Effects Sex Before Marriage on a Person

We unfortunately live in a society where people no longer wait for the person they are to marry to have sex.  Those who do are ridiculed and thought of as abnormal.

God intended for the fruit of sex to be opened between two marriage partners.

God being of love, would also participate in this event and the children which are born from this activity.

Many young people do not know the devastation from becoming sexually involved too soon has on their mind, spirit and developmental growth.

Therefore, we have listed six effects having sex outside of a secure relationship has on a person.  We continue from our discussion yesterday: Sex Before Marriage Disrupts Growth of Heart and Character


3. Guilt, Regret and Diminished Sense of Worth

In Genesis, Adam and Eve experienced shame after they ate of the fruit which produced the Fall.

Since sexuality is linked to the conscience, it is no surprise that misdirected love commonly yields a harvest of guilt and loss of self-respect.

When people have used the most valuable part of their bodies to gain pleasure or love or security, they cannot but feel degraded, even if they are not conscious of the loss for some time. 

Many experienced teenagers say they regret losing their virginity the way they did.

Both old and young men say that they are haunted with guilt that what was just a pleasurable ride for them was a moving expression of love and commitment for their partner.

Females are more sensitive to how something sacred has been violated with premature sex.

They may feel shame for violating the more of their parent’s or their faith community.

Abortions add weight to the partner’s distress.  Infidelity within marriage creates its own guilt-ridden hell for the cheater.

Once the cheater wakes up to the devastation they have caused to the lives of their loved one, the self-reproach can be crushing.

One counselor compares this guilt to having killed someone while driving.

Self-forgiveness can be a formidable challenge.

When one looks at sexual attractiveness and prowess as the important reason to have a romantic connection with another, this makes one judge people based on looks and not on who they are.  This behavior creates anxiety in their relationships.

When one is concerned on how they can use another just for sex and not the whole person as a criteria for a relationship, this causes one to have fear that there are more attractive people or those who can perform better.

“Do I still look good enough, perform well enough, please you enough?”


This is tragic when adultery brings this insecurity to the one place that should be safe and secure, the marriage bed.

This undermines the ideal that your partner is unique and irreplaceable.

Jennifer, 30, explains her experience: “The acceptance, even encouragement of premarital sex makes it very difficult to sustain the fantasy that we are the sole
object of love.”

Victims of infidelity often feel they have been trashed.

With this lowered self-esteem, one may enter into other sexual involvements just to prove that they are still desirable.

This leads to even more self-disrespect.

Thus, a vicious cycle of reaching approval through sex, not able to attain this, and thereby compounding one’s desperate need.


4. Heartbreak and Destructive Behavior


All infatuations or romantic involvements of some duration are painful when they break up.

But the break up of emotional ties and expectations of where the relationship was going is intensified even more when sex is introduced.

Studies have highlighted the role of certain brain chemicals in sexual bonding.

Even in casual liaisons, sex acts like a powerful glue which has no easy way to release its grip.

Hearts that bond through sex are unlikely to disengage without being ripped apart in some way.

This trauma, for some, can resemble the pain of divorce.

Others are able to numb or deny the pain through alcohol or pills.

Many men have said that they are so afraid of being hurt like that again that they withhold their hearts even though they give their body to another for moments of pleasure.

This is why young people are indifferent to sexual activity which one commentator called, “oddly disengaged—emotionally cool while physically hot.”

The heartbreak that is incurred and the sense that one has given themselves completely and only received a little in return, not including the fallout of diseases and unwanted pregnancies, can cause young people who engage in sex prematurely to live in despair.

The rate of teen suicide has tripled in the past 30 years in the U.S.  This is ths same time period where teenage sexual activity rose sharply.

Statistics show that girls who lose their virginity are more prone to commit suicide than virgins.  Male peers are more likely to be involved in destructive behavior, such as running away from home, drug use and getting arrested.

The emotional explosion that comes when one is sexually betrayed can lead to extreme rage or lead to violence against former or new lovers.

Other emotions can be exhibited from the break-up of a sexual liaisons: stalking, assualt and homicide when jealous lovers become a daily even.  Countless people live in fear of retaliation by an ex-lover.


5. Spiritual Disorientation


Uncommitted sex encourages a distorted spiritual outlook.

Whether one belongs to a certain religion, one may still have a negative outlook.  First, premature sex gives one the belief in one’s own supremacy of his or her ego.

When one has multiple sex partners, it implies that the ego is the ultimate reality.  One may believe that others are just ‘accessories’ to use and do not deserve commitment just come and go.

When one gets involved in a sexual bond while at the same time remain aloof from any emotional ties reflects an attempt to split body and soul.  They choose to ‘have sex’ rather than to be with a whole-person union with another.

This buys into the fiction that one who lives in this way may believe that they are free to express oneself through the body and independent.

This kind of reality is unspiritual and denies the connectedness of spirit and flesh and also of oneself.

This view of reality causes one to be pessimistic about the possibility of being faithful.  It also gives the viewpoint of the unreliability of the universe.

Hebrew prophets pointed out that God was absolutely faithful through His covenant and commitment to His children.

Since, humans are made in God’s likeness, the we should and could be faithful to one another in a lasting relationship.

This is the reason adultery is tied to idolatry - betraying the covenant God and ‘having an affair’ with another god.  Jeremiah 3.6, Hosea 1.2

Moving from partner to partner displays a fickleness that is a far cry from the steadfast divine love and the dependability of the created world.

When one treats the mystery of sexuality as just a plaything is irreverent in the extreme.

Religious people use dishonesty to reconcile their own unprincipled sexual behavior with their religious doctrines and perceptions of God.

This only intensifies the disorientation and damage to the spirit.


6. Degradation of Love, Life and Lineage


If one cannot respect the power of sex which allows humans to take on a divine creativity, then they will view few things as sacred.

When sex is cheapened, it tends to lead to a tainted view of its extensions such as love, life and lineage.

These traditional components seem optional and are disregarded when inconvenient.

Love has been degraded so in the dating scene that love is hardly mentioned when discussing sex.

This represents an anemic definition of love where fickle feelings are the focus.

Even in today’s society, a child conceived outside of marriage is still viewed as a curse rather than a blessing.

This is evidence that life and lineage is cheapened through nonmarital sex.

Now unwanted pregnancies is seen as an inconvenience to be taken care of with an afternoon abortion appointment like it was a dentist appointment.

When love is trivialized then life and lineage is tied in with disrespect for the gravity of sexual relations further reinforcing a person’s disorientation of spiritually. Not taking sex seriously, removes one from the Heart of God.

Carson Daly stated that this lowers one’s self-esteem and the feeling that one has been used.  One feels self-contempt for being an user.

Then there is the embarrassment being sexually active outside of marriage can place one out of the circle of people who exhibit true integrity.

The uneasiness that comes from concealing one’s activities from family members and others.

Also, Daly speaks about the extreme difficulty of trying to break the vicious cycle of compulsive sexual behavior, and the self-hatred that comes after each sexual bond is broken.  Then the cycle begins all over again when one has to seduce another in order to revive one’s fading self-image.


Harvest of Selfishness

Though selfishness has an intuitive link to conflict and evil, it is the selfish abuse of sexuality that gives it its most virulent power.


Egoism and being absorbed into oneself is the very definition of immaturity.

When an individual grows up and builds character, then these selfish traits tend to fade.  The big question is why do so many people fail to fully grow up to the full human potential?

Why do some grow to such maturity while other have shallow hearts and small minds and are enslaved to bad habits showing immature behavior close to an animal.

Adam and Eve’s abuse of sexual love is the most critical cause of the original disruption of human growth in morals.

People throughout the ages believe that there is evil and self-destructiveness within every human heart.

This flaw pulls human godly nature down, making it impossible for one to grow fully into their God-like maturity impossible.

Anthropologist Richard Heinberg has observed: “People of every culture and age have insisted that . . . human nature is not natural at all because it has been distorted by some fundamental mistake or failure that has been perpetuated from generation to
generation.”


Reverend Moon defines this fundamental problem as descent from a poisoned lineage, a family tree rooted in self-centered love that bears only fruit of self-centered love.

The forbidden fruit was a metaphor for sexual love, which was ‘picked’ when it was immature and unripe.  This fruit was toxic in flesh and within the seed.

The first ancestors’ unprincipled liaison fundamentally disrupted the matrix of family life. 

“Humanity lost the standard of true parents, spouses, siblings and children,” explains Reverend Moon.

Opening the sexual fruit in its immature state which all humanity inherited hinders the capacity for us to give the truest love and blindness to the true reality of the heart and spirit.  Also, it gave rise to the extreme difficulty of the mind to lead the fallen body.

Catholics call this tendency original sin.  Buddhism attributes this enslavement to the senses.  Judaism calls it an evil inclination.

Freud deemed it the sexual instinct - the most unruly side of the root of the unconscious.

This inheritance, revolving around the heart and sexual desire, derailed moral and spiritual development.


Return for Tomorrow’s Post: Relationships Need True Love to Work

This post was rewritten and derived from the religious book, “Educating for True Love” written by a team of writers to explain Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s philosophy on love and marriage.

Love Comes From One's Partner

Love cannot be realized by oneself.  - Reverend Sun Myung Moon

 

Where does love come from?

 

A husband should think, "Love does not come from me but from my spouse.  Since love comes from my spouse, I must bow my head and serve her."

 

This is where the heavenly principle of living for the sake of others originates. 

When something highly noble comes to me, I must honor and serve it in order to receive it. We must live the philosophy of living for the sake of others.

When we are alone, love cannot manifest itself.

 

Love does not appear when man is alone, but only when woman appears as his object of love. Only when the object of love appears, does love finally spring forth.

We say that parental love is good and conjugal love is good because genuine love is not something that is self-centered. Love is not something that starts from me but something that starts from my partner. 

You need to know this. Love comes from your husband and from your wife, and from your sons and daughters and from your brothers and sisters.

 

Love does not start from your own self but from your spouse. Therefore, who is the owner of love?

 

 

 

 

 

Your spouse is the owner of love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where does love come from?

 

It comes from your partner. If your partner is homely or ugly, love recedes; if your partner is nice-looking or lovely, love advances more quickly.

 

The way in which love functions is determined according to your partner's attributes: her speech, her scent, her smell, and her taste.

Where is the base of love?

 

The base of love is not me. The word love must be used in reciprocal terms. No matter how handsome a man may be, if he has no partner, he is stuck because he cannot love alone.

The base of love is not me. "Love comes from me" are words that Satan has been using. I am not the base of love.

 

You may think that you are the base of love, but there will be no progress in the future unless such a mindset is totally dismantled and transformed.

Until now, wives have put themselves at the center, and husbands have put themselves at the center, with both wanting to be served. 

This has been destroying relationships. Since the basis of love does not come from me, but from my spouse, if I am to possess that love, I must sacrifice myself for that love. Love requires patience and absolutely demands sacrifice. 

With this viewpoint, there is no place in the cosmos, other than on earth, where we can defeat Satan.

God is holding tightly onto love because it can be found only in accordance with the God-centered principle of love. 

The word compassion (jabi) cannot be expressed in the absence of love. The word benevolence (in) also cannot stand on its own. The words jabi and in are all used only in reciprocal terms. 

 

 

 

Men and Women Harmonize in Love

Man symbolizes heaven and woman, earth. The two must unite and realize harmony. Men and women are different. Men's muscles are rugged and women's are smooth. Men have beards while women do not. 

Their voices are also different. If we compare men and women, we see their contrasting features fit together well.

 

Harmony unfolds between them. When we look at the physical structure of human beings, their left and right sides form a correlative pair. These two halves are bound tightly together.

Ladies and gentlemen, do you like only high things or only low things? You like things that create harmony.

 

Judging from the line formed by the horizon, fish live below and mammals, birds, and other creatures live above. 

Women menstruate once a month, like tidal variations based on the moon. Breathing is similar. A man and a woman establish a line of balance and create harmony.

 

People like Disneyland, with its rides that go up and down, because Disneyland duplicates the motions of the universe.

Which do you think will be more pleasing, a man harmonizing with another man or a man harmonizing with a woman? 

A man harmonizing with a woman is better because that reflects the harmony of the universe. We should live in step with the beat of the universe, the universe that promotes harmony through the harmony of yin and yang.

When man and woman create harmony, they initiate circular movement. When man and woman become one body through love and bear the fruits of love, God comes down and they go up and they meet in the middle. 

God becomes the center of this sphere, and spherical movement begins. The center of the sphere is the place where harmony of love is realized. 

It is the place where life emerges and moves, and it is the starting point of human equality and communal philosophy. This is so because the power of love is there. Thus, the force that embraces all interactions of the universe is love.

For human beings love is eternal. It is one and never divided. Once a man and a woman are joined in love they are to live together for a lifetime and then eternally even after death. They are two bodies that become one body by uniting and revolving together. 

When the two bodies become one, they revolve as God does and form a four-position foundation of love, the expression of the ideal world of love. Only true love dwells there and false love cannot invade. 

When man and woman become blessed by God and achieve perfection, God comes to them freely. When they form a four-position foundation of love, they will come to love each other's mind through each other's body, and when they come to love the mind their body will follow. (Blessed Family - 344) 

Original Human Beings Are Enraptured with True Love

 

What is the holiest thing in the world?

 

True love is the holiest thing in world. True love originates with God. If God exists, there is no other way than the way of true love.

 

 God truly desires the way of true love, and without traversing the way of true love, we cannot go before God. We have to know this point.

God wants to see, hear, eat, and touch everything in the universe through love.

 

As for human beings, if they receive a kiss of love from God, their joy will make them feel as if they are going to explode from inside.

 

This is where God's desire lies. God does not rejoice because He has diamonds or jewelry. 

The human body has five senses and every human being feels and confirms true love through the sensations of the five senses.

 

If the eyes are directed toward true love, they will be colored by and intoxicated with true love. 

Think about how enchanting the smiling lips of a person immersed in true love are.

 

Try to imagine the intense beauty of the five senses moving in intoxication with true love and the harmony of the five senses moving toward God.

Alone, God cannot experience the joy of such beauty. He can experience such beauty only when He has a partner, and this is the reason God created human beings. 

How would God feel as He observed a beautiful man and woman absorbed into one another through true love-intoxicated eyes, or kissing with true love-intoxicated lips, and playing the melody of a heart of true love?

 

If there is an Eve of true love, God would want to completely traverse her world of heart. God would have an impulsive desire to explore the breadth and depth of this beautiful Eve's world of heart.

God would want to traverse both Adam's and Eve's world of heart, a world more beautiful than the created heaven and earth.

 

It is certain that God would rather travel within the world of the heart of a person of true love than the universe. God would never want to leave Adam's and Eve's world of heart and true love. 

If, after God created human beings, He fell into their true love and became a child lost in that love, what kind of world would we have?

 

Since God would dwell in their midst, the world formed by God and human beings becoming one would be a world filled with joy and beauty.

If the true love of God had been perfected, the God of responsiveness would have no regrets at being totally absorbed by true love. 

God's nature is such that He would be totally happy with anything that happened within the realm of true love.

 

If human beings were to live in this world of true love, they would live a happy life free from regret. Moreover, this world would be without war and free of complaint and misfortune. 

Love Is Realized in a Completely Natural Setting

 

This is a story from my youth:

 

One day, I caught a pair of birds and tried to make them kiss each other's beaks. 

To see them kiss I put them in a cage, fed them, and watched them. I did it out of a child's desire to see them love each other and sing happily together. This was an experiment, out of curiosity, to understand the principles of nature. 

I continued this experiment, which I now understand to have been quite naughty. It was only after a long while that I finally understood that love is realized only in a natural setting. 

Sincere love is realized naturally, in an atmosphere that is natural to the highest degree. Through a long journey of experiments I came to the correct understanding of love.

When someone loses love, will having a university education help him to regain love?

 

He will only accumulate knowledge, become individualistic, and come to worship materialism.

 

Just as Korean bean soup tastes right only when it is served in a thick Korean bowl, character training can reach its purpose only when it is based on love.

The flower of world civilization should blossom on the basis of artistic harmony. In this sense, roasted ribs should be served on a heavy platter and Korean bean paste soup should be served in a thick, Korean earthenware bowl to bring out their proper tastes.

 

Once you have become used to the rough, deep, and refreshing taste of Korean bean paste soup, you will never forget it no matter where you may go.

Likewise, once people have become used to the earthy, deep, relaxing taste of love, they will not change.

 

Just as one easily tires of instant foods that are usually heavily sweetened, if one could obtain love easily and anywhere like instant food, we would be unable to call it true love.

There are people everywhere today who taste love as if they were eating instant food. This is the problem.

 

Love does not deepen because you bathe in a fragrant bath. 

I would say that the love of a couple living in the countryside that washes themselves in cold water before going to bed is purer, longer lasting, and ever deepening.

 

A couple that has to brush their teeth before kissing is not experiencing natural love. 

The toothpaste smell will prevent them from tasting the unique smell of the other. When I look at people who brush their teeth before kissing, I don't know whether they are trying to taste love or taste toothpaste.

When you meet with someone you like and love, you want to embrace and kiss that person. This is a natural instinct between the sexes. You can think you are meeting your partner in order to love your surroundings which is the universe. Finding a partner and establishing a relationship is a natural human behavior.

When man relates to woman and woman relates to man under the ideal of partnership, there will be no acts or incidents that violate the order of love. The true order of love emerges only when man and woman meet on the basis of the ideal of partnership. 

 

 

Return for Tomorrow's Post: What Does An Ideal Family Look Like?

 

 

Cheong Seong Gyeong Book Four - True Family, Chapter Five Section 4-7

Love Your Enemy = Nations Loving Nation

We all heard of the idea to love our enemy from many saints, religious leaders and prophets. Why did God make efforts to teach us that loving our enemy is important? Satan says to God, "In order for You to be God, You must always maintain the standard of ideal, eternal love."

 God replies, "Yes, that is true." Then Satan says, "God, when You made me the archangel, did You do so just in order to love me temporarily, or to love me forever?" And God says, "Forever." If God loved only temporarily, then He would be like Satan. By the same token, if one has no standard of loving forever, he cannot show God's dignity to Satan. In order for God to be God, He must love Satan no matter how much Satan is opposed to Him.

Satan says, "I fell and became evil, but You who are good can never change, and You can never do the things I do. I enjoy attacking and fighting, but You hate fighting. You must be silent even if You are beaten." Hence, God cannot forcibly resist Satan's aggression. Why? God cannot crush Satan just like that. He must love him unchangingly so that Satan will finally come to say, "Oh, indeed You are God. I surrender to You."


Centered on True Love

No matter how much suffering you may have to experience, you have to love the archangel and even your worst enemy who attacks you daily until the ideal of heaven is completely established in this world. God's hands are tied by that demand. As you go on your way to the Heavenly Kingdom, Satan will test you. Just as God must love Satan and let Satan surrender to Him in that way, so should God's children love the archangel if they want to go to the Heavenly Kingdom.

How much love would that take?

Jesus demonstrated this exact act through his words and finally through his actions when he was spat upon, kicked, tortured on his way to the cross.  Jesus did not have one moment of revengeful thought or hate as he went on his wretched walk to the cross.  He then was ridiculed to the end as he told God to forgive the lost for they did not have any way to overcome being dominated by Satan and I give my body in place of their way to be freed from him.

Even though you are persecuted by all of this world, which is the realm of the enemy, you must love the evildoer with your whole heart. That is the condition you have to fulfill.

God is most concerned about that condition.  Those people who are striving to be God's children should also be most concerned about it. This standard of loving might appear simple, but it is the very boundary line between God and Satan. No one has fully understood this before. In order to go beyond this boundary, God cannot even regard His enemy as an enemy, and He must not take revenge.

The conclusion for us is to love our enemy. When Jesus prayed for those people who were killing him, it was the greatest victory. If he had hated his enemies when he was about to die, then the providence of God would not have been successful.

But as Jesus overcame his difficulties through love, Satan began surrendering, thus Jesus obtained the qualification of God's perfected child. You have to come to the point where you are able to say, "Satan, don't you agree that I am a child of God?" and have Satan concede, "Yes, that's true."

You must be able to say confidently, "I'm following God's direction, expanding His sphere of love from the individual level through the family, clan and nation, to the worldwide level. You have no objection to that. Right, Satan?" And Satan must say, "I have to agree with you because it's the Principle."

In this way the individual spreads this type of altruistic love to the family and children, then to the society and to the nation.  Nations with citizens who love like this will love other nations as they global brothers and sisters.

This is the way God has proceeded with His dispensation, centering upon Christianity. It has been the path of sacrifice and martyrdom and, through its bloody history, Christianity has been a movement to expand God's love to the family level, the societal level, the national level, all the way to the worldwide level. Through the standard of Christian love, which loves the enemy, enemy nations can be conquered; the enemy is won over.


Return for Tomorrow's Post: Only Belief in Jesus Not Enough

Today's post is taken from the teachings of Dr. Rev. Sun Myung Moon studied and taught the bible for over 80 years.  He also wrote the Divine Principle which breaks down the bible from God's point of view of bring His children back to his heavenly ideal on earth.