WHY HUMAN SEXUALITY NEEDS DIVINE BOUNDARIES

Sexuality is one of those topics that I grew up with but never understood in terms of how and why it is so crucial to who I am and how it helps me grow into the deepest part of what it means to be human.

In the next three blogs, I will share my ideas about the most important urge humans can experience, one that flows from our animal heritage and is in tune with what human nature evolved to preserve its existence as a distinct and new species. Teilhard de Chardin’s map serves as my template for examining boundaries, one of which is sexuality.

Notice that the balance between complexity and consciousness is a line of movement in reality that began at the beginning, picking up these two traits over time. This characteristic of what we know exists is composed of many filaments or quantum strands of pure energy (one, holy, catholic, apostolic) that begin with creation and continue uninterrupted to the fullment of our humanity, which happens to be called by the name heaven, for lack of a better description.

In my assumption, God is pure energy who always is, always was, and always will be. Because God is without boundaries, it took an act of divine will to begin existence with purpose and a self-contained blueprint for all that exists within the limits of time and consciousness, and for complex movement to occur. Humans can never know God, but God can tell us (Old Testament) and show us (New Testament) in human stories and experiences how to fulfill our destiny as a human by being aware of that fingerprint on all matter that compels us forward (physically, mentally, and spirituality) to achieve our purpose as humanity. Our hearts are restless, says St. Augustine, until they rest in Thee.

SIX BOUNDARIES OF ALL THAT IS

Again, referencing the map of all that is by Teilhard de Chardin above, I have discerned six levels of boundaries, each one different, each one part of all that is, all of them setting forth a new level of consciousness and complexity.

1. THE GENESIS PRINCIPLE — It seems like a contradiction that a nature well outside the capability or capacity of humans to exist could or would even pay attention to not only a race of humanity as a bridge between animality and the deepest level of humanity. Simply put, my problem is not that there is or is not a God, as alluded to by St. Thomas Aquinas at the beginning of his masterpiece, Summa Theologica, but rather that someone who had no reason to help humans be human, other than share the energy of pure love, would stoop to become one of us to help us move to the next level of our human evolution, e.g., looking at reality as it really is. (Philippians 2:5-12) This first boundary is the unlimited God imposing limitations on a new reality, not because it enhances who or what God is, but because this reality of matter and energy would be forged on the anvil of both complexity and consciousness, according to the nature of its development. Teilhard de Chardin terms this first principle the Cosmosphere or Lithosphere. As reality grew in complexity and consciousness, something happened to this strain of reality. Life happened. Something that was not there was now there, a new boundary with a new purpose and meaning, a nature not there before now took the baton in this relay of evolution and began running with it. Animality or Biogenesis began to move forward in complexity and consciousness until it could no longer keep within its own boundaries and bubbled over into something that was not there before, but which depended on what went before for its existence. It was the age of humans, or homogenesis, and not animality. And still reality, this new lifeform continued forward towards its destiny.
2. THE CHRIST PRINCIPLE — In my view of reality, the next principle is one where humans evolved with their physical characteristics but lacked the experience to move to the next level of human evolution, how to communicate with an energy source that could not grow in consciousness and complexity without help from a higher power to provide knowledge about the new purpose in life, to know, love and serve others so that we move from rationality to spirituality. This last nature is human, but the deepest part of what it means to be human, something not attained without help. The help that this next level of reality provided now required an act of the will to give up what the world thinks is humanity’s destiny, in favor of a new reality, one that begins with Baptism and does not end with death. Galileo, yes, that Galileo, gave an inspired insight when he wrote: The Bible is not a book that tells us how the heavens go, but rather shows us how to go to heaven.
3. THE PRINCIPLE OF TRUTH — The third paradigm shift is from the words and deeds of Christ to spread it throughout the world so that all humans have the potential to become what their nature intended, sons and daughters of the Father. The third principle began with Pentecost and the tongues of fire on each of the apostles to now. The principle of truth is that the Church Universal, with four marks of one, holy, catholic, and apostolic, carries what is true about Christ’s teachings down through the centuries. Outside the Church, states a very early source, there is no salvation. Life, with all that went before, is a living gathering in each age to pray together for the Holy Spirit to enlighten each one.
4. OUTSIDE THE CHURCH THERE IS NO SALVATION — Within the time limitations of each age, the constancy and continuous addition of truth, way, and life, inexorably move to complexity and consciousness of what it means to be fully human. The Church is not just a dead collection of old and irrelevant prescriptions that each age rejects as outdated, but the ongoing living and real gathering together of those on earth still struggling to have in them the mind of Christ Jesus, and those in heaven who are one with The Christ Principle, plus those who await purification from and for their sins of omission and commission. This ongoing dynamic of the living Catholic Church, I am honored to have had a taste of it for eighty-four years.
5. FOR ME, THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND MY STRUGGLE TO REACH HOW TO KNOW GOD WITH ALL MY MIND, MY HEART, AND MY STRENGTH, IS LIFE ITSELF. My Catholic Faith is taking all the above as I understand it now, as I am and where I am. I use Lay Cistercian spirituality, based on Trappist policies and charisms, to help me do that. This is the level of making new wineskins to hold the new wine that Christ shares with me through the energy of the Holy Spirit. I make all things new each, through, with, and in Christ to the glory of the Father. These boundaries are self-imposed and accepted by the Catholic Church, as it interprets what it means for the purpose of life. The act of submission to a higher set of principles is unnatural for humans, with the default being what the individual thinks is important for them. I am a Catholic according to how I understand what that means, but, more importantly, the assumptions and behaviors I exhibit come from my interaction with Christ and my abandonment of His will.

I have put these categories of boundaries as ideas against which I use sexuality. I do not speak of gender or the physical actions of stimulation to achieve orgasm, but rather sexuality as one of two or three deep-seated emotions that humans inherited from our animalistic predecessors. Sexuality is probably the strongest urge or emotion humans have. In fact, it is so strong that God had to set boundaries to help us move from our animalistic instincts, or we would be stuck with a level of evolution that would not allow our humanity to reach its true potential. Jesus had to come to show us how to use our sexuality properly, but it does take abandonment of our animal instinct to substitute God’s energy (as we can accept it). The problem is, Jesus is no longer with us, but that ever-present and strongest emotion continues to haunt our trafficking with what is good or bad for us. The Church, imperfect as it is, has a perfect head, Christ. The more we assimilate the energy of God into ourselves, the stronger we become to realize what our next steps in evolution are and the power to be lifted up by God to that next level.

This next iteration of the blog is about the application of how I see sexuality using these five boundaries from God to move from animality to rationality, and from rationality to spirituality.

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