The other night I was helping my son Keegan with his homework. The fact that my 2nd grade son has homework every night is crazy talk. When I was in 2nd grade, my homework was to pit my He-Man and G.I. Joe figures against each other in epic combat for hours on end on end.
Anyway, he was attempting to glue words that he had cut out on a piece of paper in alphabetical order. You might say he was struggling. Elmer’s glue and 2nd grade fingers aren’t a great combination. And, the funny thing about glue is that it is quite effective at cementing two pieces of paper together. This is great except for when you’re in 2nd grade and you keep putting the words in the wrong order.
Once the glue has been applied, pulling the two pieces of paper apart is a rather nasty affair. The funny thing is that the papers become one and trying to pull them apart results in ripping the papers and spilling glue everywhere. The end result was papers glued to the table, fingers stuck together, and a seven year old repeatedly banging his head against the table
In his defense, the entire episode was technically my fault. He was working as fast as he could because I had just purchased the new Lego: Marvel Super Heroes video game and promised him that we could play it as soon as his homework was done. He was essentially doing his homework at ludicrous speed which is never a good idea unless your name is Dark Helmet or Colonel Sanders.
It was about this time that I realized that sex is a lot like the glue my son was using for his homework. I didn’t come to this realization during the homework session of course…that would have been weird. Nor did I realize it while we were playing Lego: Marvel Super Heroes because that game is so fun that any sort of distraction, even thinking about sex is impossible.
I came to this realization about sex and glue over coffee with one of our small group leaders as he talked about a student in his group. His student had slept with his girlfriend and now he was struggling because things hadn’t turned out like he thought they would. As it turns out, things were getting pretty complicated.
Often, I think I’ve had a genius idea and then realize that I actually stole the idea from someone else. This happens in our office all the time, usually after someone reads my blog and realizes that I stole another one of their ideas and played it off like it was mine. I assure you this is unintentional. I’m terrible with names and intellectual property.
With this whole sex and glue image, it turns out I’ve stolen the idea from someone fairly high up…God. In the book of Genesis, God describes sex as forging two people into one person in a way that can’t be broken apart. There is something incredibly powerful about sex. It’s like glue. It cements two people together. There is no undoing the unity that sex brings. That’s why when people talk about how so and so still has a piece of their heart they are speaking the truth.
The thing that bothers me is how our culture presents sex as just something fun to do that doesn’t have lasting consequences. Based on what I’ve read from the Inventor of sex and what I’ve observed over and over again in the lives of friends and students, sex is like glue. It forges a bond between bodies and souls. It creates beautiful and lasting unity and intimacy in the context of marriage but when two people who have been cemented together are pulled apart there is lasting emotional and relational damage.
image credited to me and the sysop
