净镜观性：Behold Sex Through the Lens of Purity

新民

God has designed us to be both emotional and rational beings. In the area of sexuality, most of us, if not all, are accustomed to see nude babies without the fancy of sexual inclination. When our children grow up, we are used to bathing and showering them in their young ages, usually before their adolescence, again without invoking sexual fantasy. This proves to us that we are capable of segmenting our inner feelings and thoughts into the proper moral compartment. We are not hopeless. Some may argue that this applies only to chidren or old people out of whack. I beg to differ.

We can recall numerous occasions in life when we are with our loved family members or when we are attending formal business meetings or worship gatherings. We seldom, if at all, have measurable sexual drives during those occasions. We control our inflatable (and importantly, deflatable) vessels quite well. This proves again that we are rational and moral creatures that can be subliminally and sublimely upright and appropriate in our conduct.

What happens when we view or imagine adult nude bodies or provocatively suggestive poses or pictures of the opposite sex (or for a minority group, even of the same sex)? Our imagination is certainly able to run adrift, if not wild, or worse, perverse. In short, we go nuts sometimes. Some point this as man's (and woman's) eroticism and fallibility to sexual sin. While I agree that we all have different degrees of propensity to become less rational and more emotional, we are adequately wired to compartmentalize our spheres of feelings (sexual one included). This eroticism is part of the baggage we necessarily carry with us, for otherwise the procreation of children would become a boring and not very enjoyable event. The Creator certainly has endowed eroticism upon our emotional makeup so that we will not flee from the task of fruitful multiplication and dominion over the earth.

The spirit of God has empowered us to love and overpowered us not to lust. This is true according to the experience of many saints. We are certainly experiencing this transformation in our pilgrim.

I thank God for giving us the eroticism part of our humanity so that we experience the joyful sexual union between a husband and wife. More than this, I thank God for giving us the power of partitioning our feelings to the right person in the right time and place so that we do not let our emotions run untamed.

I sometimes cannot help but wonder that as much as the car works and wears out its pistons in the engine, we do just that fondly, insatiably and tirelessly. We wear out our vessels with age so much so that Viagra and Levitra and the likes are purposefully invented and liberally prescribed to inflate the depressed pistons. Let's adjust our emotional timing belt and tune up the engine's ignition system so that our piston movement is turned on only when needed and morally appropriate.

Is our timing belt and ignition system up for tuning by the Holy Spirit? Exercise the power of God that he has already given, tame that occasionally unruly beast of eroticism, would you?

(2004/12/2-3)