Like food, sexual activity is necessary for survival. But while food is needed for each individual, in the case of sex the need is for the species. Nobody, as they say, ever actually died of chastity.
The understanding of many Christian centuries that chastity is actually better for you may seem at least foreign. In our society we equate sexuality with identity, often without question.
We tend to think of sexuality as something good in itself, and that sexual activity is necessary to human thriving—so much so that some readers may think I’m crazy to bring the topic into Lenten self-examination.
Well, I’m spending Lent with Desert Father Evagrius Ponticus. Evagrius talks about sex, so I will too.
Sex gets a lot of attention in our society. I don’t mean the sexy images in advertising, or the way books that would once have been labeled pornography have become mainstream. I refer to the way that sexuality has become linked to identity.
I was a seminarian at Princeton when the late Thomas Gillespie was president. I can tell you nothing specific about his preaching (fine as it was), but one comment he made stuck with me. He quoted someone saying that in our society “sexuality” has taken the place that “the soul” held in medieval thinking. I’m not a medievalist, but I think he was right.
Fourth century monk that he was, Evagrius associated sexual lust with demonic activity. If you’ve been in the grip of an inappropriate sexual longing, possession may have the ring of emotional truth, no matter what you think about demons.
But, if we get past Evagrius’ demons, he gives us a clear-eyed take on the issue:
“The demon of fornication compels us to desire various bodies.”
That compulsion to desire another person’s body merits our attention in Lent. It is not about love. Love desires another person’s well being. Evagrius points out that we want to use other people’s bodies for our own purposes.
Is it crazy to think that sexuality, as an issue in our Christian living, needs examination, even some reformation? If we want to live centered in Christ, we’ll need our bodies to be in our soul’s keeping—sexuality included.
This sense of having the body in the soul’s keeping is appealing to me. I do not know who first coined the phrase, though I remember it from a novel by Robertson Davies.
It moves away from any sense that God is speaking a big “NO” on sexuality, and toward God’s great “YES” to human thriving—to life deeply rooted in Christ and formed according to his good intention.
Evagrius has a lovely image for both options on sexuality: a sailboat at sea.
The life ruled by sexual desire, he tells us, is like a sailboat with no ballast. Nothing holds the ship vertical, so it is helpless. Rolling ocean waves batter it, and it gets tossed around or capsized. Lust is like those waves.
The chaste life, ruled by Christ with the body in the soul’s keeping, sails in the same sea. To take the metaphor further than Evagrius did, union in Christ acts like the heavy keel, keeping the ship upright despite the waves. Then, when the wind of the Spirit catches the sails, the ship can go where the pilot directs.
As I think about sexuality this Lent (and as you do too, I hope), that seaworthy ship is the vision to hang on to.
Sexuality is part of human existence, but not the main part. It can, like all parts of life, move us toward glory or emptiness; toward wholeness or horror.
We are more likely to find the glory and the wholeness if, like everything in us, sexuality is within a life that draws close to Christ and is ever at his direction.
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I’d love to hear from you in the comments! Is it crazy to include sexuality in Lenten self-examination? How do we do that in a way that is wise and balanced?
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At the age of 52, I risk being called a hypocrite for commenting about sexuality, given the things I’ve done in my 20’s. But that being said, I used sex like a drug to help me with my depression after my father died. (I see that now – not so much then) The truth is that it didn’t help and I hurt a lot of people who thought there was something more between us.
This beautiful gift of ourselves that brings to the world new life needs to be held in high regard and honor. Shared when ‘it’s possibilities’ are lovingly welcomed and will bring joy to our lives.
Thanks for sharing your story, Tim! Good self-insights and wise counsel.
There’s so much good things in this post, I’m not sure where to start! Hmm…I think I’ll give two comments, and then ask a question 🙂
1) First comment: I really liked this image, “…union in Christ acts like the heavy keel, keeping the ship upright despite the waves…” This is the precise reason why Eastern Christians place a lot of importance on will free (unlike traditional Medieval Western Christian theology, beginning with Augustine). The ship doesn’t magically stay upright. What union with Christ does is show us how to keep the ship upright, but we must cooperate with Christ for that “uprightedness” to happen. This is what we mean by “synergy,” (cooperation with Christ and the Holy Spirit) and why “good works,” are so important in Eastern Christianity. This also leads to an Eastern understanding of sin. Sin is “missing the mark,” or, in other words, being disoriented and not knowing which way is up. Because Christ is now the keel (to use Evagrius’s image), sin no longer has a hold on us because we can now say, with assuredness, that, yes, this direction is up. It is, with this notion, that death leads to sin (rather than sin leading to death), because death disorients our view of life (c.f., Romans 5:12, which was mistranslated in Latin, and then, starting with Augustine who was reading the Latin, misunderstood).
2) Second comment: I’m reading a book by Miroslav Volf, and he writes that God *IS* love. This quote of yours reminded me of his discussion: “Love desires another person’s well being.” Volf argues that, beginning with Plato, we tend to define love as the desire for something one does not have, and considers it good (c.f., Plato’s Symposium). However, Volf points out that love, in the Christian understanding, turns this concept upside-down. “For God so loved the world that he GAVE…” (John 3:16). This changes love from longing (Plato) to giving. Volf says that in anything God does, he gives. For example, “God gives when God creates; God gives when God delivers; God gives when God forgives; God gives when God grants eternal life. God gives, and in giving God loves” (Volf, Allah: A Christian Response, pg. 154).
3) OK, finally, my question! You wrote that, “…in our society ‘sexuality’ has taken the place that ‘the soul’ held in medieval thinking.” That’s a fascinating insight, and I think you may be on to something. I understand the idea of sexuality as an identity in our society, but I’m not sure I follow the idea of the “soul” being an identity in Medieval thought. Can you expound on that idea for me? Thanks!
Thanks so much, Fr. Dustin.
I’m glad you liked the imag. I was sort of reveling in Evagrius’ image of the desire-driven soul buffeted by waves. He articulates that side, and as I said, I took the image further than he did to develop the flip side with Christ as the heavy keel.
The Volf book sounds fascinating.
Dr. Gillespie’s comment was second hand — I never found out who he was quoting about modern concepts of sexuality being paralel to medieval concepts of the soul. And the Medieval period is not my specialty. That said, any extrapolation I do on the comment is pretty speculative. It rings true to me, that is, but I don’t know if it would measure up in the ears of a medievalist.
So what I would guess is that medievals viewed the soul as the essential self, or the key part of the self, the part that connects to God. So…
If modern ideas of sexuality were to be parallel, this would say that sexuality, or sexual identity, is the essential self, or the key part of the self, or the part that connects to the highest and best.
This may be entirely wrong, and medievalists in the audience should please correct me.
I was afraid this topic was going to impose the preference of chastity on all of us. Admitting that chastity does holds a lot of benefits for them that seek exactingly for sanctification in this life ahead of the glorious one yonder, I shrink at the thought that anyone would want to impress on all of us that that’s the one true and best way to go.
As humans and again better as Christians, sex plays a role in our lives and I dare say it is one of God’s gifts we seek to enjoy but more appropriately in the right context of a married home. Some of us teach our children here in Africa to seek sex only in this context to have a fulfilling and respectable experience and a life devoid of shame and avoidable pain. As such, whenever a young person around us here fails, we first of all want them to experience that downside of ignominy to help deter others before we switch to counselling on the best way forward and upward from that pit. At most times, an unwanted or unprepared for pregnancy is the primary repercussion we are forced to contend with. Though lately STDs are becoming more prominent in focus now.
But in Lent, as Christian couples, some of us are so trained or ‘processed’ (if i may use that word) that we naturally abstain from sex as a pleasure to be denied of as we seek to pay a closer attention to our Lord but not specifically for repentance of past wrongs. More prominently these day, we abstain to be ‘pure’ enough to attract Divine Assistance and Intervention for a more prosperous living.
My opinion here is that though the benefits of chastity appeal for the period of need for repentance, continuity in living what is described as a’fasted life’ does not hold a lasting appeal for all our folks here except we want them to become pretentious. Hence, to impose that code, for me, would be faulty. But I’m pleased to know that my fears were misplaced.
Dear Olaleye:
Many thanks for commenting. Glad to have you as a reader.
Though there have been periods where celibacy was strongly idealized, and individuals who seem to have recommended it for all, it seems there has always been a sexually active majority.
That is, the Church has not sought to make all be celibate. The Church has, however, sought to teach all to practice chasity — to practice appropriate boundaries as one engages in sexual activity. Traditionally this has meant sexual unions happen within the bounds of marriage.
Olaleye — thanks so much for sharing your witness with us. I’m grateful to hear witness of Christian koinonia community in other lands. Hearing the voices of non-western Christians can only serve to build up Christ’s body here in the US.
Fr. Dustin — As always, your comments are thoughtful and insightful. And I reckon I can count your voice among the “non-Western” as well, eh? 😉
Gary — I too have long observed our culture’s unquestioning acquiescence to a worldview in which the focus of one’s sexual desires is paramount in the determination (if not entirely constitutive) of one’s identity as a human being. This is true not just in the Straight-Gay and LGBT contexts, but also in the much more damaging context of “sex offender,” “pedophile,” rapist,” etc. In the culture of 21st-century USA, sexual activity or desires seem to trump every other aspect of a person’s being (unless, of course, that person is straight, in which case people seem not to notice. Kind of like how people don’t notice when you’re white).
Sorry — didn’t mean to hijack the convo away from your excellent post. I’m grateful for your faithful and pastoral treatment of this important issue. I have the same question as Fr. Dustin, plus one more: IF one’s identity is inextricably linked to one’s sexual proclivities, then is it even possible to discuss “sexuality as a gift” from God without fundamentally questioning (read, “threatening”) one’s sense of self? I can’t put my finger on the ontological issue right now, but something in the back of my mind is telling me that you can’t have it both ways — i.e., sexuality as identity-determinative, and sexuality as a free gift to be stewarded obediently under the authority of Christ? I may be off course here, so I’m counting on your brilliant insight and keen scholarship to set me straight (no pun intended). 😉
Now that I think about it a little more, maybe that’s what you meant by the medieval understanding of an identity determined by the soul — ??
Thanks for shining a light —