Sex is something that was created for our benefit and pleasure, but is it something to just throw around willy-nilly? Our culture seems to think so and Christians are not immune to this way of thinking. Philosophical naturalism, which says that everything is material and has material origins, fuels this way of thinking and it has infiltrated the church. As much as the church tries to combat this way of thinking to redeem sex and love, worldly love and sexuality still find their way in.
Sean McDowell in his new book Chasing Love takes a fresh spin on this topic in the midst of a highly sexualized culture. Currently, we are taught that love and sex are 100% focused on the self and gaining as much pleasure as possible. The number of sexual partners or girlfriends a guy can experience and the butterfly feeling we all get when we “fall in love” is the pinnacle of human love and sexuality. Sean takes notice of these culturalisms after working with numerous youth groups in Los Angeles and as a high school Bible teacher “bringing the truth to a new generation” of which grew up in a post-Christian culture.
Starting out with a biblical case for sex, sexuality, and love, Sean paints a wonderful picture of the beauty that is found in God’s original design for us as image bearers and in Jesus’s sexual ethic. He does so in a different way of looking at freedom: freedom from and freedom to. “Freedom from” is a negative view of freedom that has no boundaries whatsoever while” freedom to” is a positive form that allows us to freely work within a set of parameters. As long as we work within those parameters, ie. God’s design for sex and love, we are free to explore and there is a beauty in that! Sean gives an example of music and as a musician, this made it all click. To sum up his point, when we operate within the musical boundaries called music theory, we are “free to” make a beautiful piece of music that is pleasing to the ears of not just the composer but everyone else that hears it. Stepping outside the box of music theory into “freedom from” what we find is that music doesn’t make much sense. This is what cultural sexuality and love does, it skews the design God had for us and makes us believe, under false pretense, that because God wants us to be free, we should be free to do what we want with our bodies. There is a sense of “freedom from” God that culture wants us to embrace. What culture wants us to embrace as true is not what God had in mind for us.
Sean does a great job of making the “freedom to” love and be sexual beings within the Christian worldview relevant in culture. At the end of each chapter, he asks and answers a question that should be asked or has been asked about love and sexuality. The way he answers them is never in a way that is condescending to a teen that is living contrary to his answer. Instead, he answers them in such a way that exemplifies the love Christ intends for us to show. When appropriate he uses examples from his own life from the time he and his wife were dating and after they were married to show that Christian dating and marriage is fulfilling and possible.
Along with posing and answering questions, Sean takes on myths that culture tells us. He does this sporadically throughout the book and then hits it hard in Part 2. The pointed front and discredit of the myths served a great accent to biblical case he gave in the part before. The myths he brings up stem from the naturalistic mindset or the being in a relationship-is-the-goal-of-life mindset. Naturalizing sexuality into instinct gives rise to the ability to move from partner to partner with no commitment, but this denies the fact, as Sean makes a great point of, that when we engage in sexual acts outside of marriage, we will always have a spiritual connection with that person. Hence why it is so hard for a girl to leave an abusive relationship or feel obligated to stay as if sexual activity and being in a relationship with another human is the pinnacle of life. To combat this type of thinking, he clearly demonstrates that biblically speaking marriage is something one is called to as a Christian and not a duty of all Christians.
To close out the book, Sean tackles some very important topics in isolation such as homosexuality, pornography, and transgenderism. In a culture where “setting a thirst trap” is not just okay but encouraged and where we are encouraged to act carnally, these topics extremely important to work through. Each is covered thoroughly, with sensitivity and tact. They are all things that teens face in 21st century everyday life and are things that everyone deals with (including myself). How Sean explains it is a way that settles the matter for Christians and makes it understandable. To add a bit of substance to this claim, if the topics aren’t addressed, the church will succumb to the naturalistic tendencies we all have, hardening our hearts towards God, making it harder and harder to be truly free. Free to live for Christ because we are living within his original design for us.
A book like Chasing Love is one that every parent and teen should have on their shelves so that they too can get some sort of grip on the sexuality we are programmed to live out as well as give us the biblically grounded confidence needed to live it out. We live in a sexualized society; we cannot get around that. This is not the first time humanity has experienced sexualization of this magnitude either. The 1st century city of Corinth was very similar to ours in terms of the pervasiveness of sexual perversion. Sean’s call for sexuality is the same as Paul’s: Authentic living for Christ is freedom to live as the sexual beings we were created as.
Brewed Up Apologetics 
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