| << | Contents | >> |
One Flesh: What does it Mean?
<page 34>Please bear with me as I devote one more chapter to fleshing out the truths I have described up to this point. We will finish by comparing the sexual development of two young men, one from ancient Israel and one from modern times.
I am not an expert on ancient Israeli culture, and I apologize in advance for any historical mistakes I make. My purpose is not to teach about the details of the past, but to create a picture of a time when sexual images were not flashed before people's eyes in the same way they are today. Our generation is an experiment into what happens when we regularly entice our minds with the most attractive women and men in the world. By comparing our time with a more innocent time, I hope to help us see our challenges more clearly. By looking at a different culture, even if it isn't described totally accurately, we can gain insight into our own.
We will call our ancient Israeli young man Schmiel. He is twelve years old and is growing up in a village of five hundred people, including several young women who are his age. Before he feels his first sexual impulse, he has already been told that this impulse is a signal that he should get married and raise a family. He has started working in his father's shop so he can learn the economic skills necessary to carry out this task.
Because he still lives with his parents, Schmiel is able to save most of what he makes to pay a dowry for his future wife. The dowry will serve an important purpose. In ancient societies, women were generally unable to provide for themselves, so the dowry was like an insurance plan to help his wife survive if he were to die. Schmiel seeks to save several years' worth of his small wages to make sure that she is cared for.
Think of what this means for Schmiel's growing view of life. From the moment he feels his first erotic urge, his society has already shaped the way in which he experiences that urge. It is seen as a growing drive associated with caring for a woman he will love for his entire life. He takes it for granted that he will work hard for her, sacrifice for her, and care for their children.
Let's compare that with the message given to our modern young man, Ralph. Ralph is also twelve years old. Almost from the time he was born, he has seen the most beautiful women in the world paraded before his eyes through advertising and TV shows. When he was young, his parents protected him from overt sexual scenes, but they were unable to do that once he discovered pornography on the internet at the age of ten. As Ralph stared at the images on the screen before him, they created a feeling like no other. It was part curiosity, part nervousness, and part delight. When he got his next chance to visit the same site, he eagerly returned.
In the two years since that first experience, Ralph has visited many sites. The feelings within him have matured, and they now explode into amazing pleasure regularly. His one flesh chemistry has kicked in, taking his experience with pornography and attaching a message to it: "These women exist for my sexual enjoyment." This experience is gradually reshaping him to see every beautiful woman in this way. In time, actresses in TV shows, models in advertisements, and pretty girls at his school will all become stars in his fantasies.
<page 35>When Schmiel turns sixteen, he walks to the house of one of the young women in his village, Abby, and gives her father a marriage proposal. He has several years' worth of wages saved for her dowry. If Abby and her father will agree to the marriage, he promises to love her and care for her all the days of his life. Abby and her father do agree, and the wedding takes place a short time later.
On his wedding night, Schmiel's entire world changes. He had heard stories of how amazing sex would be, but no words could describe the rush of heavenly delight that floods his being and transforms everything he knows. Remember, Schmiel had never before seen a woman in a suggestive situation. The women around him have worn long robes, so he may have barely seen a young woman's leg, let alone a more suggestive female body part. As he takes in Abby, everything is new and amazing, and all of it is associated with her alone, the only woman he has ever seen in this way, and perhaps the only woman he ever will.
For four years Schmiel had labored to provide a dowry for someone he barely knew. He was a young teenager, so this was not easy for him. Young men don't tend to think clearly about the future. His father, however, had told him that it would be worth his effort to sacrifice for his future wife, and his culture supported that message. Now it all made sense. This was the girl he had worked for. This is the one he had sacrificed for. His one flesh chemistry takes the nature of his growing relationship with her – everything he had previously thought about a wife, everything he experiences now, and everything he anticipates about their future – and infuses it with an excitement and power that will define a good deal of their future marriage.
Ralph has a different experience. At the age of sixteen, he has already made his way through a few girlfriends, and some were willing to have sex with him. In addition, he has developed the habit of having sex with himself many times a week. He has accepted the idea that one girl will capture his heart for a time, only to be replaced by another when he feels the urge to move on.
Ralph's definition of love comes from a mixture of his culture and the peculiar competitiveness of teenage boys. On the one hand, each girlfriend is a beautiful princess who sweeps him off his feet (his culture); on the other, each is a notch in his belt, a bragging point among his friends (teenage boys). Any remorse he feels when breaking up with a previous girlfriend is overcome by both the status he gains and the realization that there will be another girl in the future. He has little motivation to think too deeply about his actions.
Ralph's one flesh chemistry is taking the nature of his relationship with a virtual harem and a few girlfriends and infusing it into his inner being. He is being reshaped to think of women as objects of pleasure and trophies to bolster his self-esteem.
The Old Testament Law had some difficult rules about sex in relation to a woman's period.
'If a woman has a discharge, and the discharge from her body is blood, she shall be set apart seven days; and whoever touches her shall be unclean until evening. …And if any man lies with her at all, so that her impurity is on him, he shall be unclean seven days; and every bed on which he lies shall be unclean.
<page 36>Jewish custom interpreted these words to mean that a man and his wife should refrain from sex from the time the wife's period started until seven days after it ended, so this generally meant a twelve to fourteen day time of abstention from sex every month. After two weeks of bliss, Schmiel and Abby are suddenly faced with two weeks away from each other, and we can be sure that it wasn't easy for either of them.
I remember when I took the time to consider what this law would have meant for me if I had lived under it. It was basically two weeks on for sex and two weeks off. I thought to myself, "It's no wonder Israel rebelled against the law." I had to work to avoid developing an attitude against God for what young married couples in Israel endured.
I don't believe this law applies to Christians. (The clean/unclean sections of the law have been fulfilled in Jesus, so in the area of husband and wife relations, we can follow a law of love and consideration.) But we should still consider what this Old Testament law says, because even though it might not apply to us in the same form, it is still in God's word. It contains messages about life that can instruct us even if the outward expression of this particular law is not binding on us.
What sort of messages can we find? An obvious one is that God is not nearly as concerned about sexual frequency as we might be. If He was, He wouldn't have placed this burden on Israel. Another observation is that this law made it just about impossible for an obedient husband or wife to become a sex addict. Schmiel and Abby simply could not practice enough frequency for them to become dependent on erotic experiences.
All of this would affect their relationship. Addiction gives people short term satisfaction that doesn't require them to learn the skills necessary to handle the realities of life. Schmiel and Abby don't have that option, so they need to learn how to work through their differences, build their relationship around friendship, and become wise enough to prosper. They must be brave when they would rather hide, humble when they would rather pretend competence, and unselfish when they would rather avoid responsibility.
And since this is all part of their relationship, when they are able to spend time with each other sexually, their one flesh chemistry reshapes them according to that relationship. The meaningfulness of the non-sexual part of their experience becomes fused with the meaningfulness inherent in the sexual part. They are with the person they have waited and worked for, and they treasure their chances to celebrate their union. The depth of their relationship outside of the bedroom sets the stage for the depth of their relationship inside it.
In our modern example, none of this is happening for Ralph. He has a virtual harem that he treasures just as much as Schmiel treasures Abby, but it stifles his growth as a person. When he is fearful, the harem has one answer: to distract him with delight. When he is bored, it provides exquisite excitement. When he is depressed, it cheers him with a message that nothing else matters but the "love" and pleasure he shares with it. Ralph has found an all-purpose coping mechanism for every problem in life. He has an "answer" to every threat to happiness and fulfillment – one that pulls him deeper and deeper into a fantasy world. As a result, he is shielded from what reality requires of him, and he never grows up.
Ralph is spiraling downward into addiction. Sex has become like a drug for him. It soothes his emotions and takes away the urgency that should motivate him to solve problems. As time goes on, it will make it more and more difficult to sustain relationships, work productively, and find satisfaction in life. A single compulsion is taking over, and that compulsion is robbing him of his future.
<page 37>In their twenties, Schmiel and Abby have a house full of children of all ages. Between working to provide for them, chasing around after them, and being involved in their community, their lives are overly full, but they find ways to manage. Though their sex life sometimes suffers from the busyness, their marriage has never been based on sex alone. Instead, it is based on the love of God which covers every area of life. Sex is a huge piece of that – and it feels as strong as death and cruel as the grave; it burns like a fire, is unquenchable, and makes them willing to give up all the wealth of their house for each other – but it is only one piece of a satisfying banquet of life that sustains them with joy.
When Ralph is twenty-five, he marries a young woman named Sally. He attempts to find joy with her, but it eludes him. Sally doesn't seem to understand his need for her to be sexy and enticing. She also isn't available when his desires overwhelm him. He becomes angry at her for not understanding him.
Sally's one flesh chemistry also has shaped her according to her own relationships with real and imaginary lovers through the years, so she finds Ralph to be unsatisfying. She wants him to be Prince Charming, sweeping her away with romance and bliss, but Ralph couldn't be Prince Charming any more than she could be a virtual harem. Both of them find the other disappointing.
Each of them may want to change for the sake of their marriage, but change feels impossible. Our one flesh chemistry was designed by God to produce a lifelong bond, and Ralph's and Sally's bonds were formed years earlier in a way that is now sabotaging their marriage. They may want to build a new bond, but the pain of leaving the old is something like the pain of divorce. Ralph and Sally are prisoners to emotions that make them willing to give up all the wealth of their current house (their marriage) for dreams that were formed when they were teenagers.
Ralph continues to view pornography and have sex with himself regularly, and he feels justified in doing so. He doesn't believe Sally is meeting his needs. She, on the other hand, watches romantic comedies and reads romance novels, longing for a man who will truly understand her. One or the other of them occasionally experiments with a relationship outside of their marriage. If nothing changes, divorce seems inevitable.
The tragic truth is that Ralph and Sally received their view of marriage from a sex and romance saturated culture that was ignorant of God's design. That culture wasn't trying to hurt them; it was just trying to use sex to sell everything under the sun. In the process, however, it encouraged Ralph and Sally to sin against their bodies by practicing a form of sexuality that connected the neurons in their brains in a way that is now sabotaging their relationship.
Ralph and Sally need a way to undo the damage. Fortunately, Jesus is in the business of undoing damage:
Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. (emphasis added)
<page 38>Sexual problems, and even sexual addiction, can be healed. There may be little human hope, but there is always hope in Jesus. In the remaining chapters of this book we will look at some principles involved in making "such were some of you, but you were washed" a truth that works itself out in experience.
Search Comments
This page has been visited 0013 times.
| << | Contents | >> |
10 per page