Sex on Fire

I was having a conversation with a Christian friend recently, and she mentioned that she doesn't listen to much secular (non-Christian) mainstream music. She mentioned that the Kings of Leon song “Sex on Fire” had gotten stuck in her head, and she didn't really want to go around singing the line “yooooooou, your sex is on fi—ire." While I completely understand on one hand, her comment got me thinking (especially because I've had absolutely no personal conviction about having this song in my head since I downloaded the album a couple months ago).

Obviously fleshly lust plagues humankind. Just walk out your front door. Not just sex, but stuff, status. I often wonder if Victoria's Secret isn't as much of a problem as the Apple store it neighbors at the mall. In college, I remember seeing a glazed-eyed student sitting in the computer lab practically drooling as he scrolled and scanned the screen. I walked around behind him—fearing the worst—only to find him looking at high resolution pictures of sports cars. Dozens and dozens of sports cars.

At any rate we are an oversexed culture, especially the Western world. But I'm convinced our desires are too small. Lust simply means “strong desire.” So the problem can't be our desire, maybe just what we desire. I mean, I sure hope I [strongly desire] God. And maybe we desire the wrong things because our desires are weak; we settle too quickly.

C.S. Lewis is often quoted saying, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

So even the greatest pleasures in this world are just pictures—reflections of paradise, heaven, consummation with God.

I heard Tim Keller preach in a sermon that if the world had any idea what God had in mind when He designed sex, it would make the most hardened jaded New Yorker blush. The sex and porn industries would be out of business—no way to compete. Maybe the problem isn't the Kama Sutra so much, but a poor interpretation of Song of Solomon. I think it's safe to say God intended sex to be “on fire,” at least some of the time.