We are in a state of ferment and confusion in the areas of sex and gender at the moment – certainly we are if we live in the West and respect traditional Christian teaching and the Bible! What to do, what to think, which direction to go in, how to understand the reasons for the confusion? I am talking about the rise in cohabitation as an acceptable lifestyle, gay marriage, the whole LGBTIQ movement, the transgender movement, etc etc, right down to the likely hoo-ha there is going to be about the Iranian women’s football team.
I propose that the main problem is that people are coming at all this from very different directions (philosophically, in terms of worldview), often without realising that they are doing so. And I want to say that though not every Christian is meant to be a philosopher – and nor do I think it vital that all Christians agree on all the details of the morality that’s up in the air at the moment – worldview is important for everyone; if we claim to follow Jesus, part of that is to look at the whole of life, including issues of gender and sexuality, in the light of God, insofar as God has revealed his ways and will.
In terms of the issues raised, there are 3 main directions to come from: human authoritarianism, expressive individualism, or biblical Christianity.
Human authoritarianism:
The family or tribe or wider community such as the state, or a religious institution such as a church, mosque, temple or synagogue lays down rules and norms of behaviour, definitions of gender etc. They may claim to be doing so on behalf of God or some god or higher power; but when you look carefully, it’s the human institution or powerful person within it who is in charge.
This approach is pretty out of vogue at the moment so I’m not staying long on it; we have had about 175 years of reaction against this in Britain, so it’s not very hip. The 1960s and 1970s were a sort of extravaganza of reaction against it, in fact.
But watch out, you evangelical Protestants: it isn’t just some Catholics who are stuck in this, it’s many of you! If we get our views on matters of sex and gender mainly from one or two of our favourite internet preachers or authors, or if, for the sake of peace of mind, we feel a need to have all our views in these tricky areas totally sorted out, or we like to feel that we are right and most others these days are wrong, then we are not much different from old-fashioned religious Pharisees; we are into a form of human authoritarianism.
Expressive individualism:
This is the dominant view at the moment – the phrase comes from sociologist Robert Bellah. The ultimate value and reference point is the feelings, desires and subjective experience of the individual. Of course as a decent person I should bear in mind the feelings of others, not just of myself (a piece of morality borrowed from Jesus, funnily enough: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”). But the main thing is to be true to yourself, to find the real You. Popular songs and movies have been articulating this for years:
“Climb every mountain, ford every stream, follow every rainbow, till you find your dream” – The sound of music. Here is Elsa singing her beautiful song in Frozen: she has now decided to go with individualism and be true to her feelings: “Let it go, let it go; can’t hold it back any more; let it go, let it go; turn away and slam the door!” and “It’s time to see what I can do, to test the limits and break through; no right, no wrong, no rules for me; I’m free!” And from Hercules (another lovely song!): “… I would go most anywhere to feel like I belong…. I would go most anywhere to find where I belong.” In fact The Bard put it in Polonius’ mouth a long time ago, in Hamlet; near the end of a whole load of proverbial advice he says:
“This above all – to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.” (Act 1, scene 3)
With this worldview, the main thing, when it comes to my gender and sex life (besides not harming other people, especially others who have not consented to take part), is my feelings and desires; and for anyone, any institution, any book, any god, to come along and say No is just repressive, unloving, destructive of human flourishing. The conclusion follows as night follows day.
Biblical Christianity:
Here the ultimate reference point is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – the true and living God who speaks in Scripture. On major matters, at least, we can hear his voice. We know he is good, wise, and holy, and that he’s not only made us but is our Owner, our Boss; we also know that he is our Lover in the sense that he loves us more than we can imagine and desires not only our good but also fellowship, closeness, relationship, mutual enjoyment.
The “biblical” part here is important: it’s possible to pick up enough about Jesus of Nazareth to believe in him in some sincere way, and yet to regard the Bible as just the opinions of the early church community about God – and so a Christian can be to some extent an Expressive Individualist. This is a way of hobbling rather than walking with the Lord. So I am advocating the notion that God sent Jesus, and then Jesus sent his Spirit, and the Spirit guided the early believers in writing the New Testament (as well as affirming the Old Testament), such that it was the truth taught in the Bible that created the church in the first place (see events in Acts ch. 2 and following), not the church that created the Bible; and the church later simply recognised the voice of God speaking in these writings – it didn’t give them authority.
Unpacking biblical Christianity:
Four relevant things that God says in Scripture:
- The good, eternal, absolute, loving Creator God made human beings in his image, in two forms or genders, and he continues to do so, assigning us our gender by means of biological sex from the womb – ordinarily. Genesis 1:26-27. And he gave us a physical and psychological capacity for sex and relationships as indicated in the second half of Genesis 2. Thus our sex, gender and sexuality belong to God not to us.
- Human beings have gone wrong, there has been a rebellion against God, so the whole race has been alienated from God, and this has resulted not only in certain physical problems but also and even more directly in moral and psychological problems. We are all affected by this. We are all messed up in every significant area of life, including sex. We all have sexual sins (at least in the realm of thoughts and desires) and sexual problems. We tend to desire too much or too little or at the wrong time or the wrong person, etc etc.
This means that letting our feelings or desires determine our sexual practice is going to be a disaster quite a lot of the time. Control, restraint, and abstinence is bound to be necessary, in a variety of ways, for everyone. We don’t live in Paradise but in a fallen world, and for now we have “original sin.” - God has redeemed the world in Jesus Christ. Believers in him are even now redeemed but it’s a process, and there will be continued tension, inner conflict and an ongoing need for restraint and repentance until we are in the perfect kingdom that’s coming. The more we know and enjoy God’s love in Jesus now, the more we realise that sex and marriage now is not the big deal in life anyway. It can be beautiful and wonderful, but it is mostly an anticipation of the eternal marriage of God’s people, the bride of Christ, with him, that will be consummated in the future.
- God is good and trustworthy, yet we tend not to trust him but to think that the only really safe option, if we want true fulfilment, is to look after ourselves, to pursue individual autonomy. This was the devil’s trick with the first humans in Genesis 3 – they fell into the mistake of thinking God was mean and did not desire their happiness.
Therefore, if it’s clear, for example, by an application of biblical teaching to my life, that God wants me to be celibate, I should trust God and know that’s good for me! It was good enough for Jesus.
Putting some of this in terms of the vexed matter of identity: Our core identity doesn’t come from looking within or from our own feelings and desires (including our sexual orientation, so far as we can discern it at the moment), but from our relation to God as our Maker and Saviour; and once we are in Christ we have a fantastically positive identity in his secure love, as someone he is transforming from the inside out.
Now we are God's children 