We have taken a look at some elements in the Biblical approach to ethics. Now we must apply these insights to our own situation. For the rest of this book we shall try to "think Biblically" about four problems:
1. Sex and marriage.
2. The problem of work or vocation.
3. Politics and compromise.
4. War.
Sex and Marriage
Some people have the queer idea that Christianity thinks that sex is something no "nice" person talks about or thinks about. Now there are a few statements by Paul that might seem to bear this out, and there has also been an ascetic strain in historic Christianity that has been negative toward sex. But this is not the attitude that emerges when one attempts to "think Biblically" about sex and marriage.
SEX Is GOOD
It seems clear, for example, that in the Biblical view sex is good. Sex is a part of God's creation; it is one of his gifts to mankind. It is not inherently sordid or nasty, any more than sunlight is inherently sordid or nasty. This fact comes out clearly in the Biblical account of creation, where the sexual distinction is part of the goodness of creation:
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. . . . And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good ( Gen. 1: 27,30).
"And behold, it was very good" needs to be set against any attempt to suggest that from a religious point of view there is something not quite "nice" about sex. William Temple has pointed out that it is wrong to joke about sex (that is, tell "dirty" jokes) for the same reason that it is wrong to joke about Holy Communion -- not because either subject is nasty, but because both are sacred, and to joke about such things is profanity. So the Christian avoids being "crude" about sex, not because sex is bad, but precisely because sex is good.
People sometimes argue:
Major Premise: "Spiritual" things are good and "physical" things are evil.
Minor Premise: Sex is physical.
Conclusion: Therefore, sex is evil.
But this is not good Biblical thinking. Not only is the major premise wrong, but so are the minor premise and the conclusion! In Biblical thinking, man is a unity; the physical and "spiritual" are all wrapped up together and cannot be separated from one another. There is not an "evil" physical part of man; on the contrary, man as a totality worships God or builds bridges or engages in sexual activity. Man's sexual drive is a part of that totality and not something separate. It is a God-given gift, which is "very good."
SEX IS A GOOD THING WHICH CAN BE SPOILED
Unfortunately, this is not the whole story. Sex is a good thing but, like other good things, it can be spoiled. Again, the Creation story drives the point home. The main point of Gen., ch. 3, is that man succumbs to the temptation, "You will be like God." This is the fundamental temptation -- the temptation to self-sufficiency, which freezes God out of the picture. The fundamental temptation is not the temptation to sexual promiscuity, as people often think. But notice that when that fundamental temptation takes ahold of life, it spoils all aspects of life, the sexual aspect included. Sex becomes a means of selfgratification: "Play this game of sex for what you can get out of it. Don't worry about the other person. Use that other person for your own satisfactions. Don't be inhibited. Express yourself." Instead of being used creatively, as God intended it, as a means of sharing which enriches the lives of both partners, sex is now being used destructively, being perverted into something it was not intended to be. It has become a means of "using" another person, which is to say that the other person is no longer really a "person" but merely a "thing." This is a denial of the Biblical attitude toward persons as children of God.
This, incidentally, is why an overabundance of "necking" or "playing around" almost invariably leads to trouble, since it is either a case of one person exploiting the other person or of two persons experiencing sex simply on the level of "physical thrill." In either case sex is something other than what God intends it to be. It becomes cheapened because it is being wrongly used, so that, instead of contributing to the enrich. ment of life, it contributes to the degradation of life.
No comments:
Post a Comment