Imago Dei and the Absolute Fake

We'll be doing a sexuality and God module with our youth group soon, so I've been thinking a lot about how they're related and how regular "church" curricula can simplify the topic into a simple "do not". I'm going to go a bit further today, in search of the underlying truth.

It's no surprise that human beings carry within them the capability for longing, as a part of the "divine spark", as Rob Bell says. Sometimes this longing transmutes itself into productive, creative searches for beauty: art, poetry, music, etc. When we hear an operatic aria and are moved to tears, it's for no apparent reason other than it's so beautiful, it makes us ache. It's why our breath is taken away by sunsets, and forests, and deserts, and oceans, and all the wonder of nature. We are created in the very image of God, and it is this God-part inside of us that longs for something supra-natural. We long for what cannot be found on this fallen earth. We long for God.

Sexuality is a manifestation of this longing. Sex is something God created. It joins, it connects, and more importantly, it fills that longing. When sex is within the boundaries of a healthy, faithful marriage, it is very good. It renews, it rejoins, it reconnects. When sex occurs outside of marriage, it may seem to fill that longing for a time, but without the stability of marriage, it returns empty; something fragile that looks like the real thing, but which shatters completely. The prolific writer and social philosopher Umberto Eco had this to say in his book, Travels in Hyperreality :

"We journey into hyperreality, in search of instances where the American imagination demands the real thing and, to attain it, must fabricate the absolute fake; where the boundaries between game and illusion are blurred, the art museum is contaminated by the freak show, and falsehood is enjoyed in a situation of 'fullness,' or horror vacui.”



Eco, despite not being a Christian (and speaking more about wax museums and Ripleys), is incredibly astute about this longing and thus we create something that is so "almost-real" that it's absolutely fake. And he understands that not only are we satisfied with this falsity, we crave it simply because we subconsciously know that we cannot have the real thing yet. And in such a modern way, we don't have the patience to wait for the real thing (though we're obsessed with obtaining it) so we settle for what we can have.

Eco called it the horror vacui, the idea that nature fears empty space, and so always tries to suck in gas or liquid to avoid being empty. It's the fear of emptiness. When people fear their emptiness inside, they try to fill it up, to stop the longing, with things that were not meant to be temporary. Sex was not meant to be casual or ephemeral. It was created as an integral and sustained part of marriage. When we "settle" for sex outside of marriage bonds, we're settling for this fake, fragile thing. It will not fill that longing for the long-term. It's not simply because the Bible says to not have sex outside of marriage. It's because it affects us in that God-part, within, and it can shatter us if we misuse it. And honestly, we're broken enough already, aren't we?