ECCLESIASTICAL VOICE

Sexual Sin

By Revd. Dr. Idowu Ibitoye
Introduction
The news of a University of Lagos lecturer who made sexual advances to an admission seeker flooded the news a couple of weeks ago. The lecturer in question happened to be a pastor with one of the leading Pentecostal Missions in Nigeria. The footage that revealed this unholy advance to a female admission seeker was put together by British Broadcasting Cooperation African eyes through a thorough investigative journalism. The footage revealed the decadence in Nigerian Tertiary Institutions. It must be clearly noted that the Holy Scripture (Bible) frowns at such action.
Biblical Foundation for Sexuality: God created the first man (Adam) and gave him a wife (Eve), both were living in the garden of Eden with Adam confirming Eve to be bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh (Gen 2:23), The bible affirmed that man shall “be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). One flesh conveys a lot of implications, which include sexual union, child conception, spiritual and emotional intimacy. The above passage revealed that God reserve sex inside marriage, which should not be abused as it is in our contemporary days.
New Testament stood against evil sexual practices such as prostitution, pre-marital sex, adultery and homosexual behaviour (I Cor. 6:13-18; Eph. 5:3; I Thess. 4:3; Ex. 20:14; Rom. 1:26-27). Though the Bible speaks against all these evil sexual behaviours, they are rampant in our days; although there are government legislation against such, yet it kept on increasing. The only solution lies in the hand of the church. The Church is expected to preach the true gospel to the entire citizenry.
Rape
Rape is the crime of forcing sexual intercourse upon a person against the individual’s will. Women or men may be the victims of rape. However, a man may force a woman to submit to him by beating her, threatening her verbally or with a weapon.
Rape is sexual intercourse that one of the persons involved does not want. Although men can be raped, in most cases the victims are generally women and children. At times the rapists may be strangers as with Shechem and Dinah (Gen.34), or they may be trusted friends and family members, as it was discovered in the case of Amnon and Tamar (II Sam. 13).
Most of the time men believe that they can demand sex because women are there to serve them sexually. The same types of thinking leads some men to see women as just toys to provide fun for them, such men who engage in this act have no concern for the women’s feelings or whether she is injured. Women are created in the image of God, they are not toys to be used for personal amusement.
Furthermore, the court systems in some countries do not take rape cases seriously and impose very light sentences on those who are caught in the act. This system encourages increase in rape cases, because men who engage in this act know that they can get away with it. This also discourages people from reporting rape cases to the police, because they know that they will be humiliated and blamed, for this reason many victims keep quite.
It has been revealed that rape victims always suffer the following; inability to trust, constant fear, psychological problems, anger, feelings of guilt and shame. Most women who were raped as children or young adults were usually unable to lead a normal married life. Most of them lose their self-esteem, while many turn to prostitution.
In Deuteronomy, the law prescribes stoning when a man comes upon a betrothed girl in town and sleep with her. The girl is stoned because she did not cry out, this means that, the sex was consensual. Deuteronomy 22:23-24 says that a man who had sex with a woman without proper arrangements is said to rape the woman, even if she consents. The parallel story to this one in the Bible is the story of Dinah and Shechem (Gen. 34) “Dinah had gone out and Shechem securing her, lay with her and had illicit sex with her”. In this story of Dinah, Shechem treated her badly rather than as a proper woman whose parents have to be consulted. Rape is punishable by death and is explicitly linked to murder, rape is a crime of aggression and violence rather than sex and the girls are always the victims (Deut. 22:25-27).
Rape is increasing at a faster rate than any other violent crime. According to police reports, more than 60,000 rape cases were reported to the police in 2004. The number of reported rape increased by 69% from 1974-2004. Many rape victims do not report the crime to the police because of shame or fear. Also many rapists threaten to kill their victims if the women go to the police.
R.C. Wiggans reported that only about 2 per cent of all reports were convicted and imprisoned. The reason for this low conviction rate results from the difficulty of proving rape under most state laws. Some State laws require evidence from witnesses, evidence of bodily injury to the woman or medical evidences. Likewise, some states require proof that a woman has had recent sexual intercourse for such proof; a woman must be examined within 24 hours after the rape. In some cases, a defense lawyer may try to cast doubt on a woman’s story by asking about her past sex life. At that stage the jury may conclude that a woman has low morals and willingly consented to sexual intercourse, if she had sexual experiences with several men in the past. For this reason, most victims keep it within themselves, and when the husband of the victim discovers it results in quarreling, if not divorce in such homes.
Furthermore, some states have changed their laws on rape; few states have eliminated laws that require evidence from witnesses or evidence of bodily injury. Some states and local communities have trained a number of police women to deal with rape victims, because many women find it easier to discuss such an experience with another woman than with a man.
The church need to create an atmosphere of trust, so that survivors of rape can have the courage to talk about it. All pastors/church leaders should have training in counseling rape survivors. These survivors include the family of the affected victims, because as it was discovered in the story of Tamar, Amnon, King David and Absalom that rape wounds affects the whole family and the revenge is always disastrous.
Conclusion
The church needs to preach a message that helps men and women to develop relationships of respect and trust. It should encourage men and women to maintain sexual purity, dignity and integrity. The church should embark on holistic discipleship of her members in other for the parishioners to be well grounded in the Word of God, so that they will be able to stand against any temptation that may come their ways. Anyone found culpable of this sin should be disciplined and brought back into fellowship through love. The church should clearly and consistently proclaim that true love protects others from all that is harmful.

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