Sex and violence

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End (Revelation 22:13).

For years, people have been concerned about sex and violence in the media. Sex and violence in books and magazines. Sex and violence in movies and on TV. Sex and violence in music and on the Internet. Everywhere we turn, sex and violence command our attention.

Sex and violence are primal—they speak to us about life and death. Sex is about the beginning of life; violence brings about the end of life. The two are closely linked. Quite often, the urge for sex is overwhelming when a person’s life has been placed in danger; the body feels a need to reproduce before it’s too late. This is why so many stories told for entertainment contain both sex and violence in close proximity to each other.

The media only gives us sexy and violent images because we find them interesting. Everyone is fascinated with life and death, because these are universal experiences shared by all human beings. The beginning of life is a profound mystery: how is the spark of life passed on to a fetus? How is it that we acquire a soul, the ability to reflect on issues of right and wrong, good and evil? The end of life is also a profound mystery: when our bodies die, what happens to the part of us that thinks and feels? Do we go on somehow, or do we just disappear forever?

Sex and violence fascinate us because they tap into something profoundly important—how life begins and what happens when life ends. But while the entertainment industry can tease us with these issues, they don’t offer us the answers that we crave. There is only one place we can go to make sense of sex and violence, birth and death—that place is God’s word. It is in the Book dictated by God Himself that we discover the truth of things. It is in the Bible that we are told how thinking, feeling human life comes about; Psalm 139 praises God, saying: you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. It is in the Bible that we are told what happens to our souls when life at last leaves our bodies; in John chapter 4 Jesus says, it is my Father's will that all who see his Son and believe in him should have eternal life. God the Father gave us life, and He offers us life beyond the grave through faith in His Son. Sex and violence raise important questions, but it is God’s word that provides the answers.