Brick House

“Oh she’s a Brick… House…” If you know the next words, just hum them. If you don’t know them, don’t look it up: I don’t want it to be a stumbling block for you!
This is one of my favorite–yet inappropriate–songs to dance to. The words are not great. The song objectifies a woman…. but oh, that ’70’s strong funky beat.

I have a memory of this song that I find funny. It was the wedding of a LivingWaters couple about 11 years ago. The reception was in a cool house in St Paul, lots of rooms where people were eating and socializing. One of those rooms was the dance floor. Brick House came on and I dragged Scott to the floor. Even though he doesn’t agree with or understand my obsession with this song, he was being a good husband and kicked into his shufflingkindaboxingtype dance move on the floor. Part way into the song I looked around, and there were only 4 or 5 other couples dancing.
They were all LivingWaters Elders.
(Remember this was 11 years ago, so there were different elders… mostly.)
I realize some of you may not find this funny and I am taking a risk sharing it…but to me this is a fun example of being in the world but not of it. We were all married, having fun dancing (with our spouses) to a funky groove. The actual meaning of the song was not on anyone’s mind.

I thought about that when Rick Burris shared on Sunday that Christians, and Baptists in particular, are considered prudish and don’t like sex. Rick said, and I quote: “We like our sex just fine”. How can we not like something that God created and gave as a gift to express our love to our spouse.

And that’s the issue: these very tight parameters that we humans struggle with.
Wait until you’re married.
Only have sex with your spouse.
Seems attainable.
And yet… clearly we live in a sexually saturated culture. It’s one of Satan’s greatest victories. Pervert, twist, dilute and destroy a gift that God has given us.

I Corinthians 6:18 says “Flee from sexual immorality.” You know that whole fight or flight thing? Paul, knowing how weak we all are, is saying, “choose the flight. Don’t try to duke it out with temptation. Don’t mess around with the fight option–flee, flee as fast you can.” The thing is, we’d look like a pin ball in a machine by fleeing everything in this culture. Flee this movie, don’t watch that show, turn your head from the commercial, don’t talk to that person, don’t listen to that music.

So we compromise and think we’ve got it handled:

The innocent flirting at work.

The Netflix series that isn’t that bad.

The movie that only has this in it but not that.

The computer screen–just once in awhile.

The book series that brings escape.

We only listen to the music–not the words

Those gateways that bring us down a path of no return. We all know people whose lives have been destroyed by sexual immorality. Maybe our own life has been. That’s the big deal. This is why we are told to be above reproach: it’s hard to walk the line on this one.

“All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body…You are not your own, you were bought with a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies” I Corinthians 6: 18-20

Ok. I guess I’ve convinced myself I gotta delete Brick House from my play list… sigh