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November 23, 2007
The Reality of Sex- the Unity of Sex, Love, and Life
Sex is like a stick of dynamite; once engaged in, it has enormous emotional and physical consequences. God, in His infinite wisdom, designed sex so that it would be intricately intertwined with love and life. Woe to the one who tries to undo the connections between the three! He makes sex purposeless, with no past and no future. As Chesterton would say, this person truly does not know what he's doing, because he does not know what he's undoing.
The realities of sex, love, and life form a natural trinity that should not be disconnected. Ultimately this is true because our transcendent God is ever so close to the material world. First of all, the material world is good because God created it, and according to Genesis He Himself said that it was good. Matter has a certain value no matter what any mortal's opinion about it might be. Second, with the hypostatic union, Christ came into the world to redeem all the messy, mundane, and physical aspects of man. As God in the flesh He united two disparate worlds, and fully experienced all the joy, tediousness, and pain we experience in life. He has shown us the great importance of the material world. Thus, all areas of man's life are sanctified, especially our bodies. They are not to be transcended when dealing with God. Rather, Christians are invited to enter deeply into the mystery of the flesh and consequently, the mystery of sex and marriage.
The world we live in has a schizophrenic attitude towards the material world. On the one hand it worships the body, bodily pleasure, and external bodily beauty. We can see this with all the money that is spent on giving the body pleasure, and making the body look good with fad diets, anti-aging products and surgeries, and the like. But underneath the surface of this superficial worship lies its true view of creation. Unfortunately, it ultimately disdains the flesh. Some currents of thought suggest that matter is neither good nor bad; it is simply raw material to be used. This reductionistic view worships technology and sees it as an absolute good, because technology continually manipulates matter to serve our desires, without asking any sort of normative question on whether or not one should engage in a particular technological process. Other currents of thought have a more Gnostic tendency, where matter is generally viewed as inferior and therefore must be escaped. "Secret knowledge" will help one live more spiritually and avoid the worthless, evil flesh. It worships the idea of living like an angel while being in denial about the reality of the flesh. An example of this is the pervasive contraceptive mentality which separates sex and life.
If sex is truly about life, then the opposite must be true as well: generation of life must include sex. Unfortunately, when the three integrated realities of sex, love, and life start to come undone, one has loveless sex and loveless life. Life without love becomes manufactured. Ultimately, this life without love is the fruit of the devil. Science without values can lead us far, far away from the truth. Recent results of such science are synthetic children, synthetic families, and synthetic sex.
Simply put, just as the separation of body and spirit produces death in a human person, so does the separation of the physical and spiritual in sex produce a kind of death for us. To think we can have sex without any kind of consequences is a lie that hurts all of society. Those of us who understand this truth must do all we can with God's grace to help people avoid this widespread deception.
God bless,
Daniel
Posted by Daniel at November 23, 2007 4:48 PM
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