Ah yes, l'amour! All of us have had our fill of sentimental ballads and sappy love songs, proclaiming to the mountains about how this one person is really hot and nice. When we talk about romantic love in a Christian sense, we either picture A) Mike Pence and his at-a-comfortable-distance wife Karen, married since they were 2 or B) Christian Mingle. You see posts about girls refusing to engage in physical contact unless "that boy got Jesus in his heart." But for how involved God is supposed to be in our love lives, we don't talk about it very much.

In my Biblical Literature class, my professor asked us how many sermons had been taught around The Song of Solomon and not many could say they even realized it was in the Bible. Views towards sex in the Christian faith range from clueless to appalled. And it makes sense, considering what the Bible has to say about it.

"Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous." - Hebrews 13: 4

"Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body." - 1 Corinthians 6:18-20

"Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality." - Galatians 5:19

Its message is evident; do not have sex with anyone but your husband or wife. And before or outside of that union, it's just sexual immorality. But in The Song of Songs, that boundary is less clear. It constantly refers to the singer's beloved one as a bride but it also refers to her as a sister. And then there's that repeating line of "I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, do not stir up or awaken love until it is ready!" Where other verses are very clear about the boundaries, this book talks about romance and love, not just the rules of marriage.

And then, there's the issue of sex itself. In the old days, it got reduced to simply being a way to further the family line and produce heirs. Now, it's become so common place that the typical age to lose your virginity is 18. Sooo, not much has changed, actually. Yikes. It's both commonplace and taboo and it's a subject that always puts God and the flesh on opposite poles.

But I think The Song of Solomon brings them both into the same hemisphere. And it does this by reorienting sex and romance around its source: love and beauty. Religion sometimes seems like it's about a battle against your natural instincts but that's such a toxic way of thinking.

The truth of the matter is that the church can't control your love life. They can remind you that God's watching, but it, like everything, should ultimately be your decision. But by not talking about it, it seems like we're supposed to not talk about it, and that's where people get the idea that sex is a sin. But in general, people do it because of either love, beauty, or both. And what better places to find God? Before we get into the semantics of what is and isn't ok before marriage, we need to remove the fear that surrounds it and stop treating desire like it's an affliction. Control does not equal limiting. We need to teach young people how to manage such things and be educated about them. A good friend of mine always tells me, "Don't be scared, be smart." And when it comes to sex, this still reigns true. It's about communication, verbal and nonverbal. At it's purist form, it's a collaboration of passion. But I'm not really in a position to say what it is and isn't. However I am in the position to say that this is a topic we can't just awkwardly dance around.