Perennial debate. So TNK UK has an excellent section call "18 Minutes with Jesus" by Robert Jeffress.
I recently saw the section on "adultery." In essence Jesus says that breaking the moral law is not just a physical thing its a mental thing. Our minds must obey the law too. This was Jesus' argument with the Pharisees' sect who thought observance of the law was just a physical thing.
So Robert Jeffress argues that the "pleasure of sex" is a God given joy and properly enjoyed within the confines of marriage.
Now I don't know how well this last bit is supported by the New Testament. It does not seem right to me.
Jesus is not recorded as having sexual relations. He way well have had, but it is not recorded. He certainly had no Earthly children, and made no preparations for them after his death. He asked John to care for his mother Mary but no mention of children. Jesus as far as the New Testament is concerned had no family of his own. Metaphorically of course all those who believe in him become his children. So does to follow Jesus mean to shun family?
Certainly not. Disciples were sent in pairs to spread the message, presumably husband and wife. And obviously if no one had children then the human race would end. So no one is rejecting family. But its this focus on "pleasure" which has always been problematic.
Why did Coptic sects form celibate monastic communities if the joy of sexual union with a wife was part of spiritual practice?
One mundane argument is that those who seek to become spiritual teachers will not have time to devote to a family of their own and simply practically avoid family to give that time to other people.
But something jars still. If we start to justify our actions by pleasure do we not slip spiritually.
We sit in front of the fire nice and warm, but need to go to the shops before they close. It's easy just to dwell on present pleasure and ignore what we need to do.
A modern way of thinking is that the draw of future pleasures can motivate us out of present pleasures. We do a pleasure calculation and this is what drives our life.
But what if we have become addicted to drugs? On this pleasure principle we just keep seeking that hit. So perhaps we start to believe there are greater pleasures to be had if we quit the drugs. But actually this is not quite true. An ex-heroine addict told me that while sex activates a good number of our brains pleasure receptors, heroine does them all. As I understand it there is no greater "hit" than drugs. They are designed exactly for a "hit."
From my own experience, and from text books this is not quite true either. The greatest pleasure, in the language of Sanskrit, is Moksha, translate as liberation.
When we achieve Moksha we do not just get the weight of the world lifted from our shoulder, we even get the weight of our shoulder lifted. Moksha is that realisation that actually we do not really exist in the body at all. If you look very carefully you can see this. There is simply no reason to believe we have anything to do with the body or the world. Firstly a simple visit to the anatomy lab will show us there is nothing in the body that is not part of the world. So this body/world distinction is false. There is just world. And then we are in trouble because if there is just world where are we? The answer is simple: nowhere! We are not in the world. But we are not outside the world either. we just drop trying to be somewhere. When we put that down then we get Moksha. Now Moksha is Absolute Peace, unlike anything we can imagine. Some say sex gives them release, but everyone knows that rather tediously the need comes back and the release is needed again. The constant need to open this value itself becomes a burden. Moksha means we just put this down, it is not us or ours.
Quick note. Eckhart Tolle liberated realising one night that the depression he was feeling was not his or anyone's: who is experiencing this depression is asked? And realised it was just depression with no one suffering as a result of it. He ended up sleeping on a park bench in Russel Square, London with not a care in the world. The thing is the body remains as things that needs care. So what was once driven by "need" becomes driven by care and compassion for our body. We treat it like we would someone else, making sure that it is fed and watered, slept. But as for happy this is not a problem any more because unhappiness was only caused by feeling bound to the body.
Cutting blog hort. The spiritual path is pleasure of its own. So why would we seek pleasure in marriage? The purpose of marriage is family and children. Pleasure is attendant but not the point.
This points at why adultery is frowned upon. If worldly pleasure are to become diminished as we liberate and become more ready for God, then absolutely adultery is no go. Eventually however the pleasure of sexual union within marriage becomes less important too. Marriage is not just a vessel to contain sexual pleasure, it is a thing in itself.
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