Taboo: Sexuality

This is a big taboo, particularly within American Christianity. The sexual sins are often considered the worst. Now, I'm not making any comments here about what is appropriate and not appropriate sexual behavior. Rather, I want to focus more on how we treat people who fall outside of our expectations of what is sexually normal appropriate, whatever our norms are. As a Church, we usually get caught up debating the rights and wrongs of behaviors (from a propositional Christianity standpoint) and forget that we still have to deal with the people who fall. Regardless of our judgments of right and wrong, I want to focus on the process of dealing with the people.

A perfect example of this was by someone who once told me, "I could be next to a murderer in church, but I could never stand and worship next to a homosexual." Wow. Again, regardless of perspective of homosexuality, I think this is just plain wrong. It's bad theology and bad relationships.

Where does the Bible state that sexual sins are the worst? My theology has always stated that all sins are equal, the "little white lie" equaling murder because all sins separate us from God. So where do we, as mere mortal humans, get off creating a hierarchy of sin? It's probably safe to say that all societies have a hierarchy of sin (put into other words), but why are the sexual sins so high up in our society?

This isn't anything new, for people who think our society is just prudish. Old Testament theophanies always avoid the genital regions, usually interpreted as occurring because the Jewish people did not believe God could or should be sexualized. God can have a full body, but not genitalia. The asexual perspective of Heaven is satirized in the movie Dogma, with a lack of sexual apparatuses in the angels.

And it's not even appropriate in most circles to think that Jesus may have ever gotten an erection, ejaculated (even in his sleep), or been physically attracted to anyone, despite Him being fully human. Gasp! I think that's why there was so much uproar over the idea that He may have married. That would mean that Jesus had a penis! Oh, my! How terrifying!! I don't think Jesus married, but it's not because of a lack of sexuality (this is another topic for another time).

The taboo on sexuality causes a lot of problems, not the least of which is sexual dysfunction and fears within the Christian community. The need for Christian counselors is huge, probably because people want to talk about sexual issues with someone who shares their values because it is unacceptable to talk about sexuality in the church. How sad. It's a major part of our lives. One could argue an entire book of the Bible (Song of Solomon) was dedicated to sexuality. Yet we can only disucss it in propositional terms. The church does not accept discussion about the mystery and journey of sex in all its forms.

I think we need to re-evaluate our taboos...