Of Sexuality & The Spirit
I recently read Scot McKnight’s very helpful review of Rob Bell’s new book “Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality And Spirituality”, a book I have been considering buying lately. With my own recent writings about sexuality (both online about homosexuality and in my current book project), the books title and subject matter immediately caught my attention. Zondervan’s synopsis of the book says:
“God and sex go together. You can’t separate the two, says Rob Bell, because this physical world is intimately linked to deeper spiritual realities. And so, in order to make sense of sexuality, at some point you have to talk about God. With beauty and unusual insight, Sex God explores this connection.”
In addition to this new book, the subject of sexuality has been on my mind as a result of our current Discipleship Training School (DTS). During most DTS’s, there is a full week of study dedicated to exploring relationships, with an emphasis on issues of romance and sexuality. After nearly 15 years with YWAM I have begun to see a startling pattern emerging when address this topic: most young Christians are woefully unaware of some basic foundations of human sexuality.
While I am deeply concerned by the lack of knowledge of basic physiology and sexual function that (in my opinion) should be standard adult understanding, I am also wrestling with how little they know about the practice of sex. Of course, the argument can be raised that much of this knowledge should be discovered in the shared journey of sexual union that comes with marraige. While agree to this in principle, in practice I have seen far too many examples of couples with painfully dysfunctional sex lives (and let’s be frank, it is usually the woman who pays the highest price).
I believe this connected in part to the pervasive (perhaps gnostic) fear or demonization of sexuality that still seems to influence a significant portion of the church. I am encouraged that it is increasingly become more common and free to explore and celebrate sexuality in as Christians (a positive outlook that I see as clearly Biblical), but we still have a long way to go.
So here are my questions for you all:
1. What is appropriate awareness/understanding/education for single adults in regards to sexuality? How much should a couple know about sexuality prior to marraige and how much should be left to discovery? Where does innocence become ignorance?
2. If Rob Bell is right and we need to rediscover the link between our sexuality and our spirituality, which comes first? Can we explore this aspect of spirituality with a limited or flawed understanding of sexuality?
Jamie
Once again some astute, pointed and snotingly hard questions!
I don’t have any answers, only another question, something that has bugged me for some time. Where would a godly person go to learn more about sex and sexuality?
The background to the question after being married for 10+ years things start to get a bit boring. The marriage books I have on my bookshelf tell me that this a normal part of the marriage journey. Board of all sorts of thing including the same sex. Now in God’s grace without my prompting my wonderful wife decided to get into shape (3 kids can mess up ones body shape!) so with her invigorated about all things physical (not just sex) this issue has resolved itself. However the question sits in the back of my mind.
Where would I go, say I am another 10 years older and wanting to develop my sexuality – what Godly resources are there? Yet paradoxical the mystical union of man and wife is analogues to union of Christ and his bride the church. So sex must be important to God somhow?!
David,
A very good question, something I have been thinking about a great deal of late. Thanks for sharing from your own journey.
Peace,
Jamie
This is a bigger question than any of us really know…there are so many people struggling with this issue..as a person who does life with alot of college students at “Christian” universities, I see many students getting married prematurely simply to answer the sexuality question in their own life. Many time, hormones are dictating marriages and not the types of decisions that can lead to a long life together. I think we who have students in our lives and as part of our journeys need to have some very serious discussions about the sexualization of our culture, its impact on people and how sexual ethics are lived out faithfully. Good post!
Robin,
I think you are right. I believe that the poor or absence of healthy understanding about sexuality among Christians is largely to blame. We do live in a hyper-sexualized culture, but we have to be careful not to respond by demonizing or ignoring sexuality. Rather, we must celebrate sexuality as it was intended to be. Failing to do this not only has undermined our sexual identities, but have negatively impacted our relationship and understand of God. Thanks!
Peace,
Jamie
First, Hi Jamie, I have not forgotten you, and you are in my thoughts and prayers often.
Second, great thoughts, and something that I think really is a topic that the church NEEDS to address. And soon.
It’s not merely about teaching students/college age people, that sex is a no before marriage, in my opinion we do so little to prepare people for marriage, because all we think students want is sex. (which may or may not be the point). But as I’ve been thinking lately and as david aludes towards is that there is little to no theological framework for how we view sex and sexuality.
Rob does a great job by starting the converstaion (yes i did read the book), but I think he is only laying the ground work for much more to be done in regards to the christian perspective about sex.
I know in my personal experience, that relationships are foreign to me. Having not had too many, leads me to think that I am VERY unprepared for developing a strong relationship that will lead to marriage. And in some ways I see the church (and my parents) having failed to teach me how to enter into “relationship” (not just the sexual side) with a woman. And it probably doesn’t help that many more people are coming from broken homes (me included) where we learn all the wrong things about relationships.
Now that I’ve rambled on too much…we have much work to do, to explore the very real and practical connection between sex, spirituality, relationships and how to handle ourselves as christians in relationships to others (not only our partners).
Hey Andrew,
Thanks for stopping by. I don’t comment much, but I cruise by your blog daily. Keep it up!
I agree with your thoughts. While remaining chaste before marriage is important, I think we do damage by framing our emphasis on sexuality primarily on this morality issue. I think we need to be more thorough with our Biblical scholarship as so much of our talk about this topic reflects serious bias and misunderstanding.
Part of the problem (which I think you allude to) is that we have separated the concept of sexuality from relationships, as though they are disconnected. This is dangerous and destructive on both “sides” of the equation. I think many people share your experience of being failed in this area.
Great thoughts. Thanks!
Peace,
Jamie
you said it so much more consisely and eloquently than i could have, and that’s why you’re published and i’m still wishing
thanks for continuing to read
as i think you know, i’m not at the church any longer, so there’s not as much time in my life to blog, but that doesn’t mean that the thoughts have stopped
i’m working on getting back to that kind of life, which i really miss and truly need
all in god’s time (i guess)(as traditional and non emergent as that sounds)
wishing we could talk more often…until then
andrew
Andrew,
Drop me an email any time. Things have been busy here of late, but will be opening up a tad soon. I’d love to connect again. Blessings, bro!
Peace,
Jamie
Asking whether to approach “spirituality” first or “sexuality” first is like asking if the chicken or the egg came first… And, all our understandings are limited and/or flawed…
So I think to start it’s helpful to define terms. I think “sexuality” encompasses much more than genital copulation, or other overt physically sexually expressive action. So to discuss question #1 (behavior), we would need to take a step back and discuss the meaning of genital contact and the meaning of sexuality.
Have I mentioned to you R. Rolheiser’s book “The Holy Longing”? There’s a chapter on the spirituality of sex/sexuality and it’s the best I’ve ever read on it anywhere. But the whole book is valuable because what he is discussing is Desire. My experience in protestantism has been that nothing positive can be said about anything connected with Desire. At least sex/sexuality are affirmed, even if that affirmation is not well explained. Desire, on the other hand, is one gigantic hot potato.
Dana
Dana,
Great thoughts. I hope I didn’t suggest that sexuality was nothing more than “genital copulation”, as that was not my intention. Yes, sexuality & spirituality are an integrated whole, but our engagement with them function on varying degrees. I still think the question stands: Does a person need a foundational understanding in their own sexuality to understand the integrative spirituality, even in God’s character? Or do the ideas and experiences of God’s nature in this respect lay the foundation for the understanding of our human sexuality?
Thanks for the suggestion on the book. Thanks!
Peace,
Jamie