Of all the splendidly ridiculous, transcendently fulfilling things humans do, it’s sex... that most confounds everything. What in the world are we doing? Why in the world are we so consumed by it? The impulse to procreate may lie at the heart of sex, but... bursting from our sexual center is a whole spangle of other things—art, song, romance, obsession, rapture, sorrow, companionship, love, even violence and criminality—all playing an enormous role in everything from our physical health to our emotional health to our politics, our communities, our very life spans.
Why should we be so? Did nature simply overload us in the mating department...? Or is there something smarter and subtler at work, some larger interplay among sexuality, life and what it means to be human? (p. 64)
Decades ago, it’s already a scandal to wear a one-piece swimsuit in TV. Nowadays, every highway has billboards filled with women wearing significantly more provocative clothes in poses that really tease the senses. Music Videos are filled with intense sexual materials. "Clean magazines" are way back the line compared to smut magazines. The world is obsessed with sex. We have a sexual revolution, and even the secular world is wondering why? Let’s try to keep that in mind and try to answer it later.
It’s been said that whether we deny it or not, we ultimately have two fears—the fear of not being loved, and the fear of not being able to give love. There’s nothing wrong with that. We all have the desire to share our lives with others, to know that there are others genuinely caring for us or there for us whatever happens.
created for love
This desire springs from our being created in the image and likeness of God. God is love, and as His creatures, we are created for love. How can we say that, and how can we be certain about it? Let’s try to dig a little deeper on that statement. It’s going to take a lot of thinking, but it will all be worth it.
in the beginning... God is madly in love with you!
Reading John 1:1-5, we see a glimpse of the Trinity and the reality that before God, there was "nothing" -- all creatures came from Him. He is the source of light. Genesis tells us that the world is dark and void without God. Let’s try to imagine that if it was us.
Imagine yourself in a dark room all by yourself. Can you spend a lifetime in that scenario? Given the choice, would you want others to join you eventually? Most of us think of creation as that. God was bored by Himself, so He created man. But is that really the case?
Let’s ask another question. Can God create something He cannot carry? What’s really in this question? If God can create anything, he can create it, but if He can’t carry something, He’s not God. Are your heads spinning already? Let’s try to ask a similar question. Can you draw a triangle with four sides? Of course not! That won’t be a triangle anymore. In the same way, God can’t create something that will not make Him a God. There is a problem with the question. In other words, for God to be God, He needs to be infinite, without limits... the very thing we often describe God with.
Let’s ask the question again, did God create you and me just because He is bored? Of course not! If He "needed" us to be happy or complete, He wouldn’t be God. So what’s the only logical reason God created us? If there’s nothing in it for Him, then there’s no other thing to say than because it’s all because of us – God created us because He wants us to be happy. Let’s take it a little further.
If a carpenter creates a chair, what would he need? Wood and nails. Once he’s finished and leaves, we’re left with the materials he used. Those would still be there because they are not dependent on the carpenter. But what did God create us from? Nothing. So if God would leave us, we’ll all be... "nothing". So the fact that we’re here means that God hasn’t left us.
If God created us so that we’ll be happy--remember that He gives infinitely as well--and that we are still here despite being sinners means that He still gives Himself to us, it only means that God is madly in love with us--with you and me! Let me repeat that in case you missed it... "God is madly in love with you!"
in His image
We should never forget that we are created in the image of God, not God in our image. If God is perfect, He can only give perfect love, and being created in His image, God meant that we do the same as well. If God created us for our sake, we should also give ourselves completely, versus seeking how we can "use" others.
Sex is important but how does it fit our lives? According to the Church, sex speaks this language of "forever" and "total giving". It foreshadows how God wants us to unite with Him--we were created for heaven and sex foreshadows the unity we’ll have with Him in it. That’s why the world is obsessed with it.
But if sex is the sign, then love is more important. In other words, the desire to be loved and to love is much deeper than the desire to have sex because love precedes sex -- the message precedes the language. We’ll discuss how this -- sex as the language -- is the case in our future parts of this series.
So how come that doesn’t seem to be the case with love and sex today? The problem is we have various definitions of love, most of them wrong. The Church tells us that Original Sin screwed up the picture. Before that tragedy, however, we can see what God meant for love and sex.
We’ll continue our dive to the beginning as we progress in this series and see how it was originally -- how it got ruined and hopefully how it gets fixed. It’ll be exciting. But first, we need to define what "love" is as the Church understands it. That will help us see it when we look at the beginning.
Next in this series...
What is the difference between love and lust? Why is knowing their difference important in sex and love?
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