Love
Stories
By Stephen
Terry
Sabbath
School Lesson Commentary for March 17 – 23, 2012
“How
beautiful you are and how pleasing, my love, with your delights! Your stature
is like that of the palm, and your breasts like clusters of fruit. I said, ‘I
will climb the palm tree; I will take hold of its fruit.’ May your breasts be
like clusters of grapes on the vine, the fragrance of your breath like apples, and your mouth like the best wine.” Song of
Songs 7:6–9, NIV
The intensity of sexual expression in the Bible is
shocking to some who see sexual intimacy as somehow outside the realm of
Christian experience. But in the beginning, mankind was created sexual. The
intent expressed in Genesis is that men and women were created to be paired as
complimentary to one another. Notice that the word used was “complimentary” not
“identical.” It is in this difference that we find much of the secret of sexual
attraction. Biologists and anthropologists have researched and published reports
about various theories surrounding sexual attraction, but most people know what
they are attracted to and what they are not, even if they may find it difficult
to express it in words. I have not found anyone who says that they are
attracted to their partner saying “They are shaped just like me,” or “We are so
physically alike that I could not resist falling in love.”
Instead a young man with close cropped hair may speak of
the shining, flowing tresses of his paramour. A slender, young slip of a woman
may speak of the broad shoulders and narrow waist of her young man. That young
man may speak of the gentle curves of his woman’s hips or even her breasts as
Solomon did. The differences become appealing when shone upon with the light of
love. Even the French, who are proverbial for their veneration of love, have a
saying, “Vive la difference!” While equality of opportunity is certainly right
for men and women and an idea whose time is fully due, when it comes to our
sexuality, difference is the spice that makes love fragrant.
What does this have to do with God? When we look around
at the world, we see that God created not uniformity so much as diversity. Just
as God did not make men and women with the same cookie cutter, He formed the
world not to be uniform so much as He formed it to be harmonious. He knew that
harmony cannot be achieved without individuality. No orchestra can achieve
harmony with everyone playing the same note. In the same way, nature cannot achieve
harmony without the diversity of its creation. Whether we look at the uniqueness
of human fingerprints and retinal patterns or the apparently infinitely unique
snowflakes on a winter’s day, the message is the same. Diversity is the pattern
for everything both inanimate and living as it comes from the hand of the
Creator. It is also the pattern for marriage and intimacy.
We have a saying in English based on the laws of polar
magnetism that “likes repel and opposites attract.” This is anecdotally expressed
in romance novels and romantic movies, when the high society girl falls for the
auto mechanic from the “wrong side of the tracks,” or when the scion of a wealthy
family falls for a nightclub singer. Often called “forbidden love,” these
stories are the life blood of romance writers who know that our nature is such
that it is drawn to the sexual energy raised when these disparate individuals
find the differences impossible to resist. This desire for something different
is so strong that many a philandering spouse, both male and female, has used it
as an excuse for their unfaithfulness when things at home became too
predictable, too familiar. However, while this difference may bring a couple
together sexually in the beginning, God frowns on it as being an excuse for adultery.
The same author, who wrote the Song of Songs, also tells
us in Proverbs, “Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own
well. Should your springs overflow in the streets, your streams of water in the
public squares? Let them be yours alone, never to be shared with strangers. May
your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth. A
loving doe, a graceful deer—may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be
intoxicated with her love. Why, my son, be intoxicated with another man’s wife?
Why embrace the bosom of a wayward woman?” Proverbs 5:15-20, NIV
At this point, some might say, “Yes, he wrote this, but
he had hundreds of wives and concubines.” In fact, during counseling sessions
with those who have given their affections to someone other than their spouse,
I have had those who have tried to justify their unfaithfulness to their spouse
by raising the issue of polygamy in the Old Testament. However, even with
widespread polygamy, The Bible made it clear that adultery was wrong. Adultery
is not the taking of many wives. It is the abandonment of one wife for another.
While the Old Testament, patriarchal polygamist provided for all of his wives,
the adulterer funneled his resources to the one he was presently involved with.
As it was then, so it is today. Adultery commonly means that the betrayed
spouse is impoverished and if there are children they are financially abandoned
as well. If this were not true, then there would not be the need for the
governmental agencies established to make sure that these abandoned children
have the financial support they need. Their existence establishes that this is
so, and their growth from year to year shows that the problem is increasing
rather than decreasing.
God wants us to live in harmonious relationships with
our spouses, with our families, with our neighbors. He also wants that type of relationship
with us as well. In fact, He refers to His relationship with us with the
symbolism of marriage, and when we neglect it, He calls that adultery. “I gave
faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all
her adulteries. Yet I saw that her unfaithful sister Judah had no fear; she
also went out and committed adultery. Because Israel’s immorality mattered so
little to her, she defiled the land and committed adultery with stone and wood.”
Jeremiah 3:8-9, NIV It may seem strange that the Bible would use the imagery of
marriage and adultery regarding our relationship with God since there is no
other God, but this text reveals that the Israelites nonetheless managed to fashion
“gods” of wood and stone as objects of adultery. This should be an object
lesson to us that not only other people can be our partners in adultery but
even inanimate objects can steal the affections that rightly belong to our
spouse.
If we treat God in this manner, is it difficult to believe
that we are wayward enough to treat each other this way as well? It is no
secret that the path to broken marriages is just as wide in the Christian
community, today, as it is in secular society. Perhaps similarly to how Ronald
Reagan’s “Trickle-Down Economics” was supposed to bring affluence to the impoverished,
we enjoy a “trickle-down” spirituality as the neglect in our spiritual
relationship to our loving God brings neglect to all of our other
relationships, too. Do we see our relationship with God as the epitome of
desire? Or do we see it only as something of convenience? When it gets in the
way of what we want to do, we cast it aside. We may be missing something
wonderful if we do.
When
God pours grace into our lives, do we experience spiritual arousal? In the
mid-seventeenth century, Bernini tried to portray this level of spiritual
intimacy in his work, “The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa.” As angels pierce her
heart with darts of God’s love and grace, her experience of ecstasy becomes
virtually orgasmic in intensity. While the artist surely did not intend to
portray the spiritual as being simply a physical sexual orgasm, he found that
the allegory of such an image helps portray the desirability of an intimate
spiritual relationship with a loving God.
In the beginning, when God created man and woman, we
read that they became one flesh. That is accomplished through the intimacy of
sexual attraction and union. When we sunder that, it leaves torn attachments
that have been ripped apart in such a way that even with healing effects of
time, the scars may be permanent and the damage irreparable in this life. We
often hear people say of those who have been hurt that they need to “move on.” Indeed, we may be forced to do just that, but
the injured partners may never be able to “move” as they once did. The betrayed
trust hurts, and that pain will go with them into any new relationships. That
is why Jesus said, “So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what
God has joined together, let no one separate.” Matthew 19:6, NIV
As it is with our spouses, so it is with God. When we
form a spiritual union and choose to sever the bond, the wounds of that separation
will speak to our hearts as long as we live. Also, unlike our human
relationships, there is no other God that we can seek to replace the relationship
with. As long as we walk the Earth, there will be emptiness as we feel the
loss. We may attempt to quiet that voice with other things, but they cannot
fill the void we feel. When the activity stops and everything is quiet, our
hearts will still speak to us about the emptiness we feel.
The Bible tells us that when a man divorces his wife and
she marries another, he cannot change his mind and remarry her. (See
Deuteronomy 24:1-4) To do so would be a “no win” situation. Either way, the
adulterer is causing pain to someone. This is the tragedy of adultery. But
fortunately those who have committed spiritual adultery can still find
restoration. Since there really is no other God, there is by definition no real
opportunity to become married to another god. God himself calls us back into relationship
to Him in spite of what we may have done to break off our intimacy with Him. Even
though, as we read in Deuteronomy, it was not allowed for Hosea to do so, God
commanded him to take back his wife as an illustration that God would take back
His people. “The LORD said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again,
though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the LORD
loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin
cakes.” Hosea 3:1, NIV While with man,
the pain of destroyed intimacy can leave permanent scars, God is willing to
heal us if we once again make Him the object of our spiritual desire. This may
seem hard for us to understand. However, the Bible tells us, “With man this is
impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Matthew 19:26, NIV No wonder Saint
Theresa found such ecstasy when faced with a love like that.
This Commentary is a Service of Still
Waters Ministry
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