Sex, Love and…Peacemaking?

IV.    Vows of Voluntary Sacrifice

“We freely offer up our appetites, wealth, and pride to relieve the suffering of the world, for the sake of our neighbors and God’s joy.”

17. I will discipline my sexual appetite by practicing chastity and purity in my relationships and recreation; I will treat sexual intimacy as a public, lifelong and exclusive covenant for marriage; I will respect the bodily image and sexual dignity of each person as a child of God, and refrain from lust and pornographic media.

(by D. Sharon Pruitt via Flickr)

Wait—sexual intimacy? What does that have to do with nonviolent Christian discipleship? That sounds a whole lot more pleasant than that “expect to be persecuted and bear your crosses” stuff in the other vows!

When we talk about the very real specter of sexual violence and abuse in war-ravaged settings or even behind domestic doors, the connection between sexuality and Christian nonviolence is abundantly clear. But the clarity dissipates as we move closer to our own practices and experiences of sexuality (though some of us may indeed have experienced or even committed some of this more explicit violence).

Contemporary conversation has helpfully raised awareness that sexuality is a fundamental, powerful and broad-ranging element of who humans are, and as such, has profound implications for human wholeness. What popular conversations haven’t noted so well is the inherently relational and corporate nature of sexual thought and practice. In much current conversation and media depictions, sex, and its place in the fulfillment of free and happy individuals, is portrayed primarily (if not solely) in the realm of the independent individual. Even when speaking of or showing intercourse, the primary value of that sexual encounter is usually placed on the pleasure of each independent individual involved rather than on the relational connection between the two that this act has forged.

("Connection" by rent-a-moose via Flickr)

Yet to commit our sexuality and related desires to Jesus’ nonviolent life, we will have to see the unavoidably relational nature of our sexual being. As with all other interactions and internal dispositions, sexuality both connects us to others and affects our relating with them and ourselves. This moves sexuality out of the context of just one (our individual selves) and into the context of two. But the connectivity does not stop there. Every person is connected to multiple others, and to one degree or another, this means our interactions with one person rebound and affect interactions with others (we’ve all seen this connectivity at work when we come home mad at a co-worker and, partly as a result, snap at our housemate). This is sexuality in the context of many. When we move into the context of the church, the connections broaden even further as our sexuality affects God and the very community God has called into being.

All this to say, one individual’s sex and sexuality have all kinds of far reaching effects which cannot simply be contained  to one other person, or even oneself, nor can the traces simply be erased as a bit of harmless compartmentalized fun. Given our relational interconnectivity and the power and breadth of our sexual attitudes, desires and practices, our sexuality has substantial implications for living in shalom with one another, for finding Christ’s salvation for ourselves and the whole community (f.y.i, our  total wholeness cannot be achieved without the wholeness of those around us)!

Phew. And we haven’t even stated yet how all this connectivity ties our sexuality to our practice of Christian nonviolence! To keep this reflection short(er), I’ll point to just a couple of quick things.

So, why take today’s vow of disciplined desires and avoidance of lust when we also equally affirm that sexuality is good and God-created?

"I will discipline my sexual appetite by practicing chastity and purity in my relationships and recreation; I will treat sexual intimacy as a public, lifelong and exclusive covenant for marriage; I will respect the bodily image and sexual dignity of each person as a child of God, and refrain from lust and pornographic media."

Without going into great detail, allow me to suggest that at the heart of unchained, individualistic sexual desire is the potential to dehumanize, disrespect, and even explicitly harm the other (and oneself). This is why such a vow is included in a covenant of Christian nonviolence!

As my one example, consider the images and messages you may see daily in internet sidebars, magazines, through song lyrics, on television shows and commercials, on billboards and tabloid covers, in store windows or covering teenagers and twenty-somethings. If your memory is not deceiving you, most of them contained or conveyed some (or much) sexual content. While it may seem an innocent fascination with beauty, the dark heart of our sexualized, pornographized culture is the turning of other people (particularly women) into objects for our desire and pleasure rather than keeping them as dignified humans with real lives and relationship.

("The perfect woman," Tal Bright via Flickr)

People are reduced to tools for our self-gratification (and then used by savvy marketers to play into our desires and get us to buy unnecessary stuff). The pornographic or advertisement images and messages slowly re-shape our brains to partially believe other humans are just semi-numb bodies available for exploitation. Through porn in particular, we become detached from true consequences of reality because we repeatedly entertain impossible fantasies unrestricted by the hard work of respect, intimacy, forgiveness, patient long-term attachment, and  considering the needs of another. In doing so, one also loses connection to one’s own body seeing it as a machine driven by desire to maximize the experiences of pleasure. Through this individualized, pornographized sexualization, all are dehumanized, depersonalized and violated.

And the connections to harm go on (e.g. the child and sex trafficking enhanced by pornographic market demand, the self-loathing, eating disorders and even suicides that stem from impossible standards of beauty, domestic violence and abuse influenced by the objectification of others for our own pleasure, or even the life-long, confusing baggage from “casual” sex or intimate affairs). At the core, untransformed sexuality can warp our desires so that we view and treat others (including ourselves) with less respect as human brothers and sisters made in God’s image.

The Christ-following life includes unfulfilled, or rather, re-ordered desires. Satisfaction of desire is not the ultimate goal, but transformation. May we allow the spirit to re-order our desires today, transforming us see and respond to one another with appropriate love.

Options For Reflection and Action:

• While not to be equated only—or even primarily—with sexual desire, sit with Galatians 5:13-26 and 6:7-10 as a way of reflecting on desire as re-ordered by the Spirit, in service of one another.
• Recall some of the advertising images you have seen today. 
• Which ones conveyed something about sexuality? Reflect on what those images and messages convey about women, men, desire, intimacy, value, life goals, responsibility, families, relationships, etc.
• How does the gospel counter or transform those messages?
• Consider your own thoughts and actions recently.
• Over whom have you exercised unhealthy sexual power (domination, coercion, seduction, or slander, judgmentalism, prejudice)?
• What fantasies of intimacy do you currently hold that would be destructive to those in your life, to yourself?

Prayer Focus

Holy Spirit,

Transform our desires into fruit of the Spirit,

so that we will use our freedom not for self-indulgence

 but for loving service to one another.

Thank you. Amen.