Theology of the Body

John Paul II gave a series of talks in the 1980's on marriage, sexuality and the relationship between man, woman and God. JPII attempts to convey to all faithful readers (not just Catholics) that "the body, in fact, and only the body, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine. It has been created to transfer into the visible reality of the world, the mystery hidden from eternity in God, and thus to be a sign of it." So here we are, our bodies being products of God's own creative work, with its physical needs like all other creation, but spiritual needs given our own unique spiritual placement in the world given God's work within us. What then do we do with this? God, in an abundance of grace, recognizes these tensions, yet gives us the blessing of marriage to live this out in intimacy, trust and love. Its a great source of dialogue with God and others as any one attempts to (re)discover God's heart for marriage and relationships. Its a powerful reflection on marriage, living in covenant with your spouse and living as a single as well.

I also think this reflection brings considerable insight to anyone attempting to break an addiction to porn and fapping. Whenever I find myself losing my way, I come back to this reflection to gain insight into God's heart and where mine should be. I have mainly stuck to the simplified version, as his original talks are pretty complex: https://www.amazon.com/Theology-Simple-Language-Philokalia-Books/dp/1442141042. There's 86 chapters, but they are all 1-2 pages each. My hope is to just post a brief review of each chapter per day, but offer a reflection specifically related to porn recovery.

The goal of this forum is to rediscover God's heart for marriage and human dignity in sexuality with a specific focus on porn addiction and recovery. I hope all feel welcome participating in this dialogue.

 

01. The Beginning

In Mark 19: 3-8, Jesus is questioned by the Pharisees about divorce. There, they ask him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” Jesus puts it right back on them by reminding them that in the beginning, God never intended for man and woman to be separated upon their union. He responds, “Haven’t you read, that at the beginning, the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”

This attempt by the Pharisees to trick Jesus into a legalistic debate, brings Jesus’ views on marriage to light. And with that, we see he takes it right back to the beginning by joining Gen 1:27 and Gen 2:24. For Jesus, if we ever want to learn about the Father’s will for marriage, we merely have to look back to the beginning: God created man/woman in his own image. And upon that union between a man and a woman, they will leave their father and mother (their family bonds that previously made up their family identity) and the two will be joined together. They will no longer be two separate individuals coming from two separate families. They will be one. This union between the two of them is a God-ordained event, not merely a social pact between families. God has created it. Therefore, the Lord interprets this passage with simple, yet profound words, “what God has joined together, let man not separate.”


I find this to be a powerful reflection on the heart of the Lord when it comes to addictions to porn and fapping. After fapping for years and years, I find now that it just pulls me in. Its a habit, an addiction, that comes up in certain situations and then i find it impossible to resist. When I’m alone by my computer. When I’m wasting time on YouTube or web-surfing. When I feel down about things. When I’m angry or upset. I find myself wanting to return to this addiction that I often feel powerless over.

It isn’t until after that I realize how this addiction pulls apart my marriage bond. Everything about my marriage is great. I love my wife. She’s my best friend. We love life together and I can never imagine a moment in my life without her. But my addictions to porn and fapping creates shame in my heart and makes it difficult for me to engage in intimacy with her. When those moments come up and she’s looking to me for intimacy, I find myself ashamed of all things: my choices of porn, my body, my performance, her thoughts of me, etc, etc. It starts with porn. What God has joined together between the two of us, I find myself separating by choosing to engage in porn and that leads to a path of shame. When I go for extended stretches without porn? Our intimacy is so good. Its wonderful. But when I get back into it, it tears our sexual bond gets torn asunder. I know the power of addictions often makes you feel like you have no power in the decision, but it is a decision I choose in the end. No one is forcing me.

So as the Lord says, “what God has joined together, let man not separate,” I see myself as contributing to separation in my marriage that God does not intend, and it starts with my choice of porn and fapping. This isn’t a guilt trip. Its a calling out. Its a call to transparency: that life choice hurts your marriage in ways God does not desire. Repairing the damage that causes requires that I stop watching porn, stop fapping by acknowledging I have a problem with this and seek forgiveness and a community of like-minded people to help lift me out of that addiction.

 

02. In God's Image

JPII continues his talk by drawing specific attention to Jesus’ use of Genesis 1:26-27 in Matthew 19. There he says, “Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator made them ‘male and female.’ Upon deeper reading of the Genesis 1 creation account, we can come to understand the nature of man and woman as image bearers of God. The first creation story in Gen 1 has this steady progression where God is systematically creating all things in existence. As this creation takes place, his work builds and build. Light and darkness, land and seas, plant life and animal life. All the things God creates bears a certain pattern: he sees what’s needed, he calls something into existence and it becomes so. But upon reaching the decision to create man, he has a slightly different tune. “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Get 1:26-27. Here, in this creative act, man and woman are distinctively earthly, physical beings, created along side the rest of existence. But bear a mark of the Creator unlike anything else. Man and woman are a reflection of God, made in his image.

Set up this way, man and woman are physical beings, while also being spiritual beings. Physically, we are apart of this world. We thirst. We hunger. We grow tired. And…we carry a sex drive. But as spiritual beings, our hearts long for the Creator’s community. JPII says, “man cannot be defined in purely naturalistic or materialistic terms. Yes, man is a physical being. But already on the first page of the Bible, we learn that man can’t be explained as a merely physical being….Ultimately, man can only be understood in relation to God….This great mystery of creation—that we are created in God’s image—is the key reference point for understanding all aspects of humanity, including our sexuality.”

What strikes me is there is a duality that exists in man’s nature: he is both physical yet he is also spiritual. As Christians, its so very easy to draw attention to man’s spiritual nature alone, which certainly requires great attention. But in doing so, how often do we forget that we are physical beings with physical needs? Most specifically, as physical, earthly beings, we have a sex drive…a libido. A physical yearning for sexual activity. JPII talks a little later about how sex is a celebration of the community and love between a man and a woman. So there’s that aspect of it which is important to call out. But there’s still an aspect of our human sexuality that exists which craves sexual expression. I wouldn’t call it animalistic. But rather a raw, unrefined drive that needs to be released.

Its difficult to put that drive into words, but I know its there. When I first started coming a sexual age, this thing controlled me. I first discovered fapping at 13 or so, then quickly moved to porn. I had my first sexual encounter by 16 and carried that on for years. I tried to express myself any which way I could. When I became a Christian, I put a hard stop on all sexual activity. That made my porn addictions even worse. Part of what drove me to cut out sex was just shame over my choices. Something about being Christian made me feel guilty about having sex. Made me feel guilty about my body in general. Sex was seen as such a bad thing, that all things associated with it were bad, including sexuality in general. But that’s not what God invites us to understand about ourselves. Sex in its proper place is a good thing. Libido, properly expressed, is a good thing. In fact, its needed. We’re physical beings. While we have a spiritual side to us that is uniquely different from all of creation, we are still physical beings like all the others. We still have physical needs.

In 1 Cor 7, Paul encourages believers in Corinth to get married. He says that “If (believers) cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. Its better to marry than to burn with passion.” Paul literally says, “burn with fire.” Those sexual urges that exist within us are not bad in and of themselves. The level of control it has over us is what’s bad. Unhindered, unbounded sexual expression can wreak havoc on an individual and on a relationship. But in a marriage relationship, its safe. In a relationship where mutual self-giving, trust and transparency exist between two people for life, sexuality has the power to be an object of building love between two people. Expressing that sexuality in the spirit of the mutual self-giving that your relationship is built on can be given as a gift to one another. The physical-spiritual identity we carry as image-bearers of God requires we remember our limitations as physical beings with physical needs, like sexuality. Sexuality is not a bad thing. Its God’s desire that it be used as an object for mutual self-giving in a marriage relationship.