Every day it seems a sexual scandal rocks the church. There is even a statistic that 95% of men do porn, including pastors. The response to this is usually doubling down on righteous living and regeneration preaching. The problem is muscling trying to be righteous never works and ignores the root of the problem. The Church since the Middle Ages adopted Plato as a interpreter of Scripture, and Christian living. Plato believed in two separate spheres, the temporal or flesh, and the spiritual realm. While the apostle Paul does make these distinctions as well, there is a flaw inherent in dividing our natures in dualities, the inevitable heresies of Catharism and Nestorianism which taught this world & the flesh is evil and the spiritual is good will take root. While the church does not take this to the farthest extreme, there is a sense that the spiritual is more important, and that the flesh is prone to sin and thus gets criticized. It is sad we fail to look to Jesus who is perfect God Man, one hundred percent divine and one hundred percent flesh, in fact John said, “This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.” (1 John 4:2). Jesus tended to his flesh as much as his spirit, eating (Luke 7:33-34), sleeping (Matthew 8:23-37), getting some time alone (Luke 4:42) and etc. And yet we in church still use Plato, not Jesus, as the model, compartmentalizing the flesh and spirit, and sadly often adopting a elevating of the spirit over the flesh. When the obvious question must be asked, if God intended us to neglect the temporal, our bodily needs, and desires, why did he out us on Earth? It would have been better to just keep us as spirits in heaven if spiritual things was all that mattered.
The truth is its meant to be a balance of both. Our bodies and spirits are connected in profound ways. Science has proven that when one forgives, a light rising from the heart to the brain removing trees of darkness in the brain imaging; this forgiveness heals the mind which effects the body. In same way, taking care of our flesh can make us more spiritually attuned, because we are not busy with illness and pain.
Returning to the sexual. Unfortunately, the Medieval obsession with demeaning sexuality and glorifying virginity and chastity still has some offshoots in Protestantism. Sexuality is presented as good in the confines of marriage, and when it is discussed, it is presented in a Hallmark Movie pristine and sanitized fashion, rather than the gritty reality of people’s fetishes and urges. As a result the Platonian and Catharian ideas creep in, and people can develop a guilt about their sexuality, hiding it, as 95 percent of men are, particularly pastors. This shaming or sanitizing of sexuality can create a split personality, where the spirit side prays, attends church, and thinks on Christ is supported as good and the passions of the sensual side is seen as sinful, and is kept in frustrated secret and develops into deviant strains. This sadly is also the fruit of erroneous Puritanism, those radicals who even banned Christmas, cheery folk.
Gonna say something radical. Jesus loves your sexual side. Oops boycott his blog! Well its true! God in the beginning commanded all creation to be “fruitful and multiply.” (Genesis 1:28). Our Lord programmed us to enjoy Sex, this the world gets right. The problem is education and late blooming has lead to people getting hitched later and later, the average is in the mid thirties now, that means sexual frustration for Christians from 13 to 36 (estimate). Which means lots of guilt from the pulpit, and from a pastor who is probably hiding his sexual frustrations from his wife. The problem is we need to be more honest about our sexual needs and desires and fetishes, or else the church is going to continue to have scandals. People are stuck in the Platonian, Nestorian, Puritan, and Cathar model, where sexuality is second to spirituality: carnal is bad or less good as the spiritual, when the two are connected like a figure eight. God put us on this planet with bodies, with desires. We are not meant to demean the flesh, and treat it as evil. For God took on human flesh and saved us! God couldn’t rescue us from eternal death if he had not taken on human flesh and died for our sins, accomplishing are eternal salvation! He had to be divine and human, so then why do we mess this up so badly?! Why do we demean the humanity in us as rebellion and make the spiritual omni-important? The answer is bad teachers: Puritans, Monastic Christianity, Plato, Nestorius, and many others beat into the church a strain of thought that demonizes sexuality, when it is beautiful, and meant to give joy, and create life; be fun and foster families.
The issue is that the fruit of Platonism and Nestorianism is in the church. That attraction and sexual urges are not examined as complex and natural, and instead the mantra of “true love waits,” is chanted. Yes, monogamy is Biblical, but what are people to do with their sexual desires when they are not married? Scripture has no answers for Masterbation, the story of Onan (Genesis 38:9) is about a man having intercourse and he spills his seed on the ground to not impregnate his brother’s wife, that’s not traditional masterbation. Pornography can be deemed sinful by Jesus’ words, “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart,” (Matthew 5:28), but in the times of Jesus people married young, I mean Mary his Mother was married at 12 to Joseph, what would Christ say now to those having to suspend their urges till 30-40yrs of age? Of course his words are still sound, but is there more mercy in Jesus over this now that people cannot easily express their sexual nature in the confines of marriage? What I am saying is I think he understands, that we arn’t able to “delight in the wife of your youth,” (Proverbs 5:18) in these times. Also on the topic of pornography, The Song of Songs in our Bibles is so pornographic Jews won’t let young people read it till they are old enough. So.. we need to examine the issue in a more nuanced and complex way than just using verses as war cries against porn.
My aim is not to contest Scripture over sexual morality. What I am saying is that our world has made it very hard to express our sexuality in a Biblical way. It isn’t wise to marry young to avoid sexual sin because then you may not be right for one another and divorce, thus violating Jesus’ other words, “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” (Matthew 19:6). And yet Paul says if you burn with passion, marry, “But if they can’t control themselves, they should go ahead and marry. It’s better to marry than to burn with lust” (1 Corinthians 7:9), well I see that in the short term working, but Paul was an unmarried man giving this advice, I’d rather have talked to the other apostles who were married, “Don’t we have the right to bring a believing wife with us as the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers do, and as Peter does?” (1 Corinthians 9:5), since they could advise if rushing into wedlock is wise.
Now I am sure I lost fundamentalists. How dare you question Paul! Well I believe 99% of Paul’s writings are God Breathed, but 1% was his struggle with a demon he had and his ego, “So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited,” (2 Corinthians 12:7), some old Phariseeisms he was purging, “I was circumcised when I was eight days old. I am a pure-blooded citizen of Israel and a member of the tribe of Benjamin—a real Hebrew if there ever was one! I was a member of the Pharisees, who demand the strictest obedience to the Jewish law,” (Philippians 3:5), and sometimes he did rash things like preach against Peter. We have to remember the authors of the Bible are not perfect, Christ is perfect, and the message does come through perfectly in the 66 Books of Scripture, but sometimes they speculate, Hebrews Chapter 6 which terrifies Christians in the Greek is presented as a theory and a speculation about falling away from the faith, it is not a fact, thus it is not God Breathed. The apostles are clear when it “seems good to them,” and when its “God breathed.” You have to pay attention to the words, and rightly divide Scripture.
God made us both flesh and spirit, “Then the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person.” (Genesis 2:7). We walk this earth in the flesh because that is God’s intent, and we have spirit which is also his intent. Jesus is the example! He is both Son of God and Son of David, “concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord,” (Romans 1:3-4). We are not suppose to neglect one or the other! Are spiritual and sexual desires are both part of who we are! If God wanted us to be sexless monks and nuns, he’d have kept us in heaven!!!
It is time to cast aside Plato’s duality of spirit and flesh, and adopt Christ’s Spirit and Flesh; that both are equally important. I do not have answers how to morally live out your sexuality in this age of delayed matrimony, all I can say is the shame game or silence & ignoring sexual issues in the church isn’t working. We need to stop using the Hallmark Movie approach that pretends people don’t have some unique desires. God knew what would attract us and make us randy, it does not surprise him; the problem is our world is fallen and so unlike paradise in Eden we cannot explore our sexuality without consequences like sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, painful soul ties, heart break and etc. Its a mess, we arn’t suppose to indulge the sinful self, but at the same time doing it under the umbrella of marriage isn’t an option for many, so the problem remains; urges remain without a proper outlet, and I believe Jesus is aware of that and is merciful. Of course we stick to The Scriptures, but we do need to take into account the context, that in Bible days people in Palestine were agararian and married as pre-teens, now we are cosmopolitan and marrying as mid-life adults. We need The Holy Spirit’s guidance, and to stop shaming people, and being silent about our sexual natures. God made sex, he have us genitals, and intends us to use them. Neglecting to talk about this part of ourselves is dangerous, breeding bad spirituality like monasticism, nestorianism, catharism, and Puritanism. It is equally bad to ignore and shame sexual desire and prioritize the spirit as it is to indulge sexual desire in ways that can lead to disease that kills you like Aids. Amen.
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