License to Thrill
In my city, prostitution is legal and preaching is dangerous.
Brian Newman
January 1, 2006
When I decided to preach a seven-week series called "Sex and the City," a pastor friend in town said I must be crazy. Our city is famous for sex in a way few others are. I live in Amsterdam, the city all too well-known for prostitutes and extravagant sexual practices. In Holland almost 80 percent of people live together before marriage. It's called samenwonen. In fact the government recognizes samenwonen as a legal standing in society, somewhere between being single and married. Here it is simply another alternative. In my own congregation, there are more than a few people who live together while claiming to follow Christ. So when I brought up the subject, I decided to set the bar high. I was tempted to give "seven reasons not to have sex before marriage," but rather than making it a "don't do it" discussion, I spoke about radical purity in an age of rampant impurity. We introduced our community to a man and woman who lived 3,000 years ago and were passionately in love with each other. In the Song of Solomon, we observe this couple wait to consummate their relationship, see them struggle to have intimacy, and see them honor each other above all else. Then all of us in the congregation were challenged to measure our lives by the lifestyles of these two hot-for-each other lovers. As we pressed on in the series, I discovered some things about speaking to a postmodern audience on sex and sexuality. Young people want us to "shoot straight" with them, to acknowledge how things are in many of our lives and also how God designed them to be. They were much more open to Bible study on the topic than I expected. They also want room to reach their own conclusions. Instead of telling people up front that pre-marital sex is wrong (most people ...
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