God Loves Sex
An Honest Conversation about Sexual Desire and Holiness
About
"It's rare to find a Christian book about sex that is real and helpful and honest. God Loves Sex is all of that and more."--Donald Miller, bestselling author of Blue Like Jazz and A Million Miles in a Thousand Years
The church's stance on sexual matters has been clear throughout history: all sexual activity outside the boundaries of Christian marriage is sin. So we hide our struggles and pretend to live above the erotic fray, or else we embrace the culture's redefinition of what is acceptable. But in this book Allender and Longman explore what the Bible really says about sexual desire and sexual intimacy.
God Loves Sex offers a truly liberating, godly view of holy sensuality by recovering the clear meaning of the Song of Songs as God-sanctioned eroticism. Then it uses that lens to answer questions posed by a fictional new Christian struggling with expectations of sexual purity. It asks provocative questions, such as What does it mean to be both holy and filled with rich sexual desire? and How can our sexual struggles take us deeper into the purposes of God?
Pairing psychological insight with sound biblical scholarship, the authors bring desire and sex out into the open, allowing Christians of any age and any marital status to understand sex the way God meant it to be.
"This is not your average Christian book on sex. This is something better--and it is going to bring clarity, healing, and hope to a lot of people."--John Eldredge, author of Wild at Heart
"I have always loved the Song of Songs, but this book gives me a rich picture of how it can help us to something deeper in our marriage. So healing!"--Stasi Eldredge, author of Captivating and Becoming Myself
"In a world where sex most often lives in confusion, perversion, compulsion, guilt, and shame, it is wonderful that Allender and Longman use the Bible's sex song to restore sex to its original created beauty."--Paul David Tripp, author of Sex & Money
Dan B. Allender is professor of counseling psychology and is former president of Mars Hill Graduate School in Seattle, Washington. He is the author of several books, including The Wounded Heart.
Tremper Longman III is the Robert H. Gundry Professor of Biblical Studies at Westmont College in California. He has authored, coauthored, or edited numerous books, including The Baker Illustrated Bible Dictionary and commentaries on several biblical books, including Song of Songs.
Endorsements
"It's rare to find a Christian book about sex that is real and helpful and honest. God Loves Sex is all of that and more. I'm grateful the authors tell the truth about a subject so complex and beautiful and ultimately give us hope and guidance to redeem the power of intimacy in our own lives."
Donald Miller, bestselling author of Blue Like Jazz and A Million Miles in a Thousand Years
"Wise. Playful. Sacred. Surprising. This is not your average Christian book on sex. This is something better--and it is going to bring clarity, healing, and hope to a lot of people. I loved it from the first chapter."
John Eldredge, author of Wild at Heart
"I have always loved the Song of Songs, but this book gives me a rich picture of how it can help us to something deeper in our marriage. A really good book. So healing!"
Stasi Eldredge, author of Captivating and Becoming Myself
"In a world that has gone sexually insane, where sex most often lives in confusion, perversion, compulsion, guilt, and shame, it is wonderful that Allender and Longman use the Bible's sex song to restore sex to its original created beauty. Along the way, with refreshing and liberating honesty, they break the church's code of sexual silence and offer us sex wisdom that only comes when we stop being afraid and start listening to the God who fashioned sex for his glory and our good and who meets us in our sexual struggles with remarkable grace."
Paul David Tripp, author of Sex & Money: Pleasures That Leave You Empty and Grace That Satisfies
"God Loves Sex is a rare gift from a masterful joining of an adept Bible scholar and a prominent Christian therapist, author, and professor. With the use of both commentary and fiction, Longman and Allender invite us into the ancient, erotic love poems found in Song of Songs. The Song invites us to desire, enjoy, risk, struggle . . . and to consider 'how our sexuality--holy and broken, beautiful and bent--is used by God to draw us deeper into his love.' This book literally took my breath away."
Rose Madrid Swetman, lead pastor, Vineyard Community Church, and regional leader, Vineyard Northwest
"It's precisely because God loves sex that the Enemy hates it--turns it into a Mirkwood of entangled abuses and heartbreaks and compulsions, a dark place better skirted than braved. Enter Dan and Tremper, old comrades tenderly fearless enough to open sexuality to a little light and air, to name our shames in a way that relieves us of them and woos us to godly desire and play. Their machetes--the Bible at its most scandalously sexual, and professional psychology (fictionalized in Malcolm!) at its most scandalously Christian. There is probably no one who cannot find herself or himself in this book and therein find new hope."
Esther L. Meek, professor of philosophy, Geneva College
The Authors
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Dan B. Allender
Dan B. Allender (MS, Barry College; MDiv, Westminster Theological Seminary; PhD, Michigan State University) is professor of counseling psychology and former president of The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology in Seattle, Washington. He travels and...
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Tremper Longman III
Tremper Longman III (PhD, Yale University) is Distinguished Scholar and Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at Westmont College. He has served in leadership for the Institute for Biblical Research for many years. Longman is the author of more than thirty...
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