The meaning of sex....

I don’t know that I can give a short answer to the question of what the “real meaning of sex” is. I speak from a generation that made a lot of mistakes, and when I see how badly we’ve equipped our children to make sense of their own lives and relationships, it looks pretty sad. I guess the clue I would draw is that nature shows us that sex is not just for reproduction but also for that deep human connection we hunger for. It’s designed to be part of healing the essential human condition of loneliness.

This is why Christians have always had an interest in how to handle sexuality. This deep human experience of alienation and loneliness, our difficulty in connecting with each other in love, is an aspect of the shattering of our relationship with God. It’s probably not an exaggeration to say that all religions recognize that there is something wrong in the universe, either with our relationship to God and each other, or in our perception of that relationship. We feel out of sync. Every religion tries to address that experienced disconnect by helping humans recover unity through prayer, meditation, serving the poor, or other means.

Christians believe that God took the initiative to repair the damage by coming to earth in human form. This means that he blessed and affirmed the human body, the body he made at the beginning of creation. He showed that it is possible for a human body to contain the presence of God.

In Christ we, too, can become “partakers of the divine nature,” as St. Peter says; we take on the presence of God like a coal takes on the illumination and warmth of fire. We live “in Christ” as St. Paul says, filled with the healing presence of God. Being bearers of God’s light means that we’re able to love each other and repair the tragic brokenness among the human race.

Read Bodies of Evidence: The Real Meaning of Sex Is Right in Front of Our Eyes
by Frederica Mathewes-Green at Touchstone.