The Complete Bible Guide to Love and Sex

Jesus was building upon this same vision when he pointed out the connection between the love of God and the love of neighbor. That's why he and his disciples affirmed that marriage is a sacrament. Any relationship, if it is truly a loving relationship, is acted out in a spiritual as well as a physical dimension. Not surprising then that some of the most evocative love poetry in all literature is to be found in the book of the Bible referred to as the Song of Songs. And not surprising either that the poetry of that book has been used throughout history to describe the passionate love between two people, as well as the mystical union between God and humankind.

The Christian gospel calls for a reunion of the flesh and the spirit, not the triumph of the spirit over the flesh, or vice versa. Note that in the Genesis story it was a corruption of the spiritual side of human nature that led to the fall. It was their hunger for a higher knowledge that led Adam and Eve to take the forbidden fruit, not mere physical appetite. So in biblical tradition pride is the most deadly sin, not lust. Rather than seeing a conflict between flesh and spirit, as the Greeks much later did, Genesis sees the real tragedy as the separation of humankind from God. From the opening chapters, Genesis tells the gradually unfolding story as humankind is divided against itself. Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the city of Sodom and Gomorrah. The original unity of flesh and spirit, God and humankind is replaced by a tragic polarity. Not only are human beings now at war with each other, but mind and body are divided against themselves. And increasingly, perversions of sexual identity are associated with perversion of the spirit.

It was this double edged quality of evil that Jesus so clearly recognized. That's why he identified so openly with the so called "prostitutes and sinners." He saw so clearly that they were not responsible for the evil of the world. Jesus identified the corrupt religious leaders of his day and time as being more responsible for humanity's moral problems, for the self appointed guardians of goodness and truth defined sex as evil and thus made sinners of us all. Jesus saw that self-righteous piety is equally dangerous as promiscuity, for both these attitudes intensify the antagonism between flesh and spirit.

Today the same problem is before us. Whenever sexuality and spirituality are regarded as separate and unrelated things, then both dimensions suffer. For sex is demeaning when it is reduced to the level of a commodity, and religion is demeaning when it is a matter of dry ritual or abstract doctrine. In America today the disembodied spirituality of popular religion is locked in fateful struggle against the dispirited hedonism of the secular world. And the resolution to the conflict is not the triumph of one side over the other, but the rediscovery of what I would call the sacramental view of sex. It is in the interplay of the spirit and the flesh that we find our salvation. The real question is not the prurient question of who does what to whom and when? The truly important question is whether our relationships with other people reflect the love of justice of God. In the passing encounters and the fleeting moments, do we find values that endure. Faith, hope and love, these three, said Paul, and the greatest of these is love. But if love tends more and more toward love making, without the faith and the hope that give it depth and power, then love itself is lost. If, on the contrary, one is able to infuse one's sexual relationships with the saving qualities of mutual respect, trust, and commitment, then one moves closer to living a life which on earth becomes all that it shall be "in Heaven."

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