We have what they need
So occasionally I get sucked into writing on this other blog, and recently I’ve been discussing the topic of sexuality and how the church approaches it. I feel pretty strongly that the church’s problem in dealing with sexuality through history have come because the church has the wrong fundamental approach to the whole thing - that rather than think of sexuality as a part of being human that has the potential to connect us to each other and to the Divine, it all starts from (and usually ends at) coming up with the right set of rules/boundaries/prohibitions to contain and control sexuality. It’d be interesting to go into why this has happened, and continues to happen, but for now I just want to focus on whether/how it can be changed.
Because - I feel like most Christians are all tied up inside over the whole thing. Yeah, most of them can grow up and get married and probably feel less angst about it than they did as teens & single young adults - but certainly many people don’t fit into this cookie-cutter pattern. And yes, celibacy is probably a respectable option if you’re called to it. I’m not dissing marriage or celibacy. But I just think the church really misses out on this whole huge part of what it means to be a human and what that can tell us about God, how it connects us to the Divine. I can’t imagine how one can fully know, accept, and love one’s own body unless one fully knows, accepts, and loves one’s sexuality (as it truly is, not just as you think it should be) - and I really can’t see how one can foster a connection to the presence of God/sacredness/the Divine while being disconnected from one’s body.
So here’s my radical proposition: I think we queers have a special mission, here and now in history, to take this message of sexuality into the church. Being queer has allowed us the pain, the chore - but also the opportunity - of having, by necessity, to break outside the box that the church has always placed around sexuality, to venture out into strange & unknown &, to many, scary territory of sexuality without clearly defined rules/limits/prohibitions/customs to contain & define it. We’ve learned things that few straight Christians get the chance to learn. And the church really needs our message and vision now, a lot, or else it will keep getting more and more dead.
What do you think? Do we queers know something about sex & sexuality that straight Christian don’t, and if we do, should we really go through all the pain & annoyance of trying to convince them that we have something they need?
March 2nd, 2008 at 2:24 pm
I agree that we know something (or are learning some things). But hang the “pain and annoyance of trying to convince them that we have something they need.” When we create forums and spaces where we start exploring with each other what an embodied sexual morality (unboxed) means in each of our lives and start learning from one another, those who need it will come to us. I trust them to figure out what they need. But as long as we sit around trying to convince what ever “them” we select, that “they” need something–we’ll end up spending all our time on that and never get to the good stuff. I’m sure I betray my age when I say, “just do it.” Those who need it will gather.
December 5th, 2008 at 11:57 am
This is an interesting set of ideas. Thank you for raising this discussion. I think that you are absolutely right to say that the church, especially in the West, has been afflicted with a very destructive understanding of sexuality. As if it is really a dirty and sinful thing that we would escape if we could, but the world needs new babies and we all have “urges”, so we control it as much as possible and then dont talk about it. I think this can be traced back to the influence of gnostic heretics on early Christianity and the notion that the physical world and human bodies are morally impure, and the goal of faith is to be liberated from the physical. Take for example Augustine’s writings on original sin. Since he determined that it is passed biologically from father to child, he proposed, sex is th mechanism by which moral corruption is perpetuated in the world. He went so far as to posit that Jesus never touched the walls of Mary’s vaginal canal while being born, because if he had he would have been corrupted by sin.
But the very essence of Christian faith is the radical confession that God has bridged the gap between heaven and earth. God has appeared as a human being, really and truly in flesh. God incarnate embraces the realities of time, space, food, sleeping, sex and gender. When Jesus is raised, he remains in a physical body, and that body has a particular sexual/gender identity (as do all human bodies). And Jesus is the firstfruits of our resurrection as well, meaning that we too will be raised bodily. Being made perfect in Christ involves the transformation and completion of sex and gender, but it does not mean that we shed these things and become somehow asexual.
All of this has been to say that biblical Christian faith celebrates sexual union as a testimony and witness to, and a recpitulation of God’s coventant faithfulness in the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus. So of course sexuality is treated as a holy and sacred thing that is embodied within the context of monogamy and fidelity, but this kind of sexuality is something to be celebrated not lamented as a necessary evil.
And I think you are absolutely right about the GLBTI community’s role to play in the midst of this. More than most other people, we have a profound sense of the destructive and dehumanizing power that an unhealthy and unchristian/gnostic view of sexuality can have. We have not had the option of fitting sexuality into the narrow parameters that the Western church has reticently accepted for it, and this have become outsiders. But, by grace, sometimes outsiders have a clearer view of things than those on the inside.
So in agreement with the previous commenter I would say that we need to be thinking carefully about how we approach the dominant culture in the church. We need to always keep in mind that these are our brothers and sisters, not enemies to be converted or defeated. Yet at the same time, we need to have boldness to approach with integrity as the people that we are and the experiences and insights that we have, refusing to be silenced and marginalized.