Читать книгу That Famous Fig Leaf - Chad W. Thompson - Страница 7

Perhaps it is because the body, and not just our own, has gotten us into so much trouble that we have unconsciously come to associate it with carnality. Consider the battle we fight to stay pure each time we pass a sexually explicit billboard while driving, visit a website we know we shouldn’t, or allow impropriety into our fantasy life. The guilt of our sexual misgivings has forged into our Christian ethic the belief that the body is at war with the spirit.

Even using the word purity to describe victory in this context, connotes that if we lose our battle against the body, we’ll be contaminated by it. Carmen Renee Berry wrote:

When it comes to our actual bodies, Christian discourse takes a dramatic turn toward blame. We have pointed to our bodies, sometimes referred to as “flesh,” as the source of sin. Due, in part, to translation problems, our physical bodies and our sinful natures have been seen as synonymous.35

But it is not the body that contaminates us, nor is the body our enemy in battle. According to the Apostle Paul:

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.36

The addition of “and blood” to this passage indicates that Paul was using “flesh” to describe literal bodies, rather than man’s sinful nature. Similar comparisons are made in at least fifteen other New Testament passages. As it turns out, the word translated “flesh” in these passages is actually represented by one of four Greek words which are used interchangeably, sometimes referring to the literal body in a morally neutral context, and other times referring to the carnal nature in a more figurative sense. Clapp wrote:

Casual readers of the New Testament are sometimes confused by references to sinful flesh, especially in the writings of Paul. But an only slightly closer reading reveals that flesh is a technical term for Paul . . . The “works of the flesh” include such attitudes and behaviors as quarreling and envy, matters more of spirit than of the physical body.37

So it becomes clear that our battle is not against our body, or the bodies of others; it is the “darkness of this age” that seeks to contaminate. When Jesus presented adultery as a sin that can occur absent from the body, he implicated the heart, not the body, as the source of this transgression:

You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.38

According to Christopher West:

As a result of sin, our experience of sex has become terribly distorted. In the midst of these distortions, we can tend to think that there must be something wrong with sex itself (the “body–bad/sex–dirty” mentality stems from this). But the distortions we know so well are not at the core of sex. At the core of sex we discover a sign of God’s own goodness.39

Perhaps it is this distortion that has influenced some theologians to interpret the sexual references in Song of Solomon as mere allegories. Carmen Renee Berry wrote, “Whenever I’ve heard a sermon citing the Song of Songs, the preacher has always said that the book described the relationship between Christ and the church. I guess that’s one way to avoid the sexual intimacy about which Solomon wrote.”40

She goes on to say, “We Christians seem to be comfortable with body-related and even sexually related metaphors . . . We’re for body talk as long as it’s symbolic.”41

Father Ryan wrote:

Many think that sexuality will go away or at least become quieter as we grow spiritually. But the contrary is true . . . The sexual dimension of our beings and relationships can lead us into a sense of the holy at levels deeper than conscious understanding. Oftentimes people seem to be praying to have their sexuality removed so they won’t have to struggle with it anymore. That is a denial of a powerful, creative energy that connects us to one another. We should be struggling with it, like Jacob with the angel, for it is a messenger from God.42

The Body of Christ

It is certainly fascinating to discover how the intracellular process of Homologous recombination reveals God’s mercy, or how the bacterial flagellum reveals His ingenuity; but the biological function of sexual intercourse reveals the Creator’s great love for us.

Christopher West explains that God created sexual desire to give his creation the power to love each other, as he has loved us:43

[Christ’s commandment is that we] “Love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 15:12). How did Christ love us? Recall His words at the Last Supper: “This is my body which is given for you” (Lk 22:19). Love is supremely spiritual, but as Christ demonstrates, love is expressed and realized in the body.44

West illustrates this concept with a story:

I never met my father-in-law; he died before my wife and I met. But I admire him tremendously because of the following story. At Mass the day after his wedding, having just consummated his marriage the night before, he was in tears after receiving the Eucharist. When his new bride inquired he said, “For the first time in my life I understood the meaning of Christ’s words, ‘This is my body given for you.’”45

Consider the words of the Apostle Paul:

So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.46

Our Creator gave us intercourse so that we could more fully understand what it meant when the body of God saved the soul of man. Christ sacrificially gave up his body, even to the point of crucifixion, for his church. A man and woman who sacrificially give up their bodies for one another actually re-create, somehow, Christ’s death on the cross. If the word somehow seems too vague, consider that even to the Apostle Paul this phenomenon was a “great mystery.”

In this respect theology is actually inscribed on our bodies.47 Sex, therefore, not only teaches us how to love, but shows us even more about Christ and the Scriptures that point to him. Sex is exegesis.

But not all sex is like this.

A Red Light in the Bedroom

The Red Light District is an urban area in Amsterdam with a high concentration of legalized prostitution, sex shops, strip clubs, and adult theaters. The term originates from the red lights that were historically used to signify brothels. Many would consider it one of the most sexually “liberated” places in the entire world. But Rob Bell, in his book Sex God, takes a different position on the district:

The Red Light District in Amsterdam is so sexually repressed . . . What is so striking is how unsexual that whole section of the city is. There are lots of people “having sex” night and day, but that’s all it is. There’s no connection. That’s, actually, the only way it works. They agree to a certain fee for certain acts performed, she performs them, he pays her, and then they part ways. The only way they would ever see each other again is on the slim probability that he would return and they would repeat this transaction. There’s no connection whatsoever.48

Rob is making the point that a spiritual connection is required for intercourse to be “sexual.” When the people involved do not love each other, they are not “making love,” they are making lust; and lust does not teach us anything about God.

Prostitution is an extreme example of sex that takes place outside of God’s design, but sometimes the only thing that distinguishes the kind of sex they have in Amsterdam from that which takes place in a marriage, is the glowing red sign outside the door.

According to Christopher West:

. . . it’s significant that Christ refers to looking lustfully at “a woman” in the generic sense. He doesn’t stress that it’s someone other than a spouse. As John Paul observes, a man commits “adultery in the heart” not by looking lustfully at a woman he isn’t married to, “but precisely because he looks at a woman in this way. Even if he looked in this way at his wife, he could likewise commit adultery ‘in his heart’” (Oct. 8, 1980). In other words, marriage does not justify lust . . . The sexual embrace is meant to image and express divine love. Anything less is a counterfeit that not only fails to satisfy, but wounds us terribly.49

A friend of mine recently studied Paradise Lost in his college literature class. In this seventeenth-century poem, John Milton portrays sex as wholesome before the fall, and scandalous after. One of my friend’s classmates, who also happens to be an evangelical Christian, raised his hand and asserted, “I don’t get it, they were married before the fall and after the fall; why was their sex wrong after the fall? They were married so they’re good, right?”

Wrong.

I believe Milton’s fictional poem accurately conveys the shift that must have occurred in the way Adam and Eve esteemed their bodies. Before the fall they didn’t have the capacity to objectify one another; afterwards they did. It was in this manner that their “eyes were opened.”

I don’t really believe that a husband who lusts after his wife is in the same moral position as one who patronizes a brothel. I am just trying to illustrate that regardless of the context, love that is not sacrificial, that does not put the needs of the other person first, but instead seeks to use the other’s body for its own pleasure, is not love.

This kind of sex fails to recognize the profound spirituality of the sexual bond between humans, the unique phenomenon that even the Apostle Paul called a “great mystery.” This kind of sex fails to create any kind of distinction between humans and animals, for whom sex is merely a biological process.

Born This Way

“Food for the stomach and the stomach for food” is a little proverb the ancient Greeks used to rationalize their lack of sensual control. The phrase reduced the body to the sum of its physical cravings. When you’re hungry, “Food [is] for the stomach,” just like rest is for when you’re tired, and sex is for when you’re lonely.

The phrase could be compared to more recent proverbs used to justify sexual immorality such as “if it feels good do it,” or the title of Lady Gaga’s 2011 album Born This Way. The problem with all these proverbs is that they reduce the human body to nothing more than a biological machine, void of any moral connotations. Rob Bell wrote:

This past year my family and I stayed at a wildlife lodge in Africa. We would wake up early each morning and climb into a Land Rover with our guide, who drove us all over the “bushveldt” as the Africans call it, looking at animals in their native habitats . . . When you see biological need up close, so raw and so primal, you can’t help but notice how strong it is. These animals are going to mate because it’s in their DNA, their blood, and their environment. They aren’t lying out there in that field thinking, I just really want to know that you love me for more than my body. They aren’t discussing how to make a difference in the world. One isn’t saying to the other, “I just don’t feel you’re as committed to this relationship as I am.” Other than basic biological functions, there’s nothing else going on.50

Animals are born that way, humans are not. Yet Gaga’s album contains lyrics like, “It doesn’t matter if you love him . . . Just put your paws up ‘cause you were born this way, baby.”51

Lady Gaga is a gifted artist, and has since converted to Roman Catholicism. Nonetheless, these lyrics seem to deny that we have a spiritual dimension to us that the animals don’t have. She seems to be suggesting that for humans, like animals, sex has no higher plane, no greater cause, no transcendent purpose.

The Apostle Paul, almost as though he saw Gaga coming, addresses this worldview:

Foods for the stomach and the stomach for foods, but God will destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God both raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by His power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?52

I used to think Paul called our bodies’ members of Christ’s only to demonstrate how significant they are, or to make us feel guiltier when we use them to sin. Yet the more I learn about the connection between physiology and spirituality, the more convinced I am that Paul’s admonition is to be taken literally.

The Substance of the Gospel

Traditional Christianity tends to view the body of Christ as a merely social body, and biblical references to Christians as Christ’s body are considered metaphoric. Yet Paul was much more precise in his explanation of this concept, referring explicitly to the physicality of our representation of Christ: “For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones.”53

When Christ ascended into the heavenly realm,54 the same Spirit that had been governing his actions on the earth entered all believers.55 This happened so that our bodies could replace his.

Father Ron Rolheiser wrote:

The incarnation began with Jesus and it has never stopped . . . God still has skin, human skin, and physically walks on this earth just as Jesus did. In a certain manner of speaking, it is true to say that, at the ascension, the physical body of Jesus left this earth, but the body of Christ did not. God’s incarnational presence among us continues as before.56

St. Teresa of Ávila, who championed a contemplative life through mental prayer, so aptly wrote, “Christ has no body now but yours.”57 Perhaps this is why Paul likened physical bodies to “tablets of flesh”58 on which the gospel is written, or “earthen vessels”59 by which God’s power is made manifest. Our bodies are the substance of the gospel.

Quantum Intercourse

Studies indicate that men’s sex drives not only tend to be stronger than women’s, but also that male and female sex drives tend to be motivated by vastly different factors, many of which cannot even be pinned down. I believe God intentionally designed these differences in brain chemistry so that marriage could mirror his relationship with us. The imbalance of sexual desire between the sexes forces him to pursue her, just as Christ pursues his bride: the church.

The quantum principle of entanglement asserts that when you split a single entity into two pieces, no matter how far you separate them, each piece still mirrors the physical properties of the other. In the quantum world, the notion of making “two” out of that which was once “one” is physically impossible. Such is the case with the sexual union between a man and a woman.

Several neurochemical processes occur during sex that bond lovers to one another. Men produce a bonding agent called vasopressin, and women produce oxytocin. These chemicals give physical substance to Christ’s assertion that in sex, the two are made one. This explains why sex that takes place outside of a lifelong commitment is so emotionally destructive. Attempts to make “two” out of what was once “one” are, both scientifically and spiritually, impossible.

The problem with pornography is that the same chemicals that bind us to a spouse in lovemaking, will also bind us to images on a screen. Brain scans confirm that the thalamus, which plays a crucial role in distinguishing real from pretend, responds to inner and outer realities identically.

Mirror neurons fire in the brain when the body is engaged in action, but they also fire when we merely observe the same action being performed by another. The neuron “mirrors” the behavior of the other, as though the observer were performing the action themselves.60 Perhaps this is why Jesus said one only needs to look at a woman lustfully, and he’s already committed adultery.

Sexual activity also stimulates production of the same chemicals that drug use does, which explains the addictive nature of our relationships. We have a chemical need for relationship, though sexual activity isn’t required to meet this need. A sincere conversation or close hug from a trusted friend will trigger the release of dopamine in my brain. Although in seasons of isolation, when there was no embrace to be had, I have turned to Internet pornography, which mimics intimacy by releasing the same chemicals that are released through real world relationship.61

It is in moments like these that God needs a body, because I need a hug. Loving our God and loving each other are so closely related that the New Testament uses the same Greek word to describe them both.62 If you want a deeper relationship with God, start by loving those around you. By loving their body, you are loving God’s.

When I’m transparent with someone about my need for affection and they ask “how is your relationship with God?,” I know I’m not getting a hug. It is the polite way of being told I should get my needs met directly through the Lord.

Such individuals have removed the body from the Christian life and, in so doing, confined the gospel to the invisible, ethereal realm where it exists only as an idea, and does no one any practical good here on earth.

The tendency to divorce spirit from matter, coupled with spiritual socialization that posits the body as “worldy,” all serve as obstacles to integrating one’s body into their relationship with God. Why are so many uncomfortable kneeling in church to pray, or lifting their hands in the air during a worship song? Father Ryan asks, “Is it because we have been conditioned to remove our bodies from the expression of our spiritual selves?”63

Indeed, this false division breeds a religious contempt for the body which tempts us not only to exclude it from religious life, but also to hide it from each other.