"Because we have forgotten the biblical concepts of true authority and submission, or more accurately, have rebelled against them, we have created a climate in which caricatures of authority and submission intrude upon our lives with violence.
When we quarrel with the way the world is, we find that the world has ways of getting back at us. In other words, however we try, the sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts. This is of course offensive to all egalitarians, and so our culture has rebelled against the concept of authority and submission in marriage. This means that we have sought to suppress the concepts of authority and submission as they relate to the marriage bed.
But we cannot make gravity disappear just because we dislike it, and in the same way we find that our banished authority and submission comes back to us in pathological forms. This is what lies behind sexual 'bondage and submission games,' along with very common rape fantasies. Men dream of being rapists, and women find themselves wistfully reading novels in which someone ravishes the 'soon to be made willing' heroine. Those who deny they have any need for water at all will soon find themselves lusting after polluted water, but water nonetheless.
True authority and true submission are therefore an erotic necessity. When authority is honored according to the word of God it serves and protects — and gives enormous pleasure. When it is denied, the result is not 'no authority,' but an authority which devours." — Douglas Wilson, Fidelity: What It Means to be a One-Woman Man
The sexual act is packed with meaning and mystery.
Marriage is a living metaphor. It is intimacy incarnate, which is to say it is the myth with some meat on its bones.
Men are seed, women are soil.
Men are gardeners, women are gardens.
The man initiates, the woman responds.
The man conquers, the woman cultivates.
Ephesians 5:30-32
For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.
The mysteries of marriage and lovemaking are images of Christ and His church. Every marriage and every sexual act is either telling the truth about God or it is lying about Him. The one thing they cannot do is be silent. The way we marry is saying something about Jesus. The way we make love is saying something about God. It is either orthodox or it is heretical. It is either good and glorious or it is evil and malicious.
“You may drive out Nature with a pitchfork, yet she still will hurry back.” — Horace
Biological sex and physiological sex are both pictures of the glory of God. If you deny them, they will come back to you in inglorious forms. They are either accurate portrayals or they are slanderous caricatures. They are either beautiful or they are ugly. They are either fruitful or they are fruitless. They cannot do nothing. They always do something. They either draw us closer to God or they separate us from Him. They nurture our souls or they poison them. They are either poetry or they are pornography.
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