A traveling evangelical ministry came to our school the
other day. They did a great job of
presenting some thought-provoking material in a modern and challenging manner. They covered a wide variety of topics, but
the one most relevant to the students was their presentation on sexuality. They contrasted the worldview of the
entertainment industry to the worldview of evangelical Christianity. To illustrate their point, they played
snippets of popular secular songs with the lyrics displayed. The lyrics presented sex as a good and fun
thing, but completely disconnected from any sense of commitment, consequences,
or as a part of an intimate experience between two human beings.
After a few such examples (each time the crowd singing
along with gusto), the presenter said that we should instead consider what
Jesus had to say about sexuality.
27 “You have heard that it
was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’[e] 28 But I tell you
that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with
her in his heart. 29 If your right
eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out
and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for
your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30 And if your
right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for
you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.
With this passage from Matthew 5 displayed behind him, he
said “The Bible teaches us that sex is a good thing within the right context
and the Bible has given us clear guidelines to allow us freedom to fully enjoy
our sexuality.” It would have been funny
if he hadn’t been serious, for the verse he displayed says nothing of the
sort. The verse he displayed, if it says
anything at all about sexuality, says that sexuality is evil, so evil in fact,
that if men cannot rid themselves of it, they should castrate themselves. Nowhere in the passage does it say anything
about sexuality being a good thing.
It reminded me of my own struggles as a single
Christian. Sex and sexuality was never
discussed in my home, so I learned about “God’s view” from my youth and college
groups. The messages were similarly
reductionist to the one this ministry presented: Sex and sexuality is off limits until
marriage. If you think of such things
before marriage, you are engaging in premarital sex and you must repent and ask
God for forgiveness. Every mens Bible
study I’ve attended discusses this issue, and every “guys accountability group”
I’ve joined had this as its major theme.
Thinking back on them now, I see that though they didn’t help us rid
ourselves of our sexuality, they did help us see that our inability to do so
was universal so that we didn’t feel quite so guilty about it. In all of the groups I’ve attended through
the years, the dogma of the evil of sexuality went unquestioned.
But now I see that this dogma is wrong. In Matthew 5, Jesus wasn’t talking about our
sexuality. When Jesus uses the word
“lust”, he was speaking of the type of carnal demand for immediate gratification
that reduces a woman to a mere object.
In Jesus’ time, wives were considered the objective property of their husbands. The lust that Jesus prohibits is the same faceless,
relation-less sex that the song lyrics were promoting. But this can in no way be interpreted as Jesus
repudiating the essential goodness of our sexuality.
Sexuality is an important part of what it is to be human,
and not just a married human. Just as we are emotional, spiritual, and
intellectual beings, so we are also sexual beings. We can try to “deny” our emotions or
intellect all we want, but we will still end up feeling and thinking. Our sexuality is more than our ability to
have sex, our “orientation”, or our libido. It is the mystical interplay
between a man’s masculinity and a woman’s femininity. Men naturally
aspire to masculinity and all that it may represent to them (e.g. strength,
courage, stability, justice, reason, determination), and yet they yearn for
intimacy with nothing less than femininity.
The sexuality of a woman awakens a man and makes his
senses come alive. She causes him to recognize his own manhood. She
reminds him that he does not exist alone in his own universe, but that others
are here and that he exists within community. God has given him purpose.
He can be a physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual being and be
completely alone, but because he is also a sexual being he is driven to be in
relationship. Our sexuality acts as an
unrelenting herdsman, rounding up all the other aspects of our humanity and
plunging us headlong into intimacy.
Story tellers and movie makers will tell us that
anticipation is a good thing in and of itself.
We anticipate a perfect union with God after death and this anticipation
is expressed through worship. Our
sexuality drives us to anticipate physical intimacy. This sexual tension is part of the gift of
sexuality. Sensuality is not confined to
the act of intercourse. We anticipate
the look in her eyes, the softness of her touch, the sound of her voice, her
smell, her taste. Our sexuality
encompasses this joy of anticipation. I do not write these words as mere
hyperbole. I have experienced this
ecstasy of life. While remaining chaste,
I have held a woman close while every aspect of my being desperately yearns to
become one. This too is part of
sexuality, and it is exceedingly good.
Something so utterly good must have been Satan’s first
target. Outside the church he uses our
selfishness to separate sexuality from intimacy. Within the church he uses our legalism and
pride to get us to label this great gift “evil”, and to spend all of our young
lives reading books, attending rallies, and joining accountability groups to
deny this essential part of us.
And what are the results of all of our programs? The
single man earnestly tries denying his sexuality but he cannot rid himself of
this any more than he can rid himself of his intellect or his emotions. Dejectedly
he seeks and prays for God to take these feelings away, but in God’s goodness
and mercy He refuses. God will not take away the very gift He has
designed to allow man to experience life most keenly. So man’s
ineffectual flailing at this unholy dissonance continues and a severe
frustration builds.
Many men will look for somewhere to place the blame for
their miserable condition and the woman becomes an easy scapegoat. They
will blame her for these unstoppable “evil” feelings. She must be
dressing wrong. She must be a flirt, or “leading them on”. She is
“causing her brothers to stumble” or some other cobbled together mishmash of
Bible-speak. Dress codes dictating hem line, shoulder strap width, and inseam
length are sure to follow. Even in today’s modern world we see the robes
and burqas that result from this sort of religious misogyny. It leads to a perversion of reasoning that
claims that since man cannot stop being a sexual being, he likewise cannot stop
his actions, and it is the woman’s own fault when she experiences leers,
catcalls, whistles, pinches, gropes and rapes.
Many other men will recognize (consciously or not) that
what they have been taught must be wrong. If they believe that the only
other alternative is the world’s view of casual sex, they may adopt that
view. Others will simply sink under the
suffocating guilt, quietly suffering and every day learning to hate their
sexuality.
The evangelical community must reclaim the goodness of
sexuality from the world’s crass objectification of women and from our own bleak
tradition of sexual Gnosticism. The
church should represent the beauty of God and the abundant life to needy
world. The contrast between what God
intends and the what the world offers for our sexuality could not be more
stark. Christianity can offer a complete,
fulfilling, enriching and beautiful view of sexuality. Our failure to do so is not just a lost
opportunity to make Christianity “attractive”, but ultimately it is the denial
of a very good gift of God’s creation.
