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God's original design was for the human race to be one big, happy, growing, immortal Neanderthal family, numbering in the billions, all of whom would obey Him and pay Him compliments, so that His name would be magnified. He made the first two human beings with His own hands. It was Adam and Eve's assignment to make the rest. Accordingly, God's first commandment to the young couple was to "Be fruitful, and multiply, and populate the Earth" (Gen. 1:28).
Some teens and Christian newbies are surprised to learn that God commanded those first human parents to begin copulating right from the get-go, without so much as a wedding ceremony. What they don't understand is that, in the beginning, human sex was not sinful. Sexual intercourse was just an intelligently designed method for Adam and Eve to multiply the population. Nor was it any fun. Before sin came into the world, it was no more "fun" for Adam and Eve to have sex than to floss one another's teeth. Sexual intercourse, as first designed by God, was a strenuous, unpleasurable exercise in obedience.
This biblical conundrum has puzzled many fine Christians over the years, to wit: if there was no physical pleasure in sex, how could a guileless innocent like Adam have fulfilled the Lord's commandment to be fruitful and multiply? Would Adam not require something like, say, forbidden fruit, to sharpen his appetite and to make him quiver with shameful desire for intimate possession of Eve's chaste young body? And even after he got started, would Adam not require a little – pardon me while I search for a euphemism – would Adam not require a little satisfying friction, to keep him going long enough for the necessary outcome for babies to happen?
The great church patriarch, Saint Augustine, answered this difficult question long ago: so wondrous was our first father's body, explained Augustine, that Adam could achieve penisorum erectorum without sexual desire. Adam, without lust, could make his privy member go up and down at will. It was as easily done as waggling a finger.
Saint Augustine's insight was powerfully brought home to me one day when Eve was singing a hymn in the Garden. I overheard Adam say, "Eve, look at this! Watch! No – keep singing! Now, watch!" – so I, too, looked through the bushes, and behold, Adam was making his stiff unit bob up and down to the music, like a human metronome, as easily as you or I might tap our toes. And he did it without touching himself, too! I was amazed at the sight of it. And then Adam and Eve both laughed with childlike innocence, and Eve played with the thing herself for a while, and licked it, and cuddled it, and rubbed it with cocoanut butter, but without sin, while she and Adam finished singing their hymns to the Lord. And then there was a little accident, but hey, they just laughed, because it was all done for the glory of God, and to magnify His name. But all of that came before sexual lust first entered into the world, so it was okay. Right on the money, would be my guess.
--L.
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