Sex and service

... people who do the greatest work in the world are strongly-sexed people who subordinate sex to the ends for which they live. In marriage the sex drive must be channelled into procreation and the giving of pleasure to one’s partner.* Outside of marriage, the sex drive must be sublimated and channelled into creativity in the kingdom of God. Remember — the strongly-sexed can strongly serve.

— Selwyn Hughes, Every Day With Jesus for Friday, July 27, 1984
[as quoted in God is a Matchmaker, Derek Prince]

Reminds me of this video on the Shaker movement a prof used to show. It always cracked me up when the “philosopher” part of the documentary commented on the “remarkable productivity” of those folk. It was like that moment on the Simpsons when Bart gets to say “bitch” because it’s the technically accurate term for the family pet. Here he is, Mr. Academic So-and-so, speaking in measured, expert tones, and he gets to talk about their sex lives, even insinuate the lack thereof might have made them slightly unusual. In their productivity, that is. Ah, the professorial class ... *It is for this reason, by the way — the focus upon the other’s pleasure — that Protestants aren’t so hung up on compatibility (of the sexual sort). For Christians having good sex depends on your ability to learn, not how alike your tastes are in the beginning.

God Is a Matchmaker