Last week, I introduced an idea about the way sexuality is treated in our culture. We have sanctified it, elevating it above many other aspects of personhood and human experience. The times of sexual accountability are gone. To disapprove of anyone's sexuality is to hate him/her or at least to condescend. Evidence is seen in the defensiveness surrounding any discussion on sexuality.
But why has this happened? Why does it matter? These are questions we will tackle this week.
Think of the movie Happy Feet. It's a story about a penguin named Mumble who is born amongst a tribe of singing penguins. Singing is what they do. When they are moved with passion and wish to convey strong emotion, they break out in melodious harmony. Singing binds them as a group. Singing is their identity. Our friend Mumble, on the other hand, sounds like a bird moaning in excruciating agony when he tries to sing. It's something like a whining squawk. To make matters worse, he has no desire (understandably) to sing at all. But he can tap dance something fierce! When he is filled with joy or overtaken with exhilaration, his feet move with a creative cadence that would make a jazz drummer jealous. He loves dancing. It's his identity. So how do you think he feels once he's rejected by his tribe, alienated by those closest to him, because of his tap dancing? He's devastated. Tap dancing is identity. To reject it is to reject him.
Our culture's view of sexuality is similar to the penguin tribe's view of singing. It is seen as the foremost and fundamental form of self-expression. Therefore to reject a man's sexuality is to reject him. To tell a woman her sexuality isn't what it should be is to tell her that she isn't what she should be. This is what has made sexuality so sanctified. I have no clue about how this has happened or what small steps we took as a culture to arrive at our current location, but I do believe this is how sexuality is treated.
As a result of this view, we encourage people to embrace their sexuality. "Explore and experiment, express and enjoy," we tell them. Why? Because if they don't, they are detracting from their own experience, as if they had their inner man in a prison that can only be escaped by pursuing sex and expressing those desires.
Knowing our culture sees sexuality this way matters. Like a skilled physician, once we diagnose the disease itself, we can begin to provide a cure.
The problem is twofold, we are ignorant about true self-expression, as well as its context.
True self-expression is not seen in sex, but in worship. As humans created in God's image, we are worshippers at our core. We were created to adore greatness and respond to it in admiring love and submission. We worship every day. Worship drives what we do. Life, what we pursue and love, is like smoke arising from the flame of worship. We worship whatever is the most glorious to us, whatever is most valuable and lovely. For some, it's fame or reputation. For others, it's approval. Our hearts are idol-factories, as John Calvin said. We will always worship something, whether it is family, fortunes, or football. Worship is at the core of human experience, the true self-expression.
Our second issue springs out of the first. We esteem sex so highly because we worship ourselves. The god of our culture is not sex, but humanity itself. If a man or woman's sexuality is their ultimate form of expression, then sex is the worship service of our religious humanism. To defy my sexuality, or restrain it, is to stomp on the flame of my worship. So we are caught in this conundrum, this ceaseless downward spiral. We worship man and human experience, thereby enslaving ourselves to whatever we believe life is. The only hope of deliverance is to fix our self-worship. Our eyes must turn to something greater. That something greater will be our subject next week.
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