Healthy Living

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SEXUALITY AND PURITY
Sexuality is God’s design. It is the most determining factor in a human being.. Sexuality is not just about sex or erotic feelings; it is not an issue that concerns only the married persons or those aspiring to the married life; it is an all-inclusive energy of our embodied existence. It is the primal force of interpersonal life, the God-created ‘’allurement’’ at the heart of the divine and all human relationships. The gift of touch, our eye contact that sometimes speaks louder than words, our emotions and relational energies are all part of our sexuality. It especially concerns affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way the aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others.
Adam’s sexuality made him yearn for a companion when he was all alone so much so that when the Almighty presented him with Eve, he made an exclamation of fulfillment of a longing. The love they shared was so pure and holy that being physically and emotionally naked before each other was healthy and within the rules of the game, but then evil struck. The enemy of our souls and the counterfeiter was allowed into the picture and pure love was tainted by the fall to his skirmishes.

Man with his senses adores beauty. Our senses are given to us to see, smell, taste, touch and generally appreciate things around us. Some of the things are appealing while some others appall us. Discrimination and judgment are in the eyes and ear before they are in the intellect.
That instinct for gratitude and celebration that religion formalizes as worship from the beginning permeates our sensory contact with the world. A baby feels loved when it is cuddled. The eye is arrested and sinks into happy contemplation of the beauty of creation. The fingertips praise the smooth stone. We are born making sense of things and any attempt to divorce this sensuality from spiritually only leads to a dis-spirited world.
Women, like flowers are created for adoration and admiration. They feel lost or incomplete and sad when they are not admired and appreciated. The men themselves are not immune to this appreciation even though they prefer their ego and hero image to be respected.
This show of respect and appreciation should naturally flow between the sexes without undue solicitation for it. But our wild goose chase for power and materialism impede this flow and a void is created in us resulting in desperate moves to court that attraction. Again whenever we downgrade the practice of the discipline of delight by excessive chase of materialism and techno-eccentricsm, we kill our joy and fuel stress and depression. Anxiety tightens and narrows the ducts and belly and constricts the flow of breath, so that spontaneity and surrender to inspiration become difficult.
Besides not creating time to appreciate beauty and one another, men’s chauvinism and consequent subjugation of their female counterpart have all but fuelled the dampening of female sexuality. In most patriarchal societies like in most parts of Africa, the men dictated the level of care the woman and children received - attention to their emotional needs depended on the mood of the man. And if the woman complained, she was disciplined either by outright neglect and concentration of the man on his concubine or by the man bringing in another wife to take her position emotionally.
As the women begin to find their voice due to civilization and fight for human right, they rebel against the subjugation by asserting their right and sometimes, by acting out in sexism often without much care about moral ethics and decorum.
Can we connect this to the high rate of divorce and excessive display of sex appeal that has taken the center stage of the modern world? It is a rebellion against the long time maltreatment of the womenfolk and an offshoot of human neglect of his sensual needs occasioned by technological eccentrism and civilization.
With the flagrant display of sexism in the quest for admiration and identity, a lot of us now go beyond the safe and holy ground of decorum and respect for one another to the unholy ground of indecency, abuse and exploitation. Some social analysts like Sam Keem even assert that patriarchal puritanism has increased pornography, sexual violence and hypocrisy talk about rebellion and acting out.
What can we do to reclaim graceful sexuality?

We must affirm our sexuality and try to adore the beauty of one another with decorum and respect. Affirming our sexuality helps us live wholly as emotional beings and marrying that energy to chastity authenticates us as both emotional and rational beings created in the image and likeness of God to give Him glory. The desire in us may be fierce because our Creator longs for us with a fierce passion (Jm4:5). He also wants us to love one another with depth but it is also very evident that the passion can go wild and create problems for us if we don’t tame it and channel it appropriately. The love with which the Almighty created Adam and Eve was meant to be subjected to discipline and obedience to remain authentic and holy but they failed the test and problems arose.
Sexuality, even with the erotic component of it, was unashamed, holy and pure soon after creation. Adam and Eve were naked and didn’t even know it, which meant that lust and exploitation were completely out of the question for them.
But the serene and pure life could not last because they listened to Satan. They rejected God’s way and the unashamed and pure Eros became a shamed and self-centered one giving rise to the language of the curse, ‘’ …the man shall rule over you’’ (Gen3:16). Subjugation, exploitation, abuse and misuse now came into ‘being’ as the offspring of that curse. The result of all these is that headship has been made synonymous with dominating power which usually breeds timidity and eventual rebellion all of which are incompatible with real love and responsible use of freedom. The battle over supremacy and gender emancipation gradually took the center stage of our lives while mutual respect which is fundamentally expedient for graceful sexuality and chastity became a very scarce commodity
The result of the fall for human sexuality has been, as Karl Barth puts it, “a vacillation between evil eroticism on the one hand, and an evil absence of eroticism on the other”. Most people now divorce the promptings of the brain from that of the heart and go full hug to satisfy their fleshly desire on the one hand while a few others shun the gift of touch outrightly for fear of being misled. In either case man is far from living wholesomely and keeps moaning and dancing back and forth.
We should not turn ourselves dizzy with worthless dance though since there is a solution somewhere:
Indisputable evidence has shown that a solution lies with the “Lord of the dance”, the Bridegroom, the Spirit-man, who is able to marry the celibate Nazarene witsh the Passionate Lover of men and women. He was holiness personified and yet He welcomed the friendship of women, allowed His youngest and emotion -laden apostle to literally lean close to his heart, displayed His emotion and humanness by weeping at the burial place of Lazarus and knew exactly when to go aside in solitude to tend the needs of the Spirit. He is the Vine that gives nourishment to the branches and yet He finds it important to call Himself a Bridegroom who longs passionately for His Bride the Church; the Man of sanctity is the Man of love. He beckons us to draw near and learn how to love truly and still be holy.
His words to us all are:
“Come then, my love;
My darling come with me,
You are like a dove that hides
In the crevice of a rock.
Catch the foxes, the little foxes before
They ruin our vineyard in bloom”
(Song of Songs. 2:13b-15GNB)

Let the brides respond to His seduction. Let them say; ‘I come to you my love and my Lord for intimacy and tutelage’!

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