Neither painful relationships nor painful bodies

Hardly a day goes by without some reference in the news media to premarital and/or extramarital sex. The context may be AIDS, unwanted pregnancy, abortion, or some other social problem. But satisfying answers to the pros and cons of sexual conduct are sometimes hard to find.

In this interview, which was broadcast originally on the Christian Science Sentinel Radio Edition, Mark Unger, who is a Christian Scientist, tells how he worked out his feelings on the subject a number of years ago after he and a female friend had become involved in an intimate relationship.

LISTEN to the original audio broadcast:

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Having grown up in the Christian Science Sunday School, I got some spiritual answers to this whole question about sexual activity—whether to share a physical relationship with somebody outside the context of marriage. I had a feeling that it was definitely not a good thing to do, and yet at the same time, society—the world around me—was saying free love is an acceptable thing. It’s OK, it’s the natural thing. So I had to make decisions on my own about what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is bad, what is satisfying, and what is not satisfying.

A couple of experiences really helped me. First of all, there was a girl I met in high school. We had a good relationship through the years, and at times we dated, and sometimes we didn’t. But we always remained really good friends.

In my late teens, after we were both out of high school, she was living a few hundred miles away, and we decided that we’d like to see each other again. So I went to see her, and, unfortunately, we ended up getting involved in a sexual, physical relationship. And I say “unfortunately” because it seemed to bring the relationship down to an all-time low. It was suddenly awkward. We looked at each other differently. There was more emotion involved in things. There wasn’t the free kind of sharing that we’d always had in the past.

But what really brought out to me that the physical relationship wasn’t right was that when I was preparing to leave, my friend became extremely emotional. She was very sad that I was leaving and broke down crying. We had parted before and there was never this extreme emotional state. Before, we had always shared on a more spiritual basis, a purer basis. And in our sharing I think we had both felt we were better off for having been together. There hadn’t been this kind of emotional strain.

Naturally I tried to comfort her, but I had a tough time because I was emotionally distraught myself. I was having feelings I didn’t know how to deal with, so I just did the best I could, and I did have to leave.

Naturally I had some soulsearching to do. So on the way home and after I got there, I reached out to God in prayer. I thought the least I could do was to learn from the experience because I really felt hurt. Not only had I brought myself down but I felt I was bringing someone else down. And I always had the desire, then and now, to follow in the footsteps of Christ Jesus. Of course, he didn’t go down a road of sensualism and materialism, and so, consequently, to go down that road would be not to follow him. To follow in his footsteps would be to uplift my own life and the lives of others—to heal.

One of the things I realized as I reached out in prayer was that I was learning already that sensualism is a selfish thing. The suggestion that indulging in sensuality would be satisfying and helpful just wasn’t true. In fact it seemed to be tearing down the good relationship that we had. So I concluded that this kind of physical sharing outside of marriage—outside of the moral context where it belongs—was something I didn’t want to be involved in. I prayed to be able to lift this relationship back up. I was very repentant. I knew that God was still with me, just as God was right there for the prodigal son (see Luke 15:11-24) when he turned back to his father. I knew that God was not condemning me, but that I had to see the wrong I had done and turn from it. In fact I realized that it was God’s law that was impelling me to go up higher, and so my prayer really was to lift my life higher, to lift this whole relationship back up.

I knew that I could see the spiritual reality—and that what was spiritually true in a relationship was satisfying. And my prayer was answered in a couple of different ways. First, I was talking with this girlfriend on the phone a little later on, and she told me that she was having excruciating pain from menstrual cycles. I just felt a lot of love and compassion for her and wanted to help her. I didn’t know anything about menstrual cycles, but I did know that God doesn’t send pain—that He heals us of it—because I had experienced physical healing in my own life through prayer.

Even though I had never prayed for anybody else, I just felt that was what was necessary and that it was the way to follow in the steps of Christ Jesus. So I told her, “You can be healed of this—you don’t have to live with this all the time.” Years before, I had given her the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, which was written by Mary Baker Eddy. At this time, a particular messaged in the book came to me as I was praying for her, and I asked her to read it. She agreed to do that. I talked to her over a month later. She told me that she had had a menstrual cycle again, and for the first time in her life had not experienced any pain whatsoever. A few months later, she said the same thing. She just hadn’t experienced any more pain. So she was healed, and this was the first answer to my prayer to lift our relationship to a more spiritual level.

As time went on she was working in another town and I was doing some traveling. We stayed great friends, though we had parted ways for a while. I was learning about lifting relationships higher, but there were struggles. I was still thinking about how to have a satisfying relationship that is built on a spiritual basis, versus trying to build on a material basis and feeling continually a letdown.

About a year or so later as I was traveling I met a woman and we were instant friends. We were able to share freely and openly, and we just really helped each other out. As with any close boy-girlfriend relationship, there comes a point when you have to deal with the question “Is it going to be sexual or not?” As I was praying about it I was doing a lot of observing. I had a lot of friends around me who engaged in sex outside of marriage. They didn’t seem any happier because of it.

In our particular relationship when this came up, I just explained how I felt about it and some of the things I had learned. It wasn’t something that we needed in order to have a fulfilling, satisfying relationship. She totally agreed with me, and consequently we had by far the most wonderful relationship I had ever had to that point. This was a direct answer to my prayer that there could be a satisfying, spiritually based relationship.

There’s something Mrs. Eddy says in her book Science and Health that really sums up what I learned. She makes the statement “Truth will at length compel us all to exchange the pleasures and pains of sense for the joys of Soul” ( p. 390). That’s what had been happening in my life and, of course, continues to happen. And I realize that it is happening for everybody. Truth is another name for God. So God is compelling “us all to exchange the pleasures and pains of sense for the joys of Soul.”

JOHN
If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. —John 8:31, 32

Originally published in the Christian Science Sentinel, December 4, 1995.
Photo by Quinn Dombrowski / cc by 2.0