Organic Farming and A Young Sex Life

In an earlier post I talked about the difficulties of growing your own food in a consumer culture, which needs you to buy the things you consume.

          As a culture we have become dangerously over-specialized. It takes a city to keep a family fed, clothed, educated, and loved. 

          You have a job and you do only that. The butcher would never think of baking his own bread and the candlestick maker would never slaughter his own poultry. The only way this massively interdependent system works is for everyone to surrender their curiosities and stick with one occupation. 

          I like the idea of communities assisting one another. But economics has its boundaries. Should the education of children be completely relegated to the government? Should we not be able to choose how our children are acculturated? (But this is a whole other post.)  

          The idea that we should “leave it to the professionals” has crept into the bedroom. 

          My generation has grown up with pornography as a constant presence on television, internet, and mobile media. From the “softer” to the more brutal forms, it's all there, its in your smart phone and pumped into your living room. 

          So the young man with his mind twisted to a sexuality created for his viewing pleasure, is confused by his new wife’s need for a loving sexuality of mutual enjoyment. For years the pornography industry has served his every need. For only a little money and exposure to their advertising he can also “leave it to the professionals.” Face it, his wife is an amateur trying to learn as she goes. The woman on his tablet has a decade of creating arousal in thousands of people. 

In my marriage, we make our love for free, but that doesn't mean it's cheap. A fulfilling marriage is costly, paid out in daily installments of love and respect. Inning after inning, play after play, offense and defense; marriage is a team sport. And a lifetime of love leaves plenty of time for celebration. 

          But will the young husband understand this when love has been defined as sexual arousal and release? He missed it, he mistook lust for love. Love is sacrifice to God and each other for the building up of his kingdom. I see it everyday. My fulfillment through marriage inspires and encourages me to build God’s kingdom. 

          Pornography is investing in the kingdom of the enemy. It is deadly. Porn produces short-term enjoyment and long-term discontentment. God gave married couples the privilege to make their own enjoyment, to be sustained from the produce of their own garden. Pornography is consumerism. 

          So the young wife feels unloved, ignored, and neglected. After a long day at work, or chasing toddlers, or breast-feeding through the night, she knows she can’t compete with the professionals.

          Wallowing powerless in her own insecurities, she tries to fill her discontentment with something also purchased, a paperback novel by another sex professional. And so the sad story ends. She’s locked herself in the laundry room, hoping the baby’s nap will last till the end of the chapter.