Sex, Love and the Bible

Sex, Love and the Bible

My favorite movie is The Princess Bride. A quirky but timeless tale, it remains faithful to everyone’s belief in the triumph of true love. Yet, one scene bugs me. Princess Buttercup is about to marry loathsome Prince Humperdink and forever lose her true love, Wesley. The couple stands before the altar. A dour-faced bishop is droning some blah-blah words about marriage, illustrating his complete incapacity to understand love. This stereotype of a dull churchman unable to see the beauty of romance has been perpetuated by decades of Hollywood bias.
Our culture tends to see the Church as being toad-like when it comes to love, marriage, and sex, reducing the mystery to a dry list of rules. The truth is that the biblical view of sex is beautifully complete, thoroughly healing and gloriously uplifting. By contrast, today there is a lot of ugly associated with our sexuality and a lot of fear, shame, and brokenness. This goes with our stubborn insistence on doing it our way, rather than God’s way.
Our present experience is one of deep wounds. Marriage, meant to be sacred place of stability and security for couples and their children, has become an illusion. Sexual intimacy, rather than being bonding and life-giving, is often merely a means of self-gratification. New life has become a sacrificial offering on the altars of materialism. Children are abused, women objectified, and men are in bondage to lust. There seems to be no bottom to the demented way we misuse our bodies. Christopher West puts it simply: It is not that our culture over-values sex, but that we really have no idea how precious is its value. How can something so good have come to be used so badly?
The Pharisees challenged Jesus on the liberal divorce laws current at the time. “From the beginning,” replied Our Lord, “It was not so.” He pointed out to them that this state of affairs was a result of the hardness of their hearts. (Matthew 19)
What was different in the beginning? In the first two chapters of Genesis we find that humans, out of all creatures, were made in the image and likeness of God. They were created male and female, destined for one flesh union, and naked without shame. Following the story of God and man, from Genesis to Jesus, the late John Paul II discerned a theology of the body that I will attempt to summarize.
In the beginning, man and woman had no desire to use each other. There was no grasping or possessing. They had only the desire to give sincere gift of self to each other. There were no barriers to trust. They experienced a union of the physical and spiritual which gave them wholeness. Man and woman were, together, and un-muddied mirror of God’s pure love; their complemenarity, a message from the creator showing his desire for communion with us. Their natural response was to return that love to God and to each other.
When sin—selfish choice—entered the picture, the sacred was turned upside down. The human heart was hardened. Man and woman sought to cover their nakedness, as they could no longer look upon each other with a pure, selfless gaze and give glory to God. Their potential for using each other slithered between them, resulting in shame and fear. A search for fulfillment began—a never ending, downward spiral.
We can’t go back to our original innocence, but we can move forward to healing in the New Covenant. Men failed to see the true meaning of the body and Old Covenant law made temporary allowances for this. The New Covenant, however, calls us to transcend the law by conforming our hearts. In the New Law, a man who looks at a woman with lust in his heart, commits adultery. (Mt. 5:28) This is because the opposite of love is “use.” When you cease to see someone as a person, you begin to use that person as an object. No one is free when he or she is used or entrapped in the sin of using others.
To embrace the law in love is true freedom. Perfect love casts out fear and shame and selfishness. Now, the rules are necessary because we are a fallen race, but it is not the rules that will ultimately free us from lust and sexual bondage. When our hearts become conformed to the law, we will follow the Shepherd like carefree sheep, loving Him with our whole heart, soul and mind. We will no longer follow the law out of fear or guilt, but from the joy of living with Him who is our All. And it is then, that we will begin to be who we were meant to be “from the beginning.”