All Boys Have A Peanut--Part I

As we were about to break bread our adorable little girl announced “All boys have a peanut.”  Where did that come from?  What does that mean?  Looking up into the air, I muter the words to myself, “all boys ...” when my wife bursts out laughing.  What is so funny?  All boys [laughter] have [more laughter] a penis.

Now all of us are laughing with our little one not cognizant of why, but enjoying her part in the uproar.

Kids really... do... say the funniest things.

 

The first mention of male and female in the Torah greets us with two anatomical words.  The Hebrew words respectively mean “pointed” and “bored or pierced” for man and women who are to  be fruitful and multiple.  It is hard not to see child like innocence in these first mentioned words in Genesis 1. 

 How does all of this writing of body; penis “pointed” and vagina “pierced” make you feel?  Too much info...?  Blush...?  Beautiful?  The last word is God pronouncement “it is good”, tov is the Hebrew word for beautiful.  Our view of the body (and sex) begins in the First Testament.

 

Though we live in a liberated and sexually free society, sex often has this tainted sense of crud (my word),  certainly less than good.  As a new believer in Christ I remember thinking, well,  I guess God lets you have some lust if you choose to marry.  If you really want to be holy you will remain single.  Lest you think I was alone in this view, one famous brother from the third century said that “if righteous Abraham could have had a children without having sex he would have.”

 

Where does all this come from?  Surely misuse and abuse of something precious and core to who we are is part of a less than good view of the body and sex.  Bad theology and where it came from has its part as well.  One steeped in a Greek/Platonic view of the body and passions could easily misread and read into the New Testament things that are not there. To have Plato's view of the body (and its passions) as bad, a prison to be freed from, makes it easy to find in the Second Testament words that tell the body is bad, at least less then good. The word “flesh” antithetical of “Spirit” proved that doesn't it. Isn't flesh the body and sex and...? Still, I propose there is more involved – see Part II