From: joachim omolo ouko
News Dispatch with Father Omolo Beste
TUESDAY, APRIL 8, 2014

One of our News Dispatch with Father Omolo Beste who does not want her name revealed writes: “Father Omolo Beste thank you for your recent articles on cancer. Yesterday I read in one of the newspapers that the act of kissing, especially deep kissing can give you cancer according to the study carried out in Mombasa.

I and my boyfriend we kiss a lot and now I am scared if you can get cancer from kissing. If that is true then many people can die from cancer because kissing is very common, not only romantic kiss but also I have seen in church people kiss each other”.

This is very important question. Although there is no evidence that close contact or things like sex, kissing, touching, sharing meals, or breathing the same air can spread cancer from one person to another, the study in Mombasa demonstrates high rates and quantities of the herpes virus residing in the throats of these women and more so those infected with HIV and with high CD4 counts.

The team according to the research had tested saliva samples in gay men in the US for the presence of the herpes virus. Led by Dr John Pauk they had compared the level of herpes virus in saliva of these men with what was found in other body fluids and concluded that saliva was the most possible rout of transmission to others.

Scientists who refute this research argue that you cannot get cancer through kissing because cancer cells from one person are generally unable to live in the body of another healthy person. A healthy person’s immune system recognizes foreign cells and destroys them, including cancer cells from another person.

It is quite true that kissing is very common. Among Christians is called the holy kiss or kiss of peace, a traditional part of most Christian liturgies, though often replaced with an embrace or handshake today in most churches.

The kiss is an important expression of love and erotic emotions. In his book The Kiss and its History, Kristoffer Nyrop describes the kiss of love as an “exultant message of the longing of love, love eternally young, the burning prayer of hot desire, which is born on the lovers’ lips.

Kissing he implies, can lead one to maturity: “It is through kisses that knowledge of life and happiness first comes to us. Runeberg says that the angels rejoice over the first kiss exchanged by lovers,” and can keep one feeling young: “It carries life with it; it even bestows the gift of eternal youth”.

In some societies kissing has been understood negatively. It can explain why Song of Songs (also called the Song of Solomon) has been neglected part of the Bible. It is a book that is rarely read and hardly known. Such neglect does not befit any of God’s word, because as it says elsewhere in the Bible: All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.

Primarily the Song of Songs is a song of praise celebrating God’s creation and what is without a doubt the crowning glory of that creation; the gift of love between a man and a woman. The very presence of the poem in the Bible is a testimony to the fact that God does not divide the world into sacred and secular, and demonstrates the importance that God places on love and commitment.

It is also significant that God has chosen to deal with this most important topic, so central to human life and experience, through a poem, rather than through a long list of rules, regulations, and advice. The love between a man and a woman, the commitment of marriage, is a wonderful, incredible thing, and one that does not reduce easily to words on a page.

Both Jews and Christians have suggested that the Song of Songs is an allegory, a picture of either God’s love for his people Israel or of Christ’s love for the Church, which elsewhere in the Bible is described as his “bride”.

Some have suggested that the Song of Solomon was originally written as a series of songs, designed to be sung during a Jewish wedding feast, which in the time of King Solomon would have lasted for a whole week!

The primary message of the book is this: that human love, marriage and sexual love are a gift from God. Sexual love is commended and celebrated in the poem as a gift from God to be celebrated and to praise Him for.

Love between a man and a woman is fundamental to all human experience; and in the poem we have the most supreme blueprint of what love is to be like. We learn that love means giving one to another. The man is not to lord it over the woman, or vice versa, but there is to be a mutual giving, one to another.

Love means remaining loyal and faithful to one another, no matter what the circumstances. It would have been all too easy for the maiden to give in to the advances of Solomon, betraying her shepherd lover. She would have done no wrong in marrying the king, for she was a virgin. But true love is loyal and faithful, and she could not turn her back on her shepherd.

Love, relationships, marriage, and sex are all gifts from God. The Song of Songs demonstrates and celebrates this time and time again. In the light of this part of the Scriptures, we should give grateful thanks to God for the wonderful mystery of human sexuality, and pray that He guides us into using it responsibly and rightfully; within a one-to-one marriage relationship where there is mutual trust, giving, love, total commitment and respect.

Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
Tel +254 7350 14559/+254 722 623 578
E-mail obolobeste@gmail.com

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