Ask I Will.

I'm currently reading a book entitled "Real Sex" by Lauren Winner. I would highly recommend it to anyone who thinks about sex or sexuality, meaning I would recommend it to everyone. I just read chapter three, "Talking about Sex", and it was a good one. Winner insists that the argument for chastity is more than a “Jesus said it, I do it” mentality; rather, it is a complex discussion involving marriage, sexuality, our bodies and the created design for each. She presents a fascinating discussion involving the biblical intention of sexuality and the human body and the thwarted view we hold of each as a result of the fall. “Sexual desire,” she writes, “is not, in itself, a wicked thing. Rather, in the fall, our sexual desires were disordered, and one task of Christian ethics is to help us rightly order them”.

Winner writes that the change is society views of individuality and community have profoundly affected our perspective of sexuality. Using an example from the novel Jane and Prejudice by Barbara Pym, she explores how uncomfortable it is for us to talk to those in our lives about sexuality on a personal level. This example reveals how privatized the topic of one’s sexuality has become, explaining that, though sexuality is more readily discussed, and perhaps ever overly discussed, in public, one’s personal sex life is considered private property; the mentality that sex is discussable, but my private engagement in sex is not, pervades our society.

Winner’s evaluation of the slow and constant changing of societal perspectives on sexuality is well illustrated in her example of the evolution of social dancing:
“In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, ‘the old ring dances, in which all couples danced together,’ were gradually replaced by ‘social ballroom dancing, in which each couple dances alone.’ For many people today, of course, social ballroom dancing is a thing of the past. It has been replaced by the rave, in which a crowd of people dance not so much as a community, but as a group of individuals, boogying in the same room, alone."

This example illustrates accurately the Christian, and perhaps otherwise, perspective on sexuality. However, Winner argues it should not be so. “Sex is communal rather than private, but it is still personal rather than public,” she insists. Her basis for this is that believers, as a Body, are to be one with each other and hold high accountability within our sacred community.

Interesting, is it not? Sex pervades most of our social circles, talked about and over talked about, and yet I've never heard it discussed in this manner. It provokes questions and gives little fast and easy answers. But isn't it a much clearer picture of the Gospel? If sex is to show us the union between Christ and the Church, isn't this a more accurate? Or at least a less foggy mirror of that union?

Like I said. Lot's of questions. Little fast and easy answers. But ask I will. :)