Some of the best things in life are also some of the most dangerous, and a man’s sexuality is at the same time one of the best of God’s creations and the most dangerous. It can be such a blessing or such a curse, create such joy or such destruction…Understand the power of male sexuality for good and for evil. Death and life are in the power of your sexuality, so resolve, by God’s grace, that you will turn it only to the best and highest of purposes.

Some of the best things in life are also some of the most dangerous. They are both beneficial and dangerous because they are powerful, and any kind of power can be used to accomplish great good or great evil. Consider the many biblical warnings about the tongue and how it can be used to build up or tear down, to lift people high or crush them to the dust. “Death and life are in the power of the tongue,” says Solomon, and we have all experienced both.

One of the most mysterious of God’s creations is sexuality and perhaps especially male sexuality. We are tragically accustomed to hearing accounts of how it has been used for evil—how it has been used to harm, abuse, exploit, and destroy. We hear how it has been turned toward digital strangers instead of real-life wives and how it has been used for self-serving purposes instead of self-sacrificial ones. A wise man is aware of the power of his sexuality and never grows apathetic in his knowledge that it can so easily be used for harm.

But sexuality is not intrinsically evil. Male sexuality was not exempt from God’s creation-closing declaration that what he had made was not merely good but very good. And while sexuality was subject to the fall and by it gained all sorts of negative powers and harmful abilities, it remains a good creation and a good gift.

I once watched a long cascading waterfall tumble down a mountainside. As it fell lower and lower, the water picked up speed so that what was a mere trickle at the source had become a roaring torrent at the bottom. I observed how many years before, engineers had narrowed the stream so its force would grow even stronger as it was squeezed between sheer walls of stone.

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