Speak to the desires of the heart (teach your children godly sexuality)

So one of my boys kept lifting up the skirt of one of my girls to see their knickers.  An excellent opportunity to talk about godly sexuality with them I thought...

So true to form I followed the principles I give in my workshop and talked about the goodness and the holiness of sexuality with them.  How it's a good and beautiful part of a lady made by God but it's also a special part and so we need to treat it with honour.

However he kept on doing it, despite talking about its specialness and despite disciplining him for repeatedly doing it.

I know, I know, I should have called out to God for help sooner - but sometimes we have to get desperate before we find ourselves on our knees actually listening - but He's so gracious that when I did he gave me the wisdom I needed:

"Speak to the desires of the heart"

You see the trouble was that I was saying all the right things but I was talking to his logical mind rather than his desires.  And if we want to see change then we need to address the desires:

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

But the question is: how do we address desires in a godly way?  In the same way as we teach any other aspect of godly sexuality; we talk about the goodness and the holiness of our desires.

You see God made him a boy and so there is a godly fascination and yearning in him for to complete the whole image of God:

“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “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 flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” (Mt 19:4-6 emphasis mine)

The holiness is the fact that this fulfillment occurs in a covenantal relationship and this yearning is a shadow of our yearning for Christ (Eph 5:32) who is the "desire of all nations" (Hag 2:7).

Since he was only about 5 at the time, I had to keep things a bit simple, so I began:

"There's something really interesting about girls, isn't there?"  He nodded.  "God made girls attractive to us so that we really want to find out more."  I could see that I now had his full attention.

"And that means that there's something in us that wants to see their knickers."

"But God made seeing a girl's knickers to be something special for marriage just like you only get presents on special days like Christmas."

Now it's tempting to stop here, but doing so means that we are expecting them to conquer desires by self-effort which is law not grace. So now we need to offer to pray for them:

"But in the same way it's hard to not open presents until Christmas day, it's hard to stop looking at knickers.  So we need Daddy God's help.  Can I pray with you?"

He nodded and the rest is history. 

You see affirming the goodness of our children's desires speaks to their reality, only then can we begin to steer these desires towards their intended goal.

Wired for intimacy part 2 (godly sexuality)

We saw in our previous post that babies brains are pre-wired to see faces and in particular their initial focus of their eyes is designed to see only those who hold them close, such as the mother who feeds them.  This is a shadow of the spiritual reality that we are designed to seek our Father's face who gives us our daily bread and the affirmation of His love for us.

Unlike other objects our brains process faces in a different part of the brain (the fusiform face area) which is dedicated to recognising faces.  Furthermore this part of the brain is given priority over the other image processing areas in the brain, which is why we often see faces in things (called facial pareidolia):

Hence advertisers use faces in their images as it is an effective way of getting a viewer's attention.  Using eye tracking software you can see below how we focus on faces and their eye gaze:

Hence the text gets more attention from viewers when the baby's eye gaze was in that direction.

Now the world will say that this must have developed as a survival technique - so we can spot the faces of a predator in the brush.  However, we know that we are made in the image of God:

"As the Father, Son and Spirit have always know fellowship with each other, so we in the image of God are made for fellowship"  Michael Reeves

We look into another's face to see the meaning behind their words and discover their true self - their nature and character.  For, as we know, the eyes are the windows of the soul.  Faces are needed if there is to be any intimacy.

Unlike animals*, we make love face-to-face this speaks of the fact that sex is meant to be an expression of intimacy† and it is no surprise that the Hebrew word for sexual intimacy, יָדַע (yada’), is literally translated as "Adam knew Eve" (Gen 4:1).  And in its pure form there is “no shame” as there was complete openness, acceptance and intimacy.

Interestingly, research shows that those who have religious or paranormal beliefs are more prone to see faces in things than sceptics or unbelievers.  This is a shadow of the fact that despite the intimacy of another no human can ever meet our need to be fully known.  

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. (1 Cor 13:12 emphasis mine)

Jesus is "the Desire of all nations" (Hag 2:7 NKJV).  Jesus is the face that we are wired to seek.

 *After extensive research I can only find two documented cases of animals having sex face-to-face. Both were gorillas and in both cases it was commented on that this behaviour was extremely unusual.

† It is no surprise that since the sexual revolution and the rise of pornography, where sex is seen to be just biological and devoid of meaning, there has been a corresponding rise in sex in positions that are not face-to-face. It is not about intimacy or connecting but satisfying our own urges and getting pleasure.

Wired for intimacy part 1 (godly sexuality)

Before we had our first miracle baby we read the book "The Social Baby" which shows that even from birth babies are wired to seek faces over other images:

"Within minutes of birth, the baby will turn her head to the sound of someone's voice, when another sound, even if of the same pitch and intensity, will not attract her attention...the baby is also attracted to faces...Given a choice between looking at a face-shaped pattern, and one with the arrangement of eyes nose and mouth scrambled up, the newborn baby will spend longer looking at the face"

Recent research has now identified that the part of the brain used for recognising faces is far more developed in babies and is almost equal to that of adults by even 4 months.

As Christians we don't believe that this design is merely for survival, we believe that the things made reveal God's divine nature (Rom 1:20a) for "The heavens declare the glory of God" (Ps 19:1).

In the same way the physical tabernacle was "a copy and shadow of what is in heaven" (Heb 8:5), this physical realm is a shadow of the spiritual realm.  A baby seeking the face of his/her parents is a shadow of the reality that we as children of God (1 Jn 3:1) are designed to seek the face of our Creator.

"I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters says the Lord Almighty" (2 Cor 6:18)

In the Father's face we are going to find the love, affirmation and protection that we need.

A baby know this - they take delight in looking at faces.  Children know this as any parent who hears a their child say "look at me!".  This is why God instructed Aaron to bless the Israelites with the phrase "the LORD make His face shine upon you" (Num 6:23-25).

To have God's face turn from us is to be cursed and cut off from our hearts desire (eg Ps 27:9; 2 Chr 30:9).  Babies know this - they become distressed if there is no response from a parent's face (you can see an example in this YouTube video).

We are wired to seek the Father's face, to have His face shine upon us and to have Him respond to us.  But not just a father's face but the mother's face too:

"A babies vision is a little blurry at birth but within a week a baby can focus on objects about 8 to 12 inches from his face which is the distance between a mother and baby's face during feeding."

One of the names for God used in the Old Testament is "El Shaddai" which is translated as "God Almighty" in places like Gen 17:1 and Gen 49:25.  Now shaddai could be come from the root "shadad" which means powerful (hence Almighty) or "shad" which means breast.  If it is the latter root then "El Shaddai" could be translated as "many breasted one" (sources: here and here).  Implying that God, like a mother, is our comfort, our sufficiency, our nourisher.

Given the current environment there are parties that sit firmly on both sides, each fiercely arguing that their version is correct translation.  The complementarians will argue that it's a powerful, strong masculine God, the egalitarians will argue it's a nurturing, tender, feminine God.

I believe that both are incorrect.  Each side only sees one part when both parts are needed*.  You see we are made male and female in God's image (Gen 1:27) and only both together represent the fullness of God"†:

"Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam" (Gen 5:2 KJV).

Adam was created in the image of God as one being - both male and female (Gen 2:7).  This is a shadow of the heavenly reality of the Father and the Son being intimately one (Jn 10:30) and indeed his nature of Oneness despite many opposing characteristics (eg grace/mercy vs truth/judgement).

Adam was then separated into two: male and female (Gen 2:22-23 the word rib is literally "side") as a shadow of the plurality of the nature of God (both in the Trinity and His nature).  But designed to become one again (Gen 2:24).   Hence the fullness of the image of God on earth is male and female together as one.

So babies are wired to look into the face of their parents and receive all the love, affirmation, protection, comfort, nourishment from them.  This is the shadow of the spiritual reality of us as God's children looking to Him (whose nature includes both masculine and feminine aspects) and receive all that we need from Him, our all-in-all:

No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him.They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads." (Rev 22:3-4)

* Why then does Jesus say we should call Him father and why is Jesus the Bridegroom if God is both masculine and feminine?  This requires us to understand how sexuality reflects the relationships in the Godhead and between God and man, which will be covered in a later post.

† So does that mean that only married people image God?  Not entirely, because ultimately the one flesh union of a husband and wife is also a shadow of the union of Christ and the Church (Eph 5:31-32).  Perhaps this post might help.  And so if you're single, you image God by being one with the Body of Christ becoming one with Christ.