—Sun Myung Moon
Of all of the kinds of loves that exist, which would be the most formidable?
The power of sexual love. It is intermingled with the impulse to bond for life and also creating life with the passing down of genes and lineage. Sexuality taps into the deepest aspects of being human which the power is as elemental as the wind or sea and is just as impossible to tame or even fully understand.
When educating for true love involves imparting insights about sexuality and coaching in directing this marvelous force.
When sex is shared in the rightful place of marriage as an expression of the deepest trust and affection by bonding two partners in deep communion and joy. The physical communion of spouses is where all families originate. This is how the family is the school for learning love and the definition of what it means to be human.
On the other hand, as America practices the trend of sex outside marriage we establish a foundation like a fire kindling outside of a hearth. If one does not discipline the primal urges of the highest possible pleasures the body will experience, he or she is subject to compulsiveness to override the godly conscience.
This is the very reason for the birth of religious traditions. Throughout history, religious societies have acquired strong guidelines for sexual expression. The American trend is to go against these godly principles and when we take a indepth look, we see that it is the major cause of the downfall of societies in history. The religious practice of discipline cannot be overstated.
“The moral man,” reads a Confucianist text, “finds the moral law beginning in the relation between man and woman”
Doctrine of the Mean 12
Yet keeping sexuality only in the service of true love represents a formidable challenge.
Because sexuality promises great pleasure, it invites every manner of misuse.
Because it involves the whole person, distorted sexual attitudes and behaviors are particularly deeply rooted and hard to change. Father Moon elaborates:Celebrating sexuality while channeling it away from selfishness has always been a difficult task both to each individual and to society, but never more so than amidst the permissive standards of the present age.
What is the true significance of sexuality? What is its meaning within marriage?
What responsibilities are inherent in sexual love? What is the original standard for sexual morality? How can this address contemporary beliefs? We will explore these issues in this and the following
chapters.
Sexuality and Its Significance
Sexuality of course is more than sex. It includes all that an individual possesses in mind and body that is male or female; it is the “aspect of our being that lies behind, produces and is given expression by our physical sexual characteristics and reproductive capacity,” in the words of Christian ethicist Stephen J. Grenz.
One’s masculinity or femininity is “not operative in one restricted area of life but is rather at the core and center of our total life response,” as the Catholic Church has put it.
This is why it is also fundamental to one’s sense of identity. We can no more imagine being neither man nor woman than we can comfortably tolerate not knowing the gender of another. Personhood itself is inescapably a sexual matter.
Because sexuality permeates personhood, then sexual relations have all the dimensions of a whole person. An individual has a material body, thoughts, feelings, conscience, connection to higher meaning, interconnections with the family, community and beyond.
So it is with sexuality. There are the physical as well as the psychological aspects. There are interpersonal, social and cultural factors too, as well as certain important moral and spiritual implications.
Thus, sexual union is necessarily a person-to-person encounter, even when the intent is only for a body-to-body one.
Much of the moral dimension of sexual expression has to do with these whole-person realities. It explains also why it is much more than just a private matter between partners. Traditional ways of regarding the self and sexuality favor this more holistic view.
“Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh,” Genesis declares (2.24).
Since “cleaves” represents intense bonding of the two partners, it suggests there is more than oneness of flesh as a result; some say a better translation is closer to “one person.”
Sexuality Reflects the Dimensions of the Whole Person
Reflects the Heart Impulse
Because male has no meaning apart from female, and vice versa, sexuality also means incompleteness.
In this sense, the sex instinct is the biological counterpart to the spiritual heart impulse. Ethicist Lewis B. Smedes describes sexuality as the “human impulse towards intimate communion.”
Physical
Moral
Spiritual
Interpersonal
Social
Sexuality
Psychological
It impels us towards a close connection with another person, in defiance of contemporary beliefs in individual self-sufficiency as well as our defensive reaction to isolate ourselves after yet another painful encounter.
Not only the sexual urge and act but also the very organs themselves all give obvious testimony to the principle of living for another and with another. This is at the core of what Pope John Paul II called the “nuptial meaning of the body,” that is, its capacity for union and communion through selfless giving. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach observes that sex is “simply the only human activity that physically necessitates another human being.”
In this sense, the genital organs symbolize the desire of the heart for conjugal oneness. The sexual parts of the body are the only organs that cannot fulfill their fullest function without their counterpart in a member of the opposite sex; they are almost useless otherwise.
It is the same with the spiritual heart; it cannot find fulfillment without the beloved either. Indeed, the heart and the sexual parts are connected. One moves the other; there is a mysterious link of reinforcement between the communion of lovers’ hearts and union of their genitals.
Thus, the man must offer his body to the woman for her to experience the meaning of her own physical sexuality, and vice versa.
This primal, inescapable need thus draws the two sexes to bridge the divide and lend their strengths and concede their weakness for one another. In this way, the sexual urge embodies the innate push of masculinity and femininity towards oneness, towards greater love and completeness.
Sanctuary of the Body
Moreover, it is this correspondence between the spiritual heart and the physical reproductive organs that is the basis for the universal regard for sexual modesty, even among peoples who do not wear clothes.
Just as individuals show self-respect by revealing their heart only to special people in their lives, so people honor the sexual parts of the body by hiding them from public view. If the body is the temple of the spirit, then this area represents the innermost sanctuary, the holiest place, the shrine and palace of love.
A sense of the sacredness of the genital organs may have been behind the ancient Roman custom of men making oaths with their hand on their private parts. Certainly it helps to explain why Yahweh asked of Hebrew males to be circumcised and bear the mark of their special covenant with Him there.
Sacredness of Sexuality
The link between the heart and sexuality also implies its spiritual dimension. The way that partners utterly lose themselves during physical union has always suggested its transcendent side. This is one of the reasons people have historically posited sex as a spiritually elevating force in itself, heedless of its moral context, and even worshipped it.
This kind of perennial fallacy coupled with the pernicious power of sex in general—not to mention the ease with which even spiritually based personal relationships can become sexualized and destructive—have all contributed to why some of the world religions tend to scrupulously separate sex from matters relating to God.
Thus, sex and spirituality are not commonly discussed together. Yet it is simply a further reflection of the unique and paradoxical position we humans occupy as spiritual yet embodied beings, the microcosm of heaven and earth. Sexuality in many ways reflects this most dramatically.
The sex urge is an instinctual drive yet it allows participants to co-create an eternal being with God. It is a spiritual impulse towards oneness, even as it craves bodily expression and sensual play. It is a fount of carnal delight, while at the same time inviting a person into the vast possibilities of moral and spiritual growth present within the spouses’ and parents’ realms of heart.
God and Human Sexuality
The sexual act has great and unique significance to the Creator. This can best be grasped by considering lovemaking between a fully mature husband and wife. Such individuals would have achieved unity of mind and body, word and deed, each standing as a living mirror of the fullness of the Divine Parent’s heart and character.
As this resonates with the greater integrity within God, each would also be in communion with Him and attracting His joy and blessing. His interest would be amplified however when they came to the marriage bed. At the moment of conjugal union between them, the spirit and flesh join in their deepest oneness.
Thus, the couple would be an even greater reflection of the Divine at this moment than before. This is not to mention the celebration of self-giving that their lovemaking represents. God naturally wants to participate in such a beautiful tribute to His own nature of unselfish love.
At the same time, their sexual intercourse also signifies the unity of the couple’s masculinity and femininity. This is yet another facet of resembling the Creator, the origin of all the masculine and feminine natures in the manifest world. God delights in the dramatic interplay of opposites represented in the man and woman’s sexual play that echoes the same harmony of extremes within Himself.
Finally, as yet another magnet for the Divine Parent, the marvel of spirit begetting spirit through the flesh is an inherent potential in the couple’s intercourse. The union of husband and wife creates the context for God to give rise to a son or daughter, an eternal spiritual being through them—the greatest miracle of all. Thus God is captivated by the multidimensional beauty, fecundity and power of human sexual union, perhaps the most singularly sacred phenomenon in earthly life.
Vertical Force of Love
If the husband and wife’s passionate embrace represents the most complete and potent kind of horizontal love, then divine grace can be likened to a perfect vertical force of love that interpenetrates the couple at a ninety-degree angle. Through marital coupling, God’s vertical love expands horizontally on earth. It also extends into the future through the power of conception and lineage.
Reverend Moon emphasizes that God is the third partner in the marriage bed of a true husband and wife; it is the most sacred place where heaven and earth merge and rejoice.
Such a view is echoed in the Jewish writings that declare that the feminine aspect of God is present in marital relations. Islam has couples consecrating their lovemaking by offering a prayer. The Tantric yoga tradition speaks of sexual union as clearing all the body’s charkas and opening a person up to higher energies.
The holiness of sexuality is the reason behind many of the religious traditions’ prohibitions against fornication, adultery, homosexuality and lesser offenses. This negative emphasis invites charges of sexual repression.
Yet one can readily argue that the purpose of these prohibitions is to highlight the sacredness, the unique importance and beauty of sexuality, and therefore it is a tribute to a fundamentally positive view of sex.
In the Bible, even the older man is reminded, “Let your fountain be blessed and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth. A loving doe, a graceful deer—may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be captivated by her love” (Proverbs 5.18-19).
Traditional prohibitions also recognize how readily sexuality is corrupted and misdirected into idolatry and abuse of power. Undisciplined sexual desire reduces people to things to be exploited, consumed and possessed. Sexuality is also highly vulnerable to becoming compulsive. This is why the joys of sexual love are to be bounded by the moral responsibilities of marriage.
Return for Tomorrow's Post: 7 Days of Holy Sex Day 2 Sex in Marriage
This text was rewritten and derived from the Textbook: True Love, Chapter "The Meaning of Sexuality".
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