Sexuality and Chastity -the Church

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Sexuality and Chastity -the Churchs perspective.
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Sexuality as Divine Fire

• Life is a gift from God, and sexuality is a great
  power within life so that we might also create
  life.
• In Genesis, after God creates, he says It is
  good indeed, it is very good.
• Mature sexuality is when we co-create with God,
  break out of selfishness and feel as God feels
  when he looks at creation.

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Sexuality as Divine Fire

• Sexuality - the centre of the spiritual life.
• Healthy sexuality - leads to selflessness and
  joy.
• Unhealthy sexuality - revolves around selfishness
  and unhappiness.
• Happiness in life hinges on how healthy is our
  approach towards sexuality.

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Sexuality as Divine Fire

• Spirituality helps us understand sexuality
  correctly.
• The power of sexuality can be the most powerful
  force on the planet, for love, life and blessing.
• Abuse of this can lead to death, hate and
  destruction

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Toward a Christian Understanding of Sexuality

1. Sexuality as an Awareness of Having Been Cut Off
2. Sexuality versus Genitality
3. A Christian Definition of Sexuality
4. A Few Nonnegotiable Christian Principles

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Sexuality as an Awareness of Having Been Cut Off

• Latin root word of sex is secare - to cut off
  or to sever.
• To be sexed is to be cut off from the whole.
• A cut off branch of a tree would know that if it
  wants to flower and fruit, it needs to reconnect
  itself to the tree.

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• In our experience of life, we are also cut off
  from the great whole in our existence.
• In our craving for sex, we are actually craving
  for a re-connection.
• Sex is a dimension of our very awareness.
• .We sense that we are incomplete, unwhole,
  lonely, cut off, from a whole.
• We long for union. The sexes are like that.

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• Alone, we are incomplete and aching for a
  wholeness.
• This ache is an energy that is painful and great
  at the same time.
• It is the engine that drives our body and spirit.
• Sexuality thus is not just about having sex. Sex
  and having sex are NOT the same.

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2. Sexuality verses Genitality

• Sexuality - The drive for love, communion,
  community, friendship, family, affection,
  wholeness, consummation, creativity,
  self-perpetuation, immortality, joy, delight,
  humour, self-transcendence.

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• Genitality - (having sex) is only one aspect of
  the larger reality of sexuality.
• Genitality is only one particular focus of energy
  for a specific purpose.
• Do NOT look down upon genitality as did many of
  our earlier spiritual fathers may have.
• Celibacy is not to be seen as a spiritual ideal.
• Sex is perhaps one of Gods greatest gift to life
  (animal and human).

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• At its best, genitality offers humans the
  opportunity of genuine intimacy this side of
  heaven.
• Theologians have even seen the sexual encounter
  as a taste of heaven.
• Genitality does not hold all that sexuality is
  supposed to carry (the worlds view)
• Popular culture sees sex as only having sex - a
  tragic reduction.

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• We can have lots of sex but still lack real love,
  community, family, friendship.
• We can be celibate and have all these.

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3. A Christian Definition of Sexuality

• Sexuality is a good, powerful, sacred energy
  given by God to overcome our incompleteness.
• It is given to find our way back to the Garden of
  Eden - to make us co-creators with God.
• Sexuality in its full bloom has many faces.

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• Sexuality is not about finding a lover of a
  friend. It is about overcoming separateness by
  giving life and blessing it.
• Mature sexuality is about giving oneself over to
  community, friendship, family, service,
  creativity, humour, delight, so that we can help
  bring life to the world.

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4. A Few Nonnegotiable Christian Principles.

1. Sex is something sacred.
2. Sex must be linked to marriage, monogamy, and a
   covenantal commitment that is all-embracing and
   permanent.
3. Sex is an inner dynamic that leads its partners
   to sanctity.
4. Sex always needs the protection of a healthy
   chastity.

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• Chastity is not the same as celibacy.
• Chastity has to do with an all experiencing, and
  the appropriateness of any experience.
• Chastity is reverence. Sin is irreverence.
• Chastity is non-violence and non-violating.
• Chastity maintains integration - wholeness.

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• Chaste acts do not cross others moral,
  psychological, emotional, aesthetic and sexual
  boundaries.
• People are gifts in our lives, and chastity
  preserves this gift.
• We lack chastity when we cross boundaries
  prematurely or irreverently.
• Chastity is patience and respect, leading to
  gratitude and joy.

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• Sex always needs the protection of chastity.
• Sexuality is an energy that is powerful and is
  not always friendly.
• Sexuality is a holy fire that is a good servant
  but a bad master.
• Before sex, there needs to be some taboos.

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• Our culture objects to this. Sexual revolution
  fought this.
• Did the sexual revolution help us to
• -relieve loneliness?
• -build lasting communities?
• -build more stable souls?
• -result in less sexual exploitation of others?
• -create a society of less lonely, more loving,
  more gracious and happy adults?

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• Christianity has struggled to celebrate fully and
  in a healthy way sexual passion.
• The world is struggling to honestly look at what
  happens to our innocence when we devalue
  chastity.
• Both need to learn from each other.
• Passion and chastity, sex and purity must be
  brought together.

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Abuses of the gift of sexuality

• Manipulating others sexually, treating them as
  objects
• Rape
• Pornography, prostitution
• Fornication
• Masturbation
• Homosexual genital acts

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• Christianity must be the moral force that
  challenges all to celebrate the goodness of sex.
• Otherwise, Christianity will always be seen as
  the enemy.
• Our culture must re-learn the values of chastity
  and purity.
• The world must admit that there is a terrible
  price to pay for devaluing chastity and purity.

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Our lives as unconsummated passion - A Christian
Perspective

• The frustration of an unfinished piece of art.
• In this world, there is no full joy - we are
  always frustrated.
• This applies to our sexuality - we all have needs
  that are not met, and may not even be met.
• Key to understanding the following is important

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• Understand the time we are living in.
• - (interim time).
• b. Understand that sexuality has a very wide
  hunger.

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• How to handle this restlessness
• - Turn it into a healthy solitude.
• - Solitude making this aloneness into a
  strength that gives strength to others.
• Accept that we are incomplete and dis-eased.
• Stop expecting that there will be a perfect
  solution to be completely happy in this life.
• Get familiar with an inner journey.
• Know that this journey is an unending discovery
  of self.

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d. See sexual restlessness as oneness with the
poor

• Jesus reveals something by his incarnation as a
  sexual being.
• Shows that love and sex are not the same thing,
  and that chastity and waiting and
  inconsummation are important in this in-between
  time
• His celibacy was key to his solidarity with the
  poor.

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• In choosing aloneness, Christ was one with those
  who did not choose this but were victims of
  poverty, violence, war, and and unjust economic
  system.
• To sleep alone is to be poor, to be stigmatized
  to be outside of the norm.
• Sexual inconsummation puts us together with the
  victims.
• Even married people have this element of
  aloneness and they must use this energy
  creatively.

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e. In its inadequacy, our love has a real power.

• In our deepest relationships, we need a
  confessor, someone we can stop lying to, someone
  we dont have to wear masks in front of, someone
  to whom we know that our love we give is not
  enough.
• We need to acknowledge that parts of us will
  forever remain untouched.

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• This tragedy has a life-giving power. Knowing
  that its there allows us to rise above it.
• Once this is accepted, we come to the centre
  where even in its inadequacies, marriage and
  celibacy are places where God in his brokenness
  exist.