The letter and spirit of scripture, and of all Christianity, forbid us to suppose that life in the New Creation will be a sexual life; and this reduces our imagination to the withering alternative either of bodies which are hardly recognizable as human bodies at all or else of a perpetual fast.
As regards the fast, I think our present outlook might be like that of a small boy who, on being told that the sexual act was the highest bodily pleasure should immediately ask whether you ate chocolates at the same time. On receiving the answer ‘No,’ he might regard absence of chocolates as the chief characteristic of sexuality.
In vain would you tell him that the reason why lovers in their carnal raptures don’t bother about chocolates is that they have something better to think of. The boy knows chocolate: he does not know the positive thing that excludes it. We are in the same position.
We know the sexual life; we do not know, except in glimpses, the other thing which, in Heaven, will leave no room for it. Hence where fullness awaits us we anticipate fasting. In denying that sexual life, as we now under- stand it, makes any part of the final beatitude, it is not of course necessary to suppose that the distinction of sexes will disappear. What is no longer needed for biological purposes may be expected to survive for splendor.
Sexuality is the instrument both of virginity and of conjugal virtue; neither men nor women will be asked to throw away weapons they have used victoriously. It is the beaten and the fugitives who throw away their swords. The conquerors sheathe theirs and retain them. ‘Trans-sexual’ would be a better word than ‘sexless’ for the heavenly life.
Well, this is the first discussion of sexuality in heaven that this scribe has read. It is a very interesting concept that goes to the key questions we all have about the afterlife. Those questions usually center around such questions as, “will I be me, will I know my family and friends or will I have a body/”
My simple answer has been that we will be us, yet there will no longer be the illusion of separation from God or each other. We will be us, and we will know and experience total communion with others, God and the universe. In that scenario, we would be ourselves, we would know our family, etc., we would have bodies and our consciousness.
It will be the end of those things that prevent us from total communion and that imprisons us in the world of limited sensory perception and carnal existence. That is something to which we can all look forward with anticipation and joy. So much so that our lives here below can be lived in the Garden that was created for us until we can transcend the merely physical to be one with God and all creation.
Gardening for eternity,
Z gardener
Good Morning Garden 
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