The Place of Physical Intercourse in Marriage

Rev. Ernest O'Neill

And really loved ones, that is the place honestly of physical intercourse in the marriage of a son and daughter of God and it is really as real as that.  Such a contrast, and you know it will startle you even as I use the phrases but I use them to bring before you how far we’ve got from that, such a contrast to kinky sex, to whipping bodies, to abusing and manipulating bodies.  It’s such a contrast to the concentration on trying to get the physical thing right.  And you see that’s the pathetic state of sex in our society and that’s the reason for the pathetic state.  It’s the idea that somehow by working on the other loved one’s body you can create the security, and the sense of value, and the sense of unity, and safety, and intimacy that can only be created when you’re joined together by God, and you’re joined together in spirit, and in mind, and in emotions.

It’s the pathetic misunderstanding that somehow by acting upon the body you can perhaps act upon the will, and the emotions, and the mind and if ever you do think of the spirit you can somehow act upon the spirit.  And that’s why we experience such disintegration of our personalities.  That’s why we experience such conflict because in here all the time our conscience is saying, “No, no it’s not meant to be like that.  It’s not meant to be like that.”  That’s why even when the husband comes home even with his flowers the wife often refuses him physically, because he sees the thing as just making something up that he made go wrong.  He sees it as something that he ought to do that she can see outwardly and it should make everything right in her own personality.

Well, that isn’t the problem at all.  The problem is that there’s no unity in there at all and they never share that unity and they’re trying to impose a unity by motivating each other’s bodies in different ways.  It’s really the cause of the animalist horror of a husband forcing himself on his wife.  You can see, it’s just so ridiculous, it’s so grotesque in the light of what God has planned here, and that it isn’t even worth thinking about.  It’s something to be drawn back from in horror because of course the beauty of real intercourse is that it’s a deep, relaxing, mutual desire that comes from the very depths of people’s spirits and if there’s ever any forcing then there’s nothing.  There’s nothing.