Male and Female
One fundamental about being human is that we are aware of being male or female. This is both at a physical level and at a self-conscious level. A very, very small minority of us find a conflict between our physical identity and our self- conscious identity, and this can lead to a medically controlled gender change. But I want to address the vast majority of us for whom there are no such questions. This means talking about marriage.
Interestingly the definition of marriage has in the UK become very topical: not only may two men or two women engage in a 'Civil Partnership' with almost identical legal rights as a married couple, but now our parliament has decreed that they may get 'married'.
So what is marriage? Looking in the Bible we find:
So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.' (Gen 1:27-28) and in the next chapter:
But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
The man said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man. That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.(Gen 2:20-24)
When Jesus was asked about marriage and divorce he quoted this second passage:
Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?
"What did Moses command you?" he replied.
They said, "Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away."
"It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law," Jesus replied. "But at the beginning of creation God made them male and female. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate." (Mark 10:2-9)
The importance of marriage as an institution is also emphasized in the Ten Commandments, where we are told to honor our father and mother, and not to commit adultery. The family, centered on a union between a man and a woman, is the core of human society.
The Prayer Book of the church I attend has, in its 16th century original version, these comments about marriage:
First, it was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy Name. Secondly, it was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of continence might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ's body. Thirdly, it was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.
For many the first and the third of these purposes will seem the most relevant these days. For the whole thing about marriage is that it represents a committed union, 'till death us do part'. It would seem to me that unless there is commitment of this kind, it is no true marriage. The main victims of divorce are, of course, the children. And there is a lot of evidence that the children of single parents have particular disadvantages, both emotionally and educationally.
To sum up, society suffers in many ways if marriage is devalued. It is a vital ingredient of good communities where people who really care are the guardians of the vulnerable, both young and old. I am at the age now where I know I can count on the children I am father to for the support I am likely to need eventually. So thank God for families, and thank God for marriage, as He defines it.
I have deliberately introduced the topic of sex by talking about marriage, because if one asks what is the purpose of sex in nature generally the answer has to be procreation. Animals of every kind, not to mention flora, mate to produce offspring, and in many, many cases – birds and land animals – the mother and father of the offspring care for them until they can care for themselves.
We humans, throughout history and not just in recent times, have seen the main purpose of sex as a source of pleasure. We jokingly refer to prostitution as 'the oldest profession'. In many temples, in many religions, sexual activity was the prime activity. There is a lot of evidence, from sculpture and pictorial images on vases or walls, of sexual activity in classical times. Greek culture seems to have had no problem with love between an adolescent male and a mature male, and King David described the relationship he had with Jonathan as 'greater than the love of women.' Many ancient laws defined the legal status not only of wives but also of concubines, while many religions allow polygamy.
An advertising truism is that there are three magic words, NEW, FREE, and SEX, and the greatest of these is ... (I think I need not complete this for you).
The age we live in is beginning to recognize how diverse sexual urges are, and accepting that human sexuality is more complex than has hitherto been understood.
Our sexuality as humans is possibly the most important feature of our lives. The first commandment addressed to humans in the Bible is: 'Be fruitful and increase in number'. This is the urge that defines us, the urge to beget, the urge to conceive.
The Genesis story of the first humans, Adam and Eve, is very revealing. I will not quote it in full here, assuming most readers are aware of it. I have written at some length about it in my book 'Genesis Revisited'.
Before the first disobedience 'the man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame'. After the first disobedience, 'then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they rearised they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves'.
Even knowing they were naked was the indicator of that disobedience: 'who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree I commanded you not to eat from?'
What conclusions can we draw from this story? Many, no doubt, that there is no space for here. But this conclusion is safe: if there is any truth in this story, our sexuality is a hugely powerful force within us, by intention of our designer, and that departing from that design will cause us grief.
The western world, inasmuch as it is trying to deny the distinctiveness of male and female, and is trying to take away marriage and the family as the bedrock of society, is denying the very foundations of the human race's place in the designer's plan.
Individually we are responsible for the way we respond to this trend. Do we follow fashion, or challenge it?
Most of our desires are very logical and rational. Often they are simply a response to what our bodies need, in terms of food, water, and warmth. Our emotional needs of security, freedom from fear, the good opinion of others, explain a great many more. But there are two areas of desire that are less easy to understand: the craving that drug addiction brings, and the urges for sexual fulfillment.
I have nothing to say about the craving drug addicts suffer from. I smoked as a youth (in the 1950s when little was publicly known of the dangers) and gave up permanently at the age of 21. So that sort of craving is a distant memory now. I have no idea what other drug cravings might be like, and no intention of finding out.
But like every other human (I suppose) I know what sort of urges I am subject to, and what triggers them. I know that people will do things (especially if they believe they are unobserved) that they later feel a great degree of shame about. And I am not referring simply to our sexual urges, but to all those moments when thoughts come into our minds which, in our best moments, we reject. We know things about ourselves that have to do with these temptations ('testing' is the original meaning of the word) that nobody else knows about, not even our nearest and dearest. Some of us may suspect that this hiddenness is not just true of us, but of every member of the human race.
In the animal kingdom the sexual urges observable all seem to focus on a single objective: procreation. The male copulates with the female when the female is in her short period of fertility, and only then. This is true whether the fertilization of the eggs is internal or external, whether penetration is required or not. Whatever urges they have built into them, the procreative urge is a tremendously powerful force.
With humans everything is much more complicated, not least because we seem to adopt the view that sex is mainly for pleasure, and pregnancy something akin to a disease. The Internet itself has more commercial activity associated with satisfying the 'sex for pleasure' urge than any other single commercial sector. It is streets ahead of Internet share trading and gambling (the desire for wealth?), which comes a very poor second.
All this would be a little easier to understand if it was always pointing in the direction of finding a desirable mate for the ultimate purpose of procreation. We are more complex than the animal kingdom in a host of other ways besides how we experience sexual urges.
But what can one say about sexual urges that deviate from this obvious goal of the begetting and conceiving of babies? What word even dare one use? Is 'deviate' acceptable? (It comes from Latin words meaning straying from the path) Dare I call attractions which cannot possible lead to procreation deviations? This may sound judgmental, arrogant, and certainly would be condemned by the proponents of political correctness.
Here the human race seems unique in all creation, that men and women seek to respond to urges that cannot possibly be explained by any fundamental instinct to procreate. Where do these urges come from?
The Bible mentions the two most obvious ones in Leviticus chapter 18 (of at least three thousand years ago), so there is nothing recent about this. The passage begins with the condemnation of incestuous relationships, and we know there are good medical reasons for following these moral imperatives.
And then other forbidden territory is defined:
No one is to approach any close relative to have sexual relations. I am the LORD.
Do not dishonor your father by having sexual relations with your mother. She is your mother; do not have relations with her.
Do not have sexual relations with your father's wife; that would dishonor your father.
Do not have sexual relations with your sister, either your father's daughter or your mother's daughter, whether she was born in the same home or elsewhere.
Do not have sexual relations with your son's daughter or your daughter's daughter; that would dishonor you.
Do not have sexual relations with the daughter of your father's wife, born to your father; she is your sister.
Do not have sexual relations with your father's sister; she is your father's close relative.
Do not have sexual relations with your mother's sister, because she is your mother's close relative.
Do not dishonor your father's brother by approaching his wife to have sexual relations; she is your aunt.
Do not have sexual relations with your daughter- in-law. She is your son's wife; do not have relations with her.
Do not have sexual relations with your brother's wife; that would dishonor your brother.
Do not have sexual relations with both a woman and her daughter. Do not have sexual relations with either her son's daughter or her daughter's daughter; they are her close relatives. That is wickedness.
Do not take your wife's sister as a rival wife and have sexual relations with her while your wife is living.
Do not approach a woman to have sexual relations during the uncleanness of her monthly period.
Do not have sexual relations with your neighbor's wife and defile yourself with her.
Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the LORD.
Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.
Do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile yourself with it. A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it; that is a perversion.
Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. (Lev. 18:6-24 NIV)
It should be interesting to measure your own reactions on reading this. You might be distracted by the reference to sexual activity during menstruation, and wonder who Moloch was (the god of a nearby tribe, actually), but I suggest you set aside those thoughts. The condemnation you are worried about is even clearer in the next but one chapter, if you are in any doubt. I know there are many who will find references to 'a man lying with a man as one lies with a woman' difficult to reconcile with modern views about homosexuality. And to find it alongside bestiality, as if both were equally unnatural, makes one pause for thought.
It seems that God is perfectly aware the we humans can get it all wrong, and misdirect our sexual energies. In the nation he chose to be a living example of his design for humans, God wanted total purity, and set drastic sanctions. Leave aside the sanctions, for no one advocates them for today. But can we ignore the standards? Can we find true happiness in a path away from the designer's intentions? And while we may not want to be literalistic about the laws given to a very different sort of society than today's, we must always look at the principles behind those laws, and ask how they should be applied today.
This is not to deny that there can be deep friendships between two men, and two women, and these friendships can take on an importance in the lives of those involved as significant as any other bond between two humans. I am sure that God does not reject those for whom such deep and committed friendships seem to be the only way they can be true to themselves. And Paul was very clear that marriage and procreation were not for him, and he commended any others who chose celibacy as a way of life.
When we read the words that King David spoke at the death of Jonathan, eldest son of King Saul, at the hands of the Philistines, once again the Bible becomes a reference point on a difficult topic:
How the mighty have fallen in battle! Jonathan lies slain on your heights.
I grieve for you, Jonathan, my brother;
You were very dear to me.
Your love for me was wonderful,
More wonderful than that of women. How the mighty have fallen!
The weapons of war have perished! (2 Samuel 1:25-27)
Each of us finds attraction in our own individual way. The only safe rule is that we treat sexual urges as an opportunity to give, rather than take. Those who exploit others, whether naturally or unnaturally, are dehumanizing themselves, and cutting themselves off from any hope of real happiness.