get there ourselves; we don’t have to (nor can we) undo what has been done or backtrack in hopes that we don’t detonate more mines. We need only cry out to a loving Father who desires to lift us up out of the minefield and carry us into His playground.

There, with His truth and His Spirit, in the community of the Church that He has provided, He will lovingly stitch together each dismembered part of our souls.

The prophet Isaiah hinted at the messenger Christ who would come to preach good news to the broken hearted. Though Christ already came, His message of good news still applies to us today.

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; He sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and freedom to the prisoners; to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn, to grant those who mourn in Zion giving them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting. So they will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord that He may be glorified. Then they will rebuild the ancient ruins, they will raise up the former devastations; they will repair the ruined cities, the desolations of many generations. Isaiah 61: 1-4.