Without true love, men and woman cannot trust each other. They use each other to serve themselves.
—Sun Myung Moon
One Standard for Both Genders
One thing that should be cleared is the imbalance given to men and women when it comes to sexual views. We continue with the speech of Dr. Reverend Sun Myung Moon who dedicated his life to erase many false beliefs about the origin of human problems and bringing about a solution to fix it to bring about a world of peace beginning with the individual:
"The absolute sex standard applies to both men and women equally. Males degrade themselves through misdirected sexuality as much as females do.
Obviously, men cannot be rewarded for promiscuity while women are penalized and held solely accountable for controlling them. Nor can female sexual desire or capacity be denied.
Christian tradition, for example, insisted on male monogamy, and both the Jewish and Christian scriptures teach that husbands have just as much of a duty to sexually satisfy their wives as vice versa. Exodus 21:10, 1 Corinthians 7:3
That said, also the pretense cannot be maintained that males and females are the same in sexual response and desires or in bearing the consequences of sexual acts. Intrinsic gender strengths and weaknesses require consideration. This has been reflected in the traditional codes of male and female honor:
Men agree not to use their superior physical strength to take advantage of women, nor to exploit the female susceptibility to promises of love and security, while women agree not to use men’s vulnerability to visual arousal and emotional manipulation against them. It is also the chief rationale behind the traditions of marriage.
In this way, the original standard protects both men and women from mutual exploitation and use of the opposite sex as an emotional crutch, pawn or object of revenge. As such it creates trust and represents real power, freedom and independence for women as well as men.
Timeless Ethic
The timeless gold standard of sexual ethics—reserving sexual intimacy only for the spouse—recognizes the moral implications of sex and the deeper need for enduring love.
It understands that sex in marriage not only heightens the sense of bonding, exclusivity and security between the partners but also it addresses all the responsibilities inherent in the sacred gift of sexuality.
It celebrates the freedoms that premarital purity affords young people—reaching personal maturity and preparing for family life and their roles as citizens. It affirms these realities, not only out of tradition, but also out of recognition of the emotional, moral, social and spiritual dimensions of this powerful and far reaching act.
Fidelity within marriage and purity outside it is a crucial foundation for all ethics, a critical underpinning of civilization itself.
If all humanity were to adopt the original standard of chastity—even without agreeing to other divinely ordained norms—then God’s world of goodness, harmony and peace would inevitably be realized.
This ethic of sexual love represents the original and unchanging God-given standard. We violate it at our peril. Sexual union is the crowning glory of marital love, symbolizing the mingling of the hearts, blood and lives of the two partners. It is the delight of the Creator as well.
Yet, as sacred as human sexuality may be, society and history provide ample evidence of people’s difficulty to discipline their sexuality and remain faithful to their partners—lovers unable to commit to one another, partners leaving behind unwanted children and disease, adults preying on children and so on. It is all too easy for the body to subjugate the mind, for instinct to override conscience in this area.
There are many theories as to why this is so.
Some keep the explanation in the realm of individual learning and childhood trauma. Others point to social conditioning based on power relationships. Still others have sought to explain such behaviors in light of early social patterns and evolution, tracing them back to the earliest communities.
In a related vein, religious traditions and certain schools of psychology find insight in ancient myths, legends and sacred stories that tell of the origins of human suffering in a prehistoric Fall.
Contemporary thinking respects such myths to be revelatory of profound inner truths—too deep for us to readily recognize and explicitly discuss—that are best conveyed by powerful images and narratives.
“Myths are facts of the mind made manifest in a fiction of matter,” asserts anthropologist Joseph Campbell.
It is relevant then to note the sexual overtones in several of these sacred narratives. The Genesis tale of Adam and Eve comes readily to mind mirrored in many ways by its counterpart in the Qur’an. Reverend Moon finds not only the root of sexual immorality revealed in this Biblical story but also the secret of general human suffering and self-destructiveness.
These are tied up with the tragic human propensity to misuse love and the harmful patterns of relationships between men and women, throughout all of the history of civilization. What is the insight revealed below the surface of the story? What does it tell us about gender relations? How does the abuse of sexuality impact individuals, relationships and society?
The Human Downfall
The Bible declares that the first man and woman lived in a world without evil or suffering, and intimately knew the Creator. They were intended for one another and lived naked, without fear or shame.
The Creator freely gave them everything, but He also gave them one warning: do not eat a certain fruit. This was perceived to be a literal fruit which nothing that enters the mouth can defile the soul only what comes out meaning speech. The fruit was a symbol for something else.
A crafty serpent, however—in the Qur’an it is a vengeful angel—tempted the woman with promises of wisdom and divine likeness, and she ate the fruit. She then gave it to the man, who also ate it.
As promised, they gained wisdom. But they also took on an unanticipated sense of shame and guilt and hid themselves, covering their sexual parts. Because of their crime, they lost Paradise and humanity has lived in sorrow and tragedy ever since.
This earliest ancestral couple’s reflexive covering of their genitals after their actions of course points to a sexual transgression like fornication or adultery. This was something that was probably transparent to audiences at the time the story first circulated.
In the Middle East to this day, “eating of fruit” is a euphemism for sexual relations. So is the expression, “to know” someone, as in “Adam knew Eve and bore Cain”. Genesis 4:1.
Thus the Tree of Knowledge takes on sexual connotations as well. In this light, the Tempter’s promise of insight, maturity and transcendent experience as the result of sexual initiation becomes quite plausible; people still expect this from sex.
Further, the foretold consequences of their deed—painful childbirth, tensions between man and woman, the difficulty to achieve maturity in love, and profound separation from God, the source of love and life—are natural outcomes arising from a sexual violation.
Milton brought in a sexual component to the Hebrew tale in his “Paradise Lost.” Early writings of Jewish and Christian clergy did as well. A historical perspective, according to scholars, makes the meaning of the Biblical account unmistakable—this is a Hebrew denunciation of the fertility cults of that time and place.
The tree, the snake, the woman’s name and other features allude to the widespread practice of temple prostitution and deliberately parody and denounce it.
After affirming the beauty of ethical sexual expression earlier in the narrative, this story places a sexual sin at the center of all manner of human disorder and misery.
Other myths with sexual implications suggest themselves. A Shinto creation myth has a god and his wife engaging in their first conjugal love improperly—some call it incest—before correctly giving birth to the islands of Japan. The goddess dies, and misfortune befalls their first son and daughter (Kojiki 4.1-6.1).
Hindu and Buddhist texts have their own tales tying the origins of suffering to sexual indiscretions.
The Greek myth of Pandora has a woman betraying her promise to her immortal fiancée and opening a box that releases every kind of suffering into the world. The box can easily symbolize the woman’s sexual parts, suggesting an act of improper sexual initiation or infidelity.
Ambivalence Towards Sexuality
It is this link—half-veiled yet intuitively understood—between sexuality and the origins of human evil that forms the basis of the mixed messages regarding sex that is evident within certain religions, especially the Judeo-Christian tradition.
A distinctive mark of the chosen people of Israel was circumcision, a mutilation of the male organ involved in the Fall. Christians came to emphasize the non-sexual conception of their Savior. Both Christians and Buddhists have favored celibacy as the path to sanctification and enlightenment. This ambivalence reflects the tragedy of a most sacred gift that has become degraded and dangerous.
Wider society reflects this same ambivalence in the way sexuality is honored on one hand— for instance, the poetry and songs celebrating its goodness— and maligned on the other—the vulgar ways people refer to it when expressing hate and aggression."SMM
Return for Tomorrow's Post: 7 Days of Holy Sex Day 7, Immature Sex
This text was rewritten and derived from the Textbook: True Love, Chapter "The Meaning of Sexuality".
