Sexual Identity - a new conversation II
Sexual Identity - a new conversation II
28 August 2016
Given our moral standards around sexuality, it could be expected that the church would be the easiest place to be single and celibate.
However, my experience – and that of many other single people I have spoken to – is that the church is the hardest place to be single. With so much emphasis on marriage and with so much of human need positioned within this inherently sexual relationship, those with different experiences of sexuality can find themselves marginalised. In being unmarried, one is not just missing a sexual relationship but often also the companionship, security, hope, affirmation, family, friendship, and other aspects of a shared life and future which marriage encompasses.
In all of these things, our witness to the world is undermined. This is where we reflect television’s Friends, affirming the world’s notion that sex is a primary driver and goal of human experience and central to our identity, rather than offering a new discourse around sexuality. We are content to offer merely another position on the spectrum of morality, trapping people in the same patterns of sexualised identity and experience.
What then for the person who has not remained “pure” before marriage? What for the married couple who find that sex itself – or marriage in general – is not living up to their expectations? What for the gay person who is seeking to be acknowledged for more than their sexuality? What for the unmarried person (gay or straight) who is trying to live a fulfilling celibate life? I believe we are called to demonstrate a radically different way to be human.
A different way
While fidelity in marriage and chastity outside it are certainly biblical concepts (Hebrews 13:4), and while there are clear biblical standards around how marriage and family relationships (as with all relationships) should be conducted, our current focus on the nuclear family as the building block of society is a Western middle-class ideal, rather than a biblical one.
There is actually a subversive approach to family evident throughout the New Testament. Jesus’ references to marriage and family are downright disturbing. To a “marriage and family-oriented” Jewish society, Jesus says his message will split families and that anyone who loves their family more than him is not worthy of him (Matt 10:34-39). When told that his family were waiting for him, Jesus responds that his family are those who do the will of God (Matt 12:46-50). He tells us that there is no marriage at the resurrection (Matt 22:30), and (as already mentioned) not all will be married on earth either (Matt 19:10-12).
In a more sexually liberal Greco-Roman context, Paul (like Jesus, a single man) presents a revolutionary approach to sexuality with his focus on equality, fidelity, concern for the social and economic wellbeing of others, and a challenge to the violence and abuses of power evident in marriages. In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul affirms sexuality as a good and healthy thing, but he also relativises it. Paul notes that marriage has costs as well as benefits, and affirms celibacy as a positive choice. In effect, Paul is saying that we are not defined by our sexuality. Instead, his teaching emphasises our identity in Christ rather than in any human institution.
Echoing Jesus’ definition of family as those who do the will of God, Paul’s teaching highlights the corporate nature of the church, with care to be extended to those within the body of Christ as well as those within our immediate families. This theme is continued elsewhere in the New Testament, such as in James 1:27 where “true religion” includes caring for widows and orphans – those outside traditional family structures. While I do not believe that any of these things are inherently anti-marriage or anti-sexuality, they demonstrate a higher priority: unity and inclusion, against the inherently personal and exclusive nature of sexuality.
Focus on friendship
So, what does this mean in our sexualised contexts? Echoing Paul’s teaching, Michael Foucault, in Religion and Culture suggests that rather than being liberated in sexuality we are to be liberated from sexuality—not “coming out” in sexual orientation (including hetero-sexuality), but finding a “way out” of sexuality. This is not a rejection of sexuality as part of our human experience, but recognition that this one element does not define the whole of who we are. Foucault suggests the “way out” of sexuality is found in friendship, something Christian thinkers such as C.S. Lewis and Australian social activist Dave Andrews also espouse. Within the church context, this translates to a shift in focus from marriage and family (necessarily closed and exclusive units) to the more open and inclusive concepts of friendship and community.
Dave Andrews, in Compassionate Community Work, suggests that as Christians we must get past the world’s idea that “two is company and three is a crowd”, to the Trinitarian perspective that “two is company and three is community”. C.S. Lewis, in The Four Loves speaks of the distinction between the intimate “face to face” of the sexual relationship and the “side by side” openness of friendship. Each notes that the orientation of friendship and community opens space for the “other”. This is not only beneficial to the “other” who is included, but strengthens the bonds between all as joys and burdens are shared, support is offered and the wisdom of another perspective is introduced.
When we value friendship and community in the way we currently do marriage and family, we will be seeking the same level of ethical conduct in all of these relationships. Our friendships and community must be characterised by the same practices of fidelity, trust, openness and unity that we currently expect of a healthy marriage. In doing so, we will create the kind of safe spaces in friendship and community that allow us to be open with each other and with God, receiving the support and care that we all need in a world in the process of redemption. We will be as concerned by broken relationships within the community as we are by broken relationships within marriages and families. We will invest as much in building the Body of Christ as we do in building strong marriages and family units.
Totality of the person
As we shift our discourse from marriage and family to friendship and community, we also ameliorate much of the risk inherent within sexuality. Most of our common human need can be met in a non-sexualised context – physical touch or emotional intimacy are not as “risky” when these occur in the context of community, rather than one-to-one. It is also significantly easier to respond appropriately and creatively to sexual desire if this desire does not come wrapped up in loneliness, alienation, hopelessness and fear for the future. Safe and healthy friendships and communities are a better place for all of us to be the whole people that we are – body, soul and spirit. When we reject the inclination to put others in boxes defined by sexuality, but rather acknowledge and accept the totality of the person before us, and the connections between us as fellow members of God’s family, we are building the Body of Christ.
A shift from marriage and family to friendship and community requires something of each of us, but it also makes the Body of Christ stronger. Defining family in an inclusive sense (as family of God), rather than exclusively (as nuclear family) opens the door for anyone to belong and offers the benefits of family (companionship, emotional intimacy, affirmation, trust, dependability) to all. This requires those “outside” and those “inside” to open themselves to the other.
As a single adult, I need to let go of my independence, allowing others to care for me and also making the effort to care for them. In turn, families need to think not just of what is good for those within the family, but also how they can include those who are outside. We each need to be vulnerable enough to let others know when we are troubled, when we have something to celebrate, when we have something to contribute. This requires us to get to know each other as whole beings – bringing our work and community lives into the church as well as our sexual lives. It means rethinking our concepts of privacy and independence (both of which are Western cultural concepts) to build interdependent lives that include, accept and affirm the needs and contributions of each member.
Hospitality needs to be considered not as a “my turn, your turn” social obligation, but as a genuine invitation to share life together –the good, the bad and the ugly – in all the diversity the family of God brings. This life together is as simple as an invitation to a child’s school play and as profound as sitting together in the hospital waiting room. It is shared Monday to Sunday in all aspects of life, not just over a cup of tea after the Sunday meeting.
Foucault suggests that “Friendship is strategically important because it opens up new spaces for affection, tenderness, fidelity, camaraderie and companionship and so reveals the emotional emptiness of the tyranny of sexuality.” If we are serious about presenting an alternative to the emotionally empty sexual liberalism of the world, here is that alternative: an identity founded not primarily in our sexuality, but rather in our shared life in Christ, expressed through friendship and community.
Caroline Jewkes is the Project Manager: Education and Training Framework, for the Booth College of Mission in Hamilton, New Zealand. She will be presenting at the upcoming Thought Matters Conference in Melbourne, October 14-16. Click HERE for further information.
First published in Thought Matters, Volume 4, Honour God with your body: A Christian view of human sexuality.
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