Why Sex?

Several years ago, after a flurry of news about some outrage I can’t even remember, my best friend asked in frustration, “Why do we even have to have sex?”

One obvious reason: without a drive that powerful and all-consuming, the human species would have died out a long time ago.  Babies are fun and rewarding but they’re also a burden and a commitment—not just for the cute years, the learning years, the carpool years, and the teen years, but for the rest of a parent’s life.  Every child, no matter how delightful, introduces a huge element of risk and worry.  We don’t volunteer for complications without a powerful motivation.  That’s one reason why birth rates always go down in developed countries, and it’s one answer to the “Why sex?” question.

Still, I understand my friend’s vexation.  I’ve felt it myself.  Loaded guns are beneficial when used for self-defense or food procurement, but they are too easily misused.  Why did God make this—the equivalent of a loaded gun—the only means for procreation?  And then why did he place it in the hands of beings who were bound to misuse it, to devastating effect?

It must be about more than us.  everything he does also reveals something about him.

Sex must be about more than us.  Everything God does also reveals something about him.

A man sees a woman—he burns for her.  It may be sheer lust: a desire to possess.  But somewhere in that tangle of impulse and emotion is also (I believe) a desire for surrender.  Sex is an abandonment of self, if only for a second.  A sadist may get a thrill out of exercising control over another human being, but for the ultimate thrill he (or she) has to let go.  Even in casual hookups or manipulative relationships there’s some degree of giving, of providing what the other person wants in order to get what you want.

A sexually-healthy marriage is mutual surrender, deepening into love so rich it produces fruit.  Each retains its own but in the process becomes better.  Neither partner gives up individuality, but in community becomes a better individual.  Even, in community, produces more individuals to grow up and figure out who they are and fall in love with a member of the opposite sex and grow the family.  That’s how it’s supposed to work, at its best.  Personal desire—even lust—initiating a vast web of mutual interdependence.

On a spiritual level, God is called our Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named (Eph. 3:15).  Note—God is not the father of each individual, but the Father of family.  Obviously not biological family, or not that alone (heavenly families, as little as we know of them, aren’t biological).  But the One God, who exists in three persons, models a biological family on a spiritual level.  Among those three persons is mutual (ecstatic?) surrender, taking and giving, creating within its great heart a dynamic that produces a universe.

Creation imitates its creator: atoms surrender elections to form molecules; planets submit to gravity to form solar systems.  Every force is dependent on or bound to another force.  There are no rugged individuals in nature.

Autonomy in sex turns pathological, leading to a form of insanity where the drive consumes the driver.

In fact, true autonomy is pathological.  Everybody knows that, though we still like to pretend our souls are ours alone.  That’s how sex goes awry: the essential submission and surrender are crammed into one second instead of spread out in a whole-life commitment.  The rest is Me Alone.  Autonomy in sex turns pathological, leading o a form of insanity where the drive consumes the driver.  And creates countless victims.  As with all human excess, it can’t last long.  We’ll be forced back into mutual dependence somehow because there’s no thwarting nature, or the God who made it.