2006-07-25 08:21:42 · 23 answers · asked by YAHWEH! 1 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
It isn't. Sex is better when you love your partner. Love is deepened by the sharing of sex (often). But they are different things.
2006-07-25 08:24:27 · answer #1 · answered by mathematician 7 · 1⤊ 1⤋
An interesting fact in this connection is that the word translated love in the Song of Solomon (the steamiest book of the Bible) 1:2 actually refers to "physical expressions of intimacy" and might better be translated as "lovemaking".
In his Encyclical "Deus Caritas Est", Pope Benedict XVI noted that the conjugal love between a man and a woman is a type of "eros" - that is, a love which seeks the other for your own fulfillment. Although it may sound selfish, it is nonetheless a true good and belongs to marriage, an institution founded on the sexual complementarity of the partners. Eros can be a true guide into agape, which is the selfless love with which God loves us, and therefore can be a major part of one's spiritual journey.
That is an amazing claim which is based on the traditional Christian understanding of human beings as both body and soul. If we were just souls floating around, sex would be just as disgusting and worthless as the Gnostics thought (Gnostics were, among other things, a religious group which thought that the soul was what was "real" about human beings). If I am both a soul and a body, then when I love I will naturally love with my body as well.
Of course, as everyone else has pointed out, love doesn't just equal sex, because that would lead to such absurd consequences as saying that rape = love. But it would be true to say that romantic love arises from our sexuality and naturally feeds into a physical expression in sexual union. However, the total self giving of a person in the act of sex suggests that it would be fittingly accompanied by a total self giving in the promises of marriage, as well.
As for the question: When will people realize this? I suspect that the Gnostic view of the soul's preeminence over the body is still widely held, which leads to an understanding of bodily expressions of love as far lessened or degraded in value. If our society were either to return to a more traditional Christian anthropology or even move to some kind of non-religious materialism (which held that the body is all there was to humans anyways), the closer tie between love and sex might become more widely held.
However, I suspect that the materialist view is probably more likely simply to collapse love entirely into sex where the Christian view would hold the physical and spiritual expressions in fruitful tension.
2006-07-25 16:45:24 · answer #2 · answered by harlomcspears 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Rape is sex, but is rape love? NO!!!!! Love is the act of giving to one another. Love doesn't happen, it's built. Love is not sex. Sex may be a FACTOR in love, but the two do NOT equal each other. The more you give to someone, the more you love that person. NOT, the more you have sex, the more you love. Many people have sex just for their own pleasure. It's not nesessarily because they love the person that they're having it with! Sex can be only lust. Someone might want to have sex with a woman because he thinks that she's pretty, and then, once he's done, does he stay with her? Noooo! He moves on to find someone possibly more pretty. Does he love any of them? Of course not! He may have loved the sexual experience he had with them, but he most certainly does not love them, he loves himself too much. Love is selfless. Just the act of sex (by itsself) is NOT. It is purely for selfish reasons. Therefore, sex is NOT love!
2006-07-25 15:32:11 · answer #3 · answered by naturelover 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Sex is a way people express their love. Sex is sometimes without love.
Love has many forms, one of which is passionate love, which very often includes sex. Many kinds of love do not involve sex.
While love and sex are often intermingled, they are not dependent upon each other.
2006-07-25 15:37:07 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Wrong!
Sex is lust, not love.
Love is caring for the other person more than you care for yourself.
The antonym of Love is not hate, but "selfishness", so love is acting unselfishly towards another, and true love is total unselfishness.
An example of this is when Jesus Christ laid down HIS life for OUR sins (ie crimes against God). For God so loved this world that He gave His only begotten Son, that ANY body who believes (ie trusts in, clings to and relies on) Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.
Now THAT is TRUE Love.
2006-07-25 15:28:12 · answer #5 · answered by no1home2day 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
No, it most definately isn't. Would you have sex with your mom, or sister. You love them right? Love and Sexual instinct are linked emotionally, but are not the same thing.
2006-07-25 15:28:34 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Doesn't HAVE to be.
I've had sex without love, and love without sex.
2006-07-25 15:25:27 · answer #7 · answered by Alex 42 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Actually not being able to tell the difference in the two has led to an increase in promiscuity, which in turn has certainly contributed to many of society's ills.
2006-07-25 15:58:11 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
So if you love your dog, does that mean you want to have sex with it?
2006-07-25 15:25:21 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Probably never, because not all love is sex.
2006-07-25 15:26:24 · answer #10 · answered by lenny 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋