| Opinion: American sexual ethics today, Part 2 |
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| By David Gushee | ||
| Monday, October 19, 2009 | ||
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EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the second of two columns contrasting prevailing cultural attitudes on sexuality with classic Christian ethics and calling for Christians to reclaim their own heritage in a countercultural practice of Christian community. The first was published Oct. 12, and can be read here .
(ABP) -- “Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits is outside his body, but the one who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body” (I Cor. 6:18-20). For Paul, as for Jesus, sexual immorality consists of any sexual activity outside of the marriage relationship. Within marriage, sex is not just permissible but required, in the sense that the body is a gift each spouse offers to the other to meet needs for emotional and physical intimacy. Marriage is also the context in which children are to be conceived, born and raised. This is what the church has always taught. The chaos of contemporary society and its negative impact on children gives us little reason to reconsider these points. But the culture will ask the church, what about all those broiling sexual desires that we have when we are at the stage of life in which we are not married? Here the New Testament simply says: Deal with it. Either get married, or learn to “flee from sexual immorality.” Both Jesus and Paul seem convinced that living without sexual intercourse is possible -- not easy, but possible. Self-control is one of the gifts of the Spirit, and it is self-control that is needed here. In this sense sex outside of marriage is not that different from numerous other things we might like to do but should not, and for which self-control is required. But why not bend a little on this one to accommodate culture? If you look at the longer passage in I Corinthians 6, Paul says that if I use my body for sexual sin, I am sinning against the body of Christ corporately, not just against myself. But believing this involves developing a sense of shared corporate identity and destiny with fellow Christians that is quite elusive in our individualistic society. That makes it a difficult teaching. But if one thinks about all the other wrongs that are done within our churches because of this lack of a sense of organic connectedness to other believers, it illuminates the fact that it is our desiccated version of Christianity that is deficient, not Paul’s teaching. In I Thessalonians 4 Paul offers another rationale for sexual self-control that will make more sense to the contemporary reader: “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified; that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother [or sister] or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish people for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject people but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.” What’s new here is the emphasis on not wronging another person: “That in this matter no one should wrong his sister or take advantage of her.” This means that what I do with my body sexually affects not only myself, and not only all members of the body of Christ, but the specific human being with whom I am doing it. She is my sister, and she is not to be wronged by my use of my body. And this really matters to Christ, who commands above all that we love people rather than harm them. This is a very realistic warning. Because of the mysterious one-flesh nature of sex, people become vulnerable to one another in a way that does not occur anywhere else. Paul here says that to take advantage of someone’s naked vulnerability in sex is a grave wrong. And people often get hurt through that vulnerability even when no one is trying to exploit anyone. How many movies and songs are about the fallout from hurts related to sex outside of marriage? It is a fact that the contemporary social realities I discussed in my last column make it more difficult than ever for people to restrict sex to marriage. But efforts to rewrite Christian sexual ethics to accommodate this difficulty bump up against both Scripture and human nature. In loving, accountable Christian communities, we must imagine and live out a biblical alternative. -30- David Gushee is distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University. EDITORIAL DISCLAIMER: As part of our mission to provide credible and compelling information about matters of faith, Associated Baptist Press actively seeks a diversity of viewpoints in its columns, commentaries and other opinion-based content. Opinions expressed in these articles are not intended to represent ABP editorial policy and do not necessarily reflect the views of ABP’s staff, board of directors or supporters. Previous ABP story: Opinion: American sexual ethics today, Part 1 (10/12)
                Comments (11)
 Sex and the pastorate
written by Arce, October 20, 2009
Then there is the problem that so many in the pastorate stray sexually, making themselves unfit for the ministry. Yet churches always want to forgive and restore the pastor to the pulpit (or other minister to ministry) while trashing the other party. The church is a victim in these cases, as is the other party, of a serious abuse of authority. Only when it involves a child victim and there is the involvement of the criminal justice system do a significant number of churches condemn the perpetrator and act to restore the victim(s).
...
written by pjerwin, October 21, 2009
The Church only victimizes itself when it allows these things to go without adequately addressing them. Most churches just don't DO church discipline, much less doing it biblically. Certainly even the gross sin of incest, as any other porneias (sexual immorality), must be dealt with in a firm and timely manner, but it should be done with a view toward restoration -- restoration to God and the Church. though not necessarily -- and may I say, not usually -- a restoration to pastoral ministry. While Paul is right to say that we should be able to make final judgments regarding such matters within the Church rather than resorting to civil authorities (going to court) when it involves the proverbial "church organist" or "church secretary," it's a different matter when it involves one more defenseless, especially because there are deeper psychological/pathological issues involved.
Matthew 5:28
written by jonathan@equalityloudoun., October 22, 2009
To me, the most important scripture on the topic is Matthew 5:28 because this scripture speaks to the Word and how we follow it in our hearts and minds, rather than how we behave and follow the Law. Behavior will never adhere to rigid laws if our heart is not in the right place. All you have to do is look at the indiscretions of so-called Orthodox Christian political leaders (Ensign, Sanford, Vitter...) and you see that they talk the talk of the Law but do not follow His Word.
Christians are perhaps too inhibited to really talk about their innermost feelings about their spouses because it is too painful. The apostle Paul may be partly at fault for his elevation of celibacy and advice to marry in 1 Cor 7:9 "But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion." If that is the reason for marriage, then it will be very difficult to follow Matt 5:28 "But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." Baptists and Sex
written by alms, October 23, 2009
Baptists and have always had a problem with Sex. I remember in the 1970s when several churches returned Church Training material to the Sunday School Board because it was "too controversial".
It seems Baptists and other Evangelicals are too timid. Abortion? Baptists were late jumping on the bandwagon.True Love Waits? Hey, wereew years too late. Some Baptist Fundamentalists and groups like Focus on the Family claim that the Moderae Southern Baptist Leadership did nothing about the 1960s-1970s erosion of morals. That leadership tried, but the followship ignored it. They then followed the Inerrency bandwagon and the rest is history. a lot more than self-restraint needed, part 1
written by Xenophon, October 23, 2009
While I agree that self-control is very important in living a virtuous life, I doubt that most people in such an erotically charged social environment will, in fact, check their sexual appetites at the door. Realistically, we need to find ways to help people properly sublimate and channel their sexual impulses.
The comments made by Arce, PJ, and Jonathan just above on sexual misconduct in the church show that even Christians are affected by the culture they are immersed in. Of course, people can and do control themselves, but it is imperative to take back the culture so that the life world (Lebenswelt) in which people share a way of life that shapes their consciousness can provide those appropriate ways to direct the sensuality that God has endowed us with that can provide the impetus for creativity, appreciation of beauty, a sense of transcendence, and a greater human connectedness. One problem that has heightened the rawness of sex in recent decades is the lack of connectedness that we feel in modern life. JDog provides us with a very insigtful comment above on this aspect of the problem that he draws from Dr. Gushee's column. As we become more socially atomistic and life's pace picks up to the point that we are not able to cultivate more fully developed relationships with other people, animals, and the natural environment, but especially with other people, we are left to reducing others to the bare elements of what we can get out of them. Those qualities of a person that are most glaringly appealing to us stand out and we tend to reduce the person to a bare aggregation of those qualities that strike our fancy for the moment. After we finish consuming what we most immediately desire from another, then we are prone to move on to the next bit of titillation. The only connections we feel in such a frenetic and fragmented milieu is a momentary but intense encounter. a lot more than self-restraint needed, part 2
written by Xenophon, October 23, 2009
Soren Kierkegaard describes such a life in the first part of his first volume of *Either/Or" in presenting to his readers how the "musical erotic" takes up life. The Don Juan figure is termed the "musical erotic" by Kierkegaard because he has such an immediately visceral impact on women similar to the immediate sensual impact music can have on its listener. While the life of the musical erotic is exciting short term, there are two problems that emerge over the course of his life. The first is boredom. One sexual conquest after another is overwhelmingly pleasurable for a time, but the same old sexual patterns of sizzling meetings followed by illicit liaisons wears thin after hundreds of such affairs. The second problem with the life of the musical erotic is that his life taken as a whole is empty. There is no development or sense of completion to his erotic project. The entire life of the musical erotic is simply one sexual episode followed by another with no overarching purpose. Such a life ends as Solomon warned us: as vanity, as purposeless, as futile.
I am afraid that the emphasis placed on mere self-control falls into the trap laid out in the second volume of *Either/Or* by Kierkegaard's character, Judge William. While there is a noble appeal and substance to living by abstract principle that is clearly superior to the purely "aesthetic" life lived by the musical erotic, the ethical life also engenders a sterility that is life-denying. I am afraid that the focus Dr. Gushee continually places on ethics, if people acted on his appeals as consistently and as rigorously as he proposes, would produce the uprightness of a Judge William accompanied with all of his subtle flaws, most notably of which is a lack of passionate engagement with particular people he is in face-to-face "relationship" with as well as with God. There is also a lack of an overwhelming awareness of one's sin that the ethical paradoxically covers over. I am sorry to say that this approach to sexuality is doomed to lead to either an inner deadness of self-righteousness or a reversion to the licentious but seeming vitality of the musical erotic. Kierkegaard's highest level of development points to how we can incorporate the best of the first two stages of development, the aesthetic and the ethical, into a seamless completion. The highest stage for Kierkegaard is the religious where an individual comes to the end of himself and takes a dramatic leap of faith into the unknown of trusting a holy God. The futility of attempting to live by either of the first two stages on life's way has led the lone individual to accept the offer of salvation that has been laid before him as the full impact of the demands of the moral law and his failure to live by it have become apparent to him. In his act of voluntary faith by an act of will, the person forfeits his claim to control his own life by a total surrender to God. At the same time, he trusts that this holy, all-powerful God will restore to him all that he has lost if it is best for him. What is completely given up is only that which does not fit who he has become by entering the life of faith as he trusts in God alone. In complete surrender, the individual comes into intimate relationship with God who meets the deepest needs of his being in a way that sex, personal accomplishment, achieving moral and political ends, etc. cannot. In fact, these human concerns can become distractions from the true source of ultimate contentment and joy that sex and moral self-satisfaction promise but fail to deliver. a lot more than self-restraint needed, part 3
written by Xenophon, October 23, 2009
Plato, who was not a Christian but anticipated many Christian themes, observed in his dialogue *The Symposium* similar patterns in the human condition. Plato speaking through the character in his dialogue Aristophanes the famous playwright noticed that we are incomplete in ourselves and we are driven by desire to find completion in sexual union with our "other half" whom the gods had split off from each of us. Love binds us to our mate as we are reunited with the other who is destined to be our source of wholeness as we are for them. Over time though we discover that our mate is not the ultimate source of satisfaction that we still long for. This remaining desire impels us to search for other means of completion. We look to other people and then realize those pursuits, too, are in the end, fruitless. So we look to abstraction and find that knowledge fills our being to some extent, but then we look beyond that level to discover the preeminent source of ourselves and all that we know and can realize in God (the Good in Plato's understanding).
Augustine interpreted Plato along Christian lines proposing a Platonic Christian theory of the properly ordered set of loves. If we love each object of our affections in the proper order and to the proper degree, then and only then, will we find what we are searching for throughout our lives. Of course, the first love should be God. When we respond to God's love for us and love God above all others, then our lives will have the joy, the meaning and significance they we constantly chase after. The other human loves will fall into place only when we love God above ourselves and our family, friends, et al. Many pathologies and broken relationships follow from our elevating some other love above that of God. This is why God makes the demands on us that Kierkegaard wrote about in his dramatic reconstruction of Abraham sacrificing his son Isaac on the altar, and perhaps lived out himself in breaking off his engagement to the girl he loved more than anything in the world. He trusted God in breaking off the engagement. God never restored the relationship here on earth even though Regine and her family pleaded with him not to call off their marriage. The pain he lived with daily is evident in his writings, which Kierkegaard wrote the bulk of within a few years after the ending of the engagement dying at the age of 42. So, what to do with the current crisis in sexuality that is plaguing the developed world? As I suggested in my comments on Part I of Dr. Gushee's discussion, restoring balance and stability to the culture that provides the background against which individuals make these crucial life-changing decisions is a start. The second is to foster a sense of romance in people so that they do not reduce male-female relationships to the lowest common denominator. The third is to cultivate in people a sense of transcendence so that they want to seek out the divine and experience rapturous joy in being in relationship with their Creator and Savior. We need to restore a sense of mystery and communion to our worship that incorporates a paradoxical sense of awe and sensuality as we enter into direct union with the Source of life, love, and joy. A truly romantic marriage, a sense of Christian community, and worship of the Lord our God, in their proper order, should provide people with a more intense, overwhelming and profoundly satisfying sense of ecstatic union than the tawdry sex as peddled in our decaying culture by commercial and libertine interests. We should drive these moral degenerates out of business with what they are really seeking all along as are we all. ...
written by pjerwin, October 27, 2009
Holy cow, Xenophon. Love ya, but distill your thoughts a bit. I get to your posts, begin scanning and skimming, and note "part one," "part two," "part three," etc., and I just don't want to work that hard. I'd like to know what you have to say, but, wow, it's like a wall. We know you're highly intelligent; you have nothing to prove. Just boil it down a little.
reply to PJ's "suggestions"
written by Xenophon, October 28, 2009
Well, PJ, I believe it is best to spell out the premisses and provide evidence when appropriate to explain and justify the conclusions that I reach. That way anyone reading my comments can understand where I am coming from. If someone disagrees with my conclusions, they can find where they believe that I have fallen into error. At that juncture, we can have a more pointed discussion by getting as many of our cards on the table as possible. If we cannot reach agreement at that point, then we can, at least, come to a greater appreciation of the other's point of view.
Otherwise, people just announce their conclusions to each other and become angry when others do not fall into line or they continually talk past each other not realizing the fundamental points where they disagree. Sorry if my comments are too long for your taste, but they are already boiled down, I believe, to the point that a reader can see the full set of premisses and assumptions I am making. And yes, it should be like hitting a wall for those who object to my arguments if I have reasoned well. The trick is to look for cracks in the wall of the fortress that one's opponent has erected. That is the competitive part of argumentation, and it can be fun as well as challenging. ... written by Jesdisciple, October 31, 2009
Lol, Xenophon. I don't think most of us are here to compete, nor do most of us want to write (or read) a book for every article. And I actually don't see that problem of talking past each other much...
After the first article I thought Gushee was conflicted about the situation and couldn't understand why. Glad to get clarification. Readers alone are responsible for the content of the comments they post here. The comments are subject to the site’s terms and conditions of use and do not necessarily reflect the opinion or approval of the ABP News. Readers whose comments violate the terms of use may have their comments removed or all of their content blocked from viewing by other users without notification.
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"But if one thinks about all the other wrongs that are done within our churches because of this lack of a sense of organic connectedness to other believers, it illuminates the fact that it is our desiccated version of Christianity that is deficient"
Is probably the most important insight that really gets at the heart of our ethical issues these days. All of our concerns--ecology, economic, cultural, poverty, and race, to name a few--goes back to the lack of connectedness that individuals in churches feel to society, to the earth, and to humanity in general.
So for me, this is the linchpin in our current--and lousy!--state of affairs when it comes to the decreasing influence of churches on the greater ethical shaping of culture and society.