When the film adaptation of a wildly popular erotic novel — “50 Shades of Grey” — comes out on our annual celebration of love, you know our culture has a disordered conception of the relationship between love and sexuality.
We have a sex obsession. I am constantly reminded of it everywhere. From social media to magazines in the grocery store checkout line, I am told that my worth amounts to my sexual utility, and that I should view others in this way as well. This disordered emphasis results from a rift in our own personal sexuality.
We are all sexually broken. We all naturally order our sexuality toward our own satisfaction.
This brokenness causes me to express my sexuality selfishly. This pursuit of my own sexual desires is lust, which compels me to make my own satisfaction the end of my sexual experiences, reducing women to instruments of pleasure. By reducing a woman’s worth to her ability to please me sexually, I no longer see her as a person, but as a shadow of who she is. I begin to reduce every woman to her perceived sexual utility; I remove the personhood from her humanity and make her an object. The results: The college hookup culture, the porn-saturated entertainment business, and the ever-growing feeling of worthlessness many experience upon rejection.
Lust forces me into a constant state of comparison to my sexual competitors, against whom I must present myself as more sexually worthy. I must have a better chance than they of capturing the objects of my lust. I’ve reduced my own worth to my body’s sexual utility.
At the bottom of this pit, I am enslaved to my sexual desires and what satisfies them. The sexual revolution has not brought freedom; rather, it’s left despair and an atmosphere of personal interactions bereft of meaningful love.
To change this, I must begin to see people as they are, not just their bodily shadows. I can only do this through “agápē” love. “Agápē” love tells me that I must first love myself, not selfishly, but charitably. Once I love myself appropriately, I see that same inherent worth in others. Recognizing this moves me to love others charitably, which involves sacrifice by making the concerns and worries of the individual I love my own.
Viewing my sexuality in light of agápē love inspires celibacy outside marriage, as I realize the uniqueness of the covenantal contract of marriage that proceeds from agápē love. The contract and language of a marriage contain a level of commitment absent from casual hookups or even dating. This covenantal commitment elevates sexual interactions to an extension of agápē love for a spouse.
Sex becomes a gift to my spouse because I express my sexuality to ultimately fulfill her sexual needs. I’ve removed my needs and act on hers alone. In the original “Book of Common Prayer” Solemnization of Marriage, the groom participating in the wedding ceremony ended his vows to his wife by including the phrase “with my body I thee worship.” This acknowledged that marriage is two becoming one, and in recognizing that, the groom devoted his body to his wife. In the absence of such a covenant, my sexuality is only expressed in my selfish brokenness; I can only act to satisfy my own desires.