Heya Greg et al!
Greg wrote (in part):
Many great and ponderous things are said in regard to sex by Christians. Throughout my teenage years we were told of the emotional intimacy effected by sex, and this argument became one of those used to encourage us to be celibate outside of marriage and faithful to one spouse.Therefore it is interesting to see what the Old Testament says or implies about sex and its implications. The Law of Moses was obviously central to the religion of the Old Testament and in the New Testament the Law is described as the Law of God and as "good and holy and true". So what does that Law say?<big snip>It is easy for some fundamentalists to dismiss the Law as obsolete for Christians, but that's too easy. (In such cases it might be appropriate to push a few buttons - mention the word "homosexuality" and the law of God, for example.) Consider what obeying the law on Levirate marriages would involve. Now, in asking this I'm not trying to encourage everyone to indulge in sexual fantasies about their brother or sister-in-law. I'm just asking people to think of the implications of this law for the relationship with one's wife/husband if one's brother-in-law died. One is obliged to have sex with one's sister-in-law. What does this do to one's relationship with one's first wife? One could findthe opportunity quite desirable, or one could find it quite detestable. The case law above seems to have arisen in the latter case. But in either case, what does this do to the notion of sexual intimacy and exclusivity?It seems to me the "Law of God" in the Old Testament didn't give a hoot about sexual intimacy and spiritual unity. Sex was all about reproduction. Anybody else like to give their call on this one?
One of the biggest problems I have had with those who refer
constantly to the Old Testament to justify their stand on a given
issue is that, too often, their approach is very much that of the
Pharisees who were contemporaries of Jesus. Their concern is always
for righteousness to the law and very seldom for grace to the sinner.
I am not saying you are necessarily guilty of this, Greg, as I know
you well enough through your contributions to Insights-l to be
cautious about jumping to any conclusions about you! :)
The problem of law vs grace is not an easy one for Christians to
solve. One needs always to strive for a balance. Too much law is
pharisaical. Too much grace is meaningless. But the balance struck by
Jesus himself, particularly in sexual matters (eg., the woman at the
well, the woman caught in adultery, even the woman who washed his feet
with her tears) seems to me one of asking not "what does the law
require" (others were always very ready to ask that anyway) but
rather to challenge people (not necessarily the alleged sinner) as to
the quality of love and grace in their own attitudes -- in their own
lives.
When he said "I have not come to replace the Law but to
fulfil it" in the Sermon on the Mount, he posed a genuine
philosophical problem for us. Did he mean that he was taking the Law
of Moses to its logical conclusion? It is hard to see that. Did he
mean that his law (love) fulfilled by superseding the old Law? Or did
he mean something along the lines of what Paul was talking about when
he described the Law as a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ? If the
latter two, then the implication is that the Law was "fulfilled"
in the sense that it had served its purpose and could now be
discarded. That gets dangerously close to replacing the Law, which
Jesus said he had not come to do!
I have come across male parishioners (I am still more comfortable
with that word than with "congregants") who regarded
themselves as loving and faithful towards their wife but who still
regarded it as clearly the duty of the wife to give her husband sex
whenever he wanted it. My own opinion is that those men failed the
test of whether their attitudes (on that point) are both loving and
gracious.
The particular OT law you dealt with in your e-mail (the Levirate
marriage) is probably a good one to use when debating our attitudes
(presumably Christian) towards sexual matters generally because, for
the vast majority of Christians, it does not seem to apply to us. Yet
one can see the wisdom that lay behind it in a community that was (by
our standards) very small in numbers and struggling for its very
existence. For them it really was a case of "populate or
perish"! I imagine your assessment that intimacy just didn't come
into it is probably right. However, so far as I am aware, none of the
Old Testament stories give any hint that sex might ever have been seen
as designed to give pleasure -- which I find hard to believe, even if
there are still people about today he hold the opinion that sex is
only for the pleasure of the man. Maybe we need to ask ourselves just
what the OT has NOT said, because it was readily understood by
everyone and so didn't need to be said.
If I seem to waffling (quite likely) then perhaps it is because
your topic is really one for discussion and debate rather than for
definitive answers. That suits me fine as, when it comes to sexual
matters, I have never been impressed by those who have definitive
answers. It is one area of life where we really do have to examine our
own consciences and make up our own mind. The corollary of that, of
course, is that we need to be very cautious about denouncing the
conclusions someone else may reach.
Cheers!
-- Tom.
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Tom Pardy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Coopernook Web site: <http://www.ozemail.com.au/~pardy>
AUSTRALIA
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