Over the course of the school year with our 7/8th grade students, we’ve been leading discussions about life-giving love, human dignity, and the value of ourselves and others. Ultimately, this serves as a warmup into discussions about the Church’s teaching on Sex & Marriage. What Marriage is meant to be, and how sex plays a role in God’s plan to build His Kingdom.
We need to start with an adequate discussion on how infinitely God loves us as unrepeatable individuals, created in His image and likeness…how He loves all of our characteristics, all of our faults, all of our beauty, all of our sins, all of our successes. Because God calls us all to love others as He loves us. Jesus says it right in the bible! “I give you a new commandment: Love one another. Just as I have loved you.” John 13:34. We need to know how He loves us, and openly receive His love, so we can fully understand how to love our spouse.
How did Jesus love us? He suffered greatly (ridicule, scourging, crucifixion, etc) and gave up His whole life and body, for us! This is how we are supposed to love. This is what marriage is about. This is what loving our neighbors and family is all about. We shouldn’t be looking for ways to better our life at the expense of others, quite the opposite. To grow in holiness, we should be seeking ways to create a positive impact on others without regard to our own ambitions.
What a life of holiness draws up closer to, and points us towards, is an eternal exchange in the fullness of God’s love in heaven. The infinite giving and receiving of Love. We see this in the Holy Trinity. God, the Father, gives life and Love to His Son (Jesus). Jesus is receiving the Love, and by receiving God’s love, Jesus is actually giving Love right back to God and this is happening constantly and infinitely through the Holy Spirit.
Marriage is meant to be a sign of this eternal exchange of Love.
Another sign of this is Jesus (our bridegroom) dying on the cross for us, the church (his bride). God wants to marry us! He shows this by shedding his life-giving blood for us on the cross. Below is an image of the Unity Cross depicting this imagery. I might come back to this in another post and describe it in more detail and some of the theology within it. For now, I think it is a beautiful image to use here.
What do you mean? How is marriage a sign of that? Adam, let me tell you, my marriage is full of blunders and challenges, its nothing like that! True, we will never be able to live out the perfect Love that is God. We are human beings, we mess up! We are all broken, it’s OK. God loves you right there. He wants us to also love ourselves, and our spouses, right there - in the mess of our suffering, pain, wounds, and all of the joys of marriage as well.
This full, complete, self-giving Love, shows us how to love in our marriages. It is right in our marriage vows, the very essence of what we are proclaiming to our spouse, in front of God and our family/community. “We come freely, without reservation, to honor each other, and accept children lovingly from God.” The last part is the juicy part that clearly shows us why marriage is only meant to be between a man and a woman.
God calls us to “be fruitful and multiply” Genesis 1:28. We are taking a vow in our marriage to be open to receiving children. This is why using contraception is a sin. When we use contraception, we are actively breaking our wedding vows to our spouse. When it boils down to it, using contraception is actually just as sinful as cheating on(not honoring) our spouse would be.
So, I hope that provides some context for what we’ve talked about with the students the last couple weeks regarding how we are meant to be open to children when married couples have sex. This brought up an important question from one of the students.
“Can married couples have sex for fun or only to make kids?”
Dr. Bursch (our fearless class leader) answered this question quite well for the students. But I felt like you parents would like to learn about it as well.
Yes, we always need to be open to the gift of life/children when we have sex within a marriage. That is true. But God, in the beginning, created everything, and He said it is good. God created pleasure and that is good too.
We are meant to enjoy sex within marriage! Of course!
It is also meant to bring us closer to our spouse and grow in our love for each other, to strengthen that bond. Where we can get sidetracked, back into sin, is if we begin to treat our spouse as an object of lust. We are never allowed to use our spouse for our own lustful desires, even within a marriage. Being married isn’t a license to do whatever we want. Remember, a holy marriage is meant to be a sign of God’s life-giving love, until death do you part.
Have a blessed week! Stay warm!
-Adam D
