Jesus + Sexuality Formation Class
When I was ten years old, I discovered pornography. This was back in the day when you usually had to go looking for it. In my case, I was playing hide-and-seek with a friend after swim practice and happened to hide in a set of bushes where someone had stashed a collection of magazines. Something mysterious sparked in my little brain and body—a confusing mixture of elation and guilt. Little did I know that, beneath the surface, a deep wound was forming in my soul that would take over twenty years to heal.
Historically, the Church has been clear about the basic biblical rules for sex: don't have sex before you're married, and don't have sex with anyone but your spouse once you are. By and large, we’ve been warned about sex, but rarely have we been discipled. Christians have excelled at drawing clear boundaries, but often failed to offer healing when they are crossed.
That's our desire for our upcoming Jesus + Sexuality Formation Class. While we intend to convey and understand Scripture's sexual ethics, more than anything, we want to take the time to name the wounds of sexuality caused by judgment, sin, shame, and a culture that constantly pulls us away from God's design and goodness.
To be human is to be an integrated whole—heart, soul, mind, and body—fundamentally designed for intimacy and love. Yet, we live in the wake of a deep fracture. Through our own sin and the harm inflicted upon us by others, we've become fragmented. In this class, we’ll be focusing on how Jesus heals our humanity by addressing four specific wounds:
The Wound of Fragmentation (Body): Culture often trains us to separate our physical actions from our actual selves, detaching the body from the heart, soul, and mind. We over-sexualize or under-sexualize the body, reducing it to a tool for performance, gratification, or procreation. Jesus invites us to resist this fragmentation, offering healing by re-integrating our physical bodies with our whole selves and treating them with the dignity they deserve.
The Wound of Distorted Imagination (Mind): We live in a world saturated with messaging that corrupts our perception of others, ourselves, and God. When our minds are distorted by lust, fantasy, or consumption, we reduce God’s image-bearers to mere objects. Healing this wound requires what author Rich Villodas calls "sobriety"—a clear-mindedness about our bodies and longings, fueled by the daily renewing of our minds.
The Wound of Counterfeit Intimacy (Heart): When our hearts doubt God's goodness or His ability to provide true connection, we tend to settle. We turn to counterfeit intimacy and sexual sin as a false savior for our loneliness. Healing begins when we guard our hearts and trust that God’s design for intimacy is better than the cheap substitutes we so easily fall for.
The Wound of Identity Amnesia (Soul): Sexual brokenness often stems from a soul-level amnesia where we forget our foundational identity as the safely beloved of God. In our forgetfulness, we look for infinite spiritual validation in finite sexual experiences. True healing comes when we remember who we are in Christ, finding our ultimate, soul-level thirst quenched in Him.
We hope that as we name these wounds together, we can step out of the shadows and experience the restorative, integrating healing of Jesus. Because when we bring our brokenness into the light, we realize we no longer have to spend our lives hiding in the bushes of guilt and shame.
"He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds."
– Psalm 147:3
Much love, Jason
