I have been thinking a lot lately about the differences between men and women regarding their different approaches to mating and dating. It is common knowledge that men are made to want to spread their seed as far and as wide as they can. While women are made to find the best man to create offspring with. Men who have only ever had one or no partners are considered losers while men who have had many partners are considered admirable. Women who have only had one partner will not be looked down upon while women who have had many partners are considered sluts or whores. Words like “slut” or “whore” are the worst things one can call a woman because it shows low standards and a lack of discrimination. As described in Debra Tannen’s book, You Just Dont Understand: Men and Women in Conversation (2013), all women strive toward building groups and creating intimacy as part of their natural states. While men do not.

Yet men are frequently demonized for not being made the same as women, especially in Christian circles. The Christian ideals regarding the biological male imperative that were always expressed to me were: dating is bad (except in groups), pre-arranged marriages are good, and stay in relationships that are one-sided. As well-intentioned as those ideas may be, I never listened very closely to any of those ideas.

I am not saying this to encourage men to be more promiscuous. I never had a real desire to be promiscuous like Charlie Sheen or Billy Bob Thornton, but I refused and refuse to demonize myself for my sexual needs and wants. A good priest friend of mine once told me that I should not either. I want to believe that the Lord made me and other men like this for a reason.

I am thankful that the Bible is full of descriptions of the Lord as promiscuous with His love. Now, of course I am speaking of agape love, not erotic love. He has been and continues to be open and available to anyone, anytime, anywhere from any background, language, gender, race, or sexuality. He has brought people from the East and from the West and from the North and from the South to His table. He continues to bring Jews, Gentiles, men, women, Blacks, Whites, Indians, Asians and everyone else to His table.

One description of the promiscuousness of the Lord in the Bible is fact that though all the disciples were Jewish, they all came from different backgrounds. They were soldiers, tax-collectors, fisherman, and other occupations. Some came from good backgrounds and others did not.

However, Jesus also spoke to Jewish people, Romans. Samaritans, men, and women. He shared His love with them all. He even reached out to those who hated Him, like Saul. He even talked to a random Samaritan woman. Good Jews did not speak to unknown women, much less Samaritans. He still talks to billions of people all over the world today, through His Word and His missionaries and through the Holy Spirit.

Another example of the Lord’s promiscuousness is from the book of Acts. On the day of Pentecost. the Lord made the disciples speak in the tongues of the people from many different lands all at once. He did this so that people can hear the word of the Lord being communicated in their native language–just the reverse of the story of the tower of Babel.

So yes, Jesus was a man and He definitely has spread and is spreading His seed all over the world—in a spiritual sense. And I am not demonizing women for wanting to build community and relationships, we need the way that the Lord made them too. We need a family and a community and relationships. I am just saying the Lord created both and gave us desires for both as models of what we need to do to further His kingdom and I thank the Lord loving me, even me.

1 Timothy 2: ¹First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, ²for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. ³This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, ⁴who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. ⁵For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, ⁶who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. ⁷For this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.