I want you like fire wants fuel

…like summer kids want a pool

…like authoritarians want a rule

…like monopeds want a stool

…like folly and a fool

…like Jr. Highers want “cool”

…like a farmer wants a mule

…like a mechanic and his tool

…like a crown without a jewel

I want YOU.

I got a God-fearing woman
One I can easily afford
I got a God-fearing woman
One I can easily afford
She can do the Georgia crawl
She can walk in the spirit of the Lord.

Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking, Bob Dylan

“Often guys will say, ‘I love Susie.’ This does not necessarily mean they are interested in Susie’s best interest, but rather, ‘I really like the sensations which occur in me whenever Susie is around.’ When a boy says, ‘I love ice cream’ he is not seeking the ice cream’s best interest. He loves the sensation ice cream gives him. In short, he loves himself…

So the time a person spends when he is single should be time spent in preparation for marriage. This is important even if he never gets married. This is because biblical preparation for marriage is nothing more than learning to follow Jesus Christ and to love one’s neighbor. In other words, preparation for Christian marriage is basically the same as preparation for Christian living. Christians are to prepare for marriage by learning self-denial, subduing their pride, and putting their neighbor first. Once they learn to love God and love their neighbor, they are prepared to enter into the covenant of marriage with one of their neighbors. These are issues which should be in the forefront of every parent’s mind as their children approach the age when they may court and marry.“ (Her Hand in Marriage: Biblical Courtship in the Modern World, pp. 83-85).

So, my dearest Anne has me rolling with laughter. She told me the joke over the phone tonight, and I can’t help but chuckling each time I think of it. There must be some truth - it leaves both genders with their glory intact, but doesn’t mind sending a double slam in the meantime:

******************

Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden. Eve had not been there long and Adam was trying to get a grasp on the whole female thing, so he asked God if they could have a talk.

God replied, “Sure. You’re my son and I love you. You can ask me anything.”

So Adam asked, “God, I see the beauty of the flowers and the amazingly gorgeous sunsets. Then I look at Eve…she is so beautiful she takes my breath away! God, why did you make Eve so beautiful?”

God smiled and said, “That’s easy to answer Adam…I made her that way so that you would love her.”

Adam laughed and said, “It worked! I do have another question though… Every time I touch the cool water or stop to stroke one of the animals You made they feel good to me. But when I touch Eve, she feels wonderful to me…so much so that my heart almost stops… God, why did You make her that way?”

God replied, “Well, Adam, that’s easy too. I made her that way so you’d love her.”

Adam grinned really big and said, “That worked too. I really do love her. I have one more question though. I don’t mean to question your wisdom or anything, but God…she is stupid! Why did you make her stupid?”

God’s eyes crinkled up, His sides started shaking, then He began laughing uproariously. After several minutes of trying to catch His breath, God replied with tears running down His cheeks, “My son…that’s easiest one you’ve asked yet! I made her that way so she would love you!”

Okay, this really isn’t in the IKDH series, but it was perfect timing. I had closed my blog and turned to some light reading before bed. I was reading the latest chapter of Evangellyfish, a “medium-brown comedy, a satire on a world that defies satire” by Douglas Wilson. Doug, as you will find out, has greatly influenced my views on sexuality and relationships.

Anyway, in this case his satire makes the same point that brother Patrick taught at church meeting on Sunday - we who call ourselves Christians are often no different in actions than our non-Christian counterpart, except the fact that we hold hypocrisy and hidden guilt in our shameful deeds. We lust because we don’t have. And we don’t have because we don’t ask God. And we don’t receive because when we ask, our secret motivation is to spend what we receive on our own pleasures. It’s time to bring the sexual appetites, insecurities, infidelities, improprieties, and deviancies into the light of Christ Jesus. He is the only one who offers true sexual wholeness, without which all of our dating and marriage experiences will be frustrated and mysteriously elude us like Johnny’s.

Johnny Quinn sat in his cubicle in the Wildlife4YouthRampage offices, but was not fully sure that was the right name. They kept changing the name on the brochures so it was hard to know from day to day what the ministry was called. Uncertainty was part of the appeal. That was just one problem with ministering to the youth of today—riding the wave of cool and contemporary youth ministry was like surfing the big ones, and with one false move, there you were with sand in your trunks.

Johnny was rubbing the back of his neck. He was one of seven assistants to the main youth minister, who was off doing stuff and never around anymore, and Johnny had been told many times that he had a promising future ahead of him in this “most important work.” He had short blond hair, and a diamond stud earring—big enough to give him street cred, so necessary in youth work these days, and yet the earring was small enough to not worry the small handful of people at Camel Creek who might possibly have a problem with it. And at one point in the church’s history there might have been a handful of people disturbed by this kind of thing in the church, but they had all died and gone to heaven quite a number of years before. And frankly, none of them cared about it now, apparently having better things to think about. But Johnny still agonized over such things—what size earring would the apostle Paul have worn if his mission had been to the skateboarding and pants-droopy youth of today? Not an easy question to answer.

Every month or so the stress of youth ministry—dealing with the kids and all their issues—would get to Johnny, and so he would head on over to Brandy’s apartment to have her give him a neck rub, followed by her specialty back rub. But somehow her giving him a back rub always turned into him giving her a front rub, and then they would fall again.

That was actually how their relationship started, which is to say, through those darn back rubs. It was her senior year in high school and she was in Johnny’s youth group, which was a combination Bible study and daisy chain back rub circle. At the end of that year they all had a good working knowledge of the gospel of Mark, and significantly improved blood flow in the delts. Brandy gave him a few back rubs back then that brought them perilously close to the edge, but honestly, there was no front rubbing until after she graduated and got her job at KING radio. That meant that when they finally followed the manner of all the earth, they were not violating the professional standards of youth ministry, but rather simply the seventh item on an ancient list which was from the Old Testament anyway.

But they would always confess their fall afterwards, and both of them remained entirely and blissfully unaware of what was causing it. And they would both try hard to improve, which of course involved reading Scripture together, holding hands and putting their heads closely together and praying about it. But somehow putting their heads together in this way didn’t really help all that much, particularly when Brandy had on the perfume he really liked, and when his mouth got anywhere near her ear, which it usually did. The more they prayed about it like this, the worse things seemed to get. Anyhow, their periodic lapses had become almost a routine, and both of them had kind of adjusted to it. And besides, there were lots of times in the month when they weren’t doing it. But the whole scenario did make Johnny have to adjust his talk for the kids on abstinence, euphemisms and indirect evasions now abounding everywhere, because he was not so hardened that he was capable of the hypocrisy on stilts that the senior ministry seemed to have mastered. Not that he knew anything about that, of course. Everything he urged upon the kids was still technically true, and the salient facts about his own testimony, as now phrased, were technically honest.