In <May.13.02.31.16.1993.1569@geneva.rutgers.edu> djohnson@cs.ucsd.edu


I'm afraid I see that question as very tendentious.  Try rephrasing it:

	What's more important to Christians?  Love of God or love
	of other human beings?

to which of course the only conceivable answer is that the one is like
the other.  I am *deeply* suspicious of any "flavor" of Christianity
which would elevate one clause of the Great Commandment to a "priority"
over the other such as to claim a conflict.  True, we are told to let
the dead bury the dead, to "hate" family rather than let it keep us from
following Christ.  But the dichotomy here is not one between love of our
fellows and love of God, but of allowing *social* constructs to blind us
to the presense of God.  It is particularly satanic to twist love of God
in such a manner as to become an excuse to treat others as on a different
level than the one who is so caught up in "love" of God.

The trouble comes in the relation of human love and human sex.  Yes, it
has sometimes been the case that the Church has "taught" that all sex
was nasty, evil, sinful stuff.  But when man and wife leave their parental
homes to become helpmates, living in one flesh, it is the sex that is the
vehicle of becoming "one flesh" (if you doubt me, read St. Paul on what
is wrong with frequenting prostitutes :-)).  Less provocatively, what I
mean is just this: sexual bonding is a deeply founded aspect of our social
interaction, and in particular is the foundation of the institution of
marriage, so that unlike with many mammals, human males remain with and
foster the children they beget and support their children's mothers.
This is the schema behind Genesis 2:18-24 (and behind Jesus' citation of
that passage.)

	[ I observe, by the way, that not all human males in fact do as
	  I have just described; but another thing that characterizes
	  human societies is our raising of *non*begotten children, not
	  only orphans and adoptees and the like, but products of the
	  quite common infidelities of humans to their spouses. We are
	  in this not unique in the animal world, but the full extent of
	  social consequences and implications is most intricate for us. ]

Yes, of course it sometimes goes "wrong" -- like all else we do, it is
infected with sin, and you find married "couples" where there is no bond,
and people so deliriously addicted to the initial stages of sexual bond
formation (the "infatuation", "falling in love" phase) that they break
any forming bond in order to keep stepping over the threshold of the deep
unity God has prepared for us, and stepping back out again right away.
Satan may indeed *use* sex as a very handy tool to corrupt human love --
but in the Edenic creation, that is not its nature, and with God's grace
under the power of Christ to make all things new it need not be a problem
for Christians (though we must be vigilant, even in Christ, as the devil
is watchful, prowling around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.)

So, returning to the original question, what is more important to STRAIGHT
Christians?  Sex, or Christianity?  Paul, clearly, tended to think that
sex was at best a distraction from Christianity (though to be charitable
to him, his context was in expectation of immediate parousia, so that the
hard TASKS of a married union -- the lifelong building and adaptation to
each other -- seemed somehow to undercut the "proper" preparation for an
immediate eschaton.  Since we *do not* know the hour of return, we should
act *both* with instant readiness for that *and* with a commitiment to our
mates that proposes a long lifetime together.  And telling people *not* to
bond in such a perspective strikes me as crippling us in the second clause
of the the commandment to love.  I would claim that only a very few saints
have the CAPACITY to deeply love (without sexual tinges or complication,
mind you) their fellow human beings unless they have had a deeply spiritual
life in married union growing together as one flesh -- and that means in
the type case, with a persistent and continued sexual relationship.  We
are human, and little good comes of trying to "mortify the flesh" to the
point of pretending to be otherwise, pretending NOT to be sexual beings.


It depends entirely on context.  If that context is major hypocrisy
on the part of those who find us "stumbling blocks" I am much less of
a mind to efface myself so that they can pontificate about MY sins.

There are some people for whom a life of celibacy is a spritual gift,
and maybe even a victory against a to-them troubling sexual urge that
seems to them to lead only to sin.  Nothing I say should ever be read
as demeaning such a gift.  Nor the even rarer gift of love for all our
conspecifics, and indeed for all God's creation, that can develop to
the full *without* the tutoring of a spousal/helpmate marriage founded
in sex.  But there is a difference between spiritual gifts and penance;
telling people that they HAVE to have a particular gift (or else? what?)
is fraught with manipulation and disregard of the differences of our
spiritual endowments from God.  To one person is given the gift of
speaking in toungues, to another intepretation of toungues; to yet
another prophecy; and to still another teaching.  The notion that some
*particular* gift is required of *all* is one of the earliest heresies.