Holistic Christian Sexuality and Community

My previous post caused a big huge discussion - but not here. It was on Tamie's blog, because she quoted me. That's fine. It's a good place to have a discussion because she has more readers.

Here are some highlights that I want to discuss:

If I can speculate, the evangelical obsession with pre-marital sex stems from their underlying ideas that sex is an act of feminine submission to there dominate male counterparts.

My response: I do think that a lot of people consider sex an act of female submission.

I'll go ahead and just throw this out there: I find our society's norms of feminine clothing to be 'submissive' in a worrying way. Why should a woman wear skirts and high heals? Why the impractical clothing? I think because its suggestive, open, immobilizing. Women are told to act out their sexual gender role in fairly overt ways on a day-to-day public basis, and I am amazed that more women, especially liberated women, don't rebel against it.

Another comment:

I have been thinking alot about something scary a friend of mine heard from her pastors wife. "When married it is a wife's duty to always give her husband sex when he wants it." [my thoughts: isn't the husband giving too? I sex only a service performed by a woman for the sake of a man?]

And another:

I would say that the standard of "feminine modesty" imposed on women by Evangelical churches and other conservative institutions is equally oppressive and misogynistic. Evangelical women are told to cover their bodies completely, disguising the existence of their hips and breasts, obstructing all reminders of their sexuality entirely, for two reasons: so they won't "cause a brother to stumble," and because they belong so completely to their husbands that, should they allow other men to see any evidence of their sexuality, it approaches unfaithfulness. In other words, a woman is responsible for the sexual deviance of every man she encounters, and her husband's ownership of her sexuality overrides her bodily autonomy even before she has met him.

And another

Sex is the duty of the married woman. Because if you don't keep him happy he'll start looking around, and that will be your fault. Right?

That's the message I've heard, and as a married woman it's hard to find a new one. Should I only have sex when I feel like it? Isn't that selfish? Shouldn't I think about his needs and just do it because on some level it's 'good for our marriage'? These destructive evangelical sex messages don't stop once you're married.

When I think about premarital sex one of the first things that comes to my mind is pregnancy. Because of contraceptives we've managed to dissociate sex from fertility, but mother nature is very good at getting her way, even when we use contraceptives. While not all sex is for reproduction (a woman can only get pregnant one week a month in the first place), sex and fertility cannot be divorced, even with contraceptives. So I guess the way I see sex is that anyone who is having sex in such a way that babies can be made should be in a relationship where they are prepared to take care of a baby together.Because if a woman is in a relationship with a man who is not prepared to take care of a baby with her, then you know who has to take care of the baby--the woman. Which is in large part why I think the contraceptive pill and some other contraceptives are anti-feminist. Because if the woman does get pregnant then the man will probably feel no responsibility and the couple will probably not have talked about it beforehand. I also think these types of contraceptives are anti-feminist because they dissociate a woman from herself, from her fertility cycle, which is a profound part of being a woman.

As far as the Bible goes, there's a lot of stuff in the Bible that I don't see evangelicals talking about. Like multiple spouses. How many concubines did Solomon have? David? Nobody in the new testament ever mentions that this practice was bad, either.

A reply:

I've been feeling for years that, on some philosophical level, contraception can be anti-feministic or is used or approached in a way that denies the value of who and what we are as whole women, denies the goodness and sacredness of our whole sexuality.

But I also believe that fertility, pregnancy, childbirth, breast feeding, and child rearing are essential parts of a woman's sexuality, and a man's too. (When people say "Ew, don't breast feed a toddler, it's sexual!" I don't want to say "No it's not!" I want to say "So?") But there seems to be this assumption that having sex for pleasure only whenever our bodies tell us to is to be "sexually free" "like men are," and so it's great to be able to take a pill to cure fertility ... I sometimes feel like taking a pill to avoid pregnancy would be to treat my sexuality as a disease rather than a sacred gift. I think it can be a far more honoring-to-women thing to reintegrate our view of sex and fertility, which might mean making an empowered choice not to have sex (even despite arousal) because the full expression of sexuality isn't desired or wise at that time. In this, a couple would honor all of what they are as good, rather than only the part that says "I want this now and I should have what I want when I want it."

I wonder what would happen if the assumption were reversed: instead of "Sex is wrong except in a certain context," its being "Sex is good except in certain contexts." Hmm.

................................

Wow, this is all powerful stuff.

I want to explain at this point that all my criticism of 'evangelicals' is born out of a number of years spent in the inner-circles of two evangelical Vineyard churches, years that ended with me taking a radical turn and becoming Orthodox. I guess I should temper my criticisms with a bit of love. Definitely not much love in my criticisms and I apologize for that. But I am genuinely and unapologetically angry with the extent to which people are lead astray and hurt by know-it-all do-it-yourself evangelical pastors who, in my experience, tend to lack in formal training or respect for the 2000 year of Christian tradition. If you're ever tempted to think that the doctrinal disputes of the church fathers in the patristic period were petty and theoretical, think of the pastor's wife who teaches women to have sex when they don't want to. I think that the patristic fathers saw just as real, practical reasons for fighting heresy.

So having said that, I think I'll try to give voice to the Orthodox Christian tradition on this issue, and try to add as little as I can of my own voice.

Definitely the body and sex are primarily to be seen as good. Like any good thing too much at the wrong time will hurt us and others.

But you really have to discuss what it is that constitutes right and wrong to get at the heart of the issue. Go to Proverbs and read about the Fool. He drinks, he frequents prostitutes, he schemes to defraud his neighbor. Isn't that what we would call a 'sinner' in modern protestant English? The thing about sin is that it's foolish. And God's wisdom is not a reaction to sin, but is prior to sin. He creates us first and then we sin.

The western view of a wrathful God threatening us with damnation is, I think, based largely on midieval Europe's feudal experience. God is seen as this angry Lord who will throw us into a debtor's prison if we don't pay him the taxes and tribute he demands. When we talk about God's will, or God's wrath in the West you get the picture that man sinned first, and then God works hard to enforce his will upon man. Man sins, and then God is forced to damn man. It's as if God has no choice in the matter. It's as if God couldn't stop him, but, darn it, he's going to get even.

An Orthodox priest once told me, much to my surprise, that God does not exist. Does not exist? No. He is. He has called himself 'I am'. He is. I thinkthe point was that 'exist' implies that we looked for him and found him. But the reality is that he created us before we looked for him, if we even did look for him. He is. His will is. And so he doesn't need to be angry with us because his salvation is before we are. He doesn't need to fight us or win over us with his will becauase he is trimphant before we exist. His will is a peaceful loving reality, not a angry anxious fight.

In that context what does submission mean? Submission does not mean losing a fight. Submission is the free act of a human being who trusts that God's will is good, and therefore sees in enlightened self-interest that it is the best, wisest way forwards. The fool comes to his senses, wishes to be wise, and chooses the smart path. That is submission. It's good for you (like a medicine) to submit. It's not for God's sake - he certainly doesn't need for you to submit. He's not angry with you. He's not trying to win a fight with you to get you to submit. If you're smart, you'll look for his way and try to follow it because it works better.

So submission is nothing humiliating or defeating if we view it as the Church does. To submit is not to lose, but to choose (put it on a bumper sticker, I dare you!)

If a woman wears modest clothes it should be because of her choice to do something she finds to be wise (either by figuring it out for herself, or by trusting God that it's the smart thing to do.) To submit is not to lose, but to choose. I really don't have much to prescribe on the matter of women's clothing. I have enough problems with my own choices. It's certainly my own problem if I stare at a fully-dressed woman and try to imagine her naked body underneath the clothes. Maybe she has helpled me along the way, maybe not. It's still my problem.

And the sacrament of submission is not closed off to men. Monks, for example, submit to their spiritual fathers and communities in just about every little detail of their lives. Every man should be given the opportunity to submit his life to the instruction of the church (which is general) and to a person, or specific people in particular. It's a gift, not a curse.

I'll paraphrase a sermon I heard from another Orthodox priest: we have passions (desires, tendencies, urges) which in and of themselves are not bad. But we are wounded people, and our passions drag us around into excesses. We search for false comforts for the wounds we've received, and we've lost control. And so in order to put our life back into balance, and in order to learn how to turn to God, we have to practice the counter-part of our passion at any given time. If we're being tempted to steal or to crave money, we should practice generosity. If we're being tempted to indulge, we should practice abstinence and fasting. If we're tempted to judge others we should call to mind our own sins and faults.

So Amy, I couldn't agree more that a normal and central part in a balanced marriage is making a wise loving decision about when not to have sex. Like when my wife doesn't feel like it. That is a perfect time for me not to have sex - to practice abstinence. Or when we are postponing having a child. Or during periods of fasting and praying.

It was put to me and my wife before we had our daughter that our marriage would only be complete when we had children. I had no idea how right the person was. He pointed out that 'the two shall become one flesh' does not mean that you become metaphorically one flesh in the act of sex. It's about the new person who comes from both of your bodies. My daughter is one flesh from us both. Our sexuality and partnership took on a completely new meaning when we knew that we were opening up our whole lives to the grace of God in that particular sense. Maybe we would have a baby, maybe not. It was really 'taking a leap'. I don't judge anyone for using contraception, but I do think that divorcing sexuality from family life does some violence to the whole person.

However, I think all of this is very nice in theory, but one thing keeps it from often becoming a reality in our day and age. If we lived in the type of society where extended families all lived together under one roof, or in a small geographical area, I think less people would use contraceptives. Raising children as an isolated nuclear family is not only tough, it's unnatural. Children need a whole extended family of adults to rely on, and parents aren't made for doing it all by themselves. What on earth do you think grandmothers and grandfathers, and aunts and uncles ar for, people?

But living in that close of a community doesn't come without its price tag either. People put their noses in each other's business. They have opinions. They judge. They fight. They get on your nerves. We are used to so much privacy and autonomy that I don't think most of us would survive, even if we had access to all the free babysitting. Submission would be on a whole new level - never mind modest clothing, or compulsary sex. How about submitting to the expectations and tabus of your extended family/community so as not to cause offense, and so as to be able to live in peace with everyone? Doesn't sound so rosey now, does it?

So we're stuck basically. We can romanticize living in closer community with people, but I have both eyes wide open. It would be the challenge of my life, one that I doubt I'm up to, to live in a community where we took care of each other so well that all couples would stop using contraception and just let the cards fall where they fell. I would probably take to the bottle (whiskey not milk) and who knows what else. I think that integrating your whole life means integrating the sinful hurt parts that you may have managed to quaranteen for a now.

I'll round off ... there's an Orthodox community I know of in the US where a few families run a school for troubled young men. Teenage boys get sent there as a last option instead of sending them to jail - for example. They have staff members who live in one big house, complex. The boys get to learn different forms of work, they don't really divide into 'staff' and 'students' very neatly, although there are boundary lines. Mostly they're a community of repentant sinners. They have mattins and vespers services every day. Most of the students sing in the choir. They appoint someone to read outloud at every meal, and they eat in silence listening to a reading. Actually, I don't know if it's every meal, but almost. They live an intensely transformational and God-filled life. Everything is about their faith and their church. It's beautiful and when I get their newsletter I read it with a mixed sense of longing and feared awe. Would I be able to hack it if I lived there?

I wrote to the priest who runs the place, and told him that their Christmas photo of everyone in the community looked like a collection of happy faces. He wrote back and said that the happy faces actually hide the immense beautiful suffering that God sends them as a continual gift. They have addicts who come there, and fail to get rehabilitated. Occasionally they'll find out that the addict has drunk himself into a vegitative state after having left. They are living with and fighting a spiritual battle against the pain, woundedness and sin of our society as it resides in a few individuals, but also as it resides in every one of them. It's triumphant but it's a crucifixion.

That's a picture of what a real community, a real integrated whole life could look like, and I think a respectful loving view of both a man's and a woman's gender roll is only to be found in a community where people lovingly submit their lives to the beautiful gift of triumphant suffering. But I have no idea how I would ever survive it. Lord, have mercy.