The Unadulterated Pleasure of Limits

When it comes to pleasure God seems to be a bit of a fanatic. Upon first glance we often fail to notice just how subtly he has infused our human existence with all kinds of aesthetic, sensual and erotic goodies to discover and enjoy. Seriously what kind of deity are we dealing with here? Surely there were more important and sensible tasks for him to put his mind to when he created the world.

I mean imagine if the earth had been created with a pre-prepared and efficient sewage system? Now that would make sense! Instead God seems to be happy to create constellations as artworks that we can only now just appreciate thanks to the hubble telescope, not very efficient if you ask me. Humans could have been pre-programmed from day one with an ability to understand incredibly complicated mathematical equations; every human could have been a Steven Hawking. Imagine the advances in technology, imagine the infrastructure our cities could have had, the volumes of scientific journals that the average citizen could consume on a daily basis. Instead what does God do? He takes that vital brain power, and devotes millions of neural synapses and enough brain electricity to power a medium size Asian city to human sexuality.

Sure God spends his day job defeating evil and death, spreading peace and justice and love and all that; but after hours he seems to spend his time tinkering and toying with  ways for humans to feel pleasure and enjoyment.  

Instead of being content with allowing humans to simply (and may I add quite functionally) mate in the manner of animals. God in his seemingly endless drive to increase our pleasure, introduces into human history and sexuality the concept of relationality. Historian Thomas Cahill in his book The Gift of the Jews notes that in contrast to their sexually mechanical Mesopotamian neighbours, the ancient people of God would make love ‘face to face’; choosing to instead to while away hours drinking from the cocktail of pleasure and relationality, taking their cues from that counter culture handbook of sexuality – the Hebrew Bible.    

You would think that little innovation would be enough for God. But with an obsessive dedication to human pleasure that would make Hugh Hefner blush, God had another trick in his pleasure trunk.   

While humans would have probably been pretty happy to put up with the sexual trinkets and fools gold of casual hook ups and a mechanical sexuality devoid of relationship. God still was determined to take things to another level. God understood that sexuality was a dance, a complex ballet of non-verbal cues, imagery, words, hints, mental play and emotional stirrings. Being the creator of this complex and intriguing system, God understood one of its greatest secrets. (Feel free to write this down) Pleasure is increased by limits.

Allow me to explain. I have a thing for chocolate. As I kid I always craved to submit to the dark bounty of the cocoa bean. Yet the problem was that I had no money. So I had to rely on my parent’s rationing out small blocks of brown goodness to me, knowing that I would only receive a small amount I savoured every delicious moment. So when I joined the world of the working and got my first paycheck I headed down to the supermarket. Before me was all kinds chocolate options to purchase. Being young and naive, I valued quantity over quality; so for about five dollars, I could buy a block of chocolate bigger than my head. Exactly 13 minutes later I was not feeling pleasure, I was suffering a sugar crash that could kill a full grown Yeti.

Now being older and smarter in the ways of the world, I have become more discerning in my chocolate consumption. Near my house is a Belgian chocolatier. Once every couple of weeks, my wife and I pay a visit. As soon as we sit down we encounter waiters so well trained and so polite that they could pass as a servants in the court of Louis the 14th. We are given glasses of cold water to cleanse our palate. When we are ready, we make our way to the chocolate cabinet. Where we are greeted witha virtual universe of singular chocolates, each hand crafted with incredible care, each containing hints of all kinds of spices and flavours from all over the globe. We make our choice and the young woman behind the counter places a single glove on her hand and carefully retrieves our chocolates, efficiently delivering them to our table. The chocolates cost more than the giant block I used to buy, and they are a fraction of the bloc’s size, but for that excruciatingly blissful moment as you allow them to melt in your mouth, they are absolutely worth it. This is the pleasure of limits at work. Hedonists with no self control and no ability to delay their gratification for a greater pleasure, slop around in the trough of mass produced supermarket chocolate. Real pleasure seekers, the true connoisseurs head to the chocolatier.

This is why artists give themselves rules or limitations to increase their creativity. This is why women find men that are hard to get hard to resist. This is why women like to pursue and be pursued, to place in the path of a suitor barriers and tests. Where is the fun in an instant conquest? Place something out of reach and we want it more, we want to tango, we want to spar.  Deep down we love, want and lust after limits and boundaries. Don’t believe the lies about men being cave dwellers, they love to buy women chocolates, flowers and lingerie; they love to enjoy the thrill and excitement that comes from working within boundaries.

We actually can’t get enough of boundaries. Imagine football without rules and referees. It is the limits that make the game, the boundaries create an environment where we find ourselves blissfully jumping up and down in the stadium when our team scores a goal. Without boundaries we have no goal, we have no game.

I remember hearing of someone who drove past two schools one school had no fence, the children sat quietly in the middle of the playground. The second school had a fence, the kids were running around, playing, climbing all over the fence, the boundary of the fence increased their fun and added to their pleasure. And so it is with human sexuality, our pleasure is increased by limitations and by boundaries. Our secular culture is only just starting to cotton on to this secret. In my book The Trouble With Paris I discuss how secular studies of well being and happiness are discovering that those people who chose to express their sexuality within marriage have more satisfying sex lives than those who choose to purse the more culturally mainstream and conventional ‘consumerist’ pattern of sexual behaviour. Why? Because God in his unabashed commitment to human pleasure has embedded in human existence the reality that pleasure is increased by limitations and boundaries. Covenantal relationships are the playground of the erotic, blank and ready canvases upon which we are invited by our pleasure loving creator to paint our masterpieces.