2 minute read
Christian culture has long taught an unhealthy, unnatural, androcentic, and repressive view of human sexuality that appears blissfully unaware of Song of Songs. I’m not denying that Christians ever say positive things about sex, but even when they do the ratio is usually all wrong. The enculturated formula tends to prescribe two-thirds negativity to one-third positivity. If you’ll pardon a clumsy metaphor, it’s like a sex-negative Oreo where Christians feel compelled to start and end with the bad stuff while keeping the good part brief and confined to the middle.
Let’s unpack this sex-negative Oreo a bit more. Because of its Stoic precedents, Christian culture has this deeply held intuition that it’s dangerous and wrong to relish the erotic. Instead they emphasize what happens when human sexuality goes off the rails: abuse, psychological harm, unwarranted pregnancies, devastated relationships, STDs, etc. Then, sure, God made it good and the continuation of the human race happens to depend on it… yeah, yeah, yeah… But, seriously kids, do NOT masturbate or engage in premarital sex. It’ll ruin your life and you’ll go to hell!!
For years I’ve been quietly asking myself, ‘What would happen to the Church‘s sexual teaching if Jesus followers rejected the philosophical lens of Stoicism through which we’ve most always interpreted the Bible, pondered these issues, and discerned them in community?’ I’ve got some thoughts here and some hunches there, but, quite honestly, the question fascinates me. Some fear that line of inquiry and think it’s playing with Pandora’s Box, but I don’t. I see it as a faithful quest to finally displace Augustine‘s guilt complex and insert Christ back into Christianity.
In my opinion, Jesus followers should be so accustomed to open and honest conversations about human eroticism that it’s just seen as an ordinary part of life. No big deal. Such conversations would certainly include thoughtfully formulating–and wrestling with–principles about what sexual practice are and aren’t healthy, wise, just, sustainable, and advantageous to human flourishing. The difference is that this reorients Christian understandings of human sexuality around a sex-positive framework, mentality, and tone that. It’s an inversion of the Oreo.
The original beatniks were known for indiscriminately screwing around. The truth is, that’s why I’m rather ambivalent about the term “sexual liberation.” It suggests an underlying philosophy of Epicureanism combined with autonomous individualism (untethered from the common good) that I simply don’t affirm. However, dial it back a notch to language like “sexual celebration” and ideas like “sexual exploration”? I’ve read Song of Songs and studied human biology. There’s no denying these ideas were a part of God’s original intention for human flourishing.
