“Let’s talk about sex.”

When Josh, my supervisor, said these words to the the Junior High Youth Group, there was an evident awkwardness. Many kids immediately became silent. Others started laughing, thinking of their school bus jokes and the inappropriate graffiti scattered across school desks and textbooks alike.

All of them were frightened. This isn’t a topic you talk about in Church. Or is it?

I’ve read a lot of articles in the past two years talking about lust. One of the biggest student-led ministries on my campus is aimed at providing accountability for those struggling with lust. Wrongful sexual desire has been a major point of discussion in the Church since its origin. How do we deal with premarital sex? What about homosexuals? Should sex be discrete and simple?

The Church has been in my bedroom a lot. It has a lot to say about who I have sex with, what context is appropriate for sex, and how I have sex. However, it has little to say about how good sex is, not just physically, but also emotionally and spiritually.

Apart from the occasional youth conference speaker saying “Sex is good, like really good. But don’t do it until you’re married,” I never heard anything in my local church regarding sexual behavior. Only the occasional mention of the “sexually immoral” and politically rooted rants about Democrats supporting homosexuals and with it, Satan and sin.

If we truly believe God created everything, and created everything good, then we should see sex no different. Yes, it can be and has been corrupted in culture, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about it. In my opinion, the Church’s silence on the matter causes more problems than anything. It allows culture to be Christians’ number one source for sexual advice. Kids grow up only knowing sex as something inconsequential, found in schoolyard jokes and used as a tool for personal pleasure.

It’s for this reason Josh decided to talk to a group of 6th, 7th, and 8th graders about sex for 6 weeks. He wanted them to encounter it not with their friends, not from porn, not on prom night, but from someone who loved them enough to talk to them honestly, comfortably, and most importantly, hear out their individual thoughts.

The biggest place that this “anti-sex” rhetoric is found in Christians circles is related to dating. The minute a single Christian tells their friends that they are interested in another single person, they are immediately berated with questions regarding their intentionality (for better or for worse). “Are you interested in marrying them? How are you doing with lust? Is she a Christian?” Sometimes I feel like these questions are masking the deeper question that people really want to ask: “How far have you gone and are willing to go in the future?”

It’s very popular for talk about “being careful with boundaries” to come up. Boundaries are good, but I fear that we misunderstand their purpose. To our friends, we use them as a comfort to get away from talking about sex. “Oh, we won’t go too far. I promise.” They become the basis for accountability in a relationship. If you don’t break the boundaries, you’re doing good. If you do, you failed. In the actual relationship, boundaries are often all that are talked about sexually.

In my opinion, this is a failure to understand both what sex and dating are meant to be. This sort of talk makes sex the enemy and flawless dating the goal. The reality is, neither of these ideas are healthy for a premarital relationship.

Sex needs to be understood, from day one, as a means of expressing love physically—not the feeling, but the connection. It is not your enemy. It’s your friend, not just when you’re married but now--even if you’re not “doing it” yet.

If you’re dating someone, ideally you would want to eventually have sex with them. If that’s the case, why not talk about it now? When I first started dating my current girlfriend, I was bold. She was squeamish to talk about sex because it felt so forbidden in the culture we live in at a Christian university. It took time, but we were able to talk about sex. We didn’t just set boundaries, but we asked and answered questions about the opposite sex. We talked about what we thought our marital sex-life might look like. Most importantly, we didn’t just talk about it as a one-time thing. We continue to talk about our sexual feelings, our future sex-life, our boundaries. We encourage each other, joke with each other, and flirt.

The reality is I shouldn’t be ashamed to want to have a sexual relationship with her in the future.

With my accountability partners, I am equally open. I don’t just talk about “did we pass our boundaries?” We talk about successes in my relationship: I tell them if my girlfriend and I had a good conversation, celebrate in the success of boundaries, and even openly talk about my sexual desire for my significant other. I find this essential to having a healthy view on sex. If I suppress these thoughts, then I’m only mounting myself for failure: the chances of me pushing a boundary, looking up porn, or masturbating increase if I’m the only person who is truly discussing sex with myself. Accountability isn’t about chastising someone when they’re wrong, it’s about being part of their base on which their sexual expression stands.

I’m not saying I have this thing perfectly figured out. The bottom line is the model I have in my life isn’t perfect for everyone, but this reality still stands—Christians need to talk about sex. We need to talk about it in Church, in our friendships, and our relationships.