Sexualisation in the Church and the Holiness of God
Where am I? I am in a large darkened hall with repetitive heavy beat music, coloured lights and a young woman repeating words of love and romance over and over again as a mass of people sway to and fro with the beat. You guessed it, I am in a “contemporary church” and not a rave party. But things are not as they seem.
In the first place, I am not worried too much by the externals – hell, I was a young man in the 70’s hooked on Jimi Hendrix, psychedelic and the like. What bothers me deeply is that the words of love, supposedly addressed to Jesus by his adoring bride the church, are launched into by the crowd with great passion without any biblically based context (immediately after they had been chatting aimlessly amongst themselves). It was quite unlike command Paul’s command, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.” (Col 3:16) Without the powerful indwelling “word of Christ” I believe the church is confusing sexuality with spirituality and this is becoming more and more widespread.
A few days after the above meeting an advertisement appeared in the latest Christian bookshop catalogue: “Do You Think I’m Beautiful”… “The Question Every Woman Asks.”…. “This book teaches women about the distractions that keep them from the One who calls them beautiful, what it takes to return to his embrace, and what delights await them there. It will help you bridge the gulf between the life you long for and the life you have.” Most of this sort of talk and behaviour is drawn from the sensual bridal images of the Song of Solomon. There are however serious problems with using this Old Testament book in this way.
Firstly, there are no definite New Testament cross references to the Song of Solomon. Where the marriage of Jesus and the church is referred to the language is never romantic but always in terms of virtue – ‘“Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready; to her it has been granted to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure”— for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.’ (Rev 19:7- 8). There is no inner point of contact between the moral cleansing in Revelation and the fragrances and oils of the woman in the Song of Solomon as she prepares for a physical encounter with the man. When Jesus dies for the church he does so to “make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word” (Eph 5:26). This is “the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God.” (1 Pet 3:4).
There is no great secret about why the writers of the New Testament avoid sexy language. They lived in a world where it was positively dangerous to pick up allusions from the Song of Solomon and apply them to spirituality. The Greek word for sexual love, eros, is conspicuously absent from the apostolic vocabulary because the Graeco-Roman world of the day was saturated with impure sex, just like the intense sexualisation of our times.
As a biblically ignorant church seeks to be more “relevant” to a pan –sexual society it is inevitable that the atmosphere in the more freely expressive parts of Christianity will also become sexual. I am NOT suggesting that this is intentional, but that powerful emotional and spiritual forces are leading the people of God astray. According to scripture, behind every idol (and sex is a really big one) there is a demon (Deut 32:17; 1 Cor 10:20).
The language of demonic seduction is not absent from the New Testament; whilst it could be applied to 1 Timothy 4:1 (which the King James Version translated “seducing spirits”), it is definitely present in 2 Corinthian 11:2- 3, “I feel a divine jealousy for you, for I promised you in marriage to one husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by its cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ .”. Revelation warns the church of “the great prostitute…with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and with the wine of whose fornication the inhabitants of the earth have become drunk….Babylon the great, mother of whores and of earth’s abominations.” (2, 5)
The evil powers at work in the sexuality of the first century (there were a thousand cult prostitutes in the temple at Corinth) were the same operating in the Baal cult of the Old Testament that the prophets so deeply loathed. In the worship of Baal men engaged in ritual acts of intercourse with the temple prostitutes believing that this would arouse Baal to have sex with his consort Ashtarte. The consequence of this copulation in the heavens was that rain would fall on the earth and prosperity would be assured. Baalism was a fertility cult. This supercharged atmosphere of sex and prosperity is a dominant feature of Western societies in our time.
My chief concern is where this infiltration of romanticism into the church will lead in the future. Many revival movements break down when sexual immorality infiltrates their leadership. Much of the gains of the “Jesus Movement” among youth in the 1960’s and 70’s fell apart through sexual immorality. We see this same spirit a work in the spirituality of the church in Thyatira, “But I have this against you: you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet and is teaching and beguiling my servants to practice fornication and to eat food sacrificed to idols. 21 I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her fornication. 22 Beware, I am throwing her on a bed, and those who commit adultery with her I am throwing into great distress, unless they repent of her doings;” (Revelation 2: 20- 22). Unless the church of today, in its relatively mild spiritual climate, is taught how to discern the difference between fleshly sensuality and holiness, what terrible things will happen in the future when the struggle between good and evil intensifies?
There is only one power greater than the fusion between sex and prosperity; it is the power of the cross. In her classic on spiritual warfare, written out of the experiences of the Welsh revival, Jessie Penn-Lewis quotes J.O. Fraser, “Deliverance from the power of the evil one comes through definite resistance on the ground of the cross.” My observation is that as the church becomes more “romantic” it becomes less grounded in the cross.
In the first sentence of the most influential volume on the cross in the last century, The Crucified God, Jurgen Moltmann says, “The cross is not and cannot be loved.” This theologian means that the death of Jesus possesses no natural attractiveness. It is an act of shame (Heb 12:2) and scandal (1 Cor 1:23). The statesman Cicero said the word “cross” should not even be uttered by a Roman. The death of Jesus is 100% unconditional agape love and 0% erotic/romantic love.
Isaiah speaks prophetically of the condition of the crucified Christ, “Like a sapling he grew up before him, like a root in arid ground. He had no form or charm to attract us, no beauty to win our hearts.” (Isa 53:2, New Jerusalem Bible). The death of Jesus represents pure love. John says, “We love (agape) because he first loved (agape) us.” (1 John 4:19). A cross-centred faith is distinguished by purity. People who love Jesus because of the cross are willing to sacrifice for him as he sacrificed for them. This is the sort of spirituality that brings the deepest pleasure to the heart of God the Father. It is a pleasure that will remain when all the erotic experiences of this world have passed away. May God grant us wisdom in these matters, before it is too late.