Todays Readings

So, I was sitting here waiting for Renee to call and was reading "All Sexed Up: Is There a Way Out of Chastity, Marriage, and the Christian Sex Cult?". Its a REALLY long article and some way over my head but what I read was interesting. The author talks about his opinion of how our view of sex in Christian circles is incorrect and cult-like and that we spend too much time thinking, discussing, avoiding, whatever it and forget what we really should be doing which is imitiating Christ. I'd agree with atleast part of what he says. His last few paragraphs sum up what he thinks we can do to help reverse some of our thinking on the subject. Read the whole article (linked above) if ya want to know more. I'll probably have more thought later.

"In the end, I am not saying anything that complex. I believe that Christians need to try to find ways out of sexuality, the very thing I see Christ and Paul trying to do in order to create a larger space for friendship. And this is possible, I believe, when we once again frame Christian action and living in regard to martyrdom instead of sexuality. As some possible ways out of the contemporary Christian sex cult, I propose a few very simple practices of freedom.

First, form friendships in which you speak more about imitating Christ, wherein you discuss your vocation, feeding the hungry, caring for orphans, challenging each other toward economic simplicity, and your redemptive vision for the world than you do about the topic of sex. By this I mean to say, trade in your accountability partner for a friend who will challenge you to imitate Christ in your life by the way you spend your money, the job that you take and the day to day interactions you have with others. Although sex will continue to factor into your discussions from time to time, refuse to make sexual confession the central reason for meeting together but more often concentrate each other on affirming the imitation of Christ. Engage in holistic forms of confession as well as affirmation that allow for failure and are not bound simply to a focus on chastity.

Second, refuse to be organized in the church along sexual lines by forming deep friendships outside of your sexual category. Singles should get to know married folk; women should befriend men; seniors should befriend youths; heterosexuals should get to know homosexuals.

Thirdly, speak more openly about marriage and refuse any formulation of chastity or virginity based upon marriage. Reject the attempt to make marriage the ideal for Christian living, and refuse to focus too much attention on the family. That is to say, do not allow your notions of virginity and chastity to be defined as preparation for marriage or as purified holding stations for an eventual spouse, for this is to disavow virginity and chastity from any intelligible Christian formulation. One does not remain a virgin in Christianity in order to keep oneself pure for his or her eventual spouse, but virginity and chastity are always defined in Christianity as functions of integrity toward one’s goal of imitating Christ.

And finally, refuse to acknowledge liberation as a “coming out” because this implies that one’s essential sexual nature must be recognized. Liberty is always the freedom to love one’s neighbor, not to sleep with her or him as an expression of who one really is. Both Paul and Christ refuse to acknowledge any essential nature, especially a sexual nature, other than the new human nature given in the resurrected Christ that gathers the community of his followers in friendship. These practices, I believe, may begin to lead us out of the contemporary understanding of ourselves as essentially sexual beings. They may lead us in a new direction toward an evangelical asceticism that reclaims the imitation of Christ as a complete form of life. Each of these is only a beginning, but they are an important beginning for finding our way out of the worship of sex. "