Some Thoughts on Marriage and Sexuality

First of all, I want to give a big congratulations to my very dear friend, Corey Fuller, and his lovely wife, Lauren (whom I also consider a friend!) on their life
together, and their beautiful celebration of and commitment to that yesterday.

Oddly enough, I had a conversation with another good friend about marriage on the drive up to Rancho Cucamonga, and these conversations intersected as I thought about their marriage, other marriages, and the culture of marriage and sexuality in much of the Christian culture around which I grew up. However, to get there, I'm going to need to set the stage.... (just so everyone knows, I will not use gender neutral language throughout this post, because I am a male, and will speak as I identify, and as I have experienced these conversations).

Last time I was in Rancho Cucamonga I was visiting my college roommate, Billy, and something came up about homosexuality, and a chapel speaker he'd heard on the topic. This speaker, meaning well, had communicated that homosexuality is sinful in the same way that lust, and anything else is sinful. In this regard, homosexuals are not worse, and we should apologize for how we've treated them, because we all sin, and we shouldn't treat them differently.

Well, this sounds nice. But is it? Now, allow me to say that this post is not about homosexuality, but this conversation brings to light that which this post is about. We talk about sex in evangelicalism in terms of water, where before we're married it's a desert and after it is a waterfall. We make jokes at the wedding about the night to be, and we write silly things expressing this on their car before they leave. It is all well and good, but it is all indicative of a certain attitude which we don't see.

"Lust", as it were, encompasses things like pornography, infidelity, promiscuity, and pre-marital sex. It might even include things like attitudes towards women in general. But, generally speaking, marriage offers a way out of lust for the evangelical. We struggle with sexual desires throughout our life, but then we get married and get to release that, fulfilling our desires. The thought of lusting after one's wife makes no sense. It is other women and pornography we have to watch out for. Not our wives! Certainly our sex with them is not a product of lust....

No. When we speak about it, sex with our wife is always love.

So.... we don't really have a good foundation to say what this chapel speaker said to the homosexual. At the end of the day, our struggle has a remedy in the form of marriage, a remedy they do not have access to.

Now, again, this isn't about homosexuality. It is about the attitude that somehow the marriage remedies our lust. I say it hides it. It gives us an acceptable avenue of release, which we then pretend is a remedy and redemption. We still lust, only now we release this through sexual intercourse with our wife.

This becomes more evident when we expand the conversation. We will generally say that homosexuality is wrong on the grounds of natural design. God didn't design it that way. Yet... we allow for and encourage contraception - which God did not design. Why? Because, in the end, our concept of marriage isn't really about God. It is really about us, and the fulfillment of our desires. It is a way to pretend the brokenness of our sexuality is not so broken.

Catholics, on the other hand, have been consistent on this count, and maintained that contraception is sinful on the same grounds that homosexuality is. Why? That brings me to the point of this post.....

Marriage, as Christians is not about us. It is not about our love. It is certainly not about our desires. As Christians, we love because we have first been loved by the one who is love, and has given love. As humans we are inclined to express love in a multitude of ways, and one is romantic. As Christians, the whole of our baptized life is a testimony, a witness, to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, into which we have been baptized and in which we participate. As Christians, the segment of our lives we call marriage is a commitment to express love (our romantic love) in a way which gives testimony to this reality, by being a witness, a testimony to Christ's marriage to the Church. This is why we marry, because we believe that Christ has married the Church, and that through our participation in Christ, so too, can we love, and commit forever, giving further witness to the saving work of God in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Corey's life testifies to the saving work of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ as much as anyone I know. I trust his marriage will, too. Please join me in praying for them, and for their future, their life together.

May we also take seriously this reality of Christian marriage, and find new ways to speak about Christian sexuality in ways that are consistent.