From the standpoint of General Revelation, or the idea that God’s truth is found in nature itself, we need to start with the fundamental principal that God created everything in nature with a purpose.

We see the tragic results in our family and in our society when we deny that there is purpose in nature: Instead of places of learning, schools become centers for merely warehousing children away from their families and indoctrinating them against God.

Instead of places of worship where God is praised and adored in spirit and in truth, too many churches become places where pastors generate income for themselves, rather than focus on the work of God.

Instead of the joyful discovery of what God has instilled in His creation, science has often become the base manipulation of things to produce wealth, aggrandize the ego of the scientist, and further political agendas of ideologues, both on the right and the left.

Instead of a healing art whereby a physician assists nature to work for the benefit of the sick, medicine has become a playground of the ego wherein the physician manipulates the structure of the body to do whatever the patient wants: sterilization, abortion, body-enhancement and gender reassignment surgeries, lopping off fat to lose weight, inserting (and removing) sexual organs at will; the list could go on and on.

Truly, man has removed himself so far from nature that for many years of the 20th Century, doctors were teaching women that it was far healthier for their babies if they used “formula” instead of the natural and nutritious milk that their own bodies provided. Of course, this myth was later disproven by the same scientific community who once said the latter; but isn’t it troubling that we couldn’t plainly see this truth from what God showed us in our own bodies?

After many years of this mistake, psychology has proposed that a number of neuroses and emotional wounds of men and women in the industrialized world has increased because “the science of nutrition” denied them the basic and fundamental bond that a child should have with his mother from the first moments of life outside of the womb.

While others make proper and compelling arguments that there is, indeed, a purpose in nature, my purpose above is to merely identify the results of several centuries of our world where nature has been inverted.

We, as Christians, need to stand up and admit that we have been complicit in this denial of the purpose in nature. God appointed us stewards of His glorious creation when He assigned Adam the work of tending His garden. But what have we done with that sacred vocation?

If there is purpose in nature, then we need to narrow down our inquiry for a moment and ask a very important question: Is there a purpose to sexual intimacy? If we cannot answer this question or if we answer the question wrongly, our inquiry will be in vain.

The reality is that many Christians, even those who profess to be counselors and pastors, abuse our stewardship of God’s creation and our role as teachers by denying that there is purpose in sexual intimacy. Click here to read more of chapter one of Christopher Doyle's upcoming book, The Meaning of Sex: A New Christian Ethos.