So I’ve been doing a Bible study focused on God’s design for sexuality. I think I’ve been sucked into the topic since I read Rob Bell’s Sex God where he explored the infinite connections between our spirituality and sexuality. It really opened my eyes to something I already knew deep down, that there is a whole lot more to sex than physical pleasure or release.
I’ve known that to be true since forever. I mean sex is great – but what draws me to it has very little to do with the physicality of it. It’s the feelings of acceptance (desirability, even!) and closeness that I long for.
I remember the first time I decided I would sleep with someone if he asked. I was 15 and away at summer camp, missing my very close friend and first love. I missed his gaze and the feeling of his shoulder pressed up against mine in his little truck. I decided if he wanted me, I would be his. Not because I wanted to have an orgasm, but because I wanted to be missed in the way that I was missing him. I wanted to feel like I belonged to him, was a part of him. I wanted us to be connected in some indefinable and immutable way.
Well if you know me well at all, you know that this story did not end in consummation but rejection. Perhaps for the best, right? No teenage sex. No unplanned pregnancy or man from my past. But what stands out for me is the profound way this experience shaped me. And yet we are told, over and over that we all just want sex to procreate or to feel that sexy feeling. But I didn’t feel the pinch of missing out on a “release” or a “pleasure” at 15. It certainly didn’t feel shallow or meaningless then. It felt like the ultimate exposure and rejection.
All this to say – that when God makes a big deal about sex I believe it.
And boy oh boy, does He make a big deal about sex.
My Bible teacher for this study is Kay Arthur. And if you know anything about Kay, she goes right to the meat. No dancing around in the safe verses, instead by day two we are reading Leviticus and how you should stone adulterers to purge evil from Israel.
“Yowza! What is this doing in here?” I think to myself. I mean, I’m not a moron, I knew stuff like that was in the Old Testament, but staring it straight in the face day after day makes you think about what in the heck God is trying to say. Just to keep rooted in the faith I found myself mumbling “To see me, is to see the father” trying to remember the revelation of God’s character is found in the person of Jesus Christ – the same dude who said, “He who is without sin, cast the first stone.”
I also took a week off. This also seemed to help to give me the distance I needed to start seeing something of what God is saying. And not that I’ve sussed the whole thing out – but it seems super clear that God is saying something like:
Sex is a very big deal. Sex is more than sex, sex is a representation of something incredibly profound spiritually. Perverting (or corrupting, or co-opting) sex is a very big no, no. Sex is the physical manifestation of covenant – two becoming one – you don’t mess with that without some very serious and long lasting consequences.
This stands in stark contrast to our culture’s messages about sex. Like: “sex is fun and inconsequential” or “sex is something we can use to market something else”.
And I wonder which holds up for you. I wonder if, like me, you weren’t looking for something deeper the first time you decided you would have sex. Or if you didn’t feel robbed of something more profound when you weren’t given the choice.
I don’t know. I am very white and suburban and female and Midwestern and heterosexual– so I get that I don’t get what sex is like for everyone else. It just seems so unlikely to me that the way it differs in its degree of significance.
Anyway, I know there’s some stuff to argue about in there. Stuff about what constitutes perversion and corruption – stuff that is valuable to work out. But what weighs heavy on my heart today is the larger image (sex as a profound spiritual practice) and the larger loss (sex is cheap and meaningless).
No comments:
Post a Comment