Lyle,

LOL! In nearly 30 years of marriage, I've been sexually accosted by 10 women and 2 men, or maybe one more. I'm beginning to lose count. They were from all kinds of backgrounds and of varying degrees of physical attractiveness.

One was a millionaire's girlfriend. She'd heard me preach a sermon that touched on sexual purity that morning. I knew her well, as she was a member of a Bible study group that met weekly around another pastor's table. She came up behind me when I was sitting and pressed up against me in a plainly provocative fashion. I played stupid, as though I hadn't a clue she had done anything. When she saw I wasn't going to respond, she withdrew. Her millionaire boyfriend had bedded her before she became a Christian, then became a Christian himself, yet had refused to marry her to date. Though they were both in the same eight person Bible study with us. I figured I was simply catching some of the emotional crossfire for what was going on in her life that had nothing at all to do with my charming good looks, hunky abs, and such. That was such a dangerous situation that I never even told my wife about it until after we had moved from the church. You have to protect people who are vulnerable and could be hurt trying to help themselves to you.

One was a lonely doctor's wife who laid hands on me suddenly when I stopped by for a pastoral visit. I simply didn't respond in kind. I saw her 20 year old son a few years ago. Seems strange to be thinking, "Young man, your Mom wanted to make the pastoral visit I made to your house when your Daddy was at work operating on people a thing that happened in their bedroom rather than in their living room." I refrained from mentioning it to him. Didn't seem like useful information.

One was a 17 year old oozing sex high school temptress who asked me if I would be the father of her as yet unconceived baby. ("Thanks for asking. But I'm already taken," I told her.) I drew on her in the "Don't Rob the Cradle" piece I posted here a month or so ago.

One was a hitchhiker beauty who tried to take off my tie and showed me the sheer nightgown in her bag she'd brought for a party with a former alter boy turned drug dealer. (I'd seen her out in the middle of the roadway up there in the redwoods along the river when I was coming home late one night. I'd let her in--contrary to my usual rule of not giving female hitchhikers a lift--fearing she might have driven her car off the road and be in need of assistance. I'd given a guy a lift who had rolled his pickup down a bank drunk two weeks earlier. So that was the first thought in my mind.)

One was a prostitute at Waikiki before they knew me well enough to realize I was a serious threat to business as usual on the islands Main Street. (The pimps should have killed me when they had the chance, before I cloned myself about 200 fold and put them out of business--along with the drug runners who preyed upon the same river of international tourists. I hear the route of the vice peddlers is still holding a decade later. So it looks like the gain was more than a passing one.)

One was a hitchhiker with a suitcase with "Jesus is Lord" written on its side. (He turned over the magazine with the picture of Jesus looking up that lay on the seat between us before putting his hand over in my lap. I removed it, and told him he was welcome to ride with me as far as he wished--but that he would be keeping his hands in his own lap while that happened. He began speaking gibberish and wanted out as quickly as I could find a place to pull over. I think he was well and truly demon possessed. I haven't heard that kind of tongues coming out of a person any other place than in certain religious groups' prayer sessions in places I've visited. I always wonder if they realize not every spirit that goes around with a "Jesus is Lord" on the side of his luggage is necessarily what it makes itself out to be.)

One was a lady who knew Judi was very ill, was having a difficult time getting along with her third husband, and dressed like a fashion model. She proposed we dump both of them and take up together on the phone one day when she called. Judi was sitting right beside me on the bed. I said to the woman, "The only reason you think I'm better than Bill is because you don't have to live in close quarters with me." (Never take up with a woman who will cheat with you. She will also cheat on you.)

One was a guy who followed me out of a strangely crowded late night restroom I'd stopped to pee at one night at St. Thomas Square in Honolulu. I went over to sit on the dark bench beneath some banyan trees by the fountain. I'd spotted a great praying place up in one of those big multi-trunked trees and was fixing to go over and climb up there in the dark. The guy who had followed me from the rest room came and sat on the edge of the rather small bench. I have noticed not all nationalities have the same sense of personal space as my own culture, so I made allowances for how close he was choosing to sit. He talked for a half hour or so, then reached over and began running his fingers through my hair. Suddenly it occured to me why six guys could be in the same small public restroom in the park at 11:30 p.m. By this time, I knew who I was sexually solidly enough that I had no inclination to either pop him in the eye with my fist, or run the 100 yard dash in four long leaps. I sat and told him about my life, and asked him about his and his family. He was not very forthcoming about his family. I pointed across the street to the largest public meeting house in the islands--the Blaisedale Auditorium--and said, "I preached there two days ago to 3,000 people." I told him I had never had sex with anyone except my wife and that I had come there intending to pray. In the end, I prayed with him and walked away.

I can't remember who the others were just now, God bless 'em all. I hope they find satisfaction somewhere. But it won't be with me. Mrs. Bush's idea of "Just Say No" to drugs has worked very well in preserving the sanctity of my marriage for nearly three decades. I've just said "No" twelve times, but not to Judi even once. All she's got to do is wink at me, and she's got me. I work very hard to preserve the dignity of folks I refuse to have sex with. You'll notice I've omitted names above, except for my own lawfully wedded wife. That is to protect the guilty, the strugglers, the ones who can't protect themselves from themselves. That's how God protects my dignity, too. So I can afford to pass on the favor.

Only time I nearly ran away screaming was when a naked man sitting knee to knee with me in a secluded hot tub down by Kern River near Bakersfield, California looked across and asked, "Are you a Christian?" I said, "Yes, I'm a pastor." He said, "I'm gay!" I nearly did the run screaming thing--bolt to the river and swim the icy torrent to the safety of the far shore. But when I looked, I could see he was at least as terrified of me as I was of him. It was like a strange dog and cat being dumped suddenly nose to nose. We were alien to each other.

To both of our credits, we resisted the urge to flee. We sat knee to knee in the sulphurous waters and discussed our different world views and life styles instead. Four hours later, we climbed the trail from Remington Hotsprings to the dirt parking area above. By then we were friends, though plainly not lovers. He looked at me and opened his arms toward me, questioningly. So I hugged a homo for Jesus' sake, figuring that's what He'd do if He were standing in my shoes. If there is such a thing as an errection in reverse, that's how my body reacted. He had invited Judi and I to come dancing at the gay bar club where he was a dance instructor. She was game, but we left for Hawaii before we could take him up on it. He isn't one of the 12 mentioned above. That hug was purely platonic.

These things occurred over the course of 27 years. So it isn't like I'm a Tom Jones on stage with ladies flinging their panties at me in the streets. This sort of intrusion into my life only occurs occasionally. I do not consider myself proof against temptation--particularly of this kind. But I do love my dear wife like my next breath, and I have never wanted anyone else nearly as much as I did her during the several months leading up to our marriage. I think the white hot flame of desire that burned in the full flush of youthful hormones then, but wasn't satisfied physically until our wedding night, proved an excellent means of anchoring my desires to the same lady I'm still married to. She's the reason I can write what I do, and go where I go. I've ministered in many highly charged sexual hot spots without ever seeking them out in the leading of God in my life in the years since. He was doing His own work in me to fit me to help others in these areas, I believe. If you don't listen when the Voice says "No", you can't hear It when It says "Go". Then you end up being a repressed sort of individual, or someone without proper boundaries to preserve your own, or other's, respect. Honor, self-respect, and one's sexual behavior are closely linked. That's why we use sexual slurs to insult people.

The fact that I've never slept with anybody except Judi and she's never slept with anybody except me is the absolute sexiest thing possible. There is a certain sense of utter rightness about it that makes even thinking of any other arrangment distressing. It gets me going just thinking about my one and only lady ever--forever and ever, Amen. Even after nearly 30 years. I'm a raging hot heterosexual monogamist of the Biblical sort. We love our ladies like Jesus loves His church--and He loves His church enough to die for her. That's why they call the whole thing "The Passion". It is passion to love enough to suffer for the one Beloved in such a way. Sex inside a marriage like mine is truly "holy matrimony"--a spiritual experience of the highest order and utmost purity. When was the last time you prayed while having sex? I do it all the time--though I must admit God gets put "on hold" for a minute here and there.

I learned this praying to God while having sex thing from my high school principal--a 6 foot 4 inch lumberjack of a businessman, who was very open in speaking of his own most satisfying marriage to his wife, the kind-faced lady we all knew as the school nurse. Once in my hearing, the principal told a boy who was being raised by his Grandma and had just got caught with pornography for the third time, "Sex is a holy and good thing. It is a gift from God Himself. That's what's wrong with those magazines. They don't tell you the whole truth. They cheapen something beautiful and make merchandise of it. Sex is so holy you can pray while you're doing it. I wish all of the students on this campus could have as wonderful a life in this area as I share with my wife." He was a great role model. When he died, I wrote an email that I understand was read at his funeral. I told some of the things he had said, and how openly and frankly he admired and valued his wife sexually. I told what a great benefit that had been to me before I was married, and how it steeled me to want the same for my own life--and that by God's help, I had achieved that. Then I wrote, "Sanctified testosterone is powerful stuff." I understand when they read that line, the whole church of mourners errupted into laugher. They knew I told the truth about what made that highly revered and honored educator tick. He loved God. He loved his wife. He loved his teachers. He loved his students. And we all loved him, too.

I am glad to say my younger son and his wife chose the same course of Biblical matrimonial monogamy themselves. They are quite happily married these four years now. My older son did not, unfortunately. He has been divorced and is now living with a girl he's not married to. I love them both, of course. We'll all be sitting at the same table tomorrow eating from the same bounty of our good God together. Every good and perfect gift--even those we misuse to our own pain, comes down from the Father of Lights in whom there is no shifting shadows. That plainly includes sex. I have heard that in the military men who chose to never sleep with anyone except their wife, and that not until their wedding call this practice "Semper Fi" (Always Faithful). It is considered the mark of rare personal discipline and respected highly. I recommend it, too.

These are the things I taught to the students in my classes during my years as a high school Bible teacher and Marriage and Family teacher. I answered the questions they put annonymously into the hat on my desk whenever we got bored of the other curriculum. About half were about sex. We talked about sex until they got tired of it and didn't mention it again for weeks on end. Once a year, I would bring a professional sex educator in from the Womens' and Childrens' Hospital to give a blow by blow on sex and condoms and stuff. (I'm more interested in shaping attitudes. The mechanics is simple enough. Dogs do it in the alley all the time. Having sex is easy. Loving for the long haul is the tough part--but the place where it all pays off.) After talking with five of my classes one morning and having considerable questions and answers from the students, the sex educator came to me. She said, "I do this for a living. I've never seen young people with such healthy attitudes toward sexuality." The Bible and honesty before God, Man, and yourself does that, Mam. In my classroom, that's the curriculum on these matters.

Skip

Last edited by Skip Johnson; 11/22/07 05:59 AM.