A SEXUAL ETHIC FOR TODAY’S WORLD

by Bishop Elias

A while back a member of the Diocese asked me for a Statement of a Sexual Ethic. I told that person that such a document would not solve the issue with which he came to me, and we went on to solve his problem. But the idea has been riding in my psyche for a long time, and I am now ready to put ideas onto paper… as it were.

The Orthodox Church can be said to have a rather severe view of human sexuality. I think we need to understand this in terms we all can understand, and perhaps show it for what it really is.

Our sexual drive, like all other human drives, is geared toward the preservation of the species. It is just as necessary as eating, drinking, and exercise. However, unlike eating, drinking and exercise, it can be linked to the need to pass on one’s name, goods and property to the progeny that are produced. In societies where children are not “owned” by the parents, but by the community, inheritance of property and goods isn’t necessarily an issue. But when the community is patrilineal, or matrilineal the issue of who belongs to whom does become important.

If we read the old testament there are ample examples of the concept that “I must know that the child is mine”. How could an ancient Patriarch know which child could inherit his goods and wealth if the Mother could have had sex with anyone within the community and bore children “willy-nilly”?

First off… Jesus himself says nothing about sexual actions. He infers that adultery is a sin (in the Woman taken in adultery) but he also uses that situation to show that the sin of hypocrisy is far worse. He does talk a bit about marriage, but never about sex. He tells us that lust in the heart is the same sin as if we actually completed the act. But He never actually discusses or teaches about sexual actions… of any kind.

It isn’t until we read St. Paul, that we get the idea that sexual celibacy is somehow better than marriage. This is strange, because Paul was a Jew, an observant Jew, and marriage and sex within marriage is looked upon as a “Blessing” given by God. For that matter, refusal of spousal privilege was a reason for divorce. A woman could divorce her husband for his refusal. We don’t know much about St. Paul, except from his writings, and so his idea that it is “better to marry, then to burn” is s good indicator that sensuality might be outside his frame of reference. Paul’s whole mission was to the gentile world… a Pagan world filled with what Paul would see as “sexual excess”, because he saw straight men and straight women making it with other straight men and women, in all combinations one could puriently conceive, Pagans, you see, had a very different view of sex and its pleasurable varieties. Paul was reacting to what he saw based on what he understood in the first century CE.

Paul condemns even marriage and replaces it with a celibate life style. He was so persuasive that early Christians married but never consummated their marriages. It was a time of formation for the fledgling Christian Community and that idea, that sex was somehow evil and perverse, pervaded the Christian domain. Remember that many of the Fathers taught that reproduction was necessary due to our fallen nature. Thus making the sexual act less than “good”.

Much of this seems to stem from the second creation story in Genesis, following the specific creation of Adam and Eve. Although eating is mentioned in the creation story, no other biological function as we now understand them, are discussed. So one would presume that bodily elimination, halitosis, and perspiration didn’t exist in the Garden of Eden, along with the sexual part of “increase and multiply”. Were Adam & Eve created without genitalia? Did their genitals appear as they left the Garden of Eden? If they were created with genitals, and their procreation wasn’t meant to include the genitals, why have them at all? The Old Testament is very silent on these issues. It is a mystery!

I think for the real truth, we ought to look to monastic concepts as they began to creep into the Church.

Early on there were brave Christians who, wanting to remove themselves from what they saw as a society that simply led to temptation, moved out into the desert. Here they lived alone, on whatever sustenance that they could garner. These people saw asceticism as way to conquer their passions (food/drink/sex) and become perfect in God’s image. They saw their renunciation of “all things of the flesh” as the way that Jesus wanted us to follow. Yet, I don’t remember Jesus condemning the joys of a non-ascetic way of life. Jesus did say that if your right hand offends, then cut it off, and if your eyes causes offense then pluck it out, but I am not sure if Jesus ever meant it literally. Jesus also tells up that if we want to follow him, we need to give away all we have to the poor and follow him. But again, did he mean this literally or was he trying to make a point. Jesus does say a lot about attachment to the things of this world. And personally, that is where I think he was going with all this. Don’t be too attached to the things of this life, cause you can’t take them with you. There are more important things in this world like love and compassion, and your soul. Stop worrying about your clothes, and consider the worth of your soul. I think these early desert dwellers had the wrong idea.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that in the understanding of Christianity, there is lots of room for differences in how we do things. There is nothing wrong with a life devoted to prayer and contemplation… to exclusion of all else. On the other hand, there is also room for those who choose to live a life that involves some level of creature comfort. Unfortunately, the people in the early Church didn’t see it this way. So impressed were the Fathers of the Church that they thought that brutal self abuse was the only way one cold achieve holiness. Just give a thought to Symeon Stylites… It was a very narrow view, and a good foil against the excesses of the remaining Pagans and some of even the Newly Christianized Imperial Family. But it was just as excessive as the licentiousness of the Pagans. It was the other side of the coin. Somehow the Fathers of the Church couldn’t see a happy medium between the two ideas.

All of this influenced many of the great thinkers of the Orthodox Christian East, and most of influential thinkers in the West, as well. Sex was a necessary evil, but God really wanted virgins to die virgins. Sexuality was reduced to “do it if you have to, but only to make babies and if you enjoy it must be a sin.” If something feels good… there must be something wrong/sinful about it.

Having lived through the second half of the 20th century and am now into the 21st, I think I have gained some insight into these things. I think that science has contributed to the understanding of ourselves as being who can enjoy pleasurable things. Eating isn’t simply a bio-function that we are blindly driven toward, but rather, but rather something we enjoy doing. If God had made us like robots we would genetically know that we must eat to live and do it out of rote habit. Enjoyment wouldn’t be an issue. It would be unnecessary to have taste buds, or olfactory senses. Eliminating waste from the body is a necessity to maintain life. As with the bio-function of eating, the same thing seems to apply. Whether we like to admit it or not, eliminating feels good. God could have made it so that we simply did it when necessary, yet he didn’t. He made us so that these necessary action would feel good and we would want to do them. I would think that the same would apply to sex. If all it was meant to be for was procreation of the species then all desire and sensation would end at some point in our lives. Yet, it doesn’t. Even post menopausal women still have a sex drive, and men are fertile until the day that they die. What the Church Fathers have taught makes no sense in light of 21st Century Scientific Knowledge. Remember… the Church Father’s were ignorant of what we know today. They taught what they understood, and in the framework of how they understood it. The Fathers of the Church didn’t know about endorphin reactions, as we do today.

I think had they looked more closely at what our Lord and Saviour was saying, they might have gotten it right. Doing or having things in excess is wrong and does no one any good. He tells the young lawyer when he tells him to “sell all he has and to follow” and repeats it in his parable about the lilies of the field. He reminds us of this in the story of the farmer who builds a new and bigger barn, only to die that very night. Jesus emphasizes using God’s Gifts as a blessing; and that more is not necessarily better.

So lets talk about God’s Gifts to us. God showers us everyday with life and love and those who love us. He tells us that we are a Temple and we ought not abuse ourselves, and today’s society is the most abusive ever. We abuse one another. We hate and we harm others. We kill the innocent and call it “collateral damage”. So it is not surprising that we generally abuse the gifts given to us by God. We eat without thought and thankfulness. We eat so that we fill all the empty spaces, not just that of our stomach. We will do anything that will make us feel better, even if it is at another person’s expense. It is a “me first” world and it is so sad.

How does this play into sex? Sex is a gift from God, and misusing it is a sin. Sex without love is a meal crammed down the throat without stopping to taste it. If we take God’s gift and share it with someone whom we love then the Gift is twice blessed. If we use it to harm, thwart, manipulate another human, we stand condemned. There is no difference here between male/male, female/female, male/female sexual bonding. The gift must be shared in love. If it is not shared in love then we are fornicating in the worst way.

It is not up to me to decide whether heterosexual love is right or wrong, nor is it in my arena to say that homosexual love is right or wrong; because what’s important is why and with whom we are sharing this action. One night stands and sex clubs aren’t the answer. Commitment is the answer. Commitment, however it is defined is the only Christian answer. Impersonal sex leaves us empty and unfulfilled. Sex enacted with love and sharing is a beautiful action, filling us with God’s love.

Humanity is weak and, although we strive for perfection we never seem to achieve it. In using the gifts from God let us try to do the best we can. If we fall, let us pick ourselves up and try once more. Let take those things with which God has blessed us in the right way and let them nourish us, as true children of God ought be nourished.