By Clare BruceFriday 7 Aug 2015Open House InterviewsChristian LivingReading Time: 7 minutes
Listen: Dr Allan Meyer chats to Sheridan Voysey about The Origins & Power of Sex.
Part 1 of 7 in ‘The Search For Intimacy’ Series
As the media bombards us with sexual imagery, traditional views of sex are continually marginalised. One man working to promote a more Biblical approach is Dr Allan Meyer, author of ‘The Search For Intimacy’ teaching series on sexuality.
He’s something of an expert on the topic, with a PhD focussing on moral and sexual integrity.
Sheridan Voysey of Hope Media’s Open House program caught up with Allan, to create a mini-version of The Search For Intimacy. Part One looks at The Origins And Power Of Sex.
Is A Biblical View Of Sex Really Necessary?
As a high school teacher and youth pastor in the 1970s, Allan Meyer said he watched many young people leading all kinds of self-destructive lifestyles.
It moved him to compassion.
“As I watched the self-destructive lifestyles of kids, it just provoked me to want to do something to help them,” he said.
“I sadly observed that the crisis kids had in their sexuality – this passion we have to find somebody who will love us, and this deep inner cry for sexual intimacy – drives people to the saddest and most destructive of decisions. And yet it has the power to become one of the elements of a totally satisfying life.
“It drove me to want to give young people some clearer guidelines and help them to manage this area well.
“As a youth pastor I realised I knew about the biology of sex, but really had no theology of sex. In other words, where did it come from, what was its ultimate meaning?”
The Secular View Vs The Bible View
Popular culture views sex from a materialistic viewpoint, as simply a pleasurable tool that’s also useful for reproduction, says Dr Meyer.
“In an evolutionary view, nothing exists for a purpose; sex just allows DNA to propagate,” he says. “But the idea that sex has to exist for species to propagate is not the case. There are many ways in which species can propagate.
“I personally find that a totally unsatisfying and in some sense a silly view of life. I think life is far more magnificent than can ever be explained in terms of accidental physics and chemistry.”
He believes the complexity of sex reveals an intelligent designer.
“Our sex life bears the fingerprints of a very thoughtful and extraordinary creator,” he said. “When one looks at the mystery of human sexuality and its extraordinary complexity, to assign that to nothing more than the roll of a dice, I think is ridiculous.
“One would have to ask the question, “how on earth would an organism eventually evolve sex?” The complexity, the number of systems that have to develop at the same time and with the same purpose in mind, is extraordinary.
“It requires fantastic design.”
- The Search For Intimacy Part 2 – Six Key Principles Of Human Sexuality
- The Search For Intimacy Part 3 – Virginity, Dating And Courtship: A Love Story
- The Search For Intimacy Part 4 – Young Love And The Role Of Parents
How Sex Reveals The Nature Of God
In the Bible worldview, sex originates from the character and nature of God. It’s a reflection of how intimate and loving God is, and His desire for relationship.
“Sex exists because God is not a lonely singularity,” said Dr Meyer.
“Some religions view God as being a singularity of person in a singularity of substance. [But] if the universe was created by a God like that, we’re talking about creation by a person who has always been alone, from all eternity.
“If I was created in the image of that kind of a God, He would create out of His own being like every artist does, and He would create a universe which propagated out of singularity.”
In other words, living beings would be perfectly happy spending life alone.
“But that’s not who we are,” Dr Meyer said. “We’re created male and female, and the Bible says God created man in His own image. So this masculinity-femininity thing is an insight into God himself.
“God is a trinity of persons, each one of those persons distinguishable, and yet they exist in such intimacy of relationship – indivisible.
“When God created human beings in His own image, He gave his own divine character a physical manifestation: maleness and femaleness. So you can bring those two bodies back together in an experience of extraordinary oneness and pleasure, a sense of being bonded and loved and cared for, yet you don’t lose the distinguishable nature of a man and of a woman.”
Sex Is A God-Idea
If you look into the Bible, it shows that sex is very much a “God-thing” – from the Old Testament, to the Gospels.
“The Bible says “for this cause a man leaves his father and his mother, he clings to his wife and the two become one flesh”,” Dr Meyer said.
“And then Jesus added a little post-script to that and said “Whatever God joins together, don’t separate it. “In other words, sex is a God-joining. The idea of two bodies becoming intimate sexually is a God-idea. It was purposefully and passionately designed out of God’s own eternal experience of intimacy.
“And that’s what makes sex not only so extraordinary, but also so powerful.
The Many Benefits Of Sex
While some people separate sex from the idea children altogether, others think of it as simply God’s tool for procreation. Both views are off-track, says Dr Meyer.
“One only has to look at the way in which it’s been constructed: human sexuality requires some fairly specific moments of connection in order for conception to take place,” he said.
“God did not design sex to simply turn a woman into a baby factory.
“It is for pleasure, it is for the development of intimacy, it is for healing; sex has profound healing properties both psychologically and physically.
“I’ve heard it said that statistically, the happily married man lives nine years longer than his single counterpart. It is so healing to our physical frame. God designed it that way.
- The Search For Intimacy Part 5 – Marriage: Have You Got What It Takes?
- The Search For Intimacy Part 6 – The 5 Tests Of A Match Made In Heaven
- The Search For Intimacy Part 7 – Healing From Sexual Brokenness: Six Steps
We can even learn about spiritual things from the principles of sex, according to Dr Meyer. It’s there when Jesus teaches people about what it means to be “born again”, and it’s there when God makes a covenant with Abraham by circumcision – inescapably linked to men’s sexuality.
“The physicality of our sexuality is loaded with revelatory insight about the nature of God himself,” Dr Meyer said.
“That’s simply another reason why it’s to be treated with such dignity and respect.”
The Sobering Proof That Sex Is No Ordinary Act
While pop culture may have “cheapened” sex, society is discovering the hard way that sex is no ordinary act, and shouldn’t be taken too lightly.
“During the ‘60s and ‘70s, that idea that sex was nothing more than a biological act was very very prevalent,” Dr Meyer said, “and the whole idea of throwing marriage ad commitment out the window was very avant-garde. But we have come to re-evaluate that very profoundly.
“I think one of the things that has forced us to do that is the increasing awareness of what inappropriate sexual touching does to children.
“If you want to go to prison today, one way you can guarantee to get there is mess around sexually with a child. You could go back 20 or 30 years and that wasn’t the case.
“But the more that we’ve been involved in the counselling of people who have been inappropriately sexually touched, the more we have come to see how impacting and disastrous a single physical sexual touch, that’s inappropriate, can be.
“You can touch a child at the age of four, and at the age of 40 they are still feeling it; at the age of 80, they are still living with the disturbed emotional responses to that single experience.
“I’ve prayed with many older people, 60 or 70 years of age, with tears running down their faces. When you get to talk to them, they’ll tell you “when I was 15 years old – “ and then they can’t speak any longer, they cry so hard. And you think, “That’s 50 years ago! They’re standing here today, as broken-hearted, 50 years down the track.”
“And yet I’ve never had a footballer come up to me and say “I got punched in a football match 50 years ago and I’ve never been able to get over it”.
“We’ve never joined the dots together. We need as a community to stop and ask the question, “Why is that so?”
It’s Time To Make The Connection
The knowledge that sexual touch can both heal and destroy lives, should make society adjust its thinking about sex, says Dr Meyer.
“We need to ask, “Why is it, that years down the track, the resonance of inappropriate behaviour is still impacting a person’s psyche?” he says.
“That doesn’t happen physically with any other area of life. What is that saying to us about sex? What does that say to us about teenagers, and about the way we treat each other sexually as adults. We need to join those dots together.
“A sexual touch has such extraordinary power to change a person’s life.”
More On ‘The Search For Intimacy’
- Part 2 – Six Key Principles Of Human Sexuality
- Part 3 – Virginity, Dating And Courtship: A Love Story
- Part 4 – Young Love: Should Parents Have A Say?
- Part 5 – Marriage: Have You Got What It Takes?
- Part 6 – The 5 Tests Of A Match Made In Heaven
- Part 7 – Healing From Sexual Brokenness: Six Steps
- More about Dr Allan Meyerand Careforce Lifekeys