Resuming blogging after spring break! Part I: Sex God

I have not blogged in almost 2 weeks which is the longest break since I began blogging back in May!

A lot happens in a few weeks and I do have much to report!

Spring Break.

An engagement.

A decision for next year.

The death of a friend.

Blessings.


Over spring break I read Sex God by Rob Bell. It is a wonderful book that sheds fresh perspective on sex and God and how they are connected. I loved it. It spoke to me, encouraged me, stirred up unpleasant emotions for me to wrestle with, convicted me, inspired me, and compelled me towards the loving, loving, loving heart of God. I would recommend it to anyone!

As part of my “quiet time” for this evening, I flipped through the book again and started typing out my favorite parts. I could not type out all of them, but here are a sample of what I loved the most. I saved the best for last so please keep reading!

Part I of resuming blogging after a break: Sex God

Excerpts from Sex God by Rob Bell:

Now if there’s a realm where things are as God wants them to be, then there must be a realm where things are not as God wants them to be. Where things aren’t according to God’s will. Where people aren’t treated as fully human.

It’s called hell.

Think of the expression “for the hell of it.” When someone says “for the hell of it” what they mean is that whatever is being discussed was done or said for no apparent reason. It was, in essence, pointless. Random. And God is for purpose and beauty and meaning.

When we say something is a “living hell” we mean that it was void of any love or peace or beauty or meaning. It was absent of the will and the desire of God.

We hear about war zones being like hell, working conditions being hellish, a divorce being an emotional hell, a famine feeling like hell on earth. Concentration camps are hells on earth.

And that’s Jesus’ point with the “gouge out your eye” teaching. His point isn’t that you should mutilate your body if you find yourself lusting after someone. His point is that something serious – sometimes hellish – happens when people are treated as objects, and we should resist it at all costs.

When Jesus talks about heaven and hell, they are first and foremost present realities that have serious implications for the future. Either can be invited to earth, right now, through our actions.

It is possible for heaven to invade earth.

It is possible for hell to invade earth.

*

I just received an email asking if I would sign a petition protesting the use of torture to get information from enemy soldiers caught in battle…the issue isn’t just what torture does to the person being tortured, it’s what torturing does to the person doing it…our own humanity is at stake.

*

When a human being is being mistreated, objectified, or neglected, when they are treated as less than human, these actions are actions against God. Because how you treat the creation reflects how you feel about the Creator.

*

Scholars believe that the word sex is related to the Latin word secare which means to “severe, to amputate, or to disconnect from the whole.” This is where we get words like sect, section, dissect, bisect.

Our sexuality, then, has two dimensions. First, our sexuality is our awareness of how profoundly we’re severed or cut off and disconnected. Second, our sexuality is all the ways we go about trying to reconnect.

*

Moments move us because they have a sexual dimension. They help us become reconnected. They go against our fallen nature which is to be cut off.

This is why music is so powerful. Have you ever noticed that when you ask people why a particular song or concert moved them so much they often resort to ambiguous explanations? You get words like emotion and passion and energy and relationship and connection.

*

Lust promises what it can’t deliver…lust comes from a deep lack of satisfaction with life.

And it always revolves around an “if” doesn’t it? If I just…the idea creeps into our head and heart that we are lacking, that we are incomplete, that this craving in front of us is the answer…Adam and Eve fixate on this one piece of fruit from this one tree when God has given them endless trees with infinite varieties to enjoy. Which is often our problem. There’s so much to enjoy, yet we fixate on something we don’t have.

This is why gratitude is so central to the life God has made us for. Until we can center ourselves on what we do have, on what God has given us, on the life we do get to live, we’ll constantly be looking for another life. This is why the word remember occurs over and over again in the Bible. God commands his people to remember who they are, where they’ve been, what they’ve seen, what’s been done for them. If we stop remembering, we may forget. And that’s where the trouble comes.

*

If you have ever given yourself to someone and had your heart broken you know how God feels.

If you have ever given yourself to someone and found yourself waiting for their response, exposed and vulnerable, left hanging in the balance, you know how God feels.

If you have ever given yourself to someone and they responded, they reciprocated with love of their own, you know how God feels.

The cross is God’s way of saying, “I know what that’s like.”

*

The woman says in Song of Songs, “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.”

She speaks a paradox. Two things are going on here. She’s giving. Giving herself away. Letting go. Loosing herself in her lover. And yet she’s also getting something in return: the other person. Her lover, at the same time, has let go and fallen into her. There is something about loosing yourself to another and their loosing themselves in you at the same time that defies our ability to categorize. Healthy marriages all have this sense of mutual abandon to each other. They’ve both jumped, in essence, into the arms of the other. There is a sense of mutual abandon between them. If one holds back, if one refrains, it doesn’t work.

*

Sex becomes a search. A search for something they’re missing. A quest for the unconditional embrace…but sex is not the search for something that’s missing. It’s the expression of something that’s been found. It’s designed to be the overflow, the culmination of something that a man and a woman have found in each other. It’s a celebration of the living, breathing thing that’s happening between the two of them.

*

You are worth dying for.

If you’re dating someone, what kind of man is he? Does he demonstrate that he’s the kind of man who would die for you? What is his posture toward the world? Does he serve or is he waiting to be served? Does he believe that he’s owed something, that he’s being shortchanged, that he’s gotten the short end of the stick, that life owes him something? Or is he out to see what he can give? Does he see himself as being here to make the world a better place? These are questions you need to ask yourself.

Take him to a family reunion. Do some sort of service project with him. See how he interacts with people he doesn’t like. Does he have liquid agape running through his veins?

A friend of mine was engaged to a man and some of her friends were not excited about them getting married. As the wedding day approached, one of her friends decided to say something to her. He said, “When a woman is loved well, she opens up like a flower.”

She broke off the engagement soon afterward. In one brilliant sentence, her friend taught her what agape is and what it isn’t.

*
The power [of a husband and wife] coming together is rooted in their choice to give themselves to each other and no one else in this particular way.

Out of six billion people on the planet, I choose you. And no one else. No one else gets this. No one else gets me in this specific, holy, sacred, emotional, spiritual, physical way. Its power is derived from its exclusivity.

That’s why wedding ceremonies stir us like they do. The bride comes down the aisle and gives herself to this man and no one else. They have something with each other that they have with no one else.

We have to be careful what we share. Because when you give it away, you no longer have it.

* Now, my favorite chapter.

Notice what Adam says about this woman: “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” Bones is a way of talking about strength, and flesh is a way of talking about weaknesses. He’s essentially saying, “Where I am weak, she is strong, and where she is weak, I am strong.”

Eve is a corresponding strength for Adam.

They fit together.

They fill each other in.

They cover for each other.

They’re better off together than apart.

…

Central to the Bible is the affirmation that there is one God. Not many, one. And sex between the man and woman has something to do with God.

Who God is. What God is like. Adam and Eve are one as God is one. Same word…

And finally, after all this leaving and cleaving and bones and flesh, the passage ends with the line “the man and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame.”

No shame or embarrassment. No apologizing for who they are. No covering up or pretending. No masks or secrets. Total acceptance of each other. That’s what we want, isn’t it? We want someone to see us exactly how we are and still love us…

If you see me for who I really am, the me that no one else has ever seen, the me that wouldn’t dare show anybody else on the planet, the parts of me I’m not sure I want anybody to ever see, if I give you that kind of glimpse into the seat of my being, into my soul, will you still love me like you do now?

It’s our question for each other, and it’s our question for God.

Unconditional, absolute acceptance.

From a lover, from God – it’s what we crave.

This is why marriage is always about something bigger than itself. It’s two people, in their unconditionally loving embrace of each other, showing each other in flesh and blood what God is like. These two are naked and they feel no shame.