Real Marriage and Natural Sex

WARNING: This post is, at times, sexually explicit.

I can see on the horizon that April is going to be a busy month for me. Seeing a particular week in which I know I won't be able to write anything, I'm setting this post to publish during that week. Ah, the wonder of computers, by which we can appear to be doing something that we actually did long ago!

Of course, the risk is that, although what I'm blogging about is current now, it may be old news by the time this post goes up. I disagree with Mark Driscoll's book Real Marriage in many ways. The controversy over the book has generated a lot of heat in the early reviews. I think it deserves to generate some heat, but I'd also like to try to contribute some light, not only to reviews of this book but also to the subject matter of sexual ethics in general and the human relationship with the created order (nature).

It seems to me that the role of nature in sexual ethics is woefully understated today. The Driscolls' book is a prime example. The Driscolls ask of sexual practices whether they are lawful, helpful, and non-enslaving. They ought further to have asked of each sexual practice under review, is it natural?

The Bible, after all, explicitly includes the question of nature as a key component of sexual ethics:

For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the NATURAL function for that which is UNNATURAL, and in the same way also the men abandoned the NATURAL function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.

Romans 1:26-27

Notice the prominent use of nature in this assessment of homosexuality. Here, by the way, is one of the places where this essay is much more than a critique of Mark Driscoll's latest book. In discussions about homosexuality, too often we allow people to frame the discussion as though the argument against homosexuality is essentially a religious argument or an argument from tradition. Really, the argument against homosexuality is biological, scientific, and natural. Clearly, it is the design of penises and vaginas to function in cooperation with one another. Yes, people have devised all sorts of other things one can do with a penis or a vagina, but the design of the created order—the natural function of penises and vaginas—is indisputable.

The argument against homosexuality is not necessarily religious (for gay marriage has never, before this century, existed in ANY religious, or irreligious, culture or among any people), but is instead anatomical. Certainly, anatomy has spiritual implications, and religious faith is affected by these observations about the created order that God has given us, but one need not be Southern Baptist to look at the design of human beings—of vertebrates!—and conclude that these beings have been designed for heterosexuality (even if you somehow believe that randomness has done the designing).

Nature is not always such a faithful guide—nature will kill you, for example, if you drink "natural" water out of the wrong stream. But when it comes to sexual ethics, for anyone who believes that God is Creator, nature must be among the factors that we include in our thinking.

Which brings us back to the Driscolls and their failure to incorporate this concept.

How would it change Real Marriage if the Driscolls had considered the concept of "natural function" from Romans 1 in their thinking? Are there modern sexual practices that are "against nature" (the literal translation of the words rendered "unnatural" in Romans 1:26)?

Consider, for example, anal sex. The Driscolls conclude that, within marriage, a husband and wife may participate in anal sex with certain conditions in place. Anal sex, according to their analysis, can be lawful, helpful, and non-enslaving. They envision circumstances in which anal sex, done the wrong way, might not be helpful or might be enslaving (for example, if one spouse were uncomfortable with the idea and were being pressured), but they also consider circumstances in which it would not be.

What happens if you meet that case study with the question, "Is it natural?" I think you must conclude that it is not. The natural function of a vagina is (a) to have intercourse with a penis, (b) to serve as a birth canal for babies, and (c) to provide an outlet for the uterus. The natural function of an anus is to provide an outlet for the intestines. To insert a penis into an anus is an act against nature.

In this world of genetic splicing and the like, it is easy for us to conclude that nature is there never as a guide for us to follow but always as a limitation to be overcome and shaped according to our desires. This is, of course, nothing more than our desire that I rather than God should be the creator and that I should have the opportunity to make corrections where I think He got things wrong.

This post contains a lot of salacious material. It may be difficult for anyone to read all of this and to see past the hot-button issues to the deeper concepts. For that reason, I want to close the post by reiterating explicitly the deeper concept that is the focus of this essay. The design of nature is a factor to consider in many aspects of Christian theology. Sexual ethics is one of those areas in which the role of natural design must play a role. Real Marriage is just one example of an attempted Christian treatment of sexual ethics that has failed, among whatever other reasons, precisely because it has made no effort to include the design of nature into its process of reaching ethical conclusions, but it is hardly alone in this category. If we would be biblical Christians, we must be more careful to consider the design of nature in our future deliberations on the subject matter of human sexuality.

Southern Baptists and Sex

Caution: This post contains some language more explicit than my standard fare.

Until I sat down and thought it through, I hadn't realized how much the topic of sex has dominated the online conversation of Southern Baptists in recent months. In a speech in Scotland Mark Driscoll promoted fellatio to the status of Christian ordinance, to which John MacArthur reacted recently, drawing the attention of Southern Baptists. MacArthur in the same series of articles took aim at the daily sex challenges promoted by people like Ed Young, Jr. Jonathan Merritt finagled an op-ed spot in USA Today ostensibly announcing a softening of the Southern Baptist position on homosexual activity and all-but-endorsing homosexual civil unions. Southern Baptist blogs reacted to that, as well. Sex, sex, sex! If we could just inaugurate a good reprise of the alcohol debate (drugs) and follow on with some wrangling over styles of worship (rock-and-roll), then we could have a blogging trifecta.

On the one hand, it is good that Southern Baptist voices are up-in-arms against Merritt's half-baked essay, but on the other hand, I don't know why anyone is at all surprised. Merritt is merely applying to homosexuality the arguments that long ago entirely defined the position of his father's generation toward divorce. And what has the outcome been? Divorce rates within the church have skyrocketed. From ignoring the implications of divorce upon spiritual health and church membership we've moved to an impending compromise of biblical limitations upon divorce in church leadership. Merritt's philippic against past Southern Baptist intolerance indirectly broaches the subject of divorce, reminding us that Southern Baptists already fall short of God's design in marriage. He rightly sees that the widespread acceptance of divorce as no big deal in Southern Baptist churches puts us in the place of the hypocrite when we dare to raise our ire against those engaged in homosexual acts. Not that divorce and homosexuality are biblically equivalent—Moses authorized no certificate of sodomy in the Old Testament. But specific exegetical questions aside, our general laissez-faire attitude toward carnality in Southern Baptist pews makes it disconcerting when we find our collective backbone.

Merritt's argument amounts to a call for us to treat homosexuality the way that we've been treating divorce. I think we might be well advised to do the converse and treat divorce a bit more in the manner that we've been treating homosexuality. Certainly any objective analysis would reveal that the de-facto Southern Baptist policy toward divorce has been an abject failure (unless one's entire goal is accomplished in the mere seduction of people to attend).

Driscoll, Young, and Merritt are the vanguards of an SBC that will talk exponentially more, and more freely, about sex and yet say all of the wrong things. In the midst of a culture full of people who so desperately need to find their solitary hope of genuine identity and fulfillment in their spiritual potential for a relationship with Christ, we're busy about showing the world that we, too, are capable of obsessing over our genitalia just as well as the next person. At least Augustine knew enough to pray for chastity, on whatever timetable. It would be better, I think, for us to look down at the ground around us and see where 1 Corinthians 7:1-9 might have fallen when we excised it from our Bibles. We should paste it right back in there and ponder a moment to see whether it doesn't offer us some important truth to balance out our mirthful contemplations of Hebrew 13:4 and the Canticles.

A healthy Southern Baptist attitude toward sex, I think, would make us neither Arthur Dimmesdale nor Larry Flynt. I'm impressed by the treatment of sexuality that C. S. Lewis gave in his autobiography Surprised by Joy:

One thing…I learned, which has since saved me from many popular confusions of mind. I came to know by experience that it [Joy] is not a disguise for sexual desire.…I learned this mistake to be a mistake by the simple, if discreditable, process of repeatedly making it.… I repeatedly followed that path—to the end. And at the end one found pleasure; which immediately resulted in the discovery that pleasure (whether that pleasure or any other) was not what you had been looking for. No moral question was involved; I was at this time as nearly nonmoral on that subject as a human creature can be. The frustration did not consist in finding a “lower” pleasure instead of a “higher.” It was the irrelevance of the conclusion that marred it. The hounds had changed scent. One had caught the wrong quarry. You might as well offer a mutton chop to a man who is dying of thirst as offer sexual pleasure to the desire I am speaking of. I did not recoil from the erotic conclusion with chaste horror, exclaiming, "Not that!" My feelings could rather have been expressed in the words, "Quite. I see. But haven't we wandered from the real point?" Joy is not a substitute for sex; sex is often a substitute for Joy. I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for Joy.

We need to show the world that sex is not a bad thing, but neither is it the thing. There is something more important than sex! Paul apparently thought that the highest and most fulfilling aspirations of life could be had without sex at all—an heretical statement in our culture and in a great many of our churches today. But it is a statement that needs to be made not only in words but in action. Depraved and perverted souls all around us need not so much to learn how Christ relates to their sex life as to be led away from the poles of Asherah and introduced to something more eternal and more real…to be called to discover something so high and pure and beautiful and joyful that they would gladly abandon sex altogether, if needs be, just to have it in their lives.