On the Out of Ur blog this week there has been two really good posts I wanted to highlight and reflect on. Both are really good posts and I encourage you to read them. I am simply going to ramble and rant about them for a while because they got me fired up this week.
First is David Fitch’s post on the politics of sexuality and the whole commotion regarding Miss California’s comments on same sex marriage.
The second post is an excerpt from Bishop N.T. Wright’s response to the Episcopal Church’s decision regarding the ordination of homosexuals.
What really struck me from both posts is just how deeply embedded our individualized sexual ethics are into our Christianity. The entire conversation around homosexuals, ordination and marriage, is so askew within the church because our sexual theology and practices are very inconsistent with any Biblical witness. We continue to try to tell the world how God wants them to live out their sex lives and in the same breath fail to alter our sex lives in a way that would actually honor God. How so?
- Statistics show that Christians have just as much sex outside of marriage, view pornography with almost the same frequency, and fail in their marriages just as frequently as those outside of the church
- We have allowed our view of our sexuality to be shaped by the powerful forces of individualism and consumerism. We believe that having sex is an inalienable right and that we should be able to consume sex in whatever manner suits us and that God and the church should be fine with it.
As Fitch and Wright both articulate far better than I, we have forgotten what discipleship and the laying down our lives truly mean. We act as if serving God should never affect our desire to have sex. God wouldn’t ever call people to celibacy would he? That is so Catholic or something isn’t it? We can’t imagine that our choices with how we live out our sexuality should ever exclude us from a higher calling God may have on our lives.
In short it is all about us and we have now effectively taken even the act of surrendering our lives in service to God and made it all about us. I understand that my words on marriage and homosexuality don’t carry much weight because I am married and have a forum to seek sexual satisfaction in my life. I am not celibate. But, I do understand about giving up my life to answer God’s call. I know what it is to deny myself and God is continually shaping me by helping me to understand the parts of my life that I struggle to give over as an act of submission. We simply want to have our cake and eat it too.
We think that a God who would ask us to limit our experiences or to give up our desires or to live differently than the rest of the world is simply a God we don’t want to serve. So we have sex with whom we want, when we want, and simply expect that church to put its stamp of approval on it. God wants more. God wants us to be different. He wants heterosexuals to stop having sex outside of marriage and to allow him to redeem their sex lives within marriage. He wants those with homosexual desires to surrender them to him and to be celibate. He wants some heterosexuals to be celibate as well to free their lives up for greater service in his name. He wants all of us to rid ourselves of lust and to actually make choices as to what we fill our minds and lives with.
God is calling us to give our entire lives to him, sexuality and marriage included, and until we get serious about doing so in a way that is drastically different than the individualistic and consumerist culture around us we will continue to fail in our efforts to be disciples of Jesus Christ.
July 24, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Greg said: We think that a God who would ask us to limit our experiences or to give up our desires or to live differently than the rest of the world is simply a God we don’t want to serve. So we have sex with whom we want, when we want, and simply expect that church to put its stamp of approval on it.
Isn’t that quite harsh? And…of course the Church’s stamp of approval is wanted! It would be dissaproving of it not to. People aren’t drawn to those who are dissaproving of them.
Greg said: He wants heterosexuals to stop having sex outside of marriage and to allow him to redeem their sex lives within marriage. He wants those with homosexual desires to surrender them to him and to be celibate. He wants some heterosexuals to be celibate as well to free their lives up for greater service in his name. He wants all of us to rid ourselves of lust and to actually make choices as to what we fill our minds and lives with.
Because we really don’t know what to think on this issue, and because your position on the issue is just one among many positions (that hasn’t won much confidence, by the way), don’t you think that the Church should have a five year moratorium on making any such pronouncements of certainty?
Why can’t we have sex with whom we want? How is celibacy defined amidst the nuances of the postmodern, post-Christian culture, anyways? How about I don’t actually commit the act, but I constantly just think about it and desire it? That can’t be wrong…right?
You may just need to become more flexible in practice “loosen up” in you doctrinal system! When we move into the postmodern world, people realize there is another way of thinking,…Analysis is good, from the whole down to the parts, but there is another way of thinking going from the whole to bigger wholes. We try to understand whatever we’re looking at as part of larger wholes. That shift in thinking has huge implications on how we preach, how we teach, how we evangelize…
(http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080218/brian-mclaren-postmodern-christianity-understood-as-story/index.html)
And…Can’t we just be a loving, diverse kingdom community that accepts everyone for who they are and DROP the “fornicator” label?
I have a better suggestion than your dogmatic call to an unrealstic and outdated Victorian Age purity:
“… practice prayerful Christian dialogue, listening respectfully, disagreeing agreeably. When decisions need to be made, they’ll be admittedly provisional. We’ll keep our ears attuned to scholars in biblical studies, theology, ethics, psychology, genetics, sociology, and related fields. Then in five years, if we have clarity, we’ll speak; if not, we’ll set another five years for ongoing reflection. After all, many important issues in church history took centuries to figure out. Maybe this moratorium would help us resist the “winds of doctrine” blowing furiously from the left and right, so we can patiently wait for the wind of the Spirit to set our course.”
(http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2006/01/brian_mclaren_o.html)
July 24, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Thanks for trying to use my post to make your own point! I laughed really hard reading your comments and quotes from others. Not sure what to respond other than to say I have said all along that I don’t try to speak for anyone other than myself and that my take on sexual ethics has always been clearly stated as different than many within emergent circles. Thanks for the comment.
July 27, 2009 at 11:00 am
…I have said all along that I don’t try to speak for anyone other than myself and that my take on sexual ethics has always been clearly stated as different than many within emergent circles.
It wasn’t just my point being made…and it certainly/specifically related to the issue of “sexual ethics”.
Except for the fact that you promote many in the “emergent circle”, like McLaren, who have a radically different view of “sexual ethics” than the one prescribed in Scripture and you, on several occasions, have made light of the world’s attempt to redefine marriage (a.k.a. the destruction of marriage), while undermining their Christian opponents, by equating the redfinition of marriage with the destructive force of heterosexual divorce.
While they are certainly both destructive forces, the Christian/biblical position against the world’s redefinition of marriage does not have to be marginalized by the fact that divorce is rampant. The battle needs to be raged on multiple fronts.
Conviction requires clarity.
The Bible is clear: Homosexuality is a sin. This is “sexual ethics” made easy…sort of like “Microsft Office for Dummies”, or the like.
Even in the above post, you seem to “hedge your bet” by stating: He wants those with homosexual desires to surrender them to him and to be celibate.
Is that all God wants from homosexuals? He just wants them to be celibate?
That is not the prescription that the Bible offers, but it was one that is often found in “emergent circles”.
July 27, 2009 at 1:20 pm
I am in no way hedging my bet, just stating a long held belief in the church. Homosexual desires should not be indulged, thus celibacy. Some are delivered from these feelings and also have heterosexual desires that they use in God honoring ways. But many do not and the clear call is to celibacy and to Christ likeness. God doesn’t just want homosexuals to be celibate, nor does he want heterosexuals to “just have sex inside of marriage”. God wants us to allow him to transform our sexuality and put it in its proper place. I think you can read what I wrote without needing to add any commentary from anyone else, emergent or otherwise.
July 27, 2009 at 2:27 pm
It is not just that a homosexual’s desires should not be indulged. That isn’t what God wants and that is not what He commands (“be holy as I am holy”). There is victory through Christ over what Romans 1 calls “shameful lusts”.