The Worship Centre

During one of our Chapel services the invited speaker offered a three day series on Beauty, particular the Beauty of God. His messages struck deep and were probably the best that semester. The speaker, Steve DeWitt, encouraged us to glorify God in all things. The Bible tells us to worship God even through our meals. C. S. Lewis suggests that we are to worship God in work and play. DeWitt spoke of worshipping God in all things, including sex. He called this "the worship centre" and spoke of the bed as the marriage altar.

C. S. Lewis, while discussing sex in the afterlife in his book Miracles commented, "The letter and spirit of Scripture, and of all Christianity, forbid us to suppose that life in the New Creation will be a sexual life; and this reduces our imagination to the withering alternatives either of bodies which are hardly recognisable as human bodies at all or else of a perpetual fast. As regards the fast, I think our present outlook might be like that of a small boy who, on being told that the sexual act was the highest bodily pleasure, should immediately ask whether you ate chocolates at the same time. On receiving the answer 'No,' he might regard the absence of chocolates as the chief characteristic of sexuality. In vain would you tell him that the reason why lovers in their carnal raptures don't bother about chocolates is that they have something better to think of. The boy knows chocolate: he does not know the positive thing which excludes it. We are in the same position. We know the sexual life; we do not know, except in glimpses, the other thing which, in Heaven, will leave no room for it. Hence where fulness awaits us we anticipate fasting. In denying the sexual life, as we now understand it, makes any part of the final beatitude, it is not of course necessary to suppose that the distinction of sexes will disappear. What is no longer needed for biological purposes may be expected to survive for splendour. Sexuality is the instrument both of virginity and conjugal virtue; neither men nor women will be asked to throw away the weapon they have used victoriously. It is the beaten and the fugitives who throw away their swords. The conquerors sheathe theirs and retain them."

Augustine and Aquinas both believed that our identities as male and female are kept intact. According to the account of Lazarus and the Rich Man their identities were not changed into mystical spirits, but rather were kept fully recognizable.

Really, the only negating factor to the belief of sexuality in heaven is found in the passage of Matthew 22 where Christ addresses the inquisitive Pharisees on the matter of a woman with multiple husbands. Jesus replies that they would neither give nor be given in marriage.

But now I ask, what is the purpose of eating? You would probably reply, "To satisfy hunger." You're right. But what of Heaven? In Heaven there will be banquets and feasts of exquisite proportions and yet we will never be hungry. So what is the purpose of sexuality? You will probably respond by saying that it is for procreation and recreation. Lewis suggests that though the biological purposes (procreation) be anulled the recreational (splendour) might survive.

Prior to the Fall the Garden was a place of shameless nudity, and, probably, sexuality as well. I doubt that God, being the Creator of this gift (sex), would abolish it with our entrance into Heaven. Just as He does not abolish our physicality or identity, so I doubt He would abolish our sexuality. Or as a friend of mine once put it, "What will the bedrooms of our Heavenly mansions be for? Not just sleeping, I hope." Even so it doesn't really matter all that much because with or without chocolates (sex) Heaven will be a wonderful place. In the end I suppose it doesn't matter so much where I end up as who I end up with. I just want to be with Jesus.