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Church Obsessed with Sex, not Morality
This nation has a strange fetish with sexual sins. The press obsessed on President Clinton’s tawdry sexual behavior, but seems to regard the Bush administration’s distortion of truth about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to justify its military adventure in that land to be of lesser significance. Even the intelligence report on Iran’s efforts to build nuclear weapons reveals that this administration was caught once again in what can only be called deliberate acts of misinformation. President Clinton’s actions, distasteful as they were, did not cost the lives of some 4,000 American military personnel and thousands of innocent Iraqis. Yet the Congress wasted time and money in impeachment procedures on the Lewinsky affair. The far greater, but not sexual, nature of this administration’s crimes has not had a similar response.
We live in a time of changing sexual standards. Premarital sex is almost a universal practice in the developed world against which an “abstinence campaign” is laughably ineffective. The reasons for this are not that we have become an immoral generation, as ecclesiastical leaders like to presume. Rather, it is caused by the fact that we have created a 10-to-15-year gap between puberty and marriage. That is not a reality that contemporary moralists seem to notice. Better health practices have lowered the age of puberty in girls, while the opening of the doors to higher education and thus for career opportunities for young women has postponed the age of marriage to new and more mature age levels. In the Middle Ages when life expectancy was much shorter, females tended to marry within 12 to 18 months of puberty. Today marriage in the late twenties for young women is commonplace. In the past the double standard that governed sexual activity meant that the male was not expected to be chaste until his marriage. Today, not only has that double standard disappeared, but so has the rigid chaperone system we once employed to protect the virginity of upper class females.
Is sex outside of marriage a sin? That is the way religious people still pose the issue, but that question does not address reality. As a pastor I have confronted issues where sex inside marriage was sinful. I have known rape to occur inside marriage. I have seen sex inside marriage used as a weapon in marital disputes. It is not marriage that makes sex holy and good; it is the quality of the relationship. So before answering that question we need to face these facts. Only then can we move on to the question at hand.
Are young people who live together prior to marriage sinful? If they love each other, if they are committed to that relationship and if their life together makes both of them more whole and more deeply human, then I do not think so. If they are merely using each other, then they have turned that relationship into an act of personal diminishment. A relationship that diminishes one or the other of the partners can never be called holy.
I have know post-married people, either divorced or widowed, who have formed bonded and sexually active relationships, some times in old age that are both beautiful and life-giving, though neither person ever planned to get married.
I have known gay and lesbian couples whose fidelity to each other is wonderful to behold, but who are told by church and state alike that there is something defective and even evil about their relationships. I find that deeply prejudiced, life-denying and simply wrong.
The heart of the Christian Gospel is found for me in words attributed to Jesus in the Fourth Gospel: “I have come that they might have life and have it abundantly.” If a sexual relationship is life-giving, loving, committed and faithful, then it needs to be called good. If a sexual relationship is exploitative, dehumanizing of the partners, a violation of one’s word given to another, then it needs to be called evil. The issue is not about sex, either inside or outside marriage, it is about the quality of the relationship...
It is God’s business, not the state’s or the church’s, to determine whether any act is forgivable or not. Private morality does not seem to me to be the state’s business unless it compromises the public welfare. The sexual debates that go on in the public arena are to me little more than diversionary attempts to keep the public attention away from the great moral issues of our day such as war and peace, the corruption and exploitation that takes place in business, the environmental degradation that occurs in the name of the bottom line and the manipulation of the market place for private greed. Until the state and church pay attention to these moral issues, their credibility on matters of sexual ethics will have little about it that is worthy of much attention.
By
John Shelby Spong
|
December 14, 2007; 9:53 AM ET
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Posted by: gary marsh | June 6, 2008 7:54 AM
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Phil, sorry for jumping to conclusions - you seemed very angry & support Spong. Almost all his supporters are the gay activists (so your assumption is wrong too - I don't 'like guys', I just made an assumption since they are statistically the most vocal Spong supporters).
But if you are a Christian you should reject his beliefs. He does not believe in the God of the bible (so why's he so concerned with being called 'Christian' then?). He doesn't believe God can or has spoken to us. He believes his vauge "God" ('the ground of all being' - whatever that is) is powerless to do miracles or intervene at all.
If you care about people's souls and have faith in Christ (in his person, in the teachings of the bible, realizing your own sin, and gratitude that he saved you) you should be WARNING homosexuals about their sin, not approving of them. You probably can't cure a Jeffrey Dahmer of his evil *impulses*, but you still have a duty to preach the truth to him. He may feel 'unfulfilled' because he won't act on his 'desires' but on the whole he will be grateful that God has given him a love of righteousness that allows him to overcome his evil desires. He would have triumphed over sin and death. You don't think EVERYONE should act on all their desires all the time, right? Even if that makes them momentarily unsatisfied in one sense?
What would you say of a medical doctor who didn't want people to feel bad about smoking, drinking, eating junkfood so he said to them - 'Go ahead, it's healthy for you' because he wanted them to FEEL good at THAT MOMENT. His mistake won't have consequences right away, but he should know better if he really loves them.
If you are a follower of Christ, preach the truth of His word. THink on this - remember the watchman in Ezekiel.
Posted by: Anonymous | February 9, 2008 1:55 PM
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Anonymous - don't mistake my rationality with brokenness. God is on my side. The broken ones include the phony Christian that I rebutted, which I am bitter towards. By the way, what's with the website about converting gay people to straight people? Are you trying to allude that I'm gay because of what I wrote? If so, what planet are you from? There is nothing in my response that has anything to with that. I think you need to learn to read also. By the way, I'm married and a crusader of Christ. If "gay" is in your head when you are reading my response, then I think you have some issues to work out with your own sexuality. Also, you can't convert gay people. If your gay, you will always be gay. Gay feelings don't come from living in sin, gay feelings come from being GAY! Every time I felt distant from God, I never thought, hmm maybe I should hook up with a guy. People who do are GAY! But don't worry, God is cool with gay people, so you don't have to obsess about going to hell because you like guys.
Posted by: Phil | February 8, 2008 1:42 PM
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Phil, you can overcome sin. You can experience forgiveness and leave all your bitterness and brokenness behind:
Posted by: Anonymous | February 7, 2008 7:46 PM
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Hey, SpongJohn SquarePantheist - learn how to read. Your flawed analysis of Mr. Spong's text explains why you are a pastor; probably of some non denominational church were you pretend to be real Christians. By the way, the Bible isn't the word of God. But I won't try to explain because it's obvious that your are an idiot. You don't deserve to critique Mr. Spong.
YOU KNOW NOTHING!
"Vague allegations about war" - You don't have a clue.
Posted by: Phil | February 7, 2008 12:51 PM
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Hey, SpongJohn SquarePantheist - learn how to read. Your flawed analysis of Mr. Spong's text explains why you are a pastor; probably of some non denominational church were you pretend to be real Christians. By the way, the Bible isn't the word of God. But I won't try to explain because it's obvious that your are an idiot. You don't deserve to critique Mr. Spong.
YOU KNOW NOTHING!
"Vague allegations about war" - You don't have a clue? Do you?
Posted by: Phil | February 7, 2008 12:51 PM
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Aaargh... the Spongster's at it again:
"It is God’s business, not the state’s or the church’s, to determine whether any act is forgivable or not."
Well yes, but you'd also agree it's God's business to define sin, which He has in Scripture, so why do you continue to deny it? Observing someone (such as Clinton) commit sin according to God's word and saying 'hey, that's wrong - you need to stop that and repent', is not saying that the sins in question are 'unforgivable'. You create a false contrast between the issue of personal tawdry behavior, which can be known with certainty, and vague allegations about 'war', or 'environmental degredation' which are open to debate.
"Is sex outside of marriage a sin? That is the way religious people still pose the issue, but that question does not address reality. As a pastor I have confronted issues where sex inside marriage was sinful. I have known rape to occur inside marriage."
What is Spong saying here? Just because sexual sin can occur within marriage, does that mean sex outside marriage is not sinful? That makes as much sense as saying that because you can die in a car accident even if you are wearing a seatbelt, therefore the seatbelt has no effect on your safety.
"Premarital sex is almost a universal practice in the developed world against which an “abstinence campaign” is laughably ineffective. The reasons for this are not that we have become an immoral generation, as ecclesiastical leaders like to presume."
This is circular reasoning. He begins with the presupposition that fornication is not sinful, and then (surprise) reaches the conclusion that fornication is not sinful, because he speculates the motives for it are different in the present society. But does this make any sense? Immoral acts are immoral intrinsically. If I steal and offer a novel excuse for it, it's still stealing. It's still wrong. Spong wrongheadedly assumes that because abstinence is 'ineffective' he can define away sin. But if antislavery were 'ineffective' in convincing southern plantation owners to give up on slavery, would that mean slavery is OK? You see how pig ignorant and inconsistent this man is...
Posted by: SpongJohn SquarePantheist | December 17, 2007 9:45 PM
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John Spong is simply a breath of fresh air. I had long ago given up on Christianity. In the process many friendships were damaged beyond repair or destroyed. Fundamentalist Christian thinking, or more accurately my inability to embrace it, was the culprit in all of this.
For me modern 21st fundamentalist Christianity had turned ugly in the truest sense of the word. The things and attitudes that are now being preached in the name of Jesus is truly a sin. One only has to imagine Jesus' reaction if he could see what is now being perpetrated in his name and life's example. There is almost no connection to what Christianity has now become and the source. It's truly tragic.
I was, and still am not, a biblical scholar in even the broadest sense of the word. Still through all of it I knew that there simply must have been something very special about Jesus. How else could one explain such a movement - an entire religion and church, being developed in his name, memory and example. John Spong has helped me understand what Jesus, his life (and death) truly means and stands for. He has brought relevancy and sense to what was little more than antiquated, conflicting non-sense (which are really what the holy scriptures are if you try to embrace them as literal and inerrant).
More than any other group, it is the Christian community itself that needs the intellect and spirit that John Spong offers to the movement. Fundamentalist Christian thinking (if you dare call it that) is killing Christianity.
Gary Marsh.