![]() ![]() ![]() If the one-flesh relationship of marriage is the gateway to experiencing God’s love-that is, if being married (and having sex with your spouse) provides you with a privileged internal encounter of God’s love-then yes, those who experience marital sex gain a deeper and fuller experience of God’s love. As we read the one-flesh relationship of marriage is ultimately a profound mystery that pertains to Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5:31-32), we need to be able to discern whether that means marriage is a gateway into that mystery, or a signpost that points towards it. You see, in order to properly consider the spiritual significance of marriage (and sex within it), we need to be able to tell the difference between a gateway and a signpost. That is to say, for all the problems I had with specific aspects of his article about the spiritual significance of sex, I don’t agree that in writing such an article he was automatically being detrimental or offensive to single Christians. Why was I so dissatisfied with their line of critique? Because I don’t believe Butler was clearly guilty of that charge. In other words, they saw him to be intentionally marginalising and excluding singles. Why were these single readers so dissatisfied? Because they understood his argument-namely, that “sex is an icon of Christ and the Church”-to be synonymous with saying that sexually chaste single Christians are less able to fully know and experience Christ’s love than married Christians. ![]() However, I also found myself troubled by some of the forceful criticism he received from various quarters-including the critique of many of his single Christian readers. Indeed, I found myself quite troubled by numerous elements of Butler’s article. Many readers considered aspects of the article’s argument to be very problematic. The fable came to mind as I scrolled through seemingly endless social media responses to Josh Butler’s (now removed) TGC (US) article, ‘ Sex Won’t Save You (But It Points to the One Who Will)’. Depending on which version of the fable you read, the story ends with either the sheep, or the boy himself, being devoured! As I said, fascinating and terrifying! “Wolf! Wolf! There’s a wolf!”, the boy yelled. Finally the day came when there really was a wolf. In it, villagers rebuke a young shepherd boy for his repeated prank of crying out in warning of a wolf when there was no wolf in sight. When I was a child, I was equally fascinated and terrified by Aesop’s fable “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”. ![]()
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