Intellectual Defenestration

In an effort to have at least something for this week

While getting ready for the next segment of my small group study on the decalogue, I came across this statement by Hauerwas and Willimon about marriage and adultery in The Truth About God:

[F]or Christians marriage is justified for the upbuilding of the community, not for the mutual pleasure of the couple. We do believe that marriage can be pleasurable, joyful, but the pleasure and joy begin not in private concerns but in public commitments. The pleasure of sex is enhanced by doing it in public, that is, in enjoying sexuality within the contract of our wider Christian ministry, our openness to new life and to children. Thus we discover the joy of the primal act of being "fruitful," of participating in the very creativity of God as God intended.

There are, of course, a couple of things I disagree with in this statement. Still, their point that marriage and thus sexuality have a much broader role than the immediate benefit of the two parties involved is, I think, a good one. And I wonder if that point is sometimes obscured in all of the "family values" talk - that what is held up is some kind of idealized model, rather than a charge to do everything as an act of service, ultimately to God, but then also to the community around us.