| Sex
in the context of Christian marriage, is never seen as an object
of pleasure alone or as an "obligation" that the couple
have to fulfill to each other, as if to take pleasure in it already
constituted sin. Both extremes, definitely, are aberrations.
Oddly, in a survey
conducted by a sociologist in the United States, it has been
found out that American Catholics tend to enjoy sex better and
make love more. This sociologist ended up observing that the
problem with married people is not too much sex but too little.
He adds that the Catholic's sacramental view of marriage enhances
further the sexual lives of Catholic couples!
Well understood,
this statement does not come as a surprise: well-integrated
religious convictions do not separate the body from the soul,
or sex from love, or faith from marriage. If ever, such convictions
produce better persons, self-assured and at peace with themselves
that when they relate inlove relationships, they also become
better lovers.
Actually, the Christian
view and the Church's teachings on marriage find their roots
in the Sacred Scripture. Considered as words coming from God,
the Sacred Scripture touches not just on spiritual realities
but also on the all-too human realities of sex and marriage
and then shed light on such realities, superior dimensions.
What the Bible says
are not to be taken literally or understood as if the laws or
dogmas of faith. They are meant to shed light on what we experience
and somehow look at it from the point of view of the Bible,
or from God's own point of view.
Among the passages
that can shed light on sex from the book of Genesis, we have
these two:
- Gen 1:27 "God
created man in his image, in the divine image He created him;
male and female He created them."
- Gen 2:23 "the
God said: This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of
my flesh; this one shall be called ,woman,. for out of ,her
man, this one has been taken."
Here, we come to
understand that the sexual difference between man and woman
is not meant to make them compete with each other or for one
to dominate the other. The difference is there because man and
woman are meant to complete each other because in Gen 2:18:
"It is not good for man to be alone."
Here we will have
to understand "the man" not referring to the male
sex, but to both man and woman. It is not good for anyone to
be alone, whether man or woman, because man by nature relational
with the man-woman relationship as its natural expression.
Sexual relationship
between man and woman finds its most intimate expression in
the sexual union. Many believe it is during the sex act that
man and woman who love each other feel a certain sense of completeness
of being. |
