#119 – Human sexuality: the Christian perspective

Too often, the Christian response to questions about human sexuality is to point to Leviticus, and similar Biblical passages.

Like other religions, Christianity has a few laws, taboos, and prohibitions about a variety of life issues (diet; holidays; technology; money; dead bodies). But when it comes specifically to human sexuality and gender, Christians have come up with a very, very ….. VERY …… long list of things to regulate and prohibit.

And the application of that preoccupation starts very early for many Christians. Many children find out before they’re two or three years old that touching their genitals actually feels kind of good, but the typical parental response to this self-exploration is to quickly scold the child and tell them how “you don’t do that …. at least not in public!” That’s the beginning of a life-long journey of associating sex with being dirty, and of feeling shame and guilt. As the kids get older, they get dire warnings about masturbation, about not dressing in a way that causes the men in the church to stumble, about the dangers of dating, and the lectures about premarital sex. And once those kids do get old enough to start exploring their own world of sexuality, that shame and guilt is complemented with condemnation if they stray even a little bit outside of very narrowly prescribed pathway of what is called “normal” sex.

That shaming, condemnation, regulation and prohibition isn’t only a parent-child transaction. Evangelicals will also direct it at pastors and worship leaders who have been caught in a sexual affair, and the response is usually an immediate termination of employment and ostracization. They’re much more forgiving and compassionate if the offence is a substance abuse problem (drugs, or alcoholism), or embezzling ministry funds; but an illicit sexual affair …. that’s just too much for them.

And typically, Evangelicals justify all of this regulation, prohibition, shaming and condemnation by pointing to Biblical passages taken from the Old Testament, especially Leviticus, or to other ones in the New Testament which in turn point directly or indirectly to those Old Testament ones.

In this episode, we talk to Dr. Stephen Simpson, who has grad level theological training, is a practicing clinical psychologist with expertise in sexuality and marriage therapy, and is an Associate Professor at Fuller Theological Seminary where he teaches Human Sexuality. We asked him: “why does Christianity cares so much about human sexuality?” Some of the things we talked about include:

• the Bible really doesn’t say anything about premarital sex
• the strongly negative preoccupation that Christianity has toward sex (and aversion to it) stems from GrecoRoman thought (which holds a dim view of the physical, and a high view of the spiritual) and Western capitalism (which sees women as property, and marriage as a financial arrangement)
• sex for love versus sex for reproduction
• when revising Christian thinking about human sexuality, do we seek guidance from medical doctors and scientists, or follow the lead of society (as we’ve done before regarding women in the workplace, or working on Sundays), or invoke the Wesleyan quadrilateral (church tradition; reason; Christian experience; and scripture)?
• how the Bible might NOT be the best place to get such guidance (especially not the Pentateuch) because any golden nuggets of Divine truth that might have been there originally are now obscured by ancient male Semitic fingerprints
• whether or not the Levitical laws were an improvement over the existing cultural norms of that era (Luke is very decidedly in the “NOT” camp on this idea)
• the fact that Christians will often invoke “the image of God” in discussions around human sexuality, even though there’s no wide agreement about what that phrase means, and no definition of that phrase that brings in aspects of God’s own sexuality and sexual nature (please note: I’m not suggesting that God even has a sexuality or sexual nature; instead, that bringing that phrase into the discussion is just not relevant)
• how the people sitting in the pews are always decades behind in the thinking of Biblical scholars and theologians; is this because those pew warmers don’t want to stray too far from their parent’s religion, or because their pastors don’t have the boldness to push them out of their comfort zones, or because the seminaries aren’t properly training the pastors, or because those seminaries depend on the pew warmers themselves for funding and support
• how this Christian preoccupation with sex exacts a heavy toll in the form of shame, guilt and condemnation, much more so for girls/daughters than for boys/sons

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find more information about Dr. Simpson and his work at his faculty web-page.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episode #101, where we talk about Divine Inspiration, or of course the two previous episodes in this mini-series on Sex (#117 and #118).

Episode image from Victoria Chentsova.

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