SEX TALKS 3: NEW TESTAMENT SEX

Sparta was an extreme case, and things were somewhat different in the Greek cities Paul visited, but it gives an illustration of the kind of thing he was up against. There was a huge culture clash between what was considered normal in a place like Corinth or Ephesus, and what Paul believed was right for followers of Jesus. Paul had a totally different view of God’s purpose for sex from the Greek world in which he was ministering.

And the thing was, for those Christians who came from a Greek background it was very difficult to break free from what they had always thought of as normal sexual behavior. So when we read what Paul writes about sexual immorality (especially in the first letter to the Corinthians) we need to understand that this is what is going on.

How does all this history relate to us, here and now?

Well, there used to be something called ‘Judeo-Christian culture’. What this meant was that while not everyone was a follower of Jesus, the way that society operated was more or less along the lines set out in the Bible. People might not always have lived in sexual purity, but the basic understanding was that sex was something that was only meant to happen in marriage. Now, that culture has almost completely disappeared. Our culture today is much more like the Greek world of the New Testament. And like the converts in those first churches, we also struggle to break free from what is now considered normal sexual behavior.

SEX TALKS 2: SEXUAL HANG-UPS?

When we read the Bible, especially the letters written by the Apostle Paul, we might get the impression that it is not too keen on sex. The general caricature of Christians is that we are prudish. Lots of people would find it hard to imagine that Christians actually enjoy sex, or are any good at it. All that Bible talk of sexual immorality can just reinforce this impression.

Paul writes a lot of warnings about sexual immorality, and this might be difficult for us to understand. For starters, you might struggle with the word ‘immorality’. Who gets to decide what is immoral anyway? And why just because one person thinks something is immoral does that have to affect the way that I live my life? Why should anyone but me get to define what is right or wrong with what I do with my body?

To help us understand why the Bible says what it does about sexual immorality we need to have a picture of what the world was like, that the Bible was written in. The Apostle Paul wrote his letters to churches that were in the Greek world. Greek was the language that most people spoke, and Greek culture was what shaped how people thought and acted. And lots of Greek culture was very sexually immoral.

Let’s take Sparta as an example.

Sparta was an extraordinary place, even by Greek standards. It was a culture built upon steely discipline and constant training for war. The Spartans were a seriously scary bunch and their exploits in battle have become the stuff of legend. A Spartan man was expected to always be ready for a fight, able to march huge distances to get to the battle, survive off the land, kill without mercy, and never show fear. At the age of seven a Spartan boy left his parents and went to Spartan warrior school. Here he would be trained in all the things that a good Spartan needed to know. At the end of this training, the best cadets would be formed into a band called the Crypteia and go off hunting – murdering slaves as the final part of their graduation.

As well as this extreme training for war, Spartans also practiced extreme sexual training. From the age of 12 a Spartan boy was compelled to take an older, male lover. There wasn’t much choice in this – it just had to be done. At the same age, a Spartan girl was considered available to any Spartan man – not to have regular intercourse, as the Spartans wanted to keep their girls ‘virgins’ until they got married – but for anal sex. Basically, Spartan society enforced state sanctioned pedophilia.

To us this might seem completely bizarre. It is difficult for us to imagine a society where 12 year olds are compelled by the government to have sex with older men. But for the Spartans this was normal – as normal as it would be in our culture for a 16 year-old girl to decide to start sleeping with her boyfriend.

SEX TALKS

As I may have mentioned previously, I have been trying to write up the seminars I took at Newday last year on sex – its going to end up as five chapters, and answers to about fifty questions that we were asked over the week. This process has slowed the past few months, but I have got about half of it done, and have a few days booked out for writing in a couple of weeks time when I hope to get it finished. As busyness and a lack of creative energy also mean I have been posting on this blog much less frequently than normal I thought I would serialize the first chapter of “Sex Talks” here.

(NB – please bear in mind that this is written with an audience of those in their late teens in mind.)

PART 1: PLUMBING & TEMPLES… OR, WHAT IS YOUR BODY FOR?

Sex is obviously a very physical thing – like, d’oh – you do it with your body. It involves getting yourself completely entangled with another human being. Sex is the most intimate of human encounters, involving the exchange of warmth, and touch, and bodily fluids. Having sex with someone is to literally mingle yourself with them – a forensics guy could swab you down afterwards and find you covered in the DNA of the person you have been intimate with.

As we begin this exploration of the meaning and purpose of sex we need to start with its physical dimension. Which means we start with thinking about the body. When we have sex are we basically just functioning like plumbing? Are our bodies essentially tubes, into which we put some things and other things come out? Or is there more to it than that?

I am writing this as a Christian – a follower of Jesus Christ – who takes the Bible seriously. I believe that following Jesus and believing the Bible makes a huge difference to how we should understand sex. More than that, it makes a huge difference to how we understand our bodies – it means that we understand our bodies to be more like temples than just plumbing. This chapter is my attempt to explain that difference to you.

ANOTHER BLOG...

Regular readers will have noticed that things have been a bit quiet on this blog recently. There are a number of reasons for this, but one of them is that I have been somewhat distracted by the launch of a new website and blog for Newfrontiers.

After a lot of planning and discussion we have finally gone live with the Theology Matters website. This is the home for online contributions by members of the Newfrontiers Theology Forum - a group of us who meet together and prepare papers which are then taught at various leaders gatherings. These papers are available on the website, but so is a new blog - What You Think Matters. Whereas the papers take a long time to produce and are subject to vigorous peer review, the blog is a space where we can make more regular comments and observations. We will also be publishing posts from a wider pool of contributors than just the guys on the Theology Forum.

I hope you like it!

If you use a RSS reader you can subscribe to the blog here.

PREJUDICE

Well the blogs are buzzing with the news that Peter and Hazelmary Bull, of the Chymorvah Hotel, Penzance, have been found to have acted unlawfully in refusing accommodation to Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy because they were not married. (For example, Cranmer offers his usual pithy insights.)

As this is already being widely covered, just a couple of observations from me…

Firstly, it is interesting/alarming that a Government agency – the Equality and Human Rights Commission, tag-line “Creating a fairer Britain” – backed the case. And subsidiary from this, what is equally interesting/alarming is the way in which facts are manipulated by language.

According to the BBC, 

John Wadham, a director at the commission, said the hotel was a commercial enterprise and subject to community standards, rather than private ones.

"The right of an individual to practise their religion and live out their beliefs is one of the most fundamental rights a person can have, but so is the right not to be turned away by a hotel just because you are gay," he said.

Gay equality charity Stonewall said it was delighted at the outcome.

"You can't turn away people from a hotel because they're black or Jewish and in 2011 you shouldn't be able to demean them by turning them away because they're gay either," its chief executive Ben Summerskill said.

Where the manipulation is apparent here is in making the false syllogism that, To turn away a black person is prejudiced; Hall and Preddy are gay and were turned away; therefore the B & B owners are prejudiced against gays. In reality the case was that the Bull’s refused accommodation in double beds to anyone who was not married – gay or straight, black, white or blue. The sexual orientation of Hall and Preddy was not the issue. Whether or not the Bull’s were following a sensible policy could itself be debated, but clearly it was not primarily an issue about prejudice against gays.

James Davison Hunter sums up the kind of special pleading we see in this case, in his book To Change the World:

The sense of injury is key. Over time, the perceived injustice becomes central to the person’s and the group’s identity. Understanding themselves to be victimized is not a passive acknowledgement but a belief that can be cultivated. Accounts of atrocity become a crucial subplot of the narrative, evidence that reinforces the sense that they have been or will be wronged or victimized. Cultivating the fear of further injury becomes a strategy for generating solidarity within the group and mobilizing the group to action. It is often useful at such times to exaggerate or magnify the threat. The injury or threat thereof is so central to the identity and dynamics of the group that to give it up is to give up a critical part of whom they understand themselves to be. Thus, instead of letting go, the sense of injury continues to get deeper.

In this logic, it is only natural that wrongs needs to be righted. And so it is, then, that the injury – real or perceived – leads the aggrieved to accuse, blame, vilify, and then seek revenge on those whom they see as responsible. The adversary has to be shown for who they are, exposed for their corruption, and put in their place.

Sadly, for the Bulls, it is they who in this case have been thus exposed.

PRAYER IS GOOD!

At this time of year many of us have 'weeks of prayer' in our churches. (For a bit of variety at Gateway this year we're doing three days over three weeks instead.) Prayer is good! Yesterday I was with a bunch of guys praying with Terry Virgo in his home, something we are privileged to do a couple of times a year. 

This focus on prayer made me look up some notes I had previously prepared based on the Apostle Paul’s prayer for the Colossians (Colossians 1:3-14). This gives us a number of principles as to how we should pray together, and perhaps will help you to pray in 2011...

1. Pray with vision

Paul never prays insipid prayers. Prayer is engaging with God, so we need to scale our prayers up, rather than down. We need to get a vision of what prayer can accomplish and of the God to whom we pray. We should not just pray limp “Bless you” prayers. Instead we pray big prayers to a big God!

2. Pray in the Spirit

It is the Spirit who enables us to pray with knowledge, wisdom and understanding; and to pray fruitfully, strongly, powerfully, enduringly, joyfully and thankfully. Romans 8:26-27 makes it clear that even when we do not know how to pray in our own language the Spirit is able to pray through us, and touch the heart of God.

3. Pray boldly

Inhibition kills prayer meetings! As Christians we have freedom! Paul prayed big, bold prayers and we need to learn to do likewise.

4. Pray with faith and love                                                   

When people first become Christians they often find it easy to pray and worship – their faith is strong and they feel love for their new brothers and sisters in Christ – but once that first flush of relationship is over it often gets harder. To overcome this we need to develop our own devotional life – it is hard to come and pray with others if your own soul isn’t “longing for the courts of the Lord” (Ps. 84:2).

5. Pray with people who pray

The Colossians learnt the gospel from Epaphras and we can guess he also taught them to pray. I have learnt most about praying by praying with people who pray (like Terry)! If you want to pray get close to people who are passionate about God, while avoiding the cynics and the moaners.

6. Pray with the word

The content of our faith and prayer is important. Paul says that the Colossians have “heard the word” and are “filled with knowledge.” It is hard to pray without the word. Using the Bible as we pray helps feed worship and prayer. It helps us focus. It inspires contributions and stirs faith.

7. Pray with the body

Paul writes about the Colossians “love for the saints” and how they are “sharing an inheritance with the saints.” We never pray on our own! Even when we are on our own our prayers join with the prayers of countless other believers, and there is nothing better than being with other believers to pray and worship. Because we are part of a body, when we come to pray together we should all come with a sense of responsibility and an expectation that we will participate in praying.

8. Pray with your head

Paul writes that he wants the Colossians to “increase in your knowledge of God.” This means we should use our minds when we pray. We don’t just bleat like sheep! As our minds are renewed (Romans 12:2) we are able to pray with increased concentration, and intelligence, and better hear what God is saying to us.

9. Pray as a forgiven sinner

Paul writes: “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” This should lead us to pray with gratitude and wonder at what God has done in us and for us.  

Happy praying!

RESOLUTION

The start of a new year is that time when people make resolutions – all those half-hearted decisions to get in shape and abstain from alcohol – decisions that are normally rescinded before February.

For many Christians, the resolution often made is to pray more and read the Bible more. Both of these are noble and worthwhile aims, but often fall short of what true relationship with God the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit means. Prayer and Bible reading cannot be reduced to merely a tick-box list to rush through and remain genuine prayer and submission to the word of Scripture. Also, genuine prayer and Bible study happens primarily when we do these things with other people, rather than on our own.

This is a contrarian idea to an Evangelical/Pentecostal/Pietistic Christianity which is built around the individuals practice of a “Quiet Time,” but better reflects Biblical expectations. While the individuals personal experience of conversion and the indwelling of the Spirit is vital, we tend to dramatically undervalue the corporate nature of our faith. Partly this is due to the lack of the plural “you” in English, so we tend to read every biblical “you” as being directed towards the individual (tu) when in reality most of them are directed to “us” (vous).

It is also due to our existential, individualised worldview – a worldview very different from the cultural and spiritual framework within which the biblical authors lived and thought.

I have grown tired of backsliding “believers” (were they ever truly regenerate in the first place?) who look me defiantly in the eye and say, “My relationship with God is still good – I’m praying and reading my Bible.” Whatever.

True discipleship means coming under the discipline of the word, alongside our brothers and sisters in Christ. This is why we are exhorted to, “not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing” (Heb 10:25). And this means meeting with the church, and listening to preaching. Doing this is a humbling act of worship. In an existential, individualised world people don’t sit and listen to a monologue. But followers of Jesus do. Followers of Jesus then prayerfully discuss and apply the preached word together. Followers of Jesus gather together to pray.

Followers of Jesus do these things because they recognize that it is as the body gathers together in prayer and under the word, that the body – in all its parts – is strengthened and grows, and Jesus is glorified.

So how about this for a New Years resolution – not only praying and reading on your own, but committing more deeply to meeting with your brothers and sisters in Christ?  To reading the Scripture with them, and praying with them? True Christianity is never a solo effort – it is always a team affair.