Marriage and Sexual Wholeness
Man for woman, woman for man, committed to permanence and fidelity. Nothing better for the civilizing of sexuality. And its enhancement. Nothing channels the power of the raw sex drive better than a committed, honorable relationship between a man and a woman.
Think about it. Outside of marriage, sex readily becomes an arm of our own brokenness and delusion. Women may use it to secure ‘love’ or to retaliate; men may use it to prove their virility. Both genders may use it for pleasure’s sake.
As we shall explore in more depth later on, those with same-sex attraction use partners of the same gender sexually in order to meet profound emotional needs. These needs for same-sex love and attention are basic and childish. When confused with sensuality, those motivated by them become subject to the worst qualities of their own gender.
Men with men generate a lot of heat but fail to become a whole relationally; man needs woman’s greater relational strength to do that. Women with women get lost in each other. Their emotional drama is fueled by intense need that is dangerous when threatened. Without the man’s ballast and objectivity, tenderness squared becomes turbulent, and ultimately fragmenting to the feminine soul.
Marriage rescues sex from any number of excesses. From the misuses of sex. I think we can safely say that outside of a binding covenant, all sex is subject to misuse. It need not give an answer for itself. By that I mean sexual pleasure does not require that one player values the other person as a whole, as a human being and not an object to satisfy one’s own need.
In marriage, you must give an answer for sex: “Is this an expression of love? Is the desire for physical love matched by commitment demonstrated on other levels?” The offering of oneself to the other becomes more than an explosive moment, a grasping after some sensation or self-confirmation.
Marriage tempers sexual love. Over time and shifting circumstance, we learn to give ourselves to the other because we love the whole of him or her. We give our bodies to the other out of love and gratitude for the breadth of our life together.
In marriage, sex is not an isolated point of pleasure but rather a series of experience that bind two together. Over the course of a lifetime. Two bodies that merge together for life discover sexual wholeness: a loving offering of the self for the other’s pleasure. And discovering in such union, over and over, the awesome mystery of marital love, man for woman, woman for man, pledged together in fidelity and permanence.
Honor marriage. Vote YES on Proposition 8.
“Father, we confess the many ways we have misused sex. Rather than love the other because (s)he is worthy of it, we have used sex as an arm of our own selfishness. Open our eyes to the better way. Show us Your way for sex in the context of marriage. Whether married or single, reclaim Your will for us regarding sexual wholeness. Let the beauty of Your truth outshine the lies we have believed and even perpetrated.”
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