There have been times when the Church and society have had a totally repressive and negative attitude towards sex. Origen, one of the earliest theologians of the Church, regarded sex as something inherently sinful: Adam did not have sexual knowledge of his wife until after The Fall. If it had not been for The Fall, the human race would likely have been propagated in some very mysterious or angelic manner without sex and, therefore, sin.

In the Middle Ages, Yves of Chartres taught that complete abstinence from sexual relationships had to be maintained on five out of seven days a week: on Thursdays in memory of the arrest of our Lord, on Fridays in honor of his death, on Saturdays in honor of the Virgin Mary, on Sundays in commemoration of the Resurrection and on Mondays out of respect for the faithful departed!

The Victorian era is also well known for its sexual prudery when some even considered that the legs of pianos had to be covered! These prejudices and the sense of guilt associated with sex still affect the lives of many. Both the obsession of the post-modern era and the repression of former times are a far cry from the biblical understanding of sex which is not outdated but highly relevant to us today.

The Bible affirms our sexuality: God made us male and female (Genesis 1:27). The body is good; we are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14). Jesus had a physical body. The sexual urge is God-given and, like fire in the fireplace, is a great blessing when enjoyed in the right context. As C.S. Lewis points out, Pleasure is God's idea, not the Devil's.

The heart of our sexuality is not the biological dimension but the personal one. Jesus himself points the way to a state beyond marriage. In heaven there is no marriage. Sex is not an ultimate goal. Our society has made an idol out of sex. Consequently, we are courting a very great danger.

Though they may love someone deeply, some cannot sustain their love without the total enrapturing physical sensation that comes with first knowledge and necessarily cools and changes over time. They are drunk on the mystery of the physical and spend their life fruitlessly chasing that initial moment of complete intoxication. Some wonder blindly in their passionate pursuit of an eternal moment. In their wake they leave broken hearts and broken dreams. For some, sex has replaced God as the object of worship. Christians need to help reverse this. If we seek pleasure as a god, in the long run we find emptiness, disappointment and addiction. If we seek God, we find, among other things, ecstatic pleasure.

There is an old adage that says we humans are destined to live with our feet on the earth and our heads in the heavens and that we are pulled both ways. Nowhere is this more clearly revealed than in our sexuality. It sits right in the middle of our being, pulling us in both directions. If we move our sexuality into the earth and want to glory only in the physical, we are no better than the animals, and soon our lives seem empty and unfulfilled. If we try to remove our sexuality from the sensations of our bodies and turn it into a disembodied celebration of the spiritual, we are doomed to come crashing back to earth each time we try to take wing.

We are neither animals nor angels. We are something else. We are humans – part spiritual and part physical and those two parts are combined into one. A true sexuality acknowledges both these dimensions and tries to embrace them both in the act of love. Having sex is what animals do. Achieving mystical union is what angels do. The human person alone can make love, where the physical and the spiritual commingle in a single, joyous act. Know this act. Celebrate this act. But, most of all, honor this act.

back to top | home