Relish life with the spouse you love....Each day is God's gift. (Eccles.9:9)
Sex without spiritual engagement is bad sex, providing only bodily pleasures. It aims at orgasm; its physical power feeds the sense of the body and has no other purpose. It is an act isolated from the rest of life; therefore, it carries the potential of sexual and psychological aberrations. These aberrations may be benign, comical, tasteless, malignant, obscene, or dehumanizing. Frequently, vulgar forms are brought into this restless act by means of alcohol and recreational drugs, in an attempt to fill life's emptiness. Bad sex is depressing for it is futureless.
Sex with spiritual engagement is good sex. Couples who invoke the spirit in their sexual union create real families. Their hearts and souls are also organs of sex. Their physical and psychological engagement serve to draw each other to the depths of their abandon. Spiritual sex encompasses all the bodily sensations, including physical orgasm, but it is aimed essentially at the affirmation of values, love, and life. Its emotional power feeds the couple's souls and never offends their dignity. Good sex is not aberrant; it expresses genuine piety, the purest form of trust and innocence and chastity. This doesn't mean it need be flat sex without color and vivacity, an unromantic routine duty to be gotten over. Piety in sex means recognizing its fragility, taking it seriously, respecting the sacramental nature of the marital bed, and weaving the ritual of lovemaking into the larger purpose of life. Sex within God's law is free from any moral anxiety. Conjugal sex purifies, it sows seeds of love (literally) and is a path to spirituality through sensuous vitality. You should be playful and inventive without any embarrassment.
Good sex is the intimation of spiritual love when it is cultivated with erotic wit and intelligence and dignified passion. In the following lines of the Song of Solomon, a mortal is seeking the profoundest sexual trance in the intimation of the sublime love, where the mystical heights and depths are scaled.
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth-
For your love is more delightful than wine.
Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes;
Your name is like perfume poured out.
Song of Solomon 1:1-3
Sex within the bond of lawful wedlock is to be enjoyed as much as it is to be reverenced. Sexuality isn't just an organic function of our bodies. The body is a sacred enclosure and opening it or entering into it requires love and respect. Good sex is a mutually offered, tenderly sought pleasure, culminating in giving of the body and soul. It ultimately brings us to the service of God through the desire for offspring.
In the animal kingdom the sole purpose of sex is procreation. We, of course, also procreate through sex, but have also discovered its many other uses-some innocent, some destructive or self-destructive. Every day we encounter destructive forms of sex in newspapers: a priest abusing youngsters; a relative sodomizing a child; a teacher impregnating a student. There are innumerable cases of rape, sadomasochistic behavior, pornography, and other deviant behavior, reported and unreported.
There are lesser-known forms of destructive sex that do not make the news. These are not reportable because they are not crimes in the legal sense of the word. For some, sex is a commodity to be stolen, for others an obsessive compulsion, for still others it is a boring chore. There is also a common misconception that passion ensues from transgression, justifying men's aggression toward women. These are crimes against the spirit, and they are often so subtle that the victim remains unrecognized.
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T. Byram Karasu, M.D. is the author of The Spirit of Happiness
