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Beyond Orgasm

The Horror & Joy of Sex

Love Sex God: Christian Sex Secrets

Spiritual Sexuality?

Nagging deep within us is an incessant craving to find completion by becoming one flesh with another human. Of course, sexual intimacy is a significant part of this. We sell ourselves short – frighteningly so – if we do not realize, however, that the cry from our innermost being extends far beyond craving orgasms. Too many of us are so disturbingly superficial that millions slip into the quicksand of supposing they can reduce the height of human intimacy almost to an animal act without damaging their very humanity. Once we fall into this mentality, the more desperately we struggle to satisfy ourselves, the quicker we sink.

So astonishingly powerful is sex that it is divinely designed to superglue you to one person for the rest of your life. God entrusted this treasure to you to empower you to maintain exclusive intimacy with the one person you are selflessly committed to for life. To use sex for any other purpose is to take the road to ever-increasing frustration and gnawing emptiness. Whether it be in thought or action, to fritter away your sexuality on someone you are not committed to for life is to become like someone who enjoys burning hundred dollar notes and can’t figure why he is continually impoverished.

It is common for us to dangerously misinterpret our own cravings. Sexually, we tend to be like children who suppose all they need is an endless supply of candy, when the real nourishment their bodies are crying out for is much more complex. Anyone is sentencing himself to long-term problems who thinks he can satisfy his bodily needs with candy alone. Slowly he would begin experiencing numerous unpleasant and ultimately life-threatening illnesses, few of which would feel as if they are related to his food intake. Likewise, we have a whole range of complex needs that we tend to naively suppose can be met by raw sex alone. And the consequences of this mistake can be catastrophic.

Before focusing on our God-given desires for human closeness, let’s lift our eyes for a moment. Many of our needs that feel like a craving for human companionship are actually yearnings that can only be satisfied by intimacy with God. This surprising, vitally important, rarely understood subject is explored in <"http://www.net-burst.net/love/luv.htm">You Can Find Love: What Your Fantasies Reveal</a>. The height of intimacy between two humans, as deep and fulfilling as it is, is superficial, relative to our desperate need to become one spirit with the most astounding Person in the universe.

         One Flesh?

Even within the human realm, however, we frequently get things horribly confused. Many of us rob ourselves by trying to reduce to shallow sensations our yearning for an experience so profound that it is truly best thought of as becoming one flesh with another human being. To be one flesh means that if your head feels fine but another part of your body hurts, your head reels in pain and does everything it can to comfort the hurting part. It means that if your head is neutral but another part of your body feels pleasure, your head is neither jealous nor disinterested, but it delights in that pleasure. Selfishness is incompatible with oneness. To be one flesh is to experience a union in which one’s greatest joy is found in the happiness of the other. You have fulfilled your craving to be one flesh with a person to the extent that you would as soon consider breaking the union (divorce) as you would consider ripping off your own head, and you would sooner hurt your partner than attack yourself with a machete.

No matter what mirage of satisfaction it might seem to offer, using sex for anything less than no-holds-barred selfless permanence is a tragic loss. By it you will cheat yourself out of the fulfillment you were born for. You might act like someone enslaved to drugs trying to convince himself he is having a good time, but selfish or superficial sex will keep tormenting the craving within you, teasing it to infuriating levels.

         The Spiritual Dimension

Of course, many people, through no fault of their own, miss out on sexual fulfillment. Whether these people are to be pitied, depends on the spiritual dimension to their lives. Pitying anyone without considering this dimension could be like pitying soaring eagles because they cannot run as fast as ostriches. There is incomprehensibly more to everlasting life than we can currently see. Feeling sorry for someone who is celibate or has a poor sexual partner, could therefore be like feeling sorry for the athlete pounding the track or a student toiling at his books. They are currently missing out on fun that others enjoy but their present hardship could end up achieving for them glory that others can only envy.

Singles can stir up their frustration, letting it rage to soul-destroying levels. They can turn to porn or fantasy or solo sex or one-night stands or other shadows that offer a high as pathetic as a drug. Soon the craving for a fix returns with even greater fury. Or singles can turn their back on that futility and use a different tack. They can stop inflaming the desire; allowing it to gradually subside, and so find both a measure of contentment and divine approval. It is the promiscuous, not these, who are to be pitied.

    Whenever we enter into sexual intercourse with selfish motives, we are even more alone than we were before. The loneliness increases our appetite for the union, which is usually translated into a need for more sexual intercourse. Lust is a self-perpetuating cycle that becomes more intense as it continues. <"http://www.net-burst.net/sexuality/source.htm">(Source)

That quote is from a man I deeply admire for his ability to receive from God profound, Bible-based truth. The instant I read his words, I recognized this divine truth as finding staggering and unexpected confirmation in a secular source: Lonely all the time: Recognizing, Understanding and Overcoming Sex Addiction, (New York, 1989, page 23) by psychologists Dr. R. Earle and Dr G. Crow. These psychologists write, “Believe it or not, the driving force behind most sex addicts’ compulsion is a desperate need for love.”

We cannot rid ourselves of aloneness and isolation by cheapening ourselves. Reducing sex to a biological act reduces us. Our one hope is a permanent union in which our highest happiness is found in the pleasure of the other partner. When sex is perverted from the expression of a sacred, lifelong fusion of a man and woman into a temporary, self-centered convenience, our clawing for fulfillment will die in bitter frustration. Ultimately, degrading oneself this way will merely aggravate one’s craving for the oneness that can only be achieved in a unique, exclusive and loving union.

Sex & God

In God’s eyes, sex is the sealing of a lifelong contract. You are bound, not by the giving of your word, but by the giving of your very body. The consequences of casual sex cannot be undone. To suppose that it is harmless is like sexually violating someone and then thinking if you say you didn’t mean it, it will cease to be a crime.

Infinitely better than the world’s best parent, Father God has our best interests at heart. When it comes to relationships, we too often respond to his loving guidance like spoiled brats asked to eat their vegetables. We are sure we know better than our Maker about what will ultimately fulfill us. Like a lazy tennis player constantly blaming his racket instead of his lack of practice, we blame our partner rather than our failure to keep practicing selfless love until we finally master the art of selfless love.

We haven’t begun to live until discovering that it is more blessed to give than to receive; more blessed to serve than to be served; more blessed to love than be loved; more blessed to lay down our lives as an offering, to turn the other cheek, to love our enemies.

         Real Lovers

A woman I’ll call Jan has kindly let me share her story with you, provided that her anonymity is preserved. Jan suffers from Body Dysmorphic Disorder, a devastating psychological affliction that has driven many people to suicide. It deceives its victims into falsely believing they are grotesquely ugly, thus causing them to feel acutely embarrassed about anyone seeing them. So acute is Jan’s condition that she believes that only about three times in the last fifteen years has she been able to look in the mirror and see what she really looks like, rather than a gross distortion. Amazingly, she confided to me that during her long marriage this affliction has never hindered her intimacy with her husband. She joked that she is “too ugly to walk to the post box but stark naked [making love with her husband] is just fine.” The key to her remarkable freedom is her attitude to lovemaking. Jan says, “I guess it’s because I’m not focused on me – it’s about giving.”

Givers are able to tap into special powers.

We were made to be lovers. Lovers are givers not takers. Takers eventually end up supposing they need to change partners. They are parasites who take all they can and then have to move to another victim. They are worse than a zero. They are an empty space sucking the life out of everything around them. The sole value that takers have is that they still have the potential to be transformed into givers, if they let God have his beautiful way in their lives.

Givers are people of honor. They are godlike, because God alone keeps giving and giving, and never runs dry. Most of us shrink from giving because we are acutely conscious that unlike God, we are not a bottomless resource, but through spiritual union with Jesus, each of us can tap into that endless supply.

Takers are stagnant water. Sentenced to getting only what is natural, they can only grasp after things that are limited and dying. In glorious contrast, givers are living rivers. Their source is supernatural. Flowing through them is that which is boundless and eternal. Givers find astounding fulfillment because the more they muster the courage to give, the more God keeps pumping new life and love and joy into them. Givers are people of faith. They know that under God they can give away what they desperately need because their God delights in continually giving them even more than they had before. They can thrive in the midst of rejection and persecution because their Source is divine. Like Jesus expressing his love on the cross, givers endure tough times because they know that through their union with the divine they are destined for greatness and eternal fulfillment.

Christian Sex?

To see someone who could have been great, reduced to a dirty, homeless junkie forced to steal to support his habit is no more pathetic than anyone who ends up a sex junkie. No matter how sophisticated you might seem, to make sex god of your life is to trash your dignity and render your life a shameful waste. To make sex god is to become an empty shell as you shrivel up inside, throw your humanity on the scrap heap and become enslaved by what you were born to rule.

One of the tragedies of not seeing things through God’s eyes is that few of us have any conception of the greatness and eternal honor we are capable of, and so have no conception of the sickening waste it is to prostitute oneself; selling one’s soul for orgasms. Such people usually have no idea of what they are doing. They are like primitives gleefully burning priceless treasures while thinking themselves smart for having found a good source of fire-starters.

Whereas it would be an appalling tragedy to make sex god, making the creator of sex God of your life will flood you with dignity and eternal fulfillment. It is only when pleasure and sex and selfish “love” are dethroned and God is made God of your life that everything falls into place and you are ready to really live. For help with this, see <"http://www.net-burst.net/love/luv.htm">You Can Find Love: What Your Fantasies Reveal. It also explains why it is only intimacy with God that satisfies our deepest longings for companionship, understanding, fulfillment, and so much more.