Many have, rightfully, bemoaned the decline of the family and the unquestionably devastating consequences of the so-called ‘sexual liberation’ of the modern world. I want to propose the idea, however, that in the Christian reaction it has become all too tempting to (inadvertently) treat marriage and family as the ultimate end of the Christian life. In this fixation on ‘the family,’ we may think we are being counter-cultural. But the big surprise awaiting us is that in doing so we have not really offered anything much different than the world.
Many of our behaviors imply that we believe that marriage and sexual fulfillment should be one of the primary goals of the Christian life. Abstinence teaching in our churches focuses on telling us that the purpose of our sexuality is for marriage and that we should seek purity for better enjoyment of marital life. Sexual purity is supremely important and a failure to maintain it (especially for women) is a unique sin that marks us in ways other sins do not. We, now as young adults, feel pressure in some corners to get married and make babies quickly.
There are places for many of these discussions and arguments. Yet, we must take care lest we find ourselves falling into the trap of having an obsession with marriage and the nuclear family that borders on idolatry. In doing such, we end up merely repackaging many of the same premises of modernity: finding our ultimate identity in our materiality and personal fulfilment, namely our sexuality.
Please do not misunderstand me: family is absolutely a crucial institution. And I applaud and join with those who speak about the need for strengthening families. I merely want to encourage us to expand our vision, carefully reassess priorities, and catch some things that I wonder if we are leaving out.
Unmarried Christians are often not encouraged enough to be constructive with their singleness, which is more prevalent now that people are tending to marry later. As a result many men and women become ‘angsty,’ desperate, insecure, self-obsessed, and often lazy – and waste their young adult years without a sense of purpose. Churches arguably also don’t know how to deal very well with divorcees, single parents, barren couples, remarried couples, or those who have had sex outside of wedlock. I have seen many times where this has, beautifully, not been the case in practice. But often it seems that we don’t exactly know how to find a place for these people in our churches.
Walk through a Christian bookstore and find countless books on preserving marriage in our society, parenting, dating, and (my favorite cringe-worthy category), how to have good ‘Christian’ sex. Whatever that means. There are plenty of important topics that need to be talked about within these areas. But the abundance serves as a suggestive contrast in light of the comparatively minimal available selection of books on theology, care for the needy, spiritual discipline, and classic Christian writings. This is not a slight on Christian bookstores. It’s more of a slight on us, the customer they sell to.
This is admittedly more controversial territory, but I want to suggest the possibility that current conversations about ‘Biblical womanhood’ and ‘manhood’ that focus on ‘recovering’ so-called God-ordained ‘models of masculinity and femininity’ are often part of this same phenomenon. These claims sometimes seem to imply, to me, that our identity should be found in the family roles our sexual differences (supposedly) relegate us to; my identity is found in being a breadwinner, provider, authority in the home, and if I am not at least aspiring for these things, I am not a man. (When these roles are described, by the way, they sound to me more like the 1950s than anything the Bible actually says). This seems like a slippery slope, and runs the risk of putting our identity in Christ in the background to our sexual/gender identity. I wonder if this doesn’t sound a lot like the world’s obsession with sexual identity, just in a different form.
Many early Christians had a different attitude towards sex and marriage. And, sometimes for good reason, we have rejected some of their ideas (such St. Augustine’s teaching that sex itself was ‘the original sin’). But they still have much wisdom for us. Many early Christians put a heavy emphasis on the portions of Scripture that propose sexual asceticism. In their time, cultural pressure to procreate in order to secure wealth, prosper society, and create a legacy, was much greater than it is today. Renouncing (or at least taking a few steps back from) sex, family, and possessions in order to live for the service of others, holiness, and a Kingdom not of this world, became the counter-cultural rallying cry of some early Christians: We don’t need to live for these things anymore.
I think they’re on to something.
By the resurrection of Christ we have the power to live entirely for God and others, and no longer for ourselves. That makes for a counter-cultural life, not 2.5 kids and a white picket fence. Anyone can do that.
No wonder we live with rampant sexual promiscuity, pornography, lust, and are watching our families deteriorate, in the Church as much as in the world. We are creating self-obsessed, short-sighted, individuals not well suited for healthy marriage and healthy sexuality in the first place because we have not taught them to live selflessly, in Christ. Preaching abstinence purely for the sake of marriage is not creating Christians who are much holier than the rest of the world and is, ironically, not making for better marriages.
I think the strongest church will be a community where people at all stations, and in all callings, regardless of their sexual/marital past, know that they are a part of the Kingdom: their identity is in their devotion to Christ, not whether they have two kids and a stable marriage.
Christ gave His body to us. Our body belongs to Him. He is our first love. We are His beloved. Our marriage to Christ should be the narrative upon which our sexual ethics falls.
A life of striving after sexual fulfillment and progeny, even in the bounds of marriage, is not all that God calls us to. There’s so much more. This path is promised to be a hard one. Assuming the ultimate end of this life is a happy family is wide of the mark, and defeating our ability to actually be a place of prophetic vision, and healing, for the world.
We may enjoy many blessed things along the way, like a family, but He is our only guarantee. And He has made His marriage proposition very clear: be mine only, and know that our path together is the path of the cross. It’s a path right into the pit of hell: for the lifting up of the needy, for the proclamation of new life to the dead.
Some of this material is adapted from postings on the blog I share with my fellow Houghton alumnus, Nathanael Smith (’12) which you can find at www.toomuchlovenathanaelkyle.blogspot.com
S. Kyle Johnson is a Houghton alumnus of 2012, and is currently working on a Master of Divinity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He can still be found at his Houghton email address, spencer.johnson12@houghton.edu