What Did Jesus Say About Sex in Heaven?

In the twenty years or so that I’ve been a Christian, there’s one topic I’ve never heard a pastor bring up: that’s sex in heaven. I’ve not even heard other Christians bring it up. Yet people still ask about it online. Don’t you find that strange? Just between you and me—no one is looking over your shoulder to judge.

Must We Confess to One Another?

Before I was saved, popular culture primarily shaped my view of Christianity. In that culture, people confessed after sinning and then did it again. That perspective came mostly from watching mob movies with Catholic mobsters confessing to a priest. But I didn’t know the difference between Catholics, Protestants, and those guys in black suits knocking on doors and asking if you’ve met Jesus. No, not the MIB, those other guys.

Nevertheless, even after I was saved and began to learn about confession, I still found it odd that people would confess their sins to other people. There’s something invasive and unsettling about sharing the worst of myself with another person. I suppose this is why I’ve always thought James 5:16 was curious.

Are We Being Honest About Temptation?

When I moved to Sacramento, I started attending a new church. One Sunday, the pastor was talking about sin and our lives before Jesus. He surprised me when he said, “If you weren’t having fun, you were doing it wrong.” I remember thinking, “I must have been doing it wrong.” My life before Jesus had been full of anxiety, depression, and dread, with happiness occasionally stopping by to rub salt into the wounds.

I still remember this line from a poem I wrote back in 1998:

Happiness, thou art as elusive as effervescent winds to my grasping hands.

I had been depressed since childhood and often thought of ending it all. While therapists and the like might ask, “How often do you have suicidal thoughts?” a better question for me would have been, “How often do you not have suicidal thoughts?”

When God Heals You, Do You Have to Go Back to Work?

After I first became a Christian, I went from being the guy counting the seconds until the sermon was done to the guy eagerly listening to every word. There’s one sermon I remember about Mark that stayed with me, and I still think about it. It was based on Mark 1:29-31.

As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they immediately told Jesus about her. So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them.

Mark 1:29-31 (NIV)

Imagine you’re sick and call off work, school, church, or whatever. However, you also pray, and after praying, you’re healed. What do you do? If you’re like me, you praise the Lord and enjoy the rest of the day, returning to your obligations tomorrow.

In that sermon, the pastor said we shouldn’t do that. Instead, we should be like Simon’s mother-in-law, returning to our obligations because the Lord has healed us. That wasn’t all. The pastor suggested that we were sinning and taking advantage of God’s healing if we stayed home and rested.

Is that true? Should we skip the rest because we’ve been healed?