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Learning for Life: Cultivating a Student Spirituality
Week 7
Peter Schuurman Educational Missions Leader, Home Missions
7.1 Bodied Beings
"I believe in the resurrection of the body." - Apostle's Creed
I was hosted by a family in Nova Scotia one summer when I was a teenager. I distinctly remember stumbling groggily into the kitchen for breakfast when my hostess greeted me with a huge laugh and the exclamation: "My goodness, don't you have the funniest feet I've ever seen!"
A large chunk of who we are is meat. Bloody, fleshy, tender and sinewy meat. It comes in beautifully odd shapes and sizes, and comments on our particular meat shape make us extremely self-conscious. Because I am my body. Beauty is more than skin deep, but it is also skin deep.
Some Christians become awkward around bodies and body-talk. Like archetypal angels, they are more comfortable praying and singing spiritual songs. Others seem captivated by their bodies and its appetites, and like the beasts, they embrace no disciplines which shape a holy beauty into their lives.
This is a fact: our bodies are just as deeply part of the creation-fall-redemption story as the rest of the universe. They are good, with a tendency to sin, and being renewed by God's Spirit in his Church. As such, they need not be demonized or idolized, but appropriately loved.
C. S. Lewis reminds us how St. Francis of Assisi humorously called his body "Brother Ass." He says,
Ass is exquisitely right because no one in his senses can either revere or hate a donkey. It is a useful, sturdy, lazy, obstinate, patient, lovable and infuriating beast; deserving now the stick and now a carrot; both pathetically and absurdly beautiful. So the body. There is no living with it till we recognize that one of its functions in our lives is to play the part of buffoon. . . The fact that we have bodies is the oldest joke there is.
That may be the oldest joke, but the greatest joke is this: that Spirit became body in the person of Jesus Christ. Even though he died, he rose from the dead to a new life. In the same way, we, too, after we die and our meat has rotted in the earth from whence it came, we will rise again in our bodies. The whole creation is slated for renewal, and our bodies, like Christ's, will be restored. Bodies matter, as much as the earth itself.
Prayer: Gracious God, grant that we might embrace and train our bodies to participate in your renewing movement. If we are shameful give us confidence. If we are lax, give us discipline. Amen.
Quote: "The screen on which the contemporary church works out its anxieties about bodies is sexuality." Lauren Winner Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity
7.2 Sex Talk
“I am slim, tall, and full-breasted and I have found favor in my lover’s eyes.” Song of Songs 8:10 (LB)
Talking about bodies, arousal, and sexual drives is a true art that is so easily done poorly.
As a teenager I recall lots of innuendo and joking, but not much frank and open discussion. This was mostly ignorance mixed with nervousness. We lacked a vocabulary for the world of love and desire.
As a young adult, there was an unspoken code I was ruled by, where a shroud of silence covered my yearnings and choked my questions. This was a mixture of some prudishness mixed with religious taboos—an intuition that such talk was either dirty or that it betrayed a lack of serious spirituality.
I thought this silence was only a Christian hang-up until I chatted with others who said they fell under the same spell. Their parents and their public school were awkward, reticent to discuss the world of love and sex in a helpful way.
Then I met someone who said her father talked too much about the subject, and it was uncomfortable for her. I bumped into others who would talk about nothing else, or insert sexual references at the oddest moments. Student newspapers, too, are rife with sexual content; but a university director once told me, “There is always much more hype than reality.”
It has been said that God delights in our sexual nature, because he could have just as easily designed us to reproduce by binary fission. Our bodies and their pleasures are his good gift, and there is something of that deep confidence in the Song of Songs. It may be embarrassing for some, but it is not shameful. Theologically speaking, our bodies are God’s home.
Talking about bodies, arousal, and the sexual act is a true art. We too quickly shy away from it in fear or conversely, we become inappropriately preoccupied with it. This tells us something: our sexuality is a deeply beautiful and mysterious thing, and the right words are difficult to find. Too few words obscures this wonder and too many words cheapen it.
No wonder that the Bible resorts to poetry when it touches on the subject of our sexual desires.
Prayer:
Lord of all mysteries: Grant that we might see clearly the holiness of all life and speak of the mysteries of our sexual nature with a mixture of reverence and comedy that is fitting for the beautiful and foibled creatures that we are.
In Christ’s name, Amen.
Quote: “Surely no other type of society has ever accumulated—and in such a relatively short span of time—a similar quantity of discourses concerned with sex… It is possible that where sex is concerned, the most long-winded, the most impatient of societies is our own.”
Michel Foucault. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction
7.3 Desire
“Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.” Song of Songs 2:7
God created us with sensuality and desire; he gave us lust for life. Unfortunately, sometimes we channel that energy into dark projects and dank places.
As a teenager I was captivated by video games. I could play for hours, untiring, battling cybernetic forces until the wee hours of the morning. My determination to win was truly remarkable. Equally vivid, however, was the sinister feeling of emptiness and aggression it left with me. This was not a lust for life, but a lust to control, to conquer.
We so easily deceive ourselves about desires that destroy us. Addictions to pornography, unhealthy relationships, or illicit sex can give us a charge. But they are not powering us for a life of human flourishing. We are captivated by them, literally enslaved to these merciless masters. “More!” they command us, “More!”
The chorus in Song of Songs charges the lover, and us in turn: “Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.” Like Joseph, who was beckoned to bed by Potiphar’s wife, we need to just say “NO.” We need to resist, re-situate ourselves, and run away. If we are unable on our own, we must seek a friend, a pastor, or a therapist for help. Some desires, like sleeping dragons, need not be awakened.
God sparks within us desires for life, for creative expression, for deep communion with others. These desires we can fan into flame. Within marriage, sexual desires can find a large measure of freedom. Outside of marriage, the desire to create, connect, and celebrate life needs only an ounce of courage and a fertile imagination.
Prayer:
God of all good things:
Thank you for your gift of desires. Help us to cultivate the good desires and channel them towards the blossoming of life. Amen.
Quote:
“Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are for too easily pleased.” C. S. Lewis “The Weight of Glory”
7.4 No Free Love
"It is for freedom that Christ has set us free." Galatians 5:1
The sexual revolution, like most revolutions, leaves wreckage in its wake. "Sexual freedom" can be another name for a sexual wilderness. Even with new technologies to mask the consequences, we have learned that there is no such thing as "free love" or "casual sex." Our bodies matter and we cannot separate what we do with our bodies from who we are or who we are becoming.
The lie presents itself often enough. Almost every movie has an episode where two people randomly meet, fancy each other, and few hours later go romping through the sheets together. To live by our fantasies is a strong, and at times convincing temptation.
Think of our sexuality as a game. When the boundaries are disregarded and the rules ignored, it may be exhilarating for the moment, but in time chaos ensues, and one loses one's passion for the game. The spectators get restless, the media exits, and the league falls apart. But when you stay within the boundaries and follow the rules, there can be uninhibited play. The spectators come alive, the media waits expectantly, and the league can flourish. There is a tremendous freedom that comes when you live within God's frameworks for life.
The same applies to our sexual life. There are boundaries and rules intended to make our play uninhibited, and to bring it in harmony with the rest of our community and creation. When we disregard these frameworks for life, we court something much less than the joy of recreated life. As Lewis Smedes says in his classic, Sex for Christians, we need to "discern the limits implicit in liberty--and the liberty within the limits-of our sexual life in Christ."
Jesus did not come to zap life of all its charms. He came to set us free from our slavery to sin, to unbind the chains of addiction that shackle us, and to open wide the doors to abundant life—which may include sexual joy. To see our sexual life as a game--as a form of play that comes with rules--is a healthy way to gauge our temptations and our inhibitions.
Prayer:
Lord, thank you for your freedom frameworks. Help us to trust them and obey them with our sights set on the bigger game of your kingdom coming. If we are frustrated, grant us constructive outlets. Amen
Quote:
“Sex is like dynamite. If it is used in the right place and at the right time the results can be beneficial, but unless the proper regulations are observed there can only be a disastrous explosion. Those people who indulge in sexual activity as casually as they would down a couple of cocktails are always the sort of people who would find it amusing to play with matches in a bomb factory.” Susan Howatch Ultimate Prizes
7.5 Love is Messy
"If we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 1 John 1:9
I didn't get married until I was in my mid-thirties. I left behind me a string of mixed-up dating experiences, some of which were painfully messy and which I deeply regret. I remember one girlfriend who left me with the friendly benediction: "You wasted a year of my life."
Sin is wastefulness. When it comes to our dating and sexual escapades, there will be wastefulness. In a sense of false urgency, we will take what is not ours to take, or we will pledge what is not ours to pledge. We will step ahead of ourselves or ahead of the preferred pace of our partner, and we will hurt each other, and in effect, the households and communities to which we belong. A confused sexual identity, promiscuity, disease, abortion, and unplanned babies may even enter the story. Love is messy. We will carry wounds and regrets.
What makes the Christian story different from the materialist story of the universe is that our story does not rest in fate. There is sin, but the future is open. We are invited to make ourselves vulnerable to God's grace, to repent, to turn our wounds and regrets over to God. His promise of forgiveness, sealed by his Spirit, can amend our lives, drawing us towards wholeness. Although regrettably the church may add to our woundedness with judgment and awkwardness, it is the church's charge to demonstrate this graciousness in God.
Rob Bell tells the story of a small outdoor wedding where the couple released a bunch of helium balloons into the air at the end of the ceremony. It was understood that each balloon represented a past marriage, a former affair, a previous abortion. The balloons sailed high up in the air and far, far away. It was a beautiful symbol of forgiven, renewed life.
The symbolism is strong. God is always in the work of mending our lives, and no matter how grievous our wastefulness, it is never beyond his redemptive ability. Never. He can let anything go if we ask.
Prayer:
God of Grace:
May the freedom that flows from confession be ours. Nurture around us a community of the forgiven that extends your grace in turn to all who come near. Amen.
Quote:
"'We are all abominations, but we are still God's pride and joy. All of us in the church need 'grace-healed eyes' to see the potential in others for the same grace that God has so lavishly bestowed on us." Philip Yancy What's So Amazing About Grace?
7.6 Sex is Communal
"You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your body." 1 Corinthians 6:19,20
It was public high school French class. For some reason, the substitute teacher thought it would be a good idea to talk about the issue of abortion. Instantly, French was forgotten.
"Its my body!" yelled the young woman in front of me, in reaction to some comment across the room. "Its my body!"
We live in an age of tolerance. What that means in practice is often the autonomy of the individual, and the right not to be questioned. Tolerance becomes indifference, and a pledge to not engage in serious conversations. The idea that we have private spheres in which we are autonomous units, however, is foreign to the Biblical story. We are not our own. We belong to a holy tradition, a local church, and to a circle of friends, family and neighbours. We are accountable to the creation, and most significantly, its Creator.
There are no private acts. Lauren Winner says sex is communal, meaning, its everybody's business. Because sex is real, it matters. It forms us as much as art or education, and thus it is of concern to the entire community. Not just because there is potential for babies to arrive, but because sex shapes character, and character formation is a communal event, not a private possession.
Marriage is like a wedding cake, concludes Winner: the couple stand hand-in-hand in the centre, but around them are concentric circles extending outwards to the whole creation. Our sex lives are shaping a household which shapes a community, which, in time, shapes a nation and a planet.
The first answer in the Heidelberg Catechism says it well: “I am not my own, but belong body and soul, in life and in death to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ.” We are held within an invisible web of relationships that stretch through all time and space. We are, at our core, inter-dependent creatures.
Prayer:
Creator God:
Help us to see ourselves aright: not as individual marbles scattered across the pavement, but as cells in a body, peas in a pod, leaves on a tree. Amen.
Quote:
"Sex, like any other necessary, precious, and volatile power that is commonly held, is everybody's business." - Wendell Berry Sex, Economy, Community and Freedom
7.7 Celibacy as Preparation for Heaven
"Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage..." Luke 20:34
Marriage is the gifted space in which we come to express our full sexual selves. In creation, God said, "It is not good for man to be alone," and so we see friendship, and more intensely, marriage and family as part of the fabric of creation, part of God's deep intention for life.
Laura Smit in her book Loves Me, Loves Me Not: The Ethics of Unrequited Love argues that while the creation’s design pushes us towards marriage and family, the new creation beckons us to something different. Jesus makes it clear that in the age to come there will neither be marriage nor giving in marriage. We will belong to a new family, tied together by water that is thicker than blood--the waters of baptism. Unlike the old covenant, the community of faith is not expanded by the births that result from marriage, but by conversions that are the result of the Spirit's work. In this sense, celibacy is a taste of the new earth.
In our sex-saturated culture, the idea of going without sexual intercourse is incomprehensible, if not sacrilegious. Yet people have lived celibate lives since time immemorial, Jesus being not the least of examples. Sex is not a right, nor is it necessary for health.
Think of it this way: life is about loving the particular creatures that dot God’s colourful world. Marriage is learning to love the many through loving the one; celibacy is learning to love the one through a love that goes out to many. Still, on this side of the new earth it seems God calls the majority to marriage at some point in their life. This does not mean, however, that single persons have a different spiritual status or that they are less than sexual beings.
Rob Bell, in his book Sexgod: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality describes sexuality as the energy to truly connect and be connected within yourself. He notes his son's question to his mother: "Mom, what does sexy mean?" His wife replied: "Sexy is when it feels good to be in your own skin. Your own body feels right, it feels comfortable. Sexy is when you love being you."
That feeling comes and goes regardless of your marital status. Says Bell, "Some of the most sexual people I know are celibate."
Prayer:
Lord of love:
You call us to a life of universal love. Help us know ourselves and others in a way that furthers your kingdom, whether married or single. May the only pressure we feel be the prodding of your Spirit. Amen
Quote: "The task we have to face is the same, whether we are married or single: To live a fulfilled life in spite of many unfulfilled desires." Walter Trobisch, The Complete Works of Walter Trobisch: Answers about Love, Sex, Self-Esteem, and Personal Growth
Copyright © CRCMA 2008
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