…You were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies. 1 Corinthains 6:20
Dear Friends in Christ,
I wrote in the last two weeks (here and here) about chastity, as part of a series on Stewardship, Chastity and Humility. I challenged the assumptions about sex and the human person that are current and pervasive in our culture. I reflected on how chastity is not merely the absence of sex, but a frame of mind and heart, a direction for action, and the actions themselves to love rightly. There is a lot more one could say (and I’ve written at length already). Let me address two things concerning chastity in practice. First, some reflections on what it takes to practice chastity, especially when unmarried. Second, some comments on issues involving sexual orientation and Christian norms of chastity.
First, a few stories. I remember a conversation I had with my father when I was a teenager—I might have been in college. Dad is a priest, and for some reason we were talking about efforts in the church to prevent sexual misconduct by clergy or lay leaders in the church. He spoke of how these new (at the time) rules were what he was raised to think of as ‘common sense’ and manners designed to protect women especially. These are norms that we now see in the church’s training called “Safeguarding God’s People” and “Safeguarding God’s Children.”
Dad made comments that really struck me. He spoke of these rules as more than preventing predators from abuse. These norms that he thought of as ‘common sense’ also were there to guard our own hearts. He said to me “Tom, there are many men at our church—good men, men you know—who think nothing of having lunch with his secretary every day. What happens when he falls in love with his secretary?” He spends more time with his secretary than he does with his wife. His relationship with his secretary (from his point of view) is less complicated than his marriage, where the hard parts of negotiating life together happen. Think of the attachment that can form there—and for the secretary too. Once those attachments form, it is hard and messy work to untangle them and undo the damage.
I was struck by his words. The time to take action and make decisions to avoid adultery is not when one is already in bed with the mistress. The time to love differently is long before the attachment begins. It starts in loyalty to one’s commitments, especially one’s commitment to God to honor each other and to prepare to honor a wife or husband (and the spouses of others). With those commitments, and with careful self-awareness, we can take prudent steps to guard our own hearts and form and shape our hearts to what is right and good and helpful. Paul answers a cliché of his day ‘all things are permissible for me’ by responding ‘but not all things are helpful.’ What in the moment might feel stifling is ultimately life-giving, now and in the future.
Another story. A friend of mine told me of a romance that she had formed with an unlikely partner. She said to me “well, the heart wants what the heart wants.” I didn’t find the words then, but I wondered later ‘why not guard your heart?’ It turns out, our hearts need guarding.
Another story. I remember having a conversation with someone in college. It was during a fraternity party, I think. Somehow, we were talking about promiscuity and the frequent practice of repeatedly pursuing random sexual partners that was sometimes championed in male college culture. He said that he figured he would get married someday, but until then he wasn’t bound. I asked him how he would go from years of interacting with women in the seduction game, to being loyal to his wife only. He seemed to think it wouldn’t be a problem, but he also seemed to think that what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.
Our experiences train us. As a species, natural selection has contributed to a powerful and often aggressive drive for sex, and, despite human cultures’ efforts to set boundaries, playing within bounds has proved challenging. The more we go out of bounds, the easier it is to do so again and to go further. Likewise, if we practice chastity, starting with our hearts and our mindset toward others, seeing them as human beings with value in God’s eyes and not as objects for our consumption, the more we will notice when our desires are pressing us into dangerous territory. The more we encourage each other and help each other in chastity, the more success we will find in training ourselves for righteousness, and seeing that pursuit bear fruit in our lives and relationships for the long term.
This is a challenge in college hook-up culture; it is certainly challenging in relationships of depth and commitment. While friends and mentors can offer some encouragement and help in navigating the balance between desire and chastity, it is most helpful when a couple is on the same page. It might sound unromantic to talk about expectations of physical relationships early on in a romance, but doing so brings vulnerability, authenticity, and true respect to the relationship. Especially in relationships that move toward marriage, it is still wise early on to commit together to norms that support chastity. And the two can find mutual support in one another. These efforts are good practice for the loyalty and fidelity of marriage, and they build mutual trust (and trust of ourselves). We learn to guard our hearts with wisdom and fidelity so that we can guard our actions for the best kinds of outcomes.
When desires and deep affections point out of bounds.
Keep in mind this counter-cultural framework of chastity when considering the debates in the church about same-sex sexual relationships. If sex is not a right based on desire, but rather a gift that God gives us, then our desires are not the final arbiters of what is good. Not only in sexual desire but in plenty of other impulses, what we feel may be natural, but often our feelings drive us to the wrong actions. How, then, do we know what is right and wrong to do? Philosophies and religions seek to answer these questions. Christianity believes that God has revealed to us what righteousness looks like. God calls us to follow his ways even what following is hard and involves sacrifice. God himself embraced sacrifice in living a human life in Jesus. And God gives us his Holy Spirit to strengthen us to choose rightly.
All the foregoing, of course, shows us that none of us has chastity completely under control. Straight or gay, young or old, married or single, none of us is perfect, and all of us take pains to train ourselves toward what is good, despite our desires. Often, this is not easy to bear.
For gay men and lesbian women, these desires are not trivial matters. Though recent decades have highlighted a lot of fluidity for some people, for others, especially for gay men, attraction to the same sex is deeply felt, durable, and persistent. For gay men who have chosen to stay in heterosexual marriages, they say that though they do find ways to love their wife, some attraction to men remains. For many gay men, marrying a woman would be living a lie, and too much interior conflict to sustain. Many lesbian women feel the same about relations with men. Honoring the historic Christian teaching about opposite sex marriage, then, leaves them with a greater challenge than most straight people have to bear. In a few protestant traditions in western culture, some have challenged the old teaching, and championed same-sex blessings and same-sex marriage. Why does most of Christianity not accept this change in teaching?
There is a lot to say. See this handout from a class on Christian Ethics (and others from that series here) for a summary of the issues. Briefly, let me say that Christian theology is not based on what is popular in culture, or what is convenient or attractive to us. We start with Holy Scriptures, and we read those scriptures through the lens of the church, whose heritage taught us to understand them and in whose crucible the Holy Spirit guides us. This is not always a simple matter—scriptures do not address every possible case, and in many matters, the Bible contains a wide range of perspectives on the same sets of questions. And sometimes the church has been conflicted or silent about some matters, and in other cases, the church has modified or clarified its teaching, with strong basis.
But in the case of sex between men or between women, the few Biblical passages that directly apply are uniformly and plainly negative, reinforcing that this is not the kind of sexual relations God wants for us. Furthermore, the church up until recent decades uniformly maintained that teaching, even in the face of cultures that were more accepting of gay sex. I find arguments to the contrary weak and unconvincing, and arguments in favor of a change severely lacking in Biblical, historical and theological strength.
Sadly, the church and Christians often brought such negativity and taboo to these subjects that we left gay and lesbian people without compassion and support and the kind of generous love that all of us need in order to thrive. The debates of recent decades, and greater openness and sharing of personal experiences, teach us a lot about each other and a lot about the poison of demonizing those who are different from us.
But we are still left with this question: what are the proper boundaries of sexual behavior, and on what basis in Christian theology do we establish those norms? Saying that we are made in the image of God does not exempt us from the task of managing our desires. In what way should we manage them? When Christian teaching is hard to bear, should we be exempt from it? Or should we find ways to support each other in faithfulness, seeking to follow God through the challenges?
Informed by all of this, deep in prayer, and by the friendships that have helped me understand lived experiences different from mine, I remain committed to the church’s historic teaching. I believe that it accurately shows us God’s best vision for us and points the way to living as God created us to live. The Episcopal Church is one of a few provinces in the Anglican Communion that allows same-sex marriage. Currently, the Episcopal church seems to hold two doctrines that contradict each other about this question. One as shown in the Book of Common Prayer, and one shown in authorized rites for same-sex marriage. This is a messy season in the church, theologically and personally.
In this messiness, we do have some opportunities. We have the opportunities to listen to each other across our differences. We can learn from each other, encourage each other, hear each other as fully human brothers and sisters in Christ, rather than demonizing one another for our feelings or convictions. And most of all, we can embrace each other with the kind of generous love that helps chastity to flourish. If we support each other in virtue, then we will find the courage to form and shape our hearts toward God and toward what is good in God’s eyes. We will train and guard our hearts to love well and to love rightly. Strengthened by our brothers and sisters in Christ, we will live more closely to God’s dreams for us, find blessings for ourselves greater than we can desire or imagine, and bless others around us more than we realize.
May God strengthen you in the pursuit of chastity, and God bless you with his grace to love generously and embrace God’s generous love for you in the process.
Yours in Christ,
-Tom