Sex And Prayer
“For the first six months of marriage men only think about sex. For the next fifty years it’s the same…” As I have just returned from Sweden, I thought it was time I dealt with sex - although there was surprisingly little of it about in Stockholm - not that I was looking. Also, this column is supposed to reflect upon how the male mind works, and most male minds work overtime on sex.
As a young man I always imagined it wouldn’t occupy your mind so much when you were old, say 35 or so. Then one of my first “pastoral situations” as a minister was helping a church member in his seventies who had been arrested for shoplifting a ‘Playboy’ from the local newsagents. It’s like the old abbot who was once asked by a young monk when he would be free from all these sexual thoughts. “About 5 minutes after you die” he replied.
All this is hardly surprising. Sexuality and spirituality are very closely related, and for men and women created in the image of God, the sex drive reflects something spiritually very deep in the Trinity. This is why many of the men and women who have pursued God so enthusiastically have been most tempted to divert their energies into the pursuit of sex - you can read about it in the diaries of the saints down through the ages. Perhaps men think a lot about sex because they don’t dare think about the God who created it.
Woman Alive monthly column
