Torrey Conference 2008: Sex and the Soul

Sex and the City, I mean, the Soul. That was the topic of this year’s annual Torrey Conference which centered itself around the biblical understanding of sex and what that means for us as Christian students. It’s an issue that I feel isn’t talked about as much as it should be amongst Biolans. The last I’ve heard sex even mentioned at Biola was through a friend, in discussing the recent movie, Sex and the City. Even then, my friend was explaining the crude, sexual humor portrayed in the hit series and of course, didn’t shed any positive light about sex in that movie.
This year’s Torrey Conference seemed to focus not only on why sex is unhealthy and negative before marriage, but they highlighted the joy and goodness of sex in marriage and gave us insight into how God intended it to be and most importantly, they connected why sex mattered to the soul. At the start of the conference, Dallas Willard spoke in the first session titled, “Sexual Desire and Spiritual Formation, with Special Reference to Pornography.”

One thing that I really took from that session was Dallas Willard’s thoughts about the foundations and reasons for our sexual desires, not just the fact that we are dealing with them and how our sexual desires and actions deeply impact our souls. Willard, a professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California and a keynote speaker at Torrey, says that it’s pointless to try to merely “fix” our sexual desires. He says it’s crucial to have a vision, intent and means when it comes to facing sexual desires and that these desires and actions can be harmful to the soul. He used pornography to further this point. He says that if one decides to stop an addiction like pornography, it would be pointless to have the, “I’ll just stop” mentality. He says the first thing to do is to change your vision. By this, he means to change how we look at sex, at people. He says our intentions must also change. “Self control simply doing what you intend to do,” says Dr. Willard. With a change of intentions, self control will indeed be tested when figuring out the means to follow your intentions. These are a few of the things that I took from Dallas Willard’s session, especially when it comes to this idea of addictions.

Diet Coke, make up and shopping. These are addictions of mine that might not necessarily be destroying my life, but they do seem to have a hold on some aspects of my life, like drugs or pornography might for others. In the New York Times, a respected print newspaper, an article says that a Yale study shows, “drug addictions should be thought of as a developmental disorder.” This raised questions in my mind regarding what the media even perceives issues like addiction as. But I know that for me, as a Christian, it’s an issue that not only impacts our physicality, mentality, emotions and psyche, it’s an issue that deeply impacts our soul.