Sex doesn't sanctify anything. Marriage--that is to say, the Holy Spirit operating in Christian marriage--sanctifies sex.
Many advocates for pre-marital sex, extramarital sex, same-sex acts, and so forth view sex as a charism of grace. Witness Anglican Bishop V. Gene Robinson's comments to his fellow bishops at Gen Con 03:
"I just need to tell you that I experience that with my partner. In the time that we have, I can't go into all the theology around it, but what I can tell you is that in my relationship with my partner, I am able to express the deep love that's in my heart, and in his unfailing and unquestioning love of me, I experience just a little bit of the kind of never-ending, never-failing love that God has for me. So it's sacramental for me."
In other words, according to this view, it's sex that's the sacrament, not marriage. And since this is the case, then the Church must go ahead and bless what is already sanctified. . . since sex is the sacralizing agent.
But this is absolutely mistaken. This view is not Christian marriage, nor Christian sex. It is ritual cult prostitution. As St. Paul writes:
Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers 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 by the Spirit of our God. "All things are lawful for me," but not all things are helpful. "All things are lawful for me," but I will not be enslaved by anything. "Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food"--and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, "The two will become one flesh." But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. (1 Corinthians 6:9-20 ESV)
Sex is, indeed, more than a physical act. It is a deeply unitive act. But the unitive nature of the act hardly equates to Christian sanctification. Rather, unless it is an act sanctified by the Holy Spirit in marriage, it creates deep disorder not only in body but in soul as well. One is unified with one's sex partner, but if it is non-marital sex, one has joined oneself not with Christ, but one has joined oneself with death.
That death may not, indeed, is likely to not, have immediate physical consequences. But the spiritual consequences are immediate, and will have ultimate sway if one does not repent. The social science research bears this out. Sexually transmitted diseases are far more common among people who are sexually active outside of marriage than those who reserve sex for marriage. Domestic violence is far more common among non-married sexual partners than among married persons. And so it goes.
Many who object to the Christian insistence on the importance and sanctity of marriage point out as a criticism that "traditionalists" seem "obsessed" with everyone else's sex life. But this is almost always a hypocritical--and unfair--characterization. In a society quite literally obsessed with sex, it just makes sense that most Christian criticism of our society would have to deal with this deep deformation of our culture.
It used to be that feminists objected to pornography for the very good and quite true reason that it made of women unhuman objects of lusts. Pornography depersonalized and devalued them. But so deep does our societal disorder and deformation run that now many feminists embrace porn as somehow "empowering" them. Funny, nothing has changed. Women still get objectified and depersonalized and dehumanized. Pornography has been indisputably linked to violence against women. But now "grrrl-power" feminists willingly cooperate with this objectification. They have given themselves up to the delusion that by allowing themselves to be objectified they somehow have gained power over men--presumably because they have the "power" to excite lust in the hearts of perverse men. This is the ultimate degradation: to get the victim to think she deserves and even enjoys the brutal treatment she's given. This is the deepest of rapes since it deforms a woman's soul.
One cannot turn on such sitcoms as "Will & Grace" and not be bombarded with one consistent and unquestioned premise: gay men think about sex all the time, and most gay men portrayed are promiscuous. Christians are right to object to this behavior. If there's any sort of obsession, it's with the audiences who demand this sort of deformed entertainment and indoctrination.
One cannot listen to pop music, especially rap music, and not be afflicted with violent recountings of rape and subjugation. One cannot watch music videos and not encounter hundreds of sexual and sexualized images.
Television actresses are applauded for their willingness to perform in "racy," or "risque," or "provocative" roles. Actresses that engage in graphic movie sex (Holly Hunter and Halle Berry) are given Academy Awards for those roles.
But pretty much the only religious experience our culture knows is sex. It is the closest thing that humans can manufacture that can mimic the Christological union of humans with their Father God. But since it is an imitation it is a perversity and a blasphemy. But it's all our culture knows. So we worship sex, and try to convert as many to the religion of cultic prostitution as possible. And we damage and damn as many souls as we convert.
It is not obsessive to continue to critique the perverse, indeed demonically fixated, prevalence of sex throughout our culture. It is a life-saving and loving act to judge. Christ came not to bring peace but a sword. It is Gospel to call death for what it is. It is the revelatory and saving grace of God, the medicine for the soul.
For Christians to pervert the Gospel by equating sex with sacrament is not just deeply deformed, it is not only deeply disordered, it is, ultimately, blasphemy. If Christians commited to the apostolic faith rise up to condemn this false gospel, then they are loving their neighbors as themselves, and thus fulfilling Christ's command to his brothers.
Posted by Clifton at January 21, 2005 02:00 PM | TrackBack