sex

I need a new definition for sex. I’m trying this one on and I think it fits pretty well.

sex n. – being closer to someone than you can be

The reason I need a new definition is because the ones that are floating around out there are weak, incomplete, and perverted. That’s what my world has done with something as beautiful as sex. And the church instead of offering a divine definition has done the typical: reacted, accepted what the world has to say, toed the battle lines where the god of the world has drawn them, or retreated in fear of something God made and calls good. The church should be promoting sex every chance they get, brining sex to every corner of the world. But I imagine that a lot of Christians would be appalled that would even I talk of sex this way—maybe even blush at the title of this post. But lofty glances from lofty people do little to save.

Sex is being closer to someone than you can be, and sexual desire is the desire to be closer to someone than you can be. Both are good. Both are good not only in a human sense, but in a divine one as well. We all have this desire to be closer to another being than we can be.

If you take even a casual look at carnal sex, you will see this definition holding true. Two people want to be closer than they can be. They want to be closer than speaking, closer than face-to-face, closer than hugging, closer than touching. They want to be in each other. If this weren’t true, then what is up with French kissing? And it’s a violent desire. Think about it.

My friend Jon said he still remembers the first time he held hands with a girl with fingers interlocked, and how fast his heart beat. He was experiencing this same thing. As his fingers went inside hers and her fingers went inside his, they experienced the fringes of sex. It’s no good for us to be close. We want the other person inside of us, one with us.

I haven’t read a lot of Freud. Most of what I know came from a sociology class I took in college, that and common knowledge from society and movies. What everyone seems to agree on is that Freud sexualized everything. He saw sex everywhere, as the source of all kinds of issues that people have to sort out and deal with. He even tagged the pleasure infants have in nursing and filling diapers as sexual. I think he was on to something. But I think he may have shot too low. It’s more than a physical sensation. I have a nine month old son named Caleb. Sometimes he gets so excited about one of us that he opens his mouth wide and tries to take a bite out of our cheek. Freud would say this is his sexual desire. I say that’s true. But it’s not reproduction or pleasure Caleb is after. He wants to be closer to one of his family members than he can be, and this is the best he can do. It's not a physical condition of his species. It's a spiritual condition inherited from his race and their metanarrative.

And while we’re talking about putting things in our mouth, let’s talk about eating. This world was always supposed to be the place where people enjoyed fellowship with each other and with their God. But in the fall of mankind, that connection was severed (literally sexed). Ever since then the plans of God for us have always been connected with the land. God’s original charter to adam included both filling the earth and subduing it. God’s word to Abraham and his descendants was that he would join them to a promised land, which He did. But when they didn’t give the land her rest every seventh year like He told them to, He had them carried off into captivity so that the land would “enjoy her sabbaths while it lies desolate without them”. In the New Testament, too, I read about the land groaning, waiting for restoration to come through mankind. Eating is sex, too. It is how we are closer to the land than we can be. We’re not content to enjoy being close to her. We want to taste her inside of us. What we eat and drink becomes one with us and produces life in us. This also kind of makes me think about when Jesus said, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” Eating is sexual. It too is being closer than you can be.

And God. When Adam and Eve were in the garden, they enjoyed intercourse with (they freely ate of) each other, the land, and God. It wasn’t until they were unfaithful to God (ate from another) that this intercourse was frustrated. It was frustrated with a treble hook: land with thorns, marriage with contention, and God through a veil. Three different areas: human, terrestrial, and divine. All frustrated. The intercourse is inhibited, and the attempt to restore the spiritual connection is a sexual proposition.

Look how sexual Jesus’ language was in his final prayer on earth. He wants us to be closer than we can be—to be one. He wants to unveil his glory for us. He wants to be in us. He wants us to be in him. This talk reminds me of the phrase one flesh or one body, referring to sex.

My prayer for all of them is that they will be one, just as you and I are one, Father—that just as you are in me and I am in you, so they will be in us, and the world will believe you sent me. I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are—I in them and you in me, all being perfected into one. Then the world will know that you sent me and will understand that you love them as much as you love me. Father, I want these whom you've given me to be with me, so they can see my glory. You gave me the glory because you loved me even before the world began! O righteous Father, the world doesn't know you, but I do; and these disciples know you sent me. And I have revealed you to them and will keep on revealing you. I will do this so that your love for me may be in them and I in them. (John 17)

A glorious body unveiled…Jesus in his bride…the bride in Jesus...his love in her...

If you think this is sexualizing something that was not intended to be, listen to what else Jesus said: “In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” That’s wedding language. In Jesus’ day a groom would be betrothed to his bride, and then he would leave her to prepare a place for them to live together. Because God had granted each Israelite family a place to live, and also because the extended family in Jesus’ time was central to their life, grooms would build their house connected to their father’s house. And of course it shouldn’t be surprising at all to hear Jesus talk this way—after all the bible does begin and end with a bride and a groom.

All sex is frustrating. Because you can never be closer to someone than you can be. The marriage bed satisfies for a moment. The best of friends can only share so much heart to heart fellowship. Hunger always returns. Even moments of true intercourse with God are short-lived, and for most of us, rare. Because there is still a barrier that even sex, the most transcendent thing in our world, cannot penetrate. Ecstasy is not an option. Not now, anyway.

But somehow there is a day coming when sex will be no more—when we will be able to be closer than we (presently) can be. George MacDonald thought that when we were released from the shackles of this nature that we would be able to flow in and out of each other’s beings, that we could know each other fully, even as we are fully known. That’s an unnerving thought for now. But one day I think we will probably find it more pleasing than sex.

For now, we are all frustrated down here. We all continue to be baffled by Adam and Eve being “naked and unashamed”. Even creation herself waits, frustrated, in “eager expectation” for the children of God to be exposed. We continue to want to be closer to another than we can be, and scared to death of it at the same time. And sometimes we really mess up because of it. I wonder how much of our messing up is just because we fail to see what is really going on. I wonder if it's because we fail to know what we really want. There are so many other fruits that look like they might be edible and might satisfy, so many people to consume, and so many gods we would make our own or give ourselves over to. So the girl longing for shelter and affection she never found at home gives her body for fifteen minutes of glory followed by years of shame. The woman eats her way to high blood pressure and heart disease. The shaman does all kinds of bizarre things to get a god to possess him. The leader slaughters and consumes his followers to fill his ego. These are all perversions of sex. Underneath each, there is this desire to be closer to someone or something than you can be and an impatience for the Day when that veil will finally be removed.

I am longing for that day. Come, Lord Jesus.

But to me it looks like the church is going a hundred miles an hour in the wrong direction on this one. Either she sticks her head in the sand or gets red-faced and screams about our oversexed culture. We are not oversexed. We are undersexed. This culture is way underconnected. We have extremely isolated lives, and it's only made worse by technology—from cell phones to chat rooms to porn sites to ipods, it is so easy to withdraw, check out, and say no to sex. And I'm talking about the church. Most Christians in the burbs don't know their neighbors—don't even know their names. The divorce rate is just as high in Christianity as it is in the general population. And try to find true community among Christians who would prefer one another to the point of laying down their lives for each other. Don't even think about finding a group of people Jesus talked about who are "one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you." As Rob Bell said, "And so we have more cell phones than ever, and we're more lonely and isolated than ever. And we have more chat rooms than ever, and we have people hurting more than ever, because they don't have somebody they can lean on. Our culture is not oversexed. We have no idea what sex really means." I’d go further than saying we need others to lean on. I’d say we need others to come into, to commingle with, to become one body with. And I think Jesus would say that, too. Oh, he did say that.

You can't even talk about sex without using hushed tones, certainly not in mixed company, and then usually only in "accountability" groups with a special time to confess "sexual sins" (which really would be better understood as "sins against sex"). But this just proves that the church really doesn't have anything to say about sex, about connecting, about moving towards one another, about becoming one, about becoming closer than we can be. The church has accepted what the world has to say about sex ("it's something dirty and forbidden and narrowly defined by what those bad people show you on late night tv or during superbowl half-time or on forbidden internet sites or in adult bookstores") and retreated in fear. Part of the reason the church doesn't have anything to say is because she's stuck in the tarbaby. Porn and romance novels and random hookups and other “sins against one’s own body” (which are thriving among church members) will wither away in a connected community—this junk feeds on loneliness and isolation and inferiority and hopelessness.

One more thing. I think all the yelling and protesting and picketing and boycotting also goes to show that the church really doesn't have anything to say about sex. When you are deaf and mute about what is good and true and pure and beautiful, you get loud about the perversions of it, which you don't understand. I know it’s true in me. I will blast the thing I hate in myself when I see it in someone else. If you think sex is good and is God’s plan for humanity then just do it. Connect. Be one. Move freely in and out of each other. Show what sex really is. Be closer than you can be. Reject boundaries that keep people alone and in the dark. Greet one another with a holy kiss. Plant a tree. Plant a garden. Throw a banquet. Live like there is no male nor female, slave nor free, for we are all one in Christ Jesus. Live like this world in its present form is passing away. And by all means, reject the perverted, shameful, narrow, definition of sex that is everywhere accepted and learn what it is that everyone falling for that is really craving—the hope that’s tucked away in you and me.

Sex is good. And what is even better is coming.