SONS, SEX AND LOVE

You will see this blog has a link to the Human Life Review online magazine, based out of New York. An excellent publication that I recommend you subscribe to for thoughtful, quality scholarly reading. I read a great article by Dr. Ross Blackburn entitled We Need Men.

Dr. Blackburn describes a difference between men, women and sex:

"Men’s sexuality differs from women’s sexuality. Yes, I know that not all men are the same, nor are all women, but generally speaking, men and women see and experience sexual relations differently. In short (and, again, generally), men are more apt to emphasize the sex, women more the relationship."

You and I know this generally true. It's also why we must bring up our sons to respect women above their own raging hormones. I know this is extraordinarily difficult in our pornographic culture. Hollywood promotes a message of casual sex as the norm. I believe that is a reason so many movie stars 'toe the line' for Hollywood's power mogul's who overwhelmingly support abortion (it's good for actors' careers). It's also hard for our sons to remain virgins until marriage, in a hook-up culture and ready access to pornography on the internet.  Nor does it help that the covers of many women's magazine send subtle messages to our daughters to display themselves like meat in a butcher's window. What happened to the 1970s feminist movement correctly calling out society's sexualizing and objectifying of women? 

I've often wondered if the sexual revolution that started in the 1960s was orchestrated by men for men. During those heady years, I noticed that mantras

such as "If it feels good, do it" and "free love" were usually touted by men. Free love meant freedom from responsibility for one's behaviour. But "free love" was a misnomer. Free love espoused sexual freedom removed from love. Lust replaced love. What we really meant was freedom to satiate lust without the responsibilities of love or the children casual sex might produce. And that is a great poverty of our age. Sex has been separated from love.  That was the high price of "free love" — not to mention rampant sexually transmitted diseases!

Lust is all about me. Love is about you. Or, as Dr. Blackburn so eloquently states, love is about the beloved, the other:

A man needs to learn how to love. He needs to learn to invest deeply in a woman, for her sake, not for what he can get from her. Men who are able to get sex apart from love simply confirm in themselves a selfishness that pervades all areas of life. It is interesting to me that our cultural conversation concerning sex speaks much of rights, but little of love. Rights are about what I am entitled to. Love is about what I give for another.

We are not mindless sexual creatures helplessly led about by our hormones and impulses. Human beings are so much more than their bodies. We have minds and a will and the Image of God to remind us there is a spark of the Divine within us. The dance pole needs to be replaced by roses and romance and seeing the beloved as beloved and sex as sacred. To invest in another person—at a deep emotional and spiritual level—is the beginning of a true understanding of eros.  It raises a man above behaving like a back alley tomcat to a human being capable of understanding the beauty of love and corollary concepts of nurture, care, protection of the beloved. A proper attitude comes from this understanding that places sex in its proper place which is the structure and security of marriage.

Nuptial language proclaims this security of understanding a deeper and fuller love. 

"I, (Bride/Groom), take you (Groom/Bride), to be my (wife/husband), to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death do us part."

It is within this fuller understanding that sex has its proper place and expression in the exclusivity of the marriage bed. The marriage bed is sacred and pure. It must not be defiled or betrayed, it is ordained and blessed by God and must always be open to the prospect of new life: Family. Children should come into the world within that foundation of nurture, care and protection. That's how it's supposed to be. That's God's plan and God's way is always the best way.