spirituality and sexuality linked

Great post by Alan Burrow on the link between spirituality and sexuality.

Have you noticed how the culture war flash points are all sexual? Abortion, gay marriage, gender interchangeability, sex education, pornography, no fault divorce, all of these are connected to sex and sexuality. This shocks Christians, but it shouldn’t. It is not only predictable, it is inevitable. You see, there is an embedded creational link between sexuality and spirituality. We were created for monogamy in both, and when a society loses one, it won’t be long before it loses the other. Why? Because God would have it so.

The Apostle Paul, when describing the death spiral of humanity in turning away from God, portrays it as a spiritual/sexual two-step. (Rom 1.21-27.) Of all the cultural manifestations Paul could name, the ones he does name are sexual – proceeding from general immorality to homosexuality and lesbianism – and in each case Paul says God gave humanity over to these things because of prior spiritual infidelity toward God. (Ibid.)

When we turn back to Genesis, we see that second only to being a spiritual being, made in God’s image, man is a sexual being, made male and female. (Gen 1.27.) And just as God joined Adam and Eve to Himself spiritually, so He joined them to one another sexually. (Gen 2.24-25.) Thus the so called “state of nature” was not a state of random spirituality and sexuality, but of monogamy in both. True religion and true marriage were not conventions society imposed to help the evolution of the species. They were the starting point, the base line, and departure from them results in the devolution of the species. Throughout the Old Testament, God calls idolatry adultery. (E.g., Jer 3.8, 12-14; Hosea 1.2; 2.2-5.) This is because He created marriage to reflect the spiritual union between Himself and humanity. The Church is a restoration of what the human race was created to be. (Eph 5.30-32 (quoting Gen 2.23-24).)

God created spirituality and sexuality such that neither can stand still. They are either moving toward monogamy or away from it, and they don’t stop. Thus America moved from Christianity to deism to humanism to the polymorphic spirituality we have today. At the same time, America moved from dedicated marriages to men having mistresses on the side to couples openly living together to the polymorphic sexuality we have today. When a society insists on the right of every individual to invent and pursue whatever spirituality they want, the same society will insist on the right of every individual to invent and pursue whatever sexuality they want. And that society will rage at anyone or anything that stands in the way – namely the one true God and marriage as He created it.

This is why conservatism and “family values” will not save the day. Only a genuine return to the one true God through Christ will reverse our current course. I am not saying Christians shouldn’t use political means to resist further erosion. But we must understand that that is a rear guard battle that will at best only slow down our rate of descent. Only a massive revival which sees tens of millions of Americans coming to Christ will turn this ship around. It is impossible to have “family values” for very long without Christ. Why? Because God would have it so.

(ht)