Over recent years there have been a number of articles in the Christian Science periodicals about the need to overcome various forms of sensuality—adultery, homosexuality, fornication. The Bible LessonsIn the Christian Science Quarterly. continually point out the necessity of finding our freedom from physical and mental slavery to immorality in all its forms.
But what about normal sex within the shelter of the marriage covenant? Is it consistent for an individual wanting to be a practicing Christian Scientist to have sexual relations with his or her wife or husband? Can one still be a successful student of Christian Science, which teaches man's spiritual identity as the child of God, while still experiencing marital sex? These questions may be raised by someone considering marriage as well as by the married person who is growing in his understanding that Life is God, neither in nor of fleshly conditions. These individuals also may ask, "Will I be able to heal myself and others if I have not yet moved beyond this particular aspect of human experience?"
To answer these questions we need, first of all, to see that it is not wrong to be married. In an absolute sense, God is Spirit, and His creation, including man, is wholly spiritual. From this purely spiritual standpoint, all that partakes of the belief that life is in matter and composed of the pleasures and pains of the physical senses mistakes reality. But human beings only gradually outgrow the beliefs of life in matter. Discovering Spirit, God, to be All is a step-by-step process in which the claims of the flesh fall away only as the realization of divine Love and Life fills us.
