Holiness and Desire: What makes us who we are?

We live in a world that prizes gratification of desire. But what if this pressure to satisfy our wants instead makes us settle for lesser imitations? What if the problem with desire is not that we want what we can’t have, but that we don’t want it enough? What if desire itself - the gap between wanting and having - is the key to living well? Holiness and Desire explores these questions and the challenges they pose to modern living. Drawing on sources from the Bible to literature and social media, Jessica Martin considers what a distinctive holiness might look like within the distorting pressures of our highly sexualized modern culture. This significant contribution to theological ethics shows that sexuality is not the sole, nor even the main ground on which a scriptural understanding of identity rests - rather it is the fullness of humanity's relationship with God. In that light, Holiness and Desire offers a wise resource for theological reflection on all that makes our relationships and has the power to distort them. Subjects include : longing for belonging, possession and idolatry ; fidelity, betrayal and abuse ; romantic dreams of fulfillment and completion ; companionship and nurturing beyond kinship ; knowing and being known ; unfulfilled desire and the yearning for God. A wide-ranging and profoundly thoughtful book, it explores the consequences of narrowing the understanding of human identity and relationship to the area of sexual desire and calls for a broader, more holistic view