Sometimes I wonder why we draw dividing lines in things like we do. Why is reading my Bible spiritual, but having a conversation with a friend is not? Why is going to church spiritual, but having sex is not? Everything gets put in its neat, tidy box and doesn’t mesh or mix with anything else. Spirituality is so sterile and exclusive and hard to access. Secularity is so pervasive and hard to avoid. Why can’t it be easier to just live a spiritual life?
I have a feeling we’re missing it. Now, I understand people have different beliefs about the world and about spirituality, but I belong to one belief system, so I’m talking from that perspective. If you belong to another belief system, you’ll probably be able to agree with some of these points despite our differences.
As a Christian, I believe God created this world and everything in it. I believe God created mankind and nature. I believe God intentionally designed things like emotions and personality and sunsets and sex. Everything we know, everything we see, everything we experience, it was all borne of God. Without getting too far into theology and doctrine, I believe there have been perversions of God’s creation and that is where we see pain and disease and brokenness. But what we have done in reflex to the pain we see in the world is sterilize the spiritual to try to isolate ourselves from that pain.
Emotional instability, insecurity, broken heartedness, lack of trust, broken families, unbalanced children, stranded spouses, and a multitude of other problems (evils, you may call them) can all result from unhealthy relationships and unhealthy sexuality, not to mention the assault, pedophilia, rape, bestiality and other atrocities that result from perverted views of sexuality and the sense of entitlement that some people have toward it. So what we’ve done in reflex is make sex a taboo. Conservative, “spiritual” families don’t speak of it. There’s so much darkness tied up in it, so many places to “stray off the straight and narrow.” We don’t talk to our sons about the beauty of the female figure for fear that they’ll end up in a chair in front of a stage stuffing dollar bills into lacy undergarments. We don’t talk to our daughters about it for fear that the lace will belong to them! We have drawn a line in the sand and said “God does not live here.”
But God does live there. God created sexuality. God created man. Then he said that it was not good that man would be alone, so he created woman. And he created them both naked. And he told them to multiply. God created sex. Sex is good. Sex is spiritual. We get a picture of God’s love through spousal love that we don’t get anywhere else. We get a picture of pleasure in sexuality that we don’t get anywhere else. God designed it that way.
Sexuality isn’t the only place we do this, it just seems to me the most obvious and culturally relevant to me right now. It’s hard to articulate what my point is here, because maybe my point is a little broad. But here it is: God made the world. He made humanity. He made matter. He gave us bodies with nerves and feeling. He gave us the capability to reason. He gave us emotion and passion and anger and love. There’s a reason we feel at peace standing under an autumn sun as it warms us from the crisp air. There’s a reason we are awestruck when we look up at the black sky, scattered about with pin-pokes of cosmic radiance. There’s a reason the body of our mate feels good in our arms, looks good in our eyes, tastes good on our lips. There’s a reason pain angers us and darkness frightens us. There’s a reason work brings anxiety but relationships give us life.
God made this place. He made it intentionally. There is purpose in everything we see and experience. Like I said before, I absolutely believe that there have been perversions of that creation which bring pain and brokenness and they were never part of God’s plan – but even in those we can generally see hope and light. There is more to life than lines in sand. God created all of this so we could experience His goodness in all of it. I would hate to reach the end of my life and realize just how much of life I really let pass me by because I was so focused on the line in the sand that I couldn’t see the beach I was on, the ocean I was next to, the beautiful island I inhabited, and all the other incredible people there with me. And I hope that as I learn to pick my head up and look and feel and experience God’s creation, that I can help others pick their heads up too. God created us for more.
The Endeavor 