Monday: Sex Mastery by Kingdom Mastery
WEEK 15
MONDAY
SEX MASTERY BY KINGDOM MASTERY
1 Corinthians 6:9-11
We saw yesterday that the Acts of the Apostles hasn’t a single sex reference in it, yet men and women mingled freely. And we saw that the probable reason was that in an age obsessed with sex they had found a new obsession. They became obsessed with the Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s work in human lives. The higher obsession absorbed the lower obsession into itself.
That is an eminently sane solution. The attempt to get rid of the dominance of sex desire by repression ends only in the desire coming back stronger. A hermit of India told me he had not looked on the face of a woman for forty years. It was the first thing he told me! Evidently it was uppermost in his mind. For forty years he had been running away from sex and turned round, and the first thing he thought of was sex. I saw a group of sadhus trying to murder sex desire by mutilating their sex organs, and you could see they were obsessed with sex. The attempt to get rid of all desire, as in Buddhism, results only in another desire, namely, the desire to get rid of desire. It was said of Immanuel Kant, the philosopher, that when he dismissed his coachman, Henry, and was troubled about the dismissal, he put up two signs at the place where he walked up and down in philosophic meditation: “Don’t think of Henry.” The attempt to do so only brought Henry back into mind!
The modern solution is to think of sex frankly and openly. But that too is just as great a failure as suppression. For as I’ve had to say again and again, whatever gets your attention gets you. Sex gets the attention of the modern man and woman, and it gets them. They become sex-obsessed, and therefore get the least out of sex, except disillusionment. The lust turns to disgust. This isn’t chance; it’s law, inherent law. The people who pay most attention to sex get the least out of it.
Sex must find its place if it is to find itself. And its place is not first place. God is God—not sex. Sex trying to be God ends in frustration instead of in fruitfulness. God intended it to be fruitful. How?
O Lord, you have written your laws within us. We thank you for them. For your laws are your preventive grace, preventing us from hurting ourselves and others. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Sex will not master me, for Christ already has the mastery of me.