Have you ever stopped as you turned pages on the way to the New Testament to read the Hebrew Scriptures' Song of Songs?

If you haven't you'll be surprised - pleasantly or not - by its frank celebrating of love between two persons - a man and a woman in this story. If you have, did you perhaps wonder how Christians in the western world have become so judgmental, so repressed and repressive, so squeamish about this fundamentally human activity.

How did it happen that bodily functions were deemed crude, base, sinful; while mind, spirit, and soul - all abstracts and not material - were deemed worthy, special, holy? Humans were split into body and spirit. The aim for many became to suppress the flesh - matter - and to nurture the "spiritual".

Platonists and Gnostics had a field day. Mind over matter! Soul trumped body! Platonic love was pure. Love expressed in sexuality was rude and lewd - except as a necessity for procreation. Balderdash!

Read Song of Songs and take heart in a different message. Delight in the pleasures of human love expressed in the flesh with soul and mind. Read Genesis 1 and remember that the biblical witness is that humans - male and female - are created in the Divine image. "It's good!" Whoopee!