In 2016, following the death of the pop icon Prince, the New York Times published an article titled “Prince’s Holy Lust.” The writer suggested that to understand Prince and his music demanded that one understand both his sexuality and spirituality. The writer went on to say that for Prince “the love of God and the sexual urges we feel are one and the same somehow. For him it all comes from the same root inside a human being. God planted these urges and it’s never wrong to feel that way. The urge itself is a holy urge.” Now, I’m not suggesting that we look to Prince for the sexual ethic of Jesus and God’s kingdom. But, in a real way, Prince is right: our sexuality and spirituality are connected. Before I begin, two quick caveats are in order. First, I recognize that this is topic that might not be fully suitable for all aged children and so want to give you the opportunity at this point to take measures that honor little ones. Second, this topic is huge. I am not going to be able to say all that I might want to say and perhaps all you might like me to say on the topic. But, I would like to explore a pathway that helps us make sense of our emotional and sexual longings as people who are made in the image of God and that will help us parent, relate to others, understand our own identity, and even talk to our spouse about sexuality and sex.
To begin – it’s really important to understand the words: spirituality and sexuality.
Along these lines, the theologian Marva Dawn helpfully delineates two features of a Biblically-oriented sexuality that often get confused in our culture. She notes that we are presented in Genesis 1 and 2 with two visions of intimate connecting – that I would call sexuality and having sex. In Genesis 1, human beings are created in the image of God and given the holy task of relating to the rest of creation in ways that declare the harmony and interdependence of all things. According to Genesis 1, being created in the image of God does not so much refer to an individual orientation that one possesses but a togetherness, a relationship of plurality, an us and we rather than I and me, revealing that we are made for fellowship with others in the same way that God-as-Trinity is a mutual community of togetherness. This image-bearing desire for togetherness, for community, for life-giving and receiving, is what the Bible means by sexuality.
To understand the point it’s instructive to begin with a root definition. The roots of a word are not always helpful in clarifying meaning, but they are in the case of the words sex and sexuality. The word sex has a Latin root, the verb secare. In Latin, secare means “to cut off,” “to sever,” “to disconnect from the whole.” To be “sexed,” therefore literally means to be cut off from the whole. Thus when you take a chain saw and cut a branch off of a tree, you have “sexed” the branch. If the branch could think or feel – it would understand itself to be separated and alone and long to be connected once again in order to continue living and producing fruit or flowers. It must somehow reconnect itself to the tree. This is precisely how we wake up in the world. We wake up in our cribs, crying – lonely, cut off from the great whole. Long before we even come to self-consciousness and long before puberty, we feel ourselves painfully sexed in our body and soul. And this desire to connect is an engine that fuels us for love, community, friendship, family affection, and wholeness. It is the burning sense that it is not good to be alone. Sexuality then is the energy inside of us that works incessantly to connect us to God, others, ourselves, and all of creation. So everyone has sexuality and that deep desire is good, life-giving, and a gift.
It’s not simply about finding a lover or even finding a friend. It is about overcoming separateness by giving life and blessing it. It’s about giving oneself over to others, service, creativity, delight, sacrifice, so that, with God’s help, we can help bring life into the world.
When you see a young mother beaming with delight at her child – joyful at seeing her child happy, you are seeing sexuality as God intended.
When you see an artist, after long frustration, look with satisfaction on a work she has just created so that everything else is blotted out, you are seeing healthy sexuality at work.
When you see a young man, cold and wet, but happy to have been of service to people by helping remove fallen trees and debris, you are seeing a lovely vision of sexuality.
When you see a table, surrounded by friends, laughing, arguing, and sharing life with each other, you are seeing healthy sexuality at work.
To be sexual doesn’t mean to be sexually active. We tend to believe that unless one is having sex with another person, his or her sexuality is not fully manifested. But that is not true. Jesus was fully human and fully sexual.
In Genesis 2:24, however, we see the second dimension of connection – of having sex. God lovingly established a means of covenant love whereby two become one. The power of such a vision can only be gained, however, from the first – from a vision of sexuality that sees true, faithful connection at its heart.
So hopefully this inspires a set of helpful questions that we have been exploring throughout our series: How do we honor our bodies and the bodies of others? How can we refuse certain scripts or lies about our bodies that seek to deform us? How can we lean into wholeness, integrity and freedom for whole ourselves? How do we love God well with our bodies and with our sexuality? A few thoughts:
We need a practice of sobriety instead of shame.
A deeply formed sexuality is one marked by sobriety. I’m not talking about abstinence or willpower; I’m referring to honesty and the ability to share vulnerable parts about ourselves without reservations like in AA communities where truth and freedom go hand in hand. In these groups, it’s often been said that we are only as sick as the secrets we keep. I’m reminded of the psalm that says, “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long” (32:3). In the church, unfortunately, we have often chosen to frame issues related to sex and sexuality through shame rather sobriety leaving people to hide. If we are going to truly love one another, we must fashion ourselves, parent our children, approach one another with truthfulness, transparency, confession, and forgiveness. In the Harry Potter series, Voldemort, the villain and arch-enemy of Harry, has such a hold on everyone that just to say his name conjured fear and despair. Instead of saying his name, people would refer to him as “You-Know-Who” or “He-Who-Must -Not-Be-Named.” Part of Harry’s courage is his refusal to do this. If we are to form sexually whole communities, we must release ourselves from the fearful shame that ruins lives. We must give one another the grace to say what many of us believe should not be named. I’m not simply talking about sin by the way – I’m talking about the ability to talk about sexuality and sex in church, with our children, with our spouse, as a single person, as a gay or straight person. I’m inviting us to that Christian place of living openly and honestly with others.
Our culture’s lore about The Talk that every mother has with her daughter and every father has with his will not help us here. Not that there doesn’t need to be frank talk about sex. But talk that emerges in isolation from the rest of life, that happens in one conversation, covers all the bases and then is dropped forever will not help our children withstand the more traumatizing forces of sex within our culture. Only talk that arises organically within an ongoing practice of honoring the body can help us make ready homes and churches that reverence the gift of sexuality. The sexual body does not exist apart from the body that eats and drinks, bathes and dresses, rests and exercises and works. Sexual desire does not exist in isolation from other desires. And children who grow up in communities that consistently articulate the good of the body will be better able to resist viewing the body as a source of shame, as an object to dominate, as a thing to abuse. We must help our young people learn that that the body mirrors back to us something important about God and that the body’s desires are a precious gift from God worthy of being sheltered and allowed to develop with God’s help in order to negotiate the difficult road of sexual maturity. And to be honest, if one wishes to have a healthy sexual life as a couple – the same rules apply.
We must remember that sex is sacred because people are sacred.
Having sex is sacred because it is the placement of our trust, our bodies and ourselves with another. We care about sex not because we are prudish – far from it – we care about sex because we believe that people should be loved with respect, with care, and commitment. Like the sabbath, Jesus would wish us to orient ourselves to that which gives people life, freedom, and love. Make no mistake, that should not leave us with nothing to say about having sex or imagining that it doesn’t matter– but remember, Jesus cares less about your stand and more about who you stand with.
When we remember that people are sacred there is no such thing as casual sex.
It’s easy to imagine an overall negative orientation within Christianity toward sex. A sort of judgie “don’t” that pervades our religious vision. However, the real Christian position about sex is that we must be careful with it because it was designed for fidelity. In fact, I recently learned that that’s true biologically and not merely ethically. I was listening to a discussion between the Christian podcaster Krista Tippet and one of the scientists, a self-acknowledged atheist, who works for Match.com, an internet dating site. Krista Tippet expressed surprise by the scientist claim that “casual sex doesn’t really remain casual.” The scientist went on to say that when people have sex the body releases chemical in the brain that form attachment. She said,
Having sex, like all practices of the body, demands a kind of selflessness. It requires us to imagine what another person feels, to seek what will give pleasure and avoid pain. It is an act of deep trust where we hand ourselves over to another with the commitment that they will love us faithfully no matter what. The novelist Martin Amis tells a powerful story about the sacredness of sex and fidelity. He tells a painful story about unrelenting tooth pain and disease, requiring that all his teeth be removed. As he awaited for replacements, toothless, he felt unlovely and undesirable. One night, his wife came to him belly dancing out of the bathroom in a silk bathrobe – embracing him, loving him. He writes: “This was the war against shame. The next morning I woke early and lay there quietly laughing and weeping into the pillow. I felt fragile, guileless, and exquisitely consoled.” Fragile, guileless and exquisitely consoled are healthy descriptions of good sex. Let’s be honest, having sex is easy but a casual acquaintance will not come to you, toothless in bed, to love you in a way that returns you to your best self. Sex between people without such commitments of faithfulness, reverence, and shamelessness, who are not willing to become uniquely responsible to and for one another assumes a split between body and spirit that the Bible says does not exist. The wisdom of the Christian tradition for the honoring of the sexual body is one that marries fidelity with intimacy.
In the end, I am trying to talk about the need to live connected to others in life-giving relationship. This is not exclusively for married people but applies to singles as well. The irony of our time is that we live in the most connected era in human history, yet we are lonelier than ever. Loneliness has become one of the greatest public health challenges people are experiencing. In 2018, Theresa May, the prime minister of the U.K. recognized this problem and responded by appointing a loneliness minister.
Friends, what if one of our roles is to be that for each other, to be that for the world? What if our sexuality is the fuel which drives us to truly love our neighbor and our desire to not be alone? What if your body is considered truly “marvelous” by God? What if you believed the same? What if . . . ? Thanks for joining me and having The Talk.
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