Another question has vexed recent discussions of sexuality: What does it mean to be male and female? If sexuality is essentially our way of living as male and female, then this issue pervades all others. Yet the roles assigned to men and women have been changing rapidly, and most American thinkers have been anxious to smash gender stereotypes.
Just a few years ago it was widely asserted that the differences between men and women were unimportant. One noted researcher said,” Sex differences are relative, not absolute. They can be assigned however we wish, as long as we allow for two simple facts: first, that men impregnate, women menstruate, gestate and lactate; and second, that adult individuals cannot alter the nuclear core of their gender schemes.”
As time has passed, those two “simple facts” have seemed to grow less simple, and the sentence has begun to read something like this one: “The differences between humans and monkeys are relative, not absolute. They can be interchanged at will as long as we allow for two simple facts: monkeys live in trees, and humans carry on conversation.” After all, reproduction and child rearing are fundamental preoccupations of most humans, and of all cultures, and the unchangeable “nuclear core of our gender schemes” touches everything we do.
Lisa Sowle Cahill puts the broader issue theologically, “Arguments that the sexes must in principle be identical in all characteristics and capacities seem to presuppose that sexual differentiation is merely accidental in relation to some human essence abstracted from the physical forms in which it invariably must be realized. Refusal to come to terms with the boundaries and possibilities that frame and make possible human choices is precisely the sin that propels the disaster of Genesis 3.” In other words, we are not ethereal spirits with sexual organs stuck on as an afterthought; the differences in our bodies make a difference.
The “androgynous human” who explored his/her position on a masculine-feminine polarity without much referring to his or her own gender—this theoretical person has lived a short theoretical life, it now seems. An awareness that male and female are constitutionally different has increasingly pervaded both secular and religious writings on sexuality. Carol Gilligan of Harvard has been particularly noted for attempting to describe these differences.
Few see the differences between the sexes as limiting their roles in society, and few are anxious to define the differences very precisely. William Stafford says, “If you could get male and female pinned down to absolutely clear role models, they could not reflect God’s image, but an idol’s image.”
The emphasis now is on greater flexibility in defining roles, and on greater appreciation for the distinctive qualities each sex has to offer. Still, what these distinctive qualities are, and how they should be expressed, is very much a matter of debate. So long as male and female roles are in transition, sexual confusion seems bound to proliferate.
In fact, the root of sexual salvation lies in Christ’s calling us to something greater than pleasure. Set up as a god, sexual pleasure calls the couple to an endless menu of sexual variations, yet often leaves them restless and bored despite their “good sex life.” The sexual gourmet will experience many remarkable sensations, but will end up unsatisfied. The person who hears God’s call can never end dissatisfied. Sexuality was meant to be the beginning of something, not the end. In Eden the first man and woman were made to delight in their complementarity, but their concerns did not end with that delight. God commanded them to multiply and fill the Earth, and to rule the Earth. Surely these commands have a spiritual dimension in Christ’s kingdom.
This places “marital problems” against the larger struggle to preach and live the kingdom of God in an unloving and unjust world. Couples who share each other’s spiritual calling almost inevitably come to appreciate each other as more than mere sex partners—and that appreciation is likely to help them become better sex partners. Thus, Christians who find themselves estranged begin to find sexual salvation as they turn their eyes more completely toward Christ. In plain, prosaic ways, loving marriages are encouraged in a kingdom of love, while they are hindered by a kingdom of self-fulfillment.
And yet, the kingdom of love encourages good marriages, and good marriages are critical to Christ’s kingdom, so much so that Paul compares the marriage bond to Christ’s love for his church. Ethicist Stan Grenz puts it this way: “There are various levels in which the divine nature is expressed by humanity. But perhaps one of the highest ways is the family unit, the coming together of two persons to form a unit. That expresses at a higher level the unity which will come.” Sexual salvation for married people means creating an environment of fidelity and love (even suffering and sacrificial love) where Christ’s love and eternal faithfulness are mirrored.
Does this mean only married couples experience sexual salvation? Are marriages alone a sign of the kingdom? Not at all. Paul’s example and teaching, and Jesus’ life leave no doubt that singleness may also be a sign. “From now on those who have wives should live as if they had none; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away” (1 Cor. 7:29–31). In this context, Paul explains that he favors celibacy over marriage. He is not merely speaking of simplifying lifestyle to give more time to ministry. He is speaking of a life that has gone beyond contingent realities, and lives “in undivided devotion to the Lord.”
As Paul saw them, both marriage and celibacy are of only relative value as they allow us to fulfill our responsibilities to the kingdom, and to the Christian community that anticipates it. The unmarried are not condemned to eternal solitude. Nor have the married entered eternal bliss. Instead, God designed our present lives to prepare us for a a more complete life as male and female. Our chief and ultimate orientation is not toward marriage but toward God and his church.
While marriage signals Christ’s covenant of love, a saved singleness makes another, different sign of God’s kingdom: a sign that says, ultimately, God is our satisfaction. Marriage trains us in the service of love. Singleness frees us to see God as the only source of our freedom. Both are modes for sexual salvation that shows itself ultimately in freedom. The redeemed can be unconstrained and unguarded, because they want what is good and do not want what is bad, because they are integrated rather than divided against themselves. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Gal. 5:1).
