Misguided Christian responses to sexual sin
An interesting story prompted the usual sort of denunciatory discussion on the Christian Union Forum at GameSpot, where I sometimes post as the token vocal Catholic apologist in a sea of fundigelical Protestants (and a few more level-headed ones, like Myles).
Anyhow...the Fox article itself wasn't anything surprising, considering the source (California). It talked about the emergence of -- just in time for Valentine's Day, surprise! -- several erotic dinner venues and shows that couples could attend for a sizeable fee. For example:
Naked Dining For starters, there's dinner. Like everyone else in America, couples in California are getting ready to spend Valentine's Day over a candlelit meal for two.But leave it to Los Angeles to incorporate delicious food and a hot body without the worry of getting fat. Impossible? Hardly, assuming the food never actually reaches your mouth because you are — and this is no joke — the plate.
Gary Arabia’s Global Cuisine — a posh event-producing/catering company that boasts clientele like Kanye West and Shaquille O’Neal — offers the Body Sushi Experience, a sensual dining soiree in which Asian delicacies are painstakingly laid out on strategically placed tea leaves atop a beautiful nude model.
Arabia says the idea came to him years ago after spending time in Japan and feeding, if you will, off the country’s unique cultural and culinary experiences.
“I am based out of L.A. where people have seen it all and done it all. I had clients who were looking for a unique culinary experience. A young lady who worked for me, a beautiful girl, was my muse for bringing Body Sushi out of the closet. It was just natural,” Arabia said.
Au natural, indeed. Fortunately for those of us with a sweet tooth, Arabia’s foray into naked noshing did not stop there. How does a nude model covered in chocolate sound?
“Body Chocolate was an evolution from Body Sushi,” Arabia said. “They are both intimate, sensual, culinary performance experiences.”
But those with shallow pockets or a propensity for beer bongs and thongs need not inquire. The Body Experience will run you $500 a person, at least.
“Body Sushi encapsulates all of the senses. It’s not a bachelor party environment. That’s not to say it’s not incredibly sensual, but it’s not girls on poles,” Arabia said.
Now I have objections to the above, don't get me wrong. But I was amazed at the...well, with one exception, the posts in the forum in response to this were either very "sounds like fun/go for it!" in nature, or else of the "all nudity is bad and the body is sinful" nature. I suppose I shouldn't roll my eyes too much, but at the same time: bloody typical. And of course, there were the usual fudigelical remarks of this nature:
This is just one more reason why California will be destroyed.
Followed by:
If anything it's going to be an earthquake.
Yes, it was Christians saying that, of the same sort that called Hurricane Katrina "God's vengeance on the gay festival in New Orleans", as if God were so threatened by the thought of a few thousand partying homosexuals that he had to wipe out an entire city to prevent it. (C'mon...the U.S. Air Force could have wiped out that entire festival and still left the majority of the city intact: you'd think that God's level of precision would be even better.)
In fact, of all the posters in the forum, one who goes by the handle "Bumper" made the most sense:
Maybe... not very christian thing to be. Think of it this way, I'm saddened by the absurd, reacionary over the top "christian" behaviour seen here. To suggest that x number of nude places designates a whole state as immoral is absurd. That is insulting to the millions of moral christians who go to church, and would easily call themselves followers of Christ.
I will not apologize for refusing to jump on the "I hate California bandwagon". To say they deserve an Earthquake or hurricane sent by our God of love is an insult to the intellect, and fundementally immoral. Get over yourselves.
There's a fundamental problem that "Bumper" highlights well...it seems within many branches of Christendom that the general response to sin takes one of two forms. It's either "God will destroy those sinners", or else "Those sinners will be left behindTM in the Rapture". Either way, the prevailing thought seems to be "You're a damned sinner marked for death, not like me!". This is especially true, it seems, in regards to sexual sinners...for such sins, Christians of the sort prone to saying such things tend to haul out a special brand of neurosis.
Which, of course, is a fundamentally un-Christian way to think.
If you've ever had the (mis?)fortune to debate a fundigelical Protestant on the topic of sexual sin, you'll probably have had 1 Corinthians 6:9 thrown in your face as proof that, for example, homosexuals are damned to Hell, and that's that. And indeed, most translations of the Bible have something like this for that passage:
Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? DO not be deceived: neither the immoral*, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals**
Of course, the passage truncates after the word "homosexuals"...one of the many reasons why "cherry-picking" from the Bible is dangerous at best, and foolish as well. The passage goes on to say, in verses 10 and 11:
...not theives, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.A couple of notes from above:
* The term immoral is thought to refer to fornicators
** The term homosexuals is not a perfect translation from the Greek, and the Greek words used may be better-translated as effeminate or sodomites. The condemnation of Paul is not heaped on those who exhibit homosexual tendencies, but on those who indulge homosexual desires with sexual acts of that nature.
The important thing to remember from the three verses above is that while practicing homosexuals might be included in the list, so are a lot of other categories of sinner, many of which we who might offer condemnation probably fall into in some manner. The passage reminds us that we should be careful of whom we call "sinner", for the same label applies to us. And all of us -- homosexuals included! -- can find justification in Christ, and we are commanded not to forget this.
Unfortunately, sometimes Christians do forget this, and the results are what "Bumper" and I have been railing against in the forum discussion.
Proper Christian reponse to sexual sin
Pope John Paul II was revolutionary when began delivering his lectures on the theology of the body, which were a huge step beyond the theology about the body that can be found in Scripture. Keep in mind -- theology of the body does not replace Scriptural teaching, but rather complements it, expands it, and applies it to the human condition directly. The fundamental understanding that underpins theology of the body is that Christ became Incarnate, became fully human, and so shared in the experience of the body. And because of that, we know -- know for certain -- that the body is, as with all Creation, a "very good" creation of God. The Incarnation would not have happened if this had not been true.
Right there, we have to stop and disclaim that most fundigelical Protestants won't be able to understand the rest of the concept of body theology, because many of them accept the erroneous teaching that humanity has two natures, a sinful nature and a divine nature. The body, of course, is regarded as inherently sinful.
That this contradicts the revelation of the Incarnation apparently never occurs to them.
But the truth is, the body is indeed holy -- in fact, it is a temple, as St. Paul teaches us. And what is more, we should not be afraid of the body, or indeed of its desires. Which brings us back to 1 Corinthians 6:9 -- it is not that homosexual tendencies are sinful, or that the natural desires one might have as a result are sinful. What is sinful is certain forms of their expression. The same is true for heterosexuals regarding the sin of fornication: it is normal to have desires, but (since we are limiting our example to those not yet married) it is sinful to act on them in certain ways.
The same is true of the situation in California.
God created us naked, after all — clothing is 100% man-made. And I don't think it's wrong, necessarily, for us to look on the body as something beautiful. As a "very good" creation of God, it is something beautiful.
That said, I think there needs to be a clear delineation between moral and immoral, because the body is a temple of the Lord, and we should not defile it or abuse it. So taking as an example the Sushi restaurant, I don't necessarily think there's anything wrong with the nudity, because it's not intended to be an actively sexual thing, but I think there is something very wrong with using a woman as a table or a dinner plate...because that both disrespects her body for what it properly is (a temple), and disrespects her as well (for is she not so much more than a dinner plate?).
The thing is, the disrespect that is heaped on the woman because she is being used as a table (an object, basically) is independent of her nudity, and would be just as wrong if she were wearing a full-length robe.
Now, in all fairness, there is also the fact that nudity of another person could serve as a temptation to others, but there's a question then of intentionality. If the woman is nude specifically because she desires to arouse passion in another, that might be a sin (depends on whether she's with her husband or not, I suppose), but if she is nude simply because she is not afraid of the beauty (abstractly speaking) of her body, then that is not necessarily a sin — if anything, it praises God's work of creation. Likewise the patrons of the restaurant: if they're there because it's arousing, that's sinful, as it is lustful. But if they are there in appreciation of beauty, it isn't necessarily a sin at all.
In the end, though, the proper Christian response to what sinfulness exists in these situations in California is not to simply articulate a desire for "God's destructive justice" upon the sinful, for the same reasons that were discussed earlier (again in relation to the passage from Corinthians): if we desire that the sinners in California be wiped out, should we not also desire that the sinners who stare back at us from the mirror also be wiped out, for the same reason of being a sinner?
We're within our right to call a sin a sin when it is evident, but not at the expense of denying our own sins in the process. And at any rate, in all such cases, our focus should not be on wrath and vengeance, but on redemption and the justification Christ has won. There are exceptions -- just war doctrine exists for those reasons -- but in general, we are not people of the sword; we are people of salvation. And we would do well to never forget that.
Comparison and contrast
If, for some reason, we do forget that, and if for some reason we -- as Christians -- begin to call for wrath and vengeance to be poured out on the sinners, who then do we begin to sound like?
I'll give you a hint -- I made some desktop images and t-shirts because of them.
As I mentioned before, many Christians seem to exhibit a certain neurosis where sexuality is concerned. This peaked, I think, during the Victorian era (when even pianos were forbidden to have uncovered legs!), although it persists to this day and age. Don't believe me? Next time you're at church -- especially if you're Catholic -- try and sit near a group of elderly parishoners, and when it comes time to offer the sign of peace, give your spouse or signifigant other a lengthy kiss on the lips. See if you get a reaction from the onlookers.
There was, and is, a good reason for this neurosis -- as Christians, we do want to encourage sexual purity and self-control. And taking pains to remove all sources of temptation, even down to wearing little white gloves while shaking another's hand (yes, I know people who've seen that happen in Mass) is a very active prevention method. But it is also neurotic: it is excessive, and it is motivated not by a genuine respect for the body or for sexuality, but by fear of those things.
It's the same fear that underpins the theology of Islam, resulting in extreme examples such as this one:
Imagine a husband and wife who have lived together as complete strangers for half a century.Believe it or not, it actually happens here in Saudi Arabia. There are husbands, brothers and sons who have never seen the faces of their own wives, sisters and mothers let alone cousins and aunts. There are wives who never showed their faces to their husbands since they have tied the knot a long or short time ago.
Children should wonder how their parents managed to conceive them when their fathers never saw their mothers. But that s probably just as well because, like their fathers, they haven t seen what their own mothers look like.
This tradition has been part of my life since the day I opened my eyes on the world, she said. Believe it or not, I have never seen the faces of even my closest female relatives my cousins and aunts.
She said every member of her tribe believes it is a great shame for women to uncover their faces at any time, thus there is no chance for a female face to be seen by anyone.
She said she only uncovers her face in total privacy, after she makes sure her husband and children are out of the house.
Only then I can feel free to change my clothes and remove my veil, she said. One day I walked over to the living room with my face uncovered. I never knew my husband was sitting there watching the TV. He saw my face.
She said her husband screamed when he saw her without a veil.
I ran to my room and I locked myself up for several hours. When I came out, he was very angry at me.
Have a read of the article -- Alhamedi's commentary on the absurdity of the above is absolutely priceless. Especially: "Children should wonder? I've always had a little trouble with this concept myself. How do you show affection to someone who's always veiled, how do you share those little intimacies, how do you procreate? Perhaps there are people who would get a bit of a thrill from making love to a veiled woman, but after a few decades it's bound to pall. Let's change the subject."
If you think about it, the example above (from Qassim, Saudi Arabia) is basically the ultimate extent of that same neurosis that the forum-dwelling Christians exhibit. So much fear is felt towards the body, and towards sexuality, that it inspires the oddest behaviours possible: in an effort to try and respect the body, greater disrespect is done to the body. In an effort to avoid temptation, the whole person is avoided. And ultimately -- and this is perhaps especially true in Islam (see here and here) -- this neurosis motivates the strangest possible behaviours, and can ultimately morph fear of the body into violence against the body, and against others as well. The plight of the Muslim male -- sexual repression on a scale unimagined in even the darkest moments of Christianity -- gives rise to the perfect conditions for temptation to take hold: the promise of 72 willing virgins in Paradise has been more than enough to entice many young men into Semtex overcoats. What's more, it leads to a need for cathartic release, which is easily satisfied by burning an effigy of Ronald McDonald in order to protest the publishing of cartoons.
We don't have to fear the body, and in fact we should not fear the body. Because the moment we do, we are one step further down the road to one day "wrapping the foil" ourselves. Of course, we should respect the body, for it is the Lord's temple, and we should not defile it with substances or sexual practices that do not respect it or carry the proper commitment behind them. But there is a huge gulf between that observation and the burqa...or even between that observation and fundigelical Prostantism's "sinful nature" theology.