YOUR BODY IS A WONDERLAND

I found the essay below over at Too Wonderful For Me. I thought it was rather wise.

There's No Such Thing As Sex

I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean.

Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way.

-the Holy Spirit, via Paul of Tarsus


Why do Christians talk about sex? There really is no such thing. The bible does not say “Adam and Eve had sex”. That would have implied that sex was just another one of the tasks they had to accomplish, along with naming the animals, etc. Gee whiz–I hope that’s not the case. “Okay, Eve. Ten o’clock, I taxonomize the cichlids. Eleven o’clock, we have sex. Got it?”

No, the bible says that Adam knew Eve. That is an order of magnitude different than “having sex”. The bible doesn’t have to say Adam and Eve “had sex” because it assumes they “had sex”–just as they had toenails, linguistics, and REM cycles. Adam and Eve were not human beings who happened to have sexual characteristics. They were just human beings. Even mentioning the word “sex” in relation to humanity is by definition redundant, and therefore, silly.

The Creator’s will for “sex” (ugh) is really a no-brainer. Husbands go into their wives, and know them. That’s the template which easily weeds out 90% of what the world calls “sex”. Do husbands go into whores, and know them? Not God’s will. Do husbands go into their neighbor’s wives, and know them? Not God’s will. Do husbands go into their own imaginations, and know them? Not God’s will. Do husbands go into husbands, and know them? Not God’s will. It’s not rocket science.

Okay, now that we’ve established the frustrating irrelevancy of the word “sex”, what is a better word? “Knowing” doesn’t work very well in our language. Too unspecific. “The marriage act” is a nice term, but a little clinical sounding. I tend to favor an expression I read in C.S. Lewis–”the nuptial embrace.” This really gets past a lot of the technical arcana, which really has nothing at all to do with “sex”, and gets down to the brass tacks of what God is up to in marriage.

Marriage is like Christ and his church. What does Christ do for his church? Well, he gives. That’s it. The nuptial embrace is about giving, pure and simple. Only, it’s not that simple.

A lot of Christians like to talk about “biblical world views” these days. It’s a useful concept, but the more I’m around people who use the term, the more I find it leaves a lot to be desired. More often than not, I see it used to smuggle in rules and laws which are not necessarily that easy to support from the bible. Many good Protestants I know are positively Roman Catholic in their ability to go beyond what is written in scripture. It’s ironic, because these people are often the ones who know and revere scripture best.

For instance, there are a lot of Protestant “marriage manuals” on the book market these days. I’ve browsed a few of them, and most of them are in fact profitable and honorable for the most part, but I always wonder–why so many rules? We want to honor the heart of God in our married lives, and we don’t want to transgress, but it sometimes makes me wonder where Jesus is in all of this.

Jesus never talked about the nuptial embrace apart from the rest of ethics. He expected one thing from his disciples–a life of gratitude to God. That manifested itself in how people used their hands and eyes, to how they pitched coins into the collection box.

Another thing Jesus didn’t talk about was “design”. He did not see handicaps or inabilities as unclean. He did not tell people “do it this way because it’s teleologically obvious, DUH.” He talked instead about people acquiring thrones by washing feet, and about their teleological family ties being turned upside down and ripped apart for some new, amazing purpose.

Giving is the first delight of God. Everything he does flows from it. He gave matter. He gave order. He gave life. He gave law. He gave judgment. He gave salvation. All of them were gifts. The best gift he gave was knowledge of himself. That came from the Incarnation. He gave us knowledge of himself by just being himself with us. That is where the beauty of Adam knowing Eve comes from. Not from design. Not from order. Not from creation mandate. Just from the simple joy of knowing another human being.

If there’s one thing I’ve come to learn about knowing people, it’s that nothing is programmed. Surprise rules the day. Try to get to “know” someone in a programmed manner, and you won’t learn anything at all about them. Think too hard about their “proper place in the design” of things, and you’ll definitely not get to know them.

The nuptial embrace is a lot like that. The design of it is obvious, which is what makes it so cool. You don’t have to translate it from Russian to Inuit. Husbands and wives know how to do it intuitively across all boundaries. It’s simple. It doesn’t require skills. It has obvious, good, consequences. If warped or skewed, it has bad consequences.

Often, in “sex” (ugh) Christians talk about the design of it all, which is a good thing. Design is always the first thing tossed out the window by people who don’t want to glorify God. We need to talk about design all the time, in simple and obvious manner, just so when people eventually come around to remembering what it’s all about, they won’t be able to say “well gee, why didn’t anybody tell me?”

On the other hand, “design” by itself proves way too much. God obviously designed a woman’s breasts for one thing, didn’t he? Keeping very small people fed, warm, and content. That’s a brilliant design, eh? Um… but wait a second. Scripture talks about other uses for a woman’s breasts, and they don’t have anything at all to do with keeping very small people alive. And, by just looking at them, that design argument is completely nonexistent, from a rational point of view. It’s a picayune thing to say, but if for some reason the Holy Spirit had not superintended the Song of Songs into the bible, men all over the world still wouldn’t need it in order to tell them that a woman’s breasts are good for them in ways which completely defy design.

Another example is the “design” of fertility. Often, Christians read the tale of Onan as an example of the sins of infertility or self-abuse. However, that tale is not a warning against self-abuse at all, or even about the proper repository for seed. It is, rather, a harsh warning about uncharity. Onan was a mean-spirited bastard who had a duty to give–and, given the context, not that horrible a task, I would think!– but was too petty to do it. There is more than ample evidence in the bible for the sinfulness of self-abuse, but the Onan story is most definitely not one of those examples. If Onan had gone into his brother’s wife ten times, cheerfully planting his seed eight of them, and doing something else the other two, that story would never have made it into the bible. Plain, simple fun is always the last thing on the minds of mean-spirited bastards.
This is why “sex” (ugh) consternates us so much as Christians. It is an “area of our life” (ugh) in which want to obey God. So, being good idolaters, we busily construct lots of checklists for what constitutes holiness in sex, so we can make sure we meet them all. Don’t do it with the neighbor’s wife? Check! Man in authority on top, woman in submission on bottom? Check! Prophylactic in place for godly stewardship purposes? Check! Properly following the design at all points? Check! We don’t really have to dig too far into our common cultural memory as Christians in order to see all this in its wondrous splendor, do we?

I wonder if we as Christians really believe in Christian liberty “in this area”? (ugh). If nothing is unclean in itself, why do we persist in thinking so? Is it because we’re afraid of seeming too licentious? Perhaps. That’s not an irrelevant concern. Grace always appears licentious to those who are absorbed with rules. However, Paul promoted a kind of surreal humility in those matters, saying that it was better to abandon something harmless than to consternate rule-obsessed people unnecessarily. This is a mind-bending kind of ethics which does not fit our natural patterns of thought. In fact, it is the exact ethic which Christ followed. He gave up something objectively good–communion with his own Father–in order not to consternate a world of people obsessed with following rules. In so doing, he finally managed to rip their petty minds away from their depraved rule-reliance, and focus them all instead upon Him, himself.
“Design” says you should give ten percent. The widow’s mite represented much more than 10%. This is a kind of radical knowing which lays waste to our concepts of what God expects of us. But even then, we’re tempted to turn that radical example of discipleship into just another Rule. “You must give your whole self to God!” we say. “You must step out in faith!” we say.

God is not impressed with us. He sees right through us. He says to us, “I’m not interested in how radical you are toward me. I just wonder whether you delight in me, or not.” The widow delighted.

Do we delight in each other’s bodies as husband and wife? Sure, we may give 10%, as required. That’s good, and honorable. “Be fruitful and multiply”. “Have a quiverfull”. Great. Man on top, woman on bottom. Tab A in slot B. Every act according to design. Everything done by law, in obedience to God. Great. But do we delight? Our bodies are one of the few things which God re-gifts. They’re his, but he brokers them out so that someone else can use them for a romp. Are they playgrounds? Are the appurtenances well-grooved with exuberant use, like the worn marks on the treads of the merry-go-round? The more familiar metaphor is “garden”, but playground makes a lot of sense, too. Our bodies ought to be the romper room of our beloveds.
That’s the thing about God, and giving, and knowing. There is nothing rational or “designed” about it. There is no apparent purpose. It is a completely new business altogether; a business of delight which shocks with its impertinence and apparent irrelevance. It is the grace of Surprise. The Creation mandate has its design, and that is good, and there is purposeful enjoyment in it. If it is despised, all the joy goes out of it. If it is honored, all the joy floods in. Yet, playgrounds don’t really do anything. They’re just fun.

A Christian husband and wife ought to be able to enjoy the apparent playful purposelessness of the nuptial embrace. After all, infertility doesn’t render the delights null and void. It does aggravate the Creation impulse, which is a good thing, and in so doing, it drives the pursuit of other avenues for fruitfulness. That’s the genius of adoption. It’s much like Christ healing the blind man and, when his followers asked about the apparent design of that handicap, he told them, in effect, “Huh. Whatever”, as the guy danced around with joy.

It takes faith to embrace God’s purpose, and it requires fear and mistrust to abandon it. That’s where the power of sexual novelty comes into play. All of the lurid perversions we see are just attempts to convince society that the nuptial embrace is too mundane to be very enjoyable; that it needs to be spiced up somehow. And, of course, the so-called “novelty” they advertise ironically turns into mundaneness itself, because it attempts to become everything. As with all sin, the thing itself is not intrinsically evil; its power comes by its promise to replace what is good. A husband and wife should feel no shame in enjoying novelty in the nuptial embrace. If they, in fact, begin to think that the novelty is everything, they have by definition ceased to enjoy the novelty, because it is no longer a novelty.

Some things are just apparent. You can run up the slide in the playground, and have a lot of fun doing it, but it’s a laugh to suggest that it’s nearly as fun as sliding down it. It would also get really tiring, which just makes everybody want to leave the playground and go home. And, of course, it’s idiocy to suggest dumping mud all over the slide. You can’t slide down it or run up it, then.

And, the most important thing about playgrounds: if you try to force your three-year old little sister to run up the big slide, you deserve a very hard spanking. Likewise, if you somehow get the impression that your three-year old sister would enjoy having her hand slammed under the see-saw, it’s time to call the police. Playgrounds are all about fun, and fun is all about which rides we feel comfortable on. Forget that prime rule–yes, finally, a Rule worth following!–and you’ve just forfeited the whole city park. Time for the city council to take it away and give it to somebody who knows how to enjoy it.