January 24 2024
Sex in the new Creation, and why women are more committed than men.
Sex In the New Creation? Of course. “Be fruitful”, is the first command given by God in Genesis 1, a statement made before the Fall. I wouldn’t be surprised that Eve was pregnant when she ate the Apple and then promptly had a miscarriage.
How about the New Creation? When?
That is the ultimate question today: WHEN? When will Jesus come back? When can we expect the New Creation of which the Bible speaks all the time?
One thing we know: We don’t know “the day and the hour”. That is a fact. But we do know the signs. We do know what it entails: a climate SO hot that it will consume all there is. The Scriptures are very clear on this. Malachi mentions ‘a refiner’s fire’, an apt description because only a fire can purify everything. Peter, the apostle, the Pierre, the Rock, writes that ‘the elements will be destroyed by fire’, and Revelation too forecast a series of calamities, among which ‘the fiery lake of burning sulfur’.
A timely warning.
Arctic News – have a look at its website – paints exactly such a picture, and places the world’s demise at our doorsteps, within the next couple of years. It sees immense danger from the methane hydrates that lurk in the shallow Arctic waters, an incalculable, immense amount of rich carbon deposits, containing gases, by some calculations 100 times more lethal than our comparably innocent-tailpipe exhausts. Once these huge amounts of gases, now tightly compacted through eons of time, burst out in the open, they expand 130-140 times in volume, and cause a sudden spike in air temperature, making the atmosphere we live in, suddenly, spontaneously, and especially lethally, inhabitable, leaving no room for any living entity. “This rise in methane concentrations alone may suffice to cause the Clouds Tipping Point, at 1200 ppm CO? to get crossed. The resulting clouds feedback could on its own cause the temperature to reach more than 18°C above pre-industrial by 2026”, to quote Arctic News.
It also notes: “humans will likely go extinct with a 3°C rise and most life on Earth will disappear with a 5°C rise”. Please note: these are warnings given by bona fide scientists, peer reviewed.
So why do I write all this?
It could quite well be that the world as we know it, the world in which we were born, grew up and matured, will disappear in a wink, as 2 Peter 3 verse 10, warns us. For those who are not familiar with the Bible, let me quote this passage: “suddenly, out of the blue, without warning, the elements will be destroyed by fire”. My paraphrasing.
Sex in the NEW CREATION.
So, what has this to do with SEX IN THE NEW CREATION? How does this chive with Jesus’ statement that ‘there will be no marriage there’?
Fecundity
We identify sex with human intercourse. Actually, it’s much more than that. Thomas Moore writes in The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life, “There is no reason why our surroundings should not be places of beauty, intimacy, pleasure, and desire – all sexual values.”
Sterile Churches.
When God said, “Let there be”, he made a sexual statement. When I place seed in the ground in the Spring, that is a sexual act. “Creating” beauty is a sexual act. This reminds me of the Protestant churches, often lacking in intimacy, pleasure and desire. The church service should be full of cosmic sexuality.
Close reading of the Older Testament and God’s instructions for the Tabernacle and Temple, reveal that their walls were decorated with images of palm trees and flowers; in other words, the temple depicted the world in a nutshell, a microcosm, with the deity living at the centre.
Our churches lack these sexual symbols, lack ‘the fruits’ of our imagination, lack the results of our artistic input. The sterility of our edifices has resulted in a general spiritual malaise, incurable if present trends persist.
Sex and us.
Yes, today we see sex strictly in bodily terms, strictly as a form of satisfying a physical desire. The entire economic world is centered on that: bodily enhancement has become a growth industry, with enticing glimpses of female nudity.
Job’s daughters are a good example of Biblical beauty.
The Bible is no stranger to female beauty. It is revealing that the book, simply called JOB, appearing just before the 150 Psalms, ends with: “Nowhere in the land were there found women as beautiful as Job’s daughters.” The curious part in this section is that, where his sons are not named, Job’s daughters are, indicating that the Old Testament sees women as more committed than men, because they bear the means of fruitfulness. Mary, too, was a woman blessed above all. Joseph more or less acted as an appendix, fading into oblivion, just as Job’s sons, while his daughters, in contrast with the lack of female rights in those days, were full heirs to Job’s immense wealth.
Women and Jesus.
Women financed Jesus’ mission. Women stayed with Jesus till the bitter end, while the men chickened out. Jesus appeared to women first after his return to LIFE. Yes, women play a larger role in Christianity than men. True then, and true now.