What if I am Asking the Wrong Question?

Religious people are often obsessed with the question of how to get into the kingdom of heaven, how to guarantee a spot there rather than the fiery alternative. But sometimes what heaven is seems less important to us than getting in, and that failure to consider heaven’s nature might well inhibit our entry. In fact, I suspect that asking how to get into heaven isn’t all that different from asking how to get into a girl’s pants. It’s really the wrong question. When the sole focus of our attention is the physicality of sex, we lose not only the reality of sex but its object: unifying love with a human person. Sex without love, physical intimacy without emotional intimacy, biological unity without marital fidelity—all of this sacrifices our personhood on the altar of appetite.