Redeeming Sex

Naked Conversations About Sexuality and Spirituality

Debra Hirsch

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780830898107
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Sexuality & Gender in Religion

Missio Alliance Essential Reading ListReaders' Choice Award WinnerSeedbed's 10 Notable BooksNothing has exposed the gap between the church and the broader society quite like the cultural argument over sexuality. Relationships, identities, orientations and even seemingly straightforward concepts such as gender have cut battle lines between the church and the world. In the fog of war and the cloud of conflict, it's increasingly hard to see our way clearly.There is hope, however. Debra Hirsch has seen it firsthand—in meaningful lifelong relationships with LGBT friends and neighbors, in Christian fellowships and in movements that have held a concern for people created in God's image and a high view of the Bible's teaching on sexuality in constructive tension. When you consider the world from the perspective of God's kingdom mission, it turns out the smoke clears and a redemptive imagination takes root.Discover a holistic, biblical vision of sex and gender that honors God and offers good news to the world.

Part One

Where Did All the Sexy Christians Go?

1

Oh My God!

Sexuality Meets Spirituality

The only thing wrong with being an atheist is that there’s nobody to talk to during an orgasm.

Author Unknown

The sexual confusion so prevalent in our world and in our own hearts is simply the human desire for heaven gone berserk.

Christopher West

Imagine if heaven was like one endless orgasm. That’s what my husband thinks.

We were having a conversation about sexuality (nothing new in our home), and I was commenting on the temporal nature of the orgasm, how overrated it is in our culture, and what role, if any, it would play in heaven. It was then that my mischievous husband suggested we wouldn’t need orgasms in heaven: heaven would be like one endless orgasm. We both laughed, but as we continued talking, it dawned on us that there was more truth in it than we first realized.

Orgasms are one of the most sought-after experiences in life—which is strange, because it’s not like they last forever or even a few weeks, like a long-anticipated holiday. We’re talking about something that is over within seconds. That isn’t to say that getting to that moment isn’t part of the allure; it is, but it’s the climax that we are really seeking. Those final few moments are so filled with such ecstasy and pleasure that for a moment nothing else in the world seems to matter.

Anything that feels that good is just begging to be repeated, which is perhaps precisely why our culture seems to be so fixated with sex. The distorting allure of pornography aside, thousands of books and magazines are published every year teaching us how to be better lovers, how to understand our pleasure zones, showing us a myriad of ways we can experiment sexually—all designed to help us enhance our orgasmic experience.

Is that why sex is so alluring to the human race? Are we simply creatures bent on pleasurable experiences? Is the orgasm the carrot on an evolutionary stick, rewarding our biologically innate drive to procreate? Or is there something more going on? Is there something else that calls to us within those brief moments of ecstasy? Something of a more primal nature, a deeper experience that helps us rise above the banality of our day-to-day lives?

Time magazine, hardly a theological journal, raised the same questions back in 2004—suggesting there is more to our pursuit of sex than just, well, brute sex:

Of all the splendidly ridiculous, transcendently fulfilling things humans do, it’s sex—with its countless permutations of practices and partners—that most confounds understanding. What in the world are we doing? Why in the world are we so consumed by it? The impulse to procreate may lie at the heart of sex, but like the impulse to nourish ourselves, it is merely the starting point for an astonishingly varied banquet. Bursting from our sexual center is a whole spangle of other things—art, song, romance, obsession, rapture, sorrow, companionship, love, even violence and criminality—all playing an enormous role in everything from our physical health to our emotional health to our politics, our communities, our very life spans.

Why should this be so? Did nature simply overload us in the mating department, hot-wiring us for the sex that is so central to the survival of the species, and never mind the sometimes sloppy consequences? Or is there something smarter and subtler at work, some larger interplay among sexuality, life and what it means to be human?1

I believe that within both the desire and the pleasure of sex are found deeper human longings for eternal connection and ecstasy. There is, in other words, something deeply spiritual about sex.

I’m not just talking about the orgasm here, but every aspect of our sexuality: our capacity for relationships, our longing for love, our identity as male and female, all point to something beyond oneself, to the “Eternal Other.” I have come to believe that our sexuality is so interlaced with longing for and experience of spirituality that we cannot access one without somehow tapping into the other.

Sparks of Eternity

The late psychiatrist M. Scott Peck was convinced that buried in our explicit pursuit of sex is an implicit pursuit of God.

He noted that sex is likely to be the closest that most people ever come to a genuine spiritual experience. It was this yearning for the spiritual, he contended, that explained why so many chase after sex with a repetitive, desperate kind of abandon. “It is no accident,” he wrote, “that even atheists and agnostics will, at the moment of orgasm, routinely cry out, ‘Oh God!’”2

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, in his wonderfully refreshing book Kosher Sex, also highlights this transcendent appeal of sex:

In lovemaking our ultimate objective is to transcend the body. We experience an intense pleasure that makes us feel really good about our partner, the object of our love. We have an out-of-body experience. We feel transported by the sexual encounter, lifted above the constraints of the body and meeting at the level of the soul. This is what orgasm is all about. It is an intensely unifying moment in which a man and a woman experience a spiritual epiphany.3

Even the meaning of the term ecstasy (ek-stasis) implies something “outside of oneself,” which is suggestive of the often-reported loss of ego awareness and personal boundaries we experience in orgasm. Will there be sex in heaven? Christopher West comes close to full agreement with my husband’s cheeky statement: “The union of the sexes as we know it now will give way to an infinitely greater Union. Those who are raised in glory will experience bliss so far superior to earthly sexual union that our wee brains can’t even begin to imagine it.”4

Think about the sense of freedom or liberation that is captured even within just a few moments, when one is seemingly transported into a different realm—one free from the worries and concerns of complicated lives and the limitations of physical bodies. Orgasms offer us fleeting experiences of transcendence, a way of losing ourselves, a mechanism to find and experience the “other.” Such ecstasy has always played a role in all forms of mysticism and worship, and these in turn anticipate a final consummation, suggesting a place or state where we will finally experience ultimate and eternal freedom.

I can clearly remember a young guy confessing to me that the only time he truly felt free was when he experienced an orgasm, which was why he felt driven to repeat them again and again—often multiple times a day! He was clearly exhibiting addictive behavior, but isn’t such freedom and transcendence as that embedded in the orgasm an intrinsic part of any addiction? Are not all our vices virtues gone wrong? Is there not, in all our addictive behavior, something deeper being sought?

Without wanting to simplify the complex psychology and motivations behind addictive behaviors, it’s not hard to see a perverse spirituality at work in them. G. K. Chesterton was on cue when he suggested that a man knocking on the door of a brothel is in fact looking for God. We all often look for the right things (connection, ecstasy, touch, yearning to be known, etc.) in the wrong places.

Many Eastern religious traditions have, in fact, been on about this for centuries, claiming that our moments of ecstasy are never just about bodily pleasure and connection, but are actually filled with spiritual significance. Some talk about being elevated “spiritually” in ecstatic moments, likening them to a moment of nirvana—a kind of temporary oneness with the universe. Osho, an Indian mystic and professor of philosophy, saw the orgasm as a mini-samadhi (achieved when one has love of God). These can transport us into a state of rapture where the ego disappears and we step outside of time into the timeless—a “now” of bliss.5

The French have an interesting little phrase that I think also captures something of this. The moments after orgasm are called la petite mort, “a little death,” a reference to the expenditure of one’s “life force.”6 These moments elicit feelings of transcendence and, for some, melancholy. I know of people who habitually cry after reaching orgasm, demonstrating that sex can be experienced as invoking a nascent sense of pain and loss. The famous literary critic Roland Barthes spoke of la petite mort as why people read great literature—it gives the reader a feeling of transcendence, liberation and release.

Whatever it is that one is seeking in sex, one thing seems clear—it’s more than just about momentary pleasure, as intoxicating as that can be. It seems that almost all the existential and religious aspects of human life are somehow mysteriously involved.

Sex then isn’t just about sex. And maybe this is one of the reasons our culture is so fixated with sex—because in it they are also looking for “something else.” And just so that we don’t miss the point, this innate spirituality of sex isn’t just limited to the fleeting orgasm or to the intensely intimate act of sex itself. The whole allure of sexuality and the associated desire to overcome loneliness through relational connection seem to point to far deeper human longings to know and be known, not just by one another but supremely by the “Other.”

Two Sides of the One Coin

Perhaps at this stage it would be helpful to take a closer look at how I define both spirituality and sexuality. These definitions will apply for the course of this book.

Spirituality can be described as a vast longing that drives us beyond ourselves in an attempt to connect with, to probe and to understand our world. And beyond that, it is the inner compulsion to connect with the Eternal Other, which is God. Essentially, it is a longing to know and be known by God (on physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual levels). This is why we are called to worship God with all that we are—body, mind and soul (Deuteronomy 6:4-9; Mark 12:29-31).

Sexuality can be described as the deep desire and longing that drives us beyond ourselves in an attempt to connect with, to understand, that which is other than ourselves. Essentially, it is a longing to know and be known by other people (on physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual levels).7 It thus forms part of what it means to “love others as we love ourselves” (Mark 12:29-31).

Defined in these ways the similarities become obvious. It turns out that sexuality and spirituality are in fact two sides of the same coin. Both express a deep longing to know and be known—by God and by others. Both involve a call to learn the true meaning and practice of love. And isn’t this exactly how God created us—with both spiritual and sexual longings?

Both of these yearnings are essential to what it means to be human. Our deepest longings as human beings are to be in relationship with God and our neighbor—this really and simply is the human condition. The Hebrew word yada (“to know”) is, in fact, used for both sexual intercourse as well as our relationship with God.8

Every relational event is a stage that affords one a glimpse into the consummating event.

Martin Buber

Yada implies contact, intimacy and relation. It refers both to sexual intimacy in the narrowest sense of the word (in Adam knowing Eve) but also to our knowledge of God. This is significant: to yada God doesn’t mean just having some abstract theoretical knowledge about God, but rather being connected to God. It implies an intimate and distinctly experiential knowledge of God, a direct encounter with the holy. And so whether we wish to point to the fullness of sexuality (knowing others) or the fullness of our spirituality (knowing God), yada is the word we’re searching for.9

Know God, No Sex?

Despite what now appears to me to be the overwhelmingly obvious connections between spirituality and sexuality, when I first came to faith and went to church, I had the sneaking suspicion that God had nothing to do with sex—well, apart from the fact that he didn’t want single people doing it. Sex was clearly only for married people. Church seemed so sexless to me that I wasn’t even convinced married people were doing it, except that they kept having kids!

By that point in my life, talking about sex, having sex, even experimenting sexually was a pretty normal part of life. When I went to church, then, it was like being time warped back into my grandmother’s era, where sex was off-limits, both in word and in deed....