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Your Delight is Divine Delight


The first responses I got from people when talking about your delight being divine delight is that it could totally be true, if we're not talking about sexual delight. For so many of us we were taught to fear sin, and to fear it a lot because our eternal salvation or eternal damnation was on the line. Regardless of what you believe about the afterlife now (I'll put my cards on the table and admit I'm ambivalent about an afterlife and if there is one I believe it's benevolent only) this intense teaching around sexual pleasure leading to potential eternal damnation is hard to shake out of your body. A lot of times I offer physical practices etc. but today I'm offering some mindset and theological shifts that you can use to help you believe that your delight is divine delight. 1) The Ecclesiological or Christological Argument for why your delight is divine delight:

Firstly, ecclesiology is the study of the Church--how we define Church, what we mean by it etc. Christology is the study of how Jesus is Christ and what Christ is. So, when I think about the Church as defined not by a hierarchical structure, but by the people who make up the Mystical Body of Christ, I'm able to see how our bodies are Christ's body. What my eyes see is what Christ sees. What my tongue tastes is what Christ tastes. And the same is true for you.


Now, some Churches decide that the body of Christ is only people who believe in Jesus as Christ, I disagree with that. I believe the Body of Christ includes all people living, deceased, and those who will come in the future (afterall God lives outside of time). I also personally include all of creation (plants and animals, and stars and rocks... you know, the whole universe). So when I say the Church, I mean literally the whole Cosmos. And when I say the Mystical Body of Christ I mean the whole Cosmos as well. But, you can define both however you'd like, what's important is that as the body of Christ our experiences are Christ's. So our delight is also Christ's.


2) Eschatological Argument for Delight. Eschatology is the study of the end times, but not in the apocalypse, four horsemen kind of way (which as a sidenote, Revelation isn't actually telling you what will happen in the future, it was written in code for people who lived when it was written, so all that stuff has already happened). Eschatology is the study of the end time in the sense of anything after Jesus' ascension is part of the Earth become closer and closer to the Kingdom of Heaven. So, it's really more about how are we creating heaven on earth here and now through our actions and thoughts and experiences.


In that way, when we delight, that is us infusing this earth becoming heaven with Delight. Even when it's sexual.


3) Natural Law argument for Delight. Natural law provides the basis for Christian ethics. It's roots are in Greco-Roman philosophy and states that anything has a specific purpose. The eye is built to see, the tongue to taste, etc. So, when we consider the clitoris, it has literally only one purpose: sexual pleasure. When we consider, if we have an organ intended solely for our sexual delight, then God delights in our using the organ he created for us to have pleasure for its purpose... pleasure.


If that all feels dangerous... If you read all that and what's coming up in your body is that it's dangerous to have sexual pleasure, I want you to think about this: We go through stages of faith and most of the time hwen the church is trying to teach us an ethical principle they're teaching it to us under the assumption that we may actually have a desire to do that bad thing (i.e. steal, gossip, commit adultury etc.) That way of teaching is really coming from a stage of faith that most of us have grown beyond. It's treating us as though all we have is compulsive desire, but that's not who we are as adults. For example, as a child I may have had to resist the impulse to steal a cool toy from a store, but as an adult I can see a beautiful dress that costs hundreds of dollars and not want to steal it.


When we've been taught that sexual pleasure is dangerous it comes from the belief that we don't have control over our impulses and therefore need an external authority to tell us to have less desire. We don't really need that anymore. That tactic of teaching ethics is like the training wheels you need before you can ride a bike. But we can all ride a bike and don't need them.


Many of our Churches and pastors are stuck teaching ethics that way because that's how they were taught and to be frank, they don't know a better way.


Perhaps today is the day you can let go of those ethical training wheels and start to trust that your pleasure and your desire are good and will lead you to holiness.


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