Tag Archive for: Winnning

What is so sacred about sex? – Part 2

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This continues from part 1…..

In part one of this article, we discussed the sexual mood of our present culture and whether or not as human beings, we are the owners of our own bodies and minds. We ended on the note that if it is the case that we have been made or created by someone else for his own purposes, then surely we would have a lot more obligations than we would have if we only belonged to ourselves. But we also noted that, this is a big “IF” because some people do not believe (or at least they live as if they don’t believe) that there is any Being higher than ourselves, to whom we must be responsible. Is it reasonable to believe that an actual Being exists who is responsible for our existence and to whom we might be accountable to, regarding our sexual lives? If there is the possibility for such a Being to exist, why would he be interested in what we do with our bodies sexually?

For starters, let us be brutally honest with ourselves: everything in this world – from ourselves to the flowers to the stars to sea to animals etc – points to the fact that some sort of careful designing has gone into the creation of our world and of ourselves, doesn’t it? We often take it for granted that this physical world of ours is structured the way it is. But mathematically speaking, the probability of this world happening by a mindless random or unordered process is incredibly small. According to Astrophysicist Hugh Ross’ conservative calculation, the chance of a planet like ours existing in the universe is about 1 in a trillion billion billion (i.e. 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 1 in 10 raised to the power 30).

 Scientists are discovering that had even a single feature of our universe been just a little bit different, the stars, galaxies and human life would not exist. Let us briefly look at a few amazing scientific discoveries before we go on. The distance from the earth to the sun is just right. Why? Even a small change of around 2% and all life would cease. If the earth was too near the sun, water would evaporate. If it was too far from the sun, its coldness level would not support life. In fact, even the rotation speed of the earth is just right; if it was too slow, the temperature differences between day and night would be too extreme, and if it was too fast the wind speeds would be catastrophic. Furthermore, if the ratio of the electromagnetic and gravitational forces had differed by about one part in ten thousand billion billion billion billion (i.e. 1 part in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000), then stars such as the Sun, which are capable of supporting life, could not exist. Do you see any picture emerging?

The delicate balance of the elements in our universe, to use the illustration of the theoretical physicist Paul Davies, is like the accuracy level that a marksman needs in order to hit a coin twenty billion light years away on the other side of the observable universe. [A light year is the speed travelled by light in one year. And light, by the way, has the fastest travelling speed in our universe]. In fact it has been noted by some researchers that the earth is placed precisely in a part of the universe that is congenial to scientific studies in cosmology, galactic astronomy, stellar astrophysics and geophysics. That is, if our earth had been positioned in a part of the universe with too much starlight, we could not have been able to see into deep space. There are more than 3000 galaxies in the observable universe, each containing millions to trillions of stars – many being bigger than the earth.

Further, Oxford mathematician John Lennox in his book, ‘God’s undertaker: has Science buried God?’, notes that the distinguished mathematician and astronomer, Sir Fred Hoyle, admitted that his atheism was shaken profoundly when he discovered the degree of fine-tuning needed between the nuclear ground state energy levels in order for carbon to be formed either by a combination of three helium nuclei, or by a combination of nuclei of helium and beryllium. (And for the record, life cannot exist on earth without an abundant supply of carbon). Sir Hoyle’s discovery, according to Lennox, led him to remark that, “a superintellect has monkeyed with physics as well as with chemistry and biology,” and that “there are no blind forces in nature worth talking about.” Interesting isn’t it? And let us not forget the issue of the human DNA – the molecule containing coded instructions for the cells in the body. A group of scientists have recently estimated that the adult body contains about 37.2 trillion cells, each containing DNA. Each person’s complete DNA is unique; the exception being identical twins. The instructions are in what is called Genetic language and they are detailed, complex and specific. These instructions include for example, which cells should grow and when, which cells should die and when, which cells should make hair and what colour it should be.  If all this sounds too technical, then let me make it simple: the scientific discoveries are pointing in the direction where it is highly unlikely that an intelligent Being did not plan and execute the creation of this whole skilfully crafted universe, including human beings like us.

What is my point with all this information? It is this: if conditions in this universe, and the nature of our human bodies, are the way they are – so delicately precision-tuned – and if human beings like us posses the kind of intelligence we posses, even to study them, then it is very reasonable to (and unreasonable not to) suppose that a more intelligent Being, (1) is out there, (2) is the cause of our beings and (3) is interested in our lives. Now if we relate this thought to Mr. Lewis’ thoughts about moral duties (discussed in part one of this article), we can say with a fair degree of confidence that the whole of mankind must have a Landlord. Our bodies, strictly speaking, are not ours. Our Landlord is this Intelligent Being who created this world and everything in it. Religious folks simply call him, God. Since this God is the cause of our intricately designed bodies and existence, it is not mind-boggling that any “Dos and Don’ts” on how we use our bodies should come from him.

 

A Curious Worldview

 In his speech to the members of the city council of Athens, Paul the apostle of Christ tried to give them a new view of God, saying, “God, who made the world and everything in it, is Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples made by human hands.” (Acts 17:24 GNB) In a city so used to building alters and shrines for every imaginable god, this news was however unimaginable. But to the people in the city of Corinth (a city well-known for its immorality), who became believers in Jesus Christ, Paul wrote them a letter in which he explained to them the sacredness of their bodies: “…the body is not to be used for sexual immorality, but to serve the Lord, and the Lord provides for the body. God raised the Lord [i.e. Jesus] from death and will also raise us by his power. … Don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and who was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourselves but to God; he bought you for a price. So use your bodies for God’s glory.” (1 Cor. 6: 13,14, 19,20 GNB). Dr Ravi Zacharias, a Christian philosopher, appropriately explains that, “the Christian walks with God, not to God. We no longer go to the temple to worship. Rather we go with our temples to worship.” The body of a believer in Christ, rather than a church building, is the holy dwelling place of God and must be treated as “holy grounds.” Thus what this person wears, or touches, or says, or looks at or reads or listens to must uphold God’s holiness.

So much for the Christian “bodies”! What bearing does this worldview have on those who do not subscribe to it? The non-Christian is a prospective temple of God. God wants to live in this person. The Christian explanation for human existence in general is that God made us and not only that, but also that he made us all for himself (Col. 1:16) and he made us in such a way that only in union with him can our greatest good be had (John 10:10). Sin does not allow this to happen. But God became man in Jesus Christ, lived uprightly among us, identified with our human weaknesses, paid for our sins in his death and rose up and wants to live in us to empower us to live as we ought to. Like C. S. Lewis once observed, God invented us in a certain sense like how a man invents an engine. And when a car is made to run of gasoline, it would not run properly on anything else. In this same sense God made the “human machine,” as Lewis puts it, to run on himself.

The fuel we need in order to function the way he designed us is God himself and the food we need to keep our souls spiritually alive is God himself. We cannot expect to function properly on our own terms. Sexual fulfillment (a major hunger of our generation) with its proper joy, peace and security does not come through the pulling down of God’s boundaries. Without God at the centre of a sexual relationship, our much desired real and secure intimacy which we often believe can be found in sexual intercourse will prove elusive. Any person, Christian or not, who tries to outsmart God on this front will soon find that the last laugh is always God’s, not ours; restlessness, emptiness, meaninglessness, broken trust, guilt and shame will ultimately come resting at our door steps. There is definitely pleasure in sin but it is fleeting. Kenyan Christian Apologist, John Njoroge, insightfully says that, “Trying to meet our real needs without God is like trying to satisfy our thirst with salty water: the more we drink, the thirstier we become.  This is a sure path to various sorts of addictions.”

Even in our limited wisdom, we realize that playing our cherished game of football without any rules does not make it really enjoyable. So we have created rules, in all their imperfections. Even with the rules in place, some people hurt others and get hurt themselves; they offend and get offended during the course of the game. Can you imagine the unbridled chaos that would exist if there were no clear rules? In the same way, we are living in an increasing sexually chaotic culture today because we are desperately throwing off God’s moral restraints: husbands and wives are sleeping with people other than their spouses, young unmarried boys and girls are “training” themselves in the act of sex yet ironically the idea of marriage is appearing uncomfortable to them because of its widely acknowledged moral limitations. God has provided a framework within which sex can be properly enjoyed physically, emotionally and spiritually, and it is not outside marriage.

 In God’s scheme of things, according to Christian teachings, you do not need to be experienced in sex before marriage. This is because you have the whole of your married life to get to know your spouse’s body (God’s gift to you) as your bodies lock and your spirits mesh in sexual intercourse before God. With each encounter you get to know the body of your spouse even better to the glory of God. And here is the rich wisdom of the Christian faith (which may seem foolish on the face of it): Any person who genuinely relies on Jesus Christ before his marriage and also during his marriage will be given the grace and spiritual strength to stay the course of marriage should he find out that he has ended up with a sexually defective spouse. Tough to take in, I know, but I cannot make this truth any more appealing than it sounds right now in a time like ours. Marriage is not a selfish enterprise, where if you are not having a sexually exciting life everything else must come crushing down for everyone in it. Rather it is essentially a self-giving worship of God as you commit yourself exclusively to that one person, to love, to cherish and to seek the good of this person always.

 The Christian scriptures teach that all who trust in God will not be disappointed, ultimately. But break God’s precepts on sex (or on any other issue of life) and you can be sure that you will not only separate yourself from God and into a dark loneliness of the soul but you will also hurt yourself and others. Let us be clear: the idea that God is an unloving and unfeeling Judge up there who is simply watching down to see who has gone even slightly wrong so that he may swiftly punish him, is wrong. God wants to reconcile us back to himself. This is the Christian message to the world. God’s precepts in the Bible are intended to facilitate our happiness and not to stifle it. A parent sternly warns her child to steer clear of fire not because she wants to make the child miserable but because she wants to prevent the child from getting hurt or even dying. How can a child enjoy life when he is hurt or dead? If we separate ourselves spiritually from God (a spiritual death), through sin, how can we expect to receive God’s best? God knows the limits within which our best can be had. Stolen waters are not as sweet as we want to believe. Many people may look happy on the outside but on the inside they may be empty, restless, bitter and troubled because they have violated God in this area of sex.

Conclusion

We were made for God and if we spend ourselves in illegitimate pleasures, we will only come away broken and impoverished in our souls (and perhaps with physical scars too). No one enriches his soul by being sexually immoral. Rather we bankrupt ourselves spiritually; we feel the emptiness, restlessness of the soul, the guilt and shame of sin because we have divorced ourselves from God, who is our ultimate good. A more serious side to sexual immorality is that in the end, we must give account of our lives to the God. Some people realize this quicker than others but the important thing is that we are willing to take the necessary steps back to God through the path he has provided – faith in his Son, Jesus Christ. And to be clear, faith in Jesus Christ is not mere intellectual belief in Jesus as Lord but includes a willful commitment to live the whole of one’s life in reverence of him and his teachings. Christ offers forgiveness and rebirth even to the one who has wrecked himself or herself sexually yet is willing to repent. Are you a mess, sexually? Jesus gives hope and strength to those seeking to please God in their sexual lives.

Winning isn’t everything

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Driving along in my jalopy one Friday, my thoughts were far apart; on one hand I was thinking about the air conditioner my jalopy badly needed and the dust that this arid road was blowing in with all these impatient 4-wheelers whisking past and on the other hand I was just thinking about how much rest I needed following what had been a rather stressful week. There were several other peripheral thoughts. I was tuned in to BBC on the radio, a new habit I was forming. It was Qaddafi making the news again. Was it news at all?
The panellists on “World have Your say” were discussing Mariah Carey’s performance for the Qaddafi’s and some money London School of Economics is to have received and the PhD his son is to have obtained from there. Having heard Qaddafi for nearly two weeks, I wanted to change stations. The University of California professor or some other panellist, opined that when profit is cardinal in our dealings with others, things are bound to go wrong. I was stunned for a moment that even from a possible secular source they were concluding that profit isn’t everything.

There were varied opinions from those who sent text messages in and those who wrote on the Facebook wall. Some thought it was no big deal for Mariah Carey and her bunch of musical friends to have received cash from Qaddafi. Others thought they shouldn’t have. Someone asked that if we’re to deal with only those of integrity/good morals there would probably be no one to deal it. That, for me, was a deep question but more importantly to me, that nagging thought remained: when profit is key, things will likely go wrong.

The idea of profit flung my mind rapidly to my own employers and the business environment in general. I asked myself, is profit king? Is making returns the cardinal thing? Any attempt to answer that question is probably tantamount to career suicide so I will leave that to your good selves to decide. Are we willing to tell the customer the absolute truth if it means losing them? Are we willing to pay employees a fair wage even if it means less profit over all? As a business man, is profit the main thing? As a company is profit the main thing? As an individual, is profit and progress the key thing? Might I propose that something can go and will go awry?

From the cradle, we’re conditioned to be competitive. Win at sports, win in class, win some awards, get into the school play, read more books, get more games, etc. Our net worth, for many of us, becomes tied to the number of abbreviations after our name, the schools we’ve been to, the cars we drive, the neighbourhood we live in, etc. We jump on to life’s treadmill running with as much energy as we have failing to realize we’re headed nowhere. Our lives become subject to figures, statistics and terms like EBIDTA, GDP and the associated financial jargons. But is winning really everything? Is being the number one company, the number one this and that really all that matters?

Recently, a court in South Africa ruled that miners could sue their companies for lung infections/disease. Can the management of AngloGold Ashanti which was named in the news item and other mining companies say they were oblivious to the risks? Can other company’s whose staff are exposed to varying risks honestly say they do not know the dangers to which they expose their staff? When companies downsize and smaller numbers do work meant for more, do they not know the adverse health risks? For many, profit is king.  Evidently, something other than the person is central and this has horrid implications.

As for companies, many if not most of them are less likely to change and it’s quite likely they will continue playing ostrich so far as the lives of their employees are concerned. Forget all those employee sessions where they promise heaven year after year. The question comes down to a personal one: is winning everything to you? Is being number one, on top, being seen, being heard, being read, being known the driving impetus of your life? It is quite likely that you are headed for a cataclysmic crash, one that may not be evident to all externally. When your world implodes it eventually shows.

I asked a female friend of mine the other day: if you were a manager in a “fairly good” company and had a decent place to live, a decent car to drive and could pay your bills with some money to spare, would you take up the Senior Managerial position or Directorship if it meant less time with the children, twice the among of current travel and less time with your hubby. Her response was tantamount to “why not?” What she was saying was that if she had worked hard and long enough, she deserved it as much as anyone else. I wondered whether she saw the entire picture or perspective, but to her winning was key. Are we any different?

We graduate from school with high hopes of “making it” or becoming a “success,” whatever those terms mean. We scramble for the few jobs available and well with God’s providence, we land one. Our lives become simplified (or so we think) and we join the polygamous throng – we make the job the second wife. We wear ourselves thin to rise up the ladder while complaining how meagre our salaries are all through. Is this all there is to life?

Sometimes human beings can be quite mysterious. Several years later we find a drug addict in our home or some nymphomaniac and we wonder to ourselves “what happened?” I bought you this and that and took you to the best of schools. Genevieve, you had LCDs, dSTv, BBC, CNN and every mod-con, how in the world could you mess up? Some years ago, our fathers could not be ancestors unless they had good homes and children known for their decorum. Apparently, modernization has changed a lot. Will you even qualify as an ancestor? Is this your story?

At life’s centre isn’t money but people. When a boss disregards the legitimate needs of his employees or even more cogently his wife and children, that’s a recipe for disaster. We keep whining about social vices, increasing crime, homosexuality, online fraud, teenage pregnancy, abortions, etc. but have we stopped to ask ourselves, how did we arrive here? There are as many answers as there are people but I want to point us to two.

Some time ago, sociologists used to tell us that the home was the primary agent ofsocialization. I dare say that now it is the peer (in most cases). We have the Internet with its allies Facebook and Twitter, SMS, satellite TV and Nigerian movies socializing our children. When you don’t know what your kids are doing on the Internet or what they’re viewing on their cell phones don’t wake up surprised that your 15 year old is sexually active. The family is one place we should look to finding answers. When all we’re concerned about is going up, we neglect these children who need direction. We neglect wives and husbands who need attention and dare I say, when the family begins to crumble, society will in consequence crumble. How could I forget music and the arts? What would have been considered socially abhorrent just a decade ago is so warmly embraced as entertainment. Andrew Fletcher is right: “let me write the songs of a nation and I do not care who writes its laws.”

Evidently, it is not enough to end there ̶at the family. I am a Christian and can only propose what I know: that a living relationship with Christ which pans out in a Biblically-modelled fatherhood and family is our only hope for survival. Stronger Bible-based families lead to stronger Churches and stronger impact on societies. I’m no scholar of world religions but I’m yet to find a religious tradition that abhors family and the responsibility a father has to wife/wives and children. I recall a discussion with a Muslim colleague who explained that Allah granted additional wives only if the man could take care of them. I’ll avoid the excursus into polygamy and Muslim marriage. The question is, is care ONLY about putting food on the table or it is about helping shape another generation of people who will be useful to society and impact it positively?

At this writing, Qaddafi is clinging unrelentingly to power when others have fallen. Young men and women are dying out of what has been called Sudden Adult Death Syndrome and employers almost gleefully bury them oblivious or rather pretentiously blind-eyed to how their need to be number one is killing our nations’ futures. When “me” rather than “we” (us) is important we tread this road. When profit and gaining is king, we cut corners, sell our consciences and throw away our integrity so we can make progress.

I’ve yet to see a person on their death bed who has asked for their certificate from Yale, Oxford or Princeton. Quite often, people are caught in the euphoria of their hope beyond the grave or in the morbid fear of what awaits them beyond those moments. You will find some seeking some peace through a preacher or Imam or spiritual man/woman and still others trying to make peace with those they have offended. Eventually it boils down to relationship – either to the divine in the hereafter or to those they are leaving behind.

I have no angst about people climbing up the professional ladder and those other things. However when they neglect their families and what is most important – family, friends, people – and turn around to criticize society, I believe I am- we are-rightfully irked. We cannot cause a thing and turn around to criticize society for creating these problems.

I believe we have some lessons to learn from all thathas gone on around us – Tunisia, Egypt and now Libya. Am I advocating some kind of revolution? Partially so. When employers begin to realize we value ourselves beyond the machinery we’ve almost been reduced to, they will change. When employees make a statement about their values and collectively and peacefully communicate it that may turn the tide around.

Each day that we rise, we will be confronted with the opportunity to be better fathers, better mothers, betters brothers/sisters, better guardians and it will not be because we have made more cash than the day before but because we have spent time of worth touching the lives of those we love. The best legacy you can leave your children is knowing their worth and might I add in Christ, a worth devoid of competition, struggling and rivalry; a worth independent of their doing but inherent in their being – their creation in the “Imago Deo” – the image of God.

As you enter a new day and week, are you going to jump on life’s performance treadmill running everywhere and yet arriving nowhere or you’re going to stop and consider the things that truly matter – GOD, family, friends and life itself? In the end, winning isn’t everything.

March 6, 2011

1744GMT