Thoughts on christian sexual ethics: or what to do or not to do unto thine brother (or sister)...

Sexual Orientation Regulations - a christian reaction?

Following on from my post asking the Q who is healthy/who is sick exploring some issues of christianity and sexualityI was going to write a post about what I think my reaction as a christian should be to the to the Sexual Orientation Regulations (SORS) being uheld by the House of Lords that attracted a recent christian led protest outside the Houses of Parliament. 

However, Rupert has done so an excellent job on exploring/clarifying/reducing the hysteria that I can't help but recomend his two posts on gay rights(SORS): part 1 and part 2. In particular I would encourage you to read this Faithworks response, that Rupert links to in his post, on why the christian response to the SORS borders on sounding homophobic (for instance by allowing a hetrosexual unmarrried couple to sleep in a BB but not a same sex couple).

Before I go on to consider how this issue has impacted my thoughts on the christian reaction to homosexuality and wider than sex and sexuality in general I personally felt my response shaped by these words of Jesus - about opening up my life, my home  and living in a generous way rather than one where I seek to shut out what I do not agree with/am afraid of...

"Here's another way to put it: You're here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We're going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don't think I'm going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I'm putting you on a light stand. Now that I've put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you'll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven."

Reflections on christian sexual ethics - or why we might be in different boats but we're all still sailing on the same sea?

One of the excellent comments left on Rupert's blog raised the whole issue of sexual ethics, what is right but at the wrong time and what is wrong and there never is a right time... how should we react as christians?  How can we get beyond our fears (in this case homophobic ones) and live a life where we can be both generous and gracious and faithful to the calling of God to live differently in terms of our ethics/lifestyle.

Christian ethics:  living not just thinking

Awhile back I wrote this post on christian ethics  where my point is that our ethics come with both action and a cost - it is not so much what we tell others but what we do ourselves, or in short we have to point out that not only do none of us make the bar (which is why I need Jesus in the first place) we are also prepareed to do something about that gap in terms of loving empowered action - to be part of God's solution to be a blessing to the world even if it costs us our rights, time and all the other things we might treasure.

As someone who has had a very tangled sexuality i have found that the christian ethic which says you must have a perfect and pure sexuality was not helpful to me in that I could not talk about my situation, it was who i was and the tug was always there to be me - it was a truth [as it was who i was] on the other hand it was not the truth of who i was in that was not my fully formed identity - confused, might be easier to read about it here...

It was only when i started to be open, to find the courage to talk about where I was and whether that was who i was that God helped me with a loving community to reveal more and more of what was false with my picture of me and what was right about it...

In this context i think we need to acknowledge the honest fact that living out traditional sexual christian ethics practices are a struggle for a lot of people: whether you're single and want to have sex, married and want to have sex with someone else [or not want to have sex with your spouse etc] or gay and want to have sex with someone of the same sex...

Thought 1: What/who am I committed too - or why would God care about our sexual behaviour?

I think part of the answer to this Q is about commitment - i think we would do wise to move away from marriage [which is a society construct, just a take a look at the history of it] and instread see it as a formal commitment. In other words God is saying we find the best in ourselves and others where we commit to one person, where we have to learn to face our selfishness and learn about a love that is based on giving not getting, laying down our rights etc. It is then not a Q of sex but a Q of commitment. Outside of commitment i could have sex with whoever i wanted but what that ends up as is me fulfilling my needs and using other people to do so, it encourages me to move on when things are difficult, to live a me centred, me first existence. And of course all the pain, heartache, selfish, cheap, desperate, short term living that comes with it...

Or as St Paul puts it in part of his letter to the Galatian community:

"It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on. "

God is then setting guidance in place cos he loves us ands knows if we go against the moral grain of the universe we will pick up splinters - we will be hurt, we will hurt others, we will become users and abusers and consume each other, doing whatever we want to satisfy our own hungers which i've found from experience tend to not really be satisfied [hence the eroticised culture in which we live where sex sells and we evaluate ourselves by how many orgasms we have, or the quality of them, or the beauty of the person we go out with etc...]

A thought that I heard Jason Clark say recently was how it was interesting how the TV series Friends had to end on a happy note - and what was that note?  Well here were 6 people who we followed over the yrs living the single dream of various searches for love/sex/relationship/careers/coffee  and by the end of the last series they all pretty much found happiness in commitment - it ended them with being married etc... that was the big happy ending for Friends and that is maybe the big happy ending God has for us, not commiting our lives to chasing our wants but to giving away our lives in loving committed relationships where we need God to empower us, so that our love can be about giving not getting...

Thought 2: a whole/healthy sexuality?

We could maybe extend this loving God to not just sex but to sexuality - we could say that commitment is part of the equation but God also wants us to have a fully realised healthy sexuality which is something i wonder how many of us have - whether gay or straight do we live with a sexual script which sees us addicted to porn, or shaped by the past so we our sexuality is disconnected/distant or is overwhelming, we seek to medicate the pain, to deal with how we have been shaped often by seeking in our sexuality to capture something lost and in turn are captured ourselves by the own chains of our life.

I can only use myself as a case study but in hanging out with people who for instance wanted to dominated, if they were female they usually had an issue with their father, more often then not he was absent and they missed having that male presence in their early teens and sort to have an authority figure now. Or they had experienced dominating parents and had learnt to associate that with love and therefore had sexualised it.

For me I experienced a passive father figure and a dominating mother, i also saw how force could give you power and therefore determined to be dominating myself and use force if necesary - which influenced my sexuality so that I needed to be dominant and found the sense of power erotic.

Following Jesus is about a journey towards healing/wholeness/fulmes of life?

Now I am not saying that everyone can blame their parents, or that everyone's sexuality has been shifted in the way that mine was - only that i can see that my sexuality was not very healthy now but at the time it was how i felt. If we all carry some degree of damaged sexuality the Q becomes not what is damaged about you but what is damaged about me, do i use my sexuality to manipulate? am i sexually shut down because i don't know how to talk about it as my family never did? am i afraid of having children? am i unable to cope with the expectations of my partner? etc etc

If we talk about our sexual brokeness and practice healing of that through God in our faith communities, will we then have a story to tell that might start well i was attracted to men but it was because my uncle abused me when i was little and never really faced it just thought it was the way it should be...

Or i needed to have sex with as many women as possible as i never felt attractive growing up and i just want to feel atrractive/loved...

Or whatever...

But then can we tell a story of a more fullfilled, health, less selfish, more open life as a result maybe we are saying something more than just this is the ideal. maybe we are saying yes let's be honest, whether i am ready to face it or not it is likely that i will have issues around commitment and issues around my sexuality - God is not about condeming us but about helping us live life to the full, caring not just about what makes me happy now but about my characture... in order to start facing deeper truths I need to be part of a community where I can be loved, accpted, be honest in and do the same for other people.

A God empowered journey in a community of  new creations...?

I need to be less judgemental about other people's sexuality and focus on my own - i might be married but am i committed to my job more than my wife? I might be hetrosexual but i am addicted to porn [which I have been] as it feeds a need in me/creates a buzz to help me feel good about myself...

I need to be aware that I cannot do this by myself - that Jesus is about helping me find a life that is healthier, whole, fulfilled and that there are people in my community who share this story of their own journey... that we are empowered to help people who are ready to face the truth and that includes ourselves...

Does it then become a Q of saying in my community we teach this as I think it is helpful in helping live out this more fulfilled way but it is unlikely that you will feel like living like that - that you need to belong first and believe...

Do I believe that the holy spirit takes us on a journey of revealing truth to us and each other but that truth is a loving one that inspires us to change as much as giving healing, life, new perspective so we can change... or as St Paul says in the same section of the letter to the Galatians:

"But what happens when we live God's way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely."

Is that more costly but ultimately healthier than saying you must do this or that when all of us know that we can not keep every aspect of the law anyway? What price tag does grace come with? Or are we gonna be like the older brother in the story of the prodigal son who throw a jealous fit because we lived as hetrosexuals [denying our own commitment/sexuality wounds]and here is the Father celebrating all these gay people [who maybe are starting to recognise their own]???

And what am I going to do as a result... how am i going to be generous and gracious?

Help please:

This is the beginning of my thinking, i'd love to hear your thoughts, stories, experiences...

Comments

[David]

wow
good stuff.
that's all I got to say for now.
hehe

[Rupert]

Great Stuff Paul. Thanks for linking to my blog, and your comments there.

I love the way that you express what we share with all human beings: brokeness. If we can grasp that, it begins to break down some of the dualisms we create that separate us from others. My brokeness is just different from other's, but somehow I justify mine and judge yours.

And dead on about community being the place that honesty, light, healing can flow.

One of the questions I have - which maybe off piste a bit from your post - is all broken sexuality a result of some past pain? I wonder if sometimes we have to find a place of holding people in our communities while we wait for the restoration of all things?

For example, I am not sure that people are gay as a result of a weak father, sexual abuse or the like ... or at least, not in every case. In my experience, a few people seem to find some "healing", get married in a loving hetersexual relationship. But for many others, that doesn't seem to happen, and learn to live as a follower of Jesus in the midst of thier sexuality.

Just wondering out loud, but that is always dangerous!

[Paul]

Thanks Rupert - it was a great couple of posts and I thought why repeat when you did such an excellent work crafting your ones...

Awhile back i did a post on growth and said to me it seemed that linear model of greater to greater victorious living in the power of Jesus has not really been my experience - i've hit some hot spots when i was more in the zone but most of the time it seems to me to be more organic like growth rings on a tree - a lot of going round and round and maybe only ever growing up and out slowly - and that depends on conditions of soil/light/water/temperature etc...

I therefore agree with you, sometimes it is a past hurt/experience/norm that has formed in us and sometimes it is something that we will struggle with for all our lives - i've found that with my sexuality - i might not live it out the way i once did but i still feel the tug, the buzz even of thinking about it...

That for me is the power of being in a community of honesty and confession, Jesus begins a good work in us and promises to complete it but is it always in this lifetime?

If I look back over say 16-17 yrs of sexual addictions/hurts/brokeness i can see that Jesus has helped heal part of me and that the healing is still going on - maybe the most healing thing has been able to share my story with so many people, who have the courage and hope to maybe start facing their own brokeness/hurting places...

[Paul]

which is also partly why i choose the picture that I did to go with this piece, that and it made me :)

[ReneeM]

I enjoyed this post, and your post you referred back to. Thank you for your honesty. There just ISN'T enough of it out there!!

Its been fun to watch my husband work through his "homo-phobia" as a result of... well you don't need that list! and the best thing, when a good friend felt free to share his struggle with homosexuality in OUR house church, and watch the reaction and interaction and compassion flow... God is healing and growing us in every aspect of sexuality, I think!

[Rupert]

Loved the photo Paul ... made me chuckle

[Paul]

thanks Renee - was a liberating moment for me when i could start being honest too - it's a strange one we often get hung up on the importance of truth as christians and yet struggle to be honest/open...

am so glad that your community is a safe place to share and find healing/support together!!!