Tim Keller made this comment which I thought was brilliant: "In a materialistic culture like ours, people keep their money and spread their bodies around. . .Christians keep their bodies [holy] and are promiscuous with their money."
What's fundamentally missing in the evangelical church is the sense that sex is first of all a holy and sacred union between a man and a woman. At its essence, it is a physical manifestation of a spiritual union of the masculine and feminine attributes of God, Christ and his church, the unity of the Trinity, the communal union of man and woman. This is why it fits most appropriately within the context of marriage.
As a sacred and holy act, sex is a reflection of the most transcendental form of human union. Sex is one of the most sacred actions humans can do together. It is the joining of two bodies in oneness. It physically represents the intentional joining of two persons to become one--NOT to become two ever again. Just as God unites people to his son that they would always remain one--distinct roles yet united in eternal love.
Within the context of physical union God is there joining the man and woman in ways that language cannot capture. It's the mystery of God's presence during sex that renders adultery so painful.
Hooking up and sleeping around are both animalistic and materialistic activities with no sense of the sacred manifestations of physical act of becoming two united in oneness with the intent to remain united together in spiritual intimacy. The oneness in the sacred act has been lost. Sex is a spiritual act at it's core expression of joining the essense of both the masculine and the feminine. Sex is about God. I've never heard an evangelical say that. Sex being about God has further implications as it relates to love, marriage, family which I'll talk about later.
The power inherent in sex intercourse finds its explanation in God intent for two persons discovering a life of oneness.
If I were to ask the average high school kid in a Christian school what sex was all about you'd here more about humanistic affection than about the sacred and holy union of man and woman by God.
It's a mysterious and definitive discovery of the meaning of the human body created by God directed toward reciprocal beauty. Sex is a sign and images unity and harmony in the most dramatic form possible and is the most sacred physical union possible among humans.
Instead of having sex set to jazz or ballads it would be, perhaps, even more appropriate to have sex with a few of Bach's cantatas playing in the background with a full orchestra and chorus. Sex set to sacred choral music makes a lot of sense.
Posted by anthony at June 21, 2005 09:44 AM