2.1 Across the Life Cycle  [go to Table of Contents]

Our sexuality is our way of seeing ourselves and our way of being in the world as male and female. This part of our life also includes the attitudes and traits defined as masculine and feminine by the communities in which we live. The way we feel toward persons of the opposite sex and persons of our own sex as well as our attitudes toward our own bodies and those of others evolves from our sexuality.

We have many needs: to express our feelings, to overcome loneliness, to share life's experiences, to find fulfillment in life through communication. We want to feel needed as persons of value, to have a sense of belonging and self esteem. We crave intimacy, affection, touch, tenderness, love, romance. All of these relate to our sexuality, and to our sense of femininity or masculinity.

Sexuality is a basic dimension of personhood, of maleness and femaleness. It seasons our personality, influences our thoughts and our actions. It helps determine our choice of work, style of life, and way of raising children.

It is far more than physical sexual activity intended either for procreation or pleasure. It includes our feelings toward persons of both sexes, our relationship expectations, and our role in relationship.

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God intends that we find fulfillment as persons in relationships with other persons. Jesus defined the essence of religion in the the Great Commandment in which love for other persons grows out of God's love for people (Matt. 22:34-40). We are enriched through relationships which continue throughout life and encompass all that we are.

Physical attributes, including genital differences and genital activities, are an integral part of our sexual identity. "Because we are body-selves, our sexuality constantly reminds each of us that we are special and unique: we look different and we feel differently from any other person."[8]
 

2.1.1 Sexual even before birth  [go to Table of Contents]

Today we know that sexual development begins before birth and changes throughout the life cycle for all persons.

In the embryo's sixth week, the physical signs of the sex of the developing child begin to take shape: genitals along with the glands, nerves, and muscles that will allow these organs to function at various stages in later life. The brain center that will receive and send sexual messages has already developed by the end of the third month of prenatal life.

So we can say that even before birth, the child is a sexual being. The newborn's sexual system will continue to grow and mature, but by time of birth, the child's sexual nature is already defined.

For thou didst form my inward parts,
thou didst knit me together in my mother's womb.
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I praise thee, for thou art fearful and wonderful.
Wonderful are thy works!
thou knowest me right well;
my frame was not hidden from thee,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately wrought in the depths of the earth.

--Psalm 139:13-15 (RSV)

Note:
8. James B. Nelson, Embodiment (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1978), pp. 17-18. [back]
 

2.1.2 Sexuality in childhood  [go to Table of Contents]

Before Sigmund Freud, at the beginning of this century, put forth his theory of the sexual stages of childhood, little thought had ever been given to children as sexual beings. The child's experiences in the family and with other persons contribute as much in developing the child's sexual nature as does the physical system itself.

In infancy, the child can feel certain sensations which produce sexual responses. The child experiences pleasure from the stimulation of the genitals and other parts of the body which are sexually sensitive. Children explore their bodies and pick up attitudes toward the body from the reactions of adults.

One of the child's major psychosexual tasks during the grade school years is to make friends with peers and with adults outside his or her family. If these friendship-making skills are not learned during these years, the adult will have to return emotionally to this period to learn what was missed the first time around.

Friendship, thus, is most essential for any relationship to grow toward love and intimacy. Pajama parties, little league, clubs, and playground games serve to prepare for the sexual awakening of puberty as they foster that ability to communicate, to Cooperate, to form sexual identity, to be trusting, to be confiding, and to be companionable.
 

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2.1.3 Turbulence in teen years  [go to Table of Contents]

The teen years are a time of physical and emotional changes. The church and family often give little information about this stage of life. Masturbation becomes a concern for some young people and may become a focus of many anxieties and fears. There may be same-sex exploratory activity. In our permissive society, premarital sexual intercourse has been occurring with increasing frequency as young people search for esteem and life's meaning.

Adolescence can be a time of uncertainty and vulnerability because of frequent and sometimes unattractive body changes. The beautiful unblemished child is suddenly transformed into a person troubled with acne, teeth which need straightening, and awkward weight distribution. Concern over sex-related body parts is common in these years. Teens need to be reassured that the size or shape of body organs and tissues does not necessarily affect their sexuality—unless worry about them undermines their self-confidence and prevents them from relating honestly.

At the same time, the young person is going through emotional and personality changes. Adolescents are just beginning to learn to feel deeply, to be more sensitive and responsive to emotional events and ideas. As a result, they experience all kinds of mood changes and emotional ups and downs. Some are very shy, others outgoing.

Inside a growing body and personality, at the very core, is an emerging spiritual being. As in all other areas of development, the spirit develops in its own way at its own rate.

Here, too, differences between self and friends can cause feelings of uncertainty and insecurity. While one teenager has experienced conversion and is able to share this excitedly, another may feel guilty about a quieter, less emotional experience and be unwilling to talk about it. If a congregation observes a "normal" {41} age for baptism, a young person may feel out of step because he or she has reached this stage too early or too late.

Each person's spiritual development is unique. This development is a daily struggle, but through the struggle comes growth and a knowledge of God in one's life.

If adolescents can be helped to honestly face who they are and realize that God accepts them just the way they are, with negative as well as positive traits, then they can truly accept themselves.
 

2.1.4 Young adult commitments  [go to Table of Contents]

Young adults are in the process of making important life decisions. While this period is the time when many marry and launch their families and their careers, an increasing number are intentionally remaining single. Some are only postponing marriage, but for others singleness is becoming their way of life.

It is at this time that many single young adults are breaking dependency ties with family and are learning to make new ties with those around them. They are struggling with decisions about making commitments to jobs, the church, the community, as well as to other people.

For newly-married couples, this is the time for adjusting to each other's habits and sexual needs. It is a time of becoming realistic about what the relationship actually offers.

During this time, the needs of the family unit affect sleep and eating routines, financial decisions, housing choices, and social life. Adding to these external pressures may be an inner need to achieve. Some experience tension between their dreams for their careers and their hopes for family life. This may undermine a satisfying sex life for the couple.

Because there are so many new things that young adults are experiencing, many feel an urgent need to {42} do things with others of their own age who are going through the same adjustments. There is often a shifting and a sifting of friends when people get married. Socially, people start drifting into a division of single young adults and young marrieds. While this division is understandable, the two groups have much to give each other. Especially blessed are those persons who have both single and married friends.

This period is a time of learning to share with and care for another person without the fear of losing oneself. If intimacy (not necessarily in the sexual sense) is not established with friends or a marriage partner, a sense of isolation, of being alone, will exist.
 

2.1.5 Middle years and change  [go to Table of Contents]

Changes come to each person at every age. Middle adulthood has its own special transition sometimes called the mid-life crisis. It affects individuals in different ways.

Some have a new freedom that they did not have before. The mortgage is almost paid, the children are beginning to earn money and look after some of their own needs. Often in this period, the wife has reentered the marketplace and the couple has two salaries. For others, pressures increase as they respond with a burst of speed in the race for career advancement.[9]

Idealism may still be present but it is often not as controlling as in earlier years. Thoughts of what others think about the work one is doing are not front and center in one's thinking as they once were. Many begin taking pleasure in teaching other people or in correcting social injustices and serving their{43} community. Many others take new interest in giving service to the church.
 

Note:
9. Gail Sheehy, Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1974), pp. 278-79. [back]

By mid-life, both couples and singles have had to adjust their dream to the facts of their life situation. Sometimes reality is favorable; sometimes it is harsh.

For those who are married and parents, there may come the frustration of unfulfilled expectations for their children. Their offspring may be independent and far from home, or they may have moved back into the parental home, creating a new set of stresses for both generations.

For singles, redefining their relationship to aging parents and to their married sisters and brothers is a continuing struggle. Adjusting to the short life of many friendships is also painful as their single friends come and go, marry, or move. In all such adjustments, their healthy sense of self and a positive sexuality may be imperiled.

The expected financial security may be a pleasant reality, or it may have evaporated with the foreclosure of a farm mortgage, forced early retirement, or the loss of a job at an age when one is less likely to find employment.

Through all the changing realities of the middle years, women and men come to view each other in altered ways. For some, a new sense of competitiveness may emerge; others find a new sense of comfort and appreciation.

When life in the middle years turns harsh, not peace and security but anxiety and depression may descend. It is well known that depression is one of the most powerful detractors of self-esteem and of sexual feelings. Thus, at a time when intimate relationships are greatly needed, they may be blocked—and this is true for both singles and the married.
 

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2.1.6 Aging and later years  [go to Table of Contents]

Neither menopause (the time of life for a woman, usually between 45 and 55, when menstruation ceases) nor late middle age for a man signal the end of an active sex life, as was formerly thought. New attitudes toward aging and better knowledge of sexuality and how the body works have helped us recognize that men and women enjoy active sex lives throughout their years.

The emotional and sexual needs of older people are just as real as those of younger people. The same hopes, dreams, feelings, desires and passions, the same capacity for intimacy and sexual response as those they had in youth remain through later life. These needs come with the same variations in intensity and in the same rich variety of expression as in the earlier years.

The need for warm close intimate contact continues throughout life. In direct expression of sexual needs, there is no such thing as being too old; such needs are integral to being human and are therefore forever. Needs may be felt in actual sexual (genital) forms, or in such indirect ways as hunger for simple forms of affection like touching, kissing, embracing.

The myth of sexless old age held by young people may become a self-fulfilling prophecy as those persons themselves grow older. They may adopt a negative view of their own sexual desires, fantasies, and feelings. Elderly people who find that they still have sexual desires may feel overwhelmed with guilt and shame, thinking they are oversexed. Women feel vulnerable to a loss of sexual attractiveness. Men feel vulnerable to a loss of sexual power (potency).

Although remaining sexually active may be the best way to maintain sexual responsiveness, it is not always possible. If sexual intercourse is not possible for any reason, mutual caring, sharing, and touching should continue.

The nurture of intimacy requires trust, warmth, {45} loyalty, reliability, and sensitivity. The elderly, like persons at all stages of the life cycle, need intimate relationships.

Touching, a powerful way to communicate care and concern, becomes more important for an older person, especially when the power of hearing, sight, and smell is waning.

Unaware of an aging person's need for love, romance, marriage, physical intimacy, and just simple friendship with the opposite sex, children may feel threatened or even disgraced by their parent's need. They may conspire to thwart a relationship, threaten to withdraw love, idealize the dead parent, or fret about the inheritance. Such interference has pushed many older persons into frustration, self-depreciation, loneliness, and depression.

The elderly are often expected to live sexless lives, particularly in institutions for the aging. There, except for certain supervised events, women and men are frequently segregated. Displays of love or affection may draw disapproval from staff members. In most cases, husbands and wives are separated. Individuals may be scolded for masturbation.

Elderly persons may need to be encouraged in the assertive expression of sexual and general needs for intimacy. Since the elderly are frequently victims of the insensitivity of others, it is equally important to educate our families, nursing home staff members, and all of us in the churches. Let us increase our awareness of the intimacy needs of the elderly as a positive first step.
 

2.1.7 For study and discussion  [go to Table of Contents]

1. When does a person become a sexual being?

2. Is it wrong or harmful for a child to explore the parts of his or her body?

3. Do persons in their teens need help in accepting their sexuality? If so, how can they be helped?

4. Describe some of the physical and emotional {46} changes that take place during the teen years. How can parents and other adults in a congregation help teenagers face these changes?

5. Why is it that in young adulthood, persons often begin to separate into groups of singles and marrieds?

6. The middle years are always difficult. Do you agree? Why?

7. Why has it long been thought that in old age people are no longer sexual?

8. Reflect on the changes that come in each stage across the life cycle. What changes in which period are the most difficult to understand and accept? How might the church help its members during these trying times?
 

2.2 Femaleness and Maleness  [go to Table of Contents]

Boy or girl? That's the first question asked about any new baby. From the moment we enter the world, we are identified as either male or female. As we go from infancy to adulthood, we are being taught and we are learning what it means to be female or male.

In most societies, one's sexual identity has come to mean a particular way of thinking, acting, and viewing one's self and others. Because these notions of what it means to be male and what it means to be female are so widespread and so firmly fixed, they shape the way we act, touching every part of our lives.
 

2.2.1 Words to name our nature  [go to Table of Contents]

What are the roots of these ideas about the way we live as persons identified by our sexual nature? First, let's look at the words used to talk about this {47} experience. Femaleness and maleness refer to the physical side of our sexuality which, of course, also has a bearing on the mental and emotional part of our being. The physical, mental, and emotional always interact in the shaping of the person.

When we speak about masculinity and femininity, we are pointing to those ways of thinking and acting that grow out of centuries of experience of people living together. A person may be female by birth but won't necessarily be "feminine" unless she has learned to be that. It's important to see the difference between femaleness and femininity and between maleness and masculinity.

The line between female and male is clear; the line between feminine and masculine is not so clear and becomes ever more fuzzy as our society changes. To say that masculinity is the same as maleness and that femininity is the same as femaleness puts boxes around people and keeps them from developing as whole human beings.
 

2.2.2 Beings male and female  [go to Table of Contents]

Genesis 1 and 2 both make the point, though in different ways: as human beings, we are female and we are male. In the first chapter the sexual character appears immediately when "God created [the earth creature] in his own image…male and female he created them" (1:27) In the second account, the creative act unfolds in stages (2:7-9, 18-23). The sexual nature of God's creation appears when both man ('is) and woman ('issa) are on the stage.

Femaleness and maleness thus were part of our being from the beginning. Humans exist as either male or female. No other form of sexuality known to us is more basic than these two forms.

God decided that it would be this way. Gender identity was not an accident, an afterthought, or the result of sin. Of course, sin may pervert the way we experience our sexuality as female and male. {48} Exploitation of the female by the male as recorded in the Bible was one such sin.

Genesis 2 makes it clear that to be created a sexual being provides for wholeness. The creature God had fashioned out of the "dust of the ground" and into whose nostrils God had "breathed the breath of life" found no companionship among the animals (2:19-20). So God made a counterpart for the human creature of whom it could be said that "this at last is bone of my bones/ and flesh of my flesh" (2:23).

The relationship is a fulfilling one, an experience of mutual respect. Though the phrase translated into English as "a helper fit for him" (2:18, RSV) may seem to imply an inferior status for the woman, the Hebrew text implies a mutual relationship. For example, in the Old Testament, God is often called the "help" of Israel (Exod. 18:4; Deut. 33:7, 26-27; Ps. 33:20). The word fit or suitable (NIV) suggests equal status (neither superior nor inferior) which could apply to either the man or the woman. The word companion might better carry the meaning of this passage.

Submission of the woman to the man appears for the first time in Genesis only after the coming of sin which damaged God's original design (Gen. 3:16).
 

2.2.3 Jesus and a new day  [go to Table of Contents]

Jesus provided a model for men to follow. The culture of his day encouraged him to consider himself above women and did not expect him to deal with them as people with their own needs and rights. Rather than accept these cultural definitions of what it meant to be male, Jesus chose a new way to respond.

Jesus' openness to women illustrates the the new way of responding. A number of women were among his disciples and close friends (Luke 8:1-3; 10:38-42; 23:55-24:11). He loved Martha and Mary (John 11:5) He willingly broke the usual sabbath law to help a woman (Luke 13:10-13).

In his presence, women seemed to sense an {49} understanding and acceptance rare among religious teachers. Indeed, he related to them in ways regarded as improper by some of the people of the time (Luke 7:38-39; John 4:7-9). "Certainly the relation of Jesus toward women and of theirs toward him seem to strike a new note, and a higher note, and to be off the line of rabbinic traditions."[10]

In dealing with the woman accused of adultery, his attitude was to redeem rather than to punish (John 7:53-8:11). Unlike the rabbis and the sages of the wisdom literature of Judaism, he did not caution men against the wiles of women. A number of his parables took note of the everyday life of women, their joys, and their fears (Matt. 13:33; 25:10-13; Luke 15:8-10; 18:1-8). He condemned the religious teachers who "devour widows' houses" (Luke 20:46-47).

Note:
10. C. G. Montefiore, Rabbinic Literature and Gospel Teachings (New York: Ktav, 1970), p. 218. [back]
 

2.2.4 Women and men as equal  [go to Table of Contents]

In Paul's writings, we find two strands of thought on the role of women in the man's world of the first century, views that sometime seem to be in tension with each other. A key passage is 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, which varies with principles found in other parts of his letters.

On the one hand, in discussing the roles of men and women, Paul placed woman in subordination to man (1 Cor. 11:3, 7-9; cf. 1 Cor. 14.34, Eph. 5.22 24, 33b, Col. 3:18; 1 Tim. 2:11-15; and outside the Pauline material, 1 Pet. 3:1). This, of course, was commonly accepted in the culture of Paul's day. But Paul Supported this view with his interpretation of the creation account in which the woman was taken from the Side of man (Gen. 2:21-22). That man was created first implied for him a leadership role for the man (1 Cor. {50} 11:7-9). The veil was for Paul the symbol of the woman's submissive role in society.

Yet Paul's thought carried another strand, namely, the equality of women and men in Christ. This was not forgotten even in the Corinthian letter (1 Cor. 11:11). It was stated more forcefully in Galatians (3:28; and outside Paul's letters in 1 Pet. 3:7). What this revolutionary truth meant for the traditional husband-wife relationship can be seen in Colossians (3:18-19) and in Ephesians (5:22-23) and indirectly in the references to women like Lydia and Priscilla who were co-workers in the New Testament church. Even so, the inequality in relationships between men and women was not completely eliminated.

2.2.5 Traditional stereotypes  [go to Table of Contents]

Traits and roles commonly accepted in our day continue to reflect inequality. Those thought to define femininity include: being passive, dependent, emotional, intuitive, raising children, and doing housework. Those often associated with masculinity include: to be aggressive, independent, rational, athletic, having a career, and being the protector. We are no longer as sure as we once were that such definitions are firmly fixed. Changes are taking place in the way that we see masculinity and femininity being expressed.

Each of us gains our understanding of what it means to be masculine or feminine through a wide variety of sources: parents, siblings, friends, peers, church, experience, books, the media, schools--all play a part in shaping how we see ourselves and others. This starts from the day of our birth and continues throughout our whole life. In each part of the life cycle, females and males are often dealt with differently, thus having different experiences and developing different traits.

Most of us are aware of the many ways in which boys and gIrls are shown what it means to be masculine and feminine. For infants, it begins with the colors {51} assigned to each, how much they are held or comforted, and how much they are talked to, to name a few of those ways. They are also influenced by whether it is the mother or the father or both who take primary responsibility for their care. As they grow older, the type of toys they are usually given: trucks for boys, dolls for girls; the play they engage in: house for girls, football for boys; and the reinforcements given for these activities all play a part in shaping how they view themselves and their place in society.

2.2.6 Pressures to conform  [go to Table of Contents]

The boy who strays from this norm by not being interested in sports and who plays with dolls soon has to deal with pressure from friends and from family urging him to change. The same applies to the girl who is interested in sports, but does not care for dolls or fancy clothes. These "deviations" may be tolerated up to a certain age, but as the boy or girl gets older, more and more pressure is applied to encourage the youngster to turn away from these "inappropriate" activities and become "normal."

During childhood, it may be easier for a girl to move away from the norm than for a boy. A tomboy receives more tolerance than a sissy. Even this acceptance starts to fade, however, as the girl reaches her teen years.

As their bodies begin to mature into the likeness of adulthood, the girl and boy are under even more pressure to start "acting like a young woman" or "a young man." In North American life, these distinctions are generally very clear. A boy is to control his emotions, be strong, be independent. A girl is to be interested in how she looks and to start being more concerned about attracting the opposite sex. The pressure to conform comes, perhaps, as much from within each individual as from peers or family. By the time adolescence is reached, the girl's or boy's understandng of what others mean by feminine or {52} masculine has become clear. If what they feel or want doesn't match up with what most people expect of them, struggles and tensions arise.

As they pass from their teen years into adulthood, females and males are both faced with many of the same choices, but face different pressures in making those choices. For example, both male and female have to choose: whether or not to go to college or university, to prepare for a career, to get married. However, the option for the female is often posed as a choice between having a career or a family, since her role is seen to be much more family-oriented, more suited to the raising of children. This choice is not one a male is expected to make since his role is seen to be that of the breadwinner of the family. Once again, if the young woman or man chooses to ignore these traditional roles, that person may meet with resistance from many quarters.

The examples given in each of these areas of life are by no means the only ways in which the communities in which we live determine what it means to be masculine and feminine. These are only representative of the forces acting upon females and males. These forces come in many forms and from many directions. Each one of us has constantly to choose how to deal with them.

As Christians, we are challenged not to accept blindly the dictates of society. It is wholesome for us to question whether commonly accepted ideas of what it means to be masculine and feminine best help people to mature as whole human beings. We affirm such attempts at nonconformity. To limit persons in their growth can be harmful to them and a loss to the community.

Each of us has a whole range of abilities. Nothing in the nature of a male prevents him from excelling in nurturing. Nor does the nature of a female disqualify her from leadership. To hold persons back in their crowth as creative individuals for the sake of "the way things are" is a misfortune to all concerned. It is important to see each other as human beings with a variety of gifts, rather than as males and females in {53} roles supposedly fixed upon us by our gender. The traits that are thought to be masculine or feminine have only been labeled as such. They are human traits of which we are all capable.

2.2.7 Freedom for human gifts  [go to Table of Contents]

In broadening our understanding of what it means to be female and male beyond the commonly accepted stereotypes, we can begin to free each other and ourselves from expectations to be a certain way. Males can take on a larger share in caring for children. They can feel free to express their emotions. They won't be under pressure always to be the strong one or the protector. Females can develop their leadership skills. They can gain confidence in their speaking ability and in their gift to think in rational, logical ways.

We must be careful not to assume that this is a matter of exchanging roles. Females should not become leaders at the expense of their ability to nurture, nor males express emotion at the expense of their ability to be rational. These traits are not opposites. To have one is not to be deprived of the other. They are all traits that each of us has the potential of developing in our own unique ways, not just as male and female, but as human beings.

Many human traits are important for all people to have, such as honesty, kindness, and respect. The ability to nurture, to express emotion, to be rational, and to be confident of oneself in the same way--they are human traits which need to be allowed to develop in each person.

This does not mean that we will become a society where everyone will be exactly the same. Some will continue to find their greatest fulfillment in carrying out traditional roles. For example, some women will be most fulfilled and make their greatest contributions to church and to society through caring for home and family. Other women will choose to {54} pursue a career in addition to home and family involvements and in these combined activities find the greatest fulfillment and make the greatest contributions to society.

Whether we are old or young, able or disabled, single or married, sick or well, we are all unique persons with our own sets of experiences and ways of thinking. It is good that we are so varied.

As we examine the stereotypes that are around us and that have bound us, may we be freed to discover within ourselves and with each other what it means to be male and what it means to be female. And may the differences that then arise, be celebrated as parts of what it means to be human.

2.2.8 For study and discussion  [go to Table of Contents]

We are all special persons with our own experiences and our own ways of thinking. It is hard to let go of traditions and customs that bind us. From your understanding of the Scriptures, what are some of the stereotypes from which we need release?

Film:  Peege.

2.3 Intimacy  [go to Table of Contents]

One of the sharpest contrasts between the Christian and the secular view of sexuality is seen in the understanding and affirmation of true intimacy.

Secular society promotes the notion that intimacy is the same as genital interaction. It often implies that sexual drives are overpowering and that if one is tempted, one can't help himself/herself.

The point must be stressed, however, that sexual intercourse is not a necessity for human existence. Human health and wholeness do not require genital {55} relations. Sex we can live without; what we cannot live without is intimacy. That is the real need of both men and women.

Many people engage in sexual intercourse thinking that in physical intimacy they will find the intimacy we all need. Unless love, trust, commitment, and the emotional and spiritual dimensions of true intimacy are present, physical sex is, at best, empty, and, at worst, distances the partners.

2.3.1 The meaning of intimacy  [go to Table of Contents]

Intimacy is closeness, familiarity, trust, friendship. It is mutual acceptance and understanding. It is the willingness to be open and vulnerable to another person. It is a sharing of personal worlds. It is involvement with another; it is caring and being cared for in return. It is "the experience of a sustained close familiarity with another's inner life; it is to know another person from the inside."[11]

Intimacy is to prize someone and to be prized by another. It is to choose, and to be chosen; to be needed and important to another. Many will be happy to share our victories but only a true intimate stands ready to share our pain and defeat.

Intimacy has many dimensions: emotional, spiritual, mental, social, aesthetic, as well as physical. Physical intimacy takes on its full meaning only when the other dimensions are already in place.

We live, however, in a world that acts as if physical intimacy in the only kind there is, and that intimacy means sex. On the contrary, having sex with someone is a poor way to get to know that person, and {56} often destroys the growth of true intimacy.

11.  Harold Bauman, "Am I Somebody? The Craving for Intimacy." Goshen College Chapel Address, June 6, 1974.

2.3.2 What intimacy demands  [go to Table of Contents]

Developing intimate relationships takes time. Intimacy is not achieved with many persons; only with a few. An intimate friendship costs something. It requires opening ourselves to risk, to baring our inner self to a trusted other. It requires the surrender of some independence, while at the same time keeping a strong sense of one's self and one's worth. It requires self-esteem and it requires faith.

It often demands physical presence, and appropriate touch. It requires confidentiality; it requires availability to the other.

2.3.3 Who should be intimate?  [go to Table of Contents]

It should be clear that we all need and should develop some intimate friendships with persons of both sexes and that being married is not a requirement for the kind of intimacy that we all need and on which we depend. Real intimacy is not limited to those who share a genital relationship.

Some nonsexual friendships outshine some sexual relationships when it comes to intimacy. For when it comes to developing closeness and sharing true knowledge of the other person from the inside, much of what passes for sexual intimacy in our world is nothing more than mechanical stimulation of genital nerve endings. And that doesn't fulfill our need for intimacy.

The 1984 Ann Lander's survey showing that most women prefer affectionate touching to sexual intercourse is but the latest evidence of the unhappiness of many marriages--intimacy needs are not being met. Physical gratification cannot fulfill our intimacy needs. Without intimacy, physical sex leaves {57} frustration and emptiness in its wake.

2.3.4 Men and intimacy  [go to Table of Contents]

The socialization of men in our society and the cultural expectations of what it means to be masculine almost guarantee that men will not learn intimacy. So, men often have difficulty expressing tenderness. A pastor remarked, in reference to a couple he was counseling, "That husband is incapable of tenderness; he doesn't know how to be gentle."

Christians will need to work hard at being a counterculture in our society, developing some feminine qualities in our sons and some masculine qualities in our daughters. Then, the possibility for intimacy can arise. We have the example of Jesus and his intimate friendships as models for Christian male-female relation and also for same-sex friendships.

2.3.5 Intimacy of the spirit  [go to Table of Contents]

To have a shared belief and faith with another person is to give to an intimate relationship a dimension the world cannot fathom. The highest and deepest intimacy is possible only with persons who share our history, our story, our destination with us. To be able to view an intimate friendship as one that will not be terminated by the grave adds a peace and confidence that truly deepens the meaning of intimate.

When one's intimate relationships include a shared belief in the Lord who is the intimate Friend of all, there is a third, an outside focus which enables a kind of intimacy that is of transcendent value.

Within the community of caring believers, in the safe enviornment of the Lord and God's people, we can deepen our experience of intimacy and truly learn what it is like to be known fron the inside.

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2.3.6  Our real need  [go to Table of Contents]

Our congregations should be communities of persons: sexual persons who understand that intimacy, not genital intercourse, is the relationship need of us all. No one has yet died from the lack of sexual intercourse. Many, however, have died from the lack of intimacy; lacking the knowledge that they were cared for or were known by someone from the inside or that they were prized, they died in loneliness. What we cannot do without is some kind of mutual sharing of life's experiences with an intimate friend, whether male or female, young or old, married or single.

2.3.7 For study and discussion  [go to Table of Contents]

1.  What is intimacy?  Check the index for references on "intimacy."
2.  What part does self-esteem and faith have in intimacy?
3.  Intimacy is closeness, familiarity, trust, and friendship. What are the proper limits for Christians in experiencing intimacy?

Films: The Touch Film, Kinetic Films; Sex Is a Beautiful Thing, Family Films; A Question of Intimacy.