A Substack piece wherein I talk about sex and orgasm. Excerpt:
The final sentence of the quotation expresses a profound thought, which I take to be that the renunciation in both the monastic and the marital state can, and ought to be, equal. But how could that be? The monk and the nun eschew all sexual relations. The married person does not: such persons limit themselves to relations with their spouses. They do not renounce all sexual relations. True. But there is supposed to be chastity in marriage, and therefore chastity in sexual intercourse. Taken in its most austere sense, a sense that neither I nor any of you have ever practiced — I’ll bet — that austere chastity forbids all sexual contact between man and woman except that which can lead to procreation.
But not only that. It also demands that at the apex of orgasm, one not fully lose oneself in its pleasure, but that even at that peak of immersion in sensuality, one retain the remembrance and love of God, in line with the first of the Great Commandments: “You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37–38) And that implies: all the time, even at the moment of orgasm.
It seems to me that the renunciation he has in mind is not merely or only about sex in marriage or refraining from it in the monastic state. Marriage has a host of things that can irritate, anger, and bother one living with another person. There are issues where either spouse can renounce their “rights” in order to live in harmony and grow in grace. The monk may need to deal with loneliness, questions of meaning, self-righteousness, anger, etc. as he attempts to grow in grace.
And I believe the point in Jesus’ “impossible” commands which go so far beyond “do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not murder, is that they ARE actually impossible, in order to bring us out of our self-righteous rationalizations and into the realization that we cannot attain these, and that we need a Savior.