Because People Are Not Objects--July 18, 2022

Because People Are Not Objects--July 18, 2022

"It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not found even among pagans; for a man is living with this father's wife.  And you are arrogant! Should you not rather have mourned, so that he who has done this would have been removed from among you?" [1 Corinthians 5:1-2]

So I'm just going to start by admitting that the beginning of this chapter [and much of the next] feels like walking into a minefield, and it feels like there is going to be no way to avoid stepping on something dangerous and causing an explosion.  I'll still invite you to come along for the journey if you are feeling up for the challenge of it, and I'll do my best to be the one to bear the brunt of whatever fallout there is when I do.  But fair warning: this is tricky territory to navigate ahead.

I say that in particular because our culture--and the American church within it--has a way of both saying too much and simultaneously too little about matters of sex, love, and the curious phenomenon of both having and being bodies in this physical world.  On the one hand, sometimes church folk get so hung up on matters of sex, gender, and sexuality [quite often when one group decides it has "the one true Biblical perspective" and cannot be convinced otherwise] that they can talk of practically nothing else.  Church groups have splintered--and are splintering again--over questions over sex and sexuality--and even when the ones doing the splintering insist it's not "just about sex," they generally tip their hand and reveal that's really what's gotten them so riled up.  And in a wider national culture that has not only come through the sexual revolution of the 1960s, but has come back through several reactionary counter-movements and new waves and new counter-waves, it certainly can feel like all anybody is ever talking about is their particular takes [often for church folk, dressed up to look like they have additional Scriptural backing] about who is allowed to have what kind of relationships with whom.

On the other hand, at the very same time, church folks often just assume that what the talking heads of radio and TV preachers have told them is the only thing Christians have to say about sex and sexuality that we never dig any deeper for ourselves into what biblical authors actually saying.  We tend to settle for stopping with the level of, "Well, I heard a preacher once say that X, Y, and Z are all bad, and I have never looked any more closely at the Scriptures to see whether their arguments hold water, so I just assume that whatever is different from my experience must be bad and wrong."  And so we end up as church saying too little about the ways we relate to one another and the kinds of relationships we have with one another.  Maybe we are just tired of all the noise of angry fire-and-brimstone preachers that we don't want to even try to say anything at all.

But for however we've gotten here, that does seem to be our problem: we church folk find ourselves tempted simultaneously to talk only about our hang-ups about sex and these bodies of ours, and at the very same time, to just keep our heads down and not say anything than what the loudest voices, inside and outside of the church, have already said. 

And I get it.  I really do.  I often find myself tempted to hide out in that place of, "Everyone else is shouting so much on this that I really don't know how helpful it would be to add one more bit of noise into the fray."  And sometimes I think that discretion is indeed the better part of valor.  But sometimes, that also seems an awfully convenient way of avoiding having to say things that will upset some people... but which others are desperately needing someone to say.  <Gulp.>

Can you feel us stepping over the barbed wire and into the minefield now?  Well, here we go....

It seems to me that one huge problem we American Christians are going to have in any conversation about sex and sexuality is that we are predisposed to frame practically every conversation on any subject in terms of "rights."  We are taught by the voices of our culture that everything should be seen as a matter of what I have the "right" to do [notice how that was the way so many folks interpreted issues like masks or vaccines during the worst of the COVID pandemic], and we have a much harder time seeing ourselves as belonging to one another in relationships of love, obligation, and mutual care.  And, at the risk of setting off the first of possibly many landmines over the next few conversations, the writers of the New Testament are just not interested, generally, in talking about "my rights" but rather about the ways we love, honor, and care for each other.  So much of what passes for Respectable Religion in this land shouts [loudly] that nobody can ever infringe upon "my rights," when the real beating heart of the Christian faith is a God who forgoes the "rights" and "privileges" of being God for the sake of the rest of us.  Paul regularly and explicitly tells his readers that the way to think in the mindset of Christ is NOT to say, "Me and My Group First," but rather to put the well-being of others at the forefront.  It is to recognize that my thriving is tied up with the thriving of everybody else--or as Fannie Lou Hamer put it so well, "Nobody is free until everybody is free."  That kind of thinking doesn't just settle for looking out for "my rights," but rather says, "What seeks the well-being of everybody?"

And this, I think is where the mindset of American culture [including a lot of church culture]  parts ways from the perspective of the New Testament writers.  A perspective that says, "My individual rights are all that matters," can really easily get comfortable with treating other people as objects for my gratification, to be used, commodified, and disposed of whenever it is convenient, rather than seeing other people's bodies as worthy of honor and respect as much as our own.  In a culture that commodifies everything and makes even our bodies into consumer goods, it is easy to say, "I can objectify others... so long as the market will allow it."  In that kind of mentality, other people become simply service providers, as interchangeable as different brands of the same product at the store. And in a land where we take it almost as a national motto that "The customer is always right," it is damnably easy to see ourselves as customers and other people simply as products there for our consumption--and disposal.

This is where Paul really gets hung up.  The situation that has come to his attention is one where a member of the church in Corinth has apparently taken his father's wife [I'm going to hope that's a stepmother, rather than an Oedipus situation] for his own girlfriend, and this just scandalizes Paul.  We don't know the details of the legalities--whether one relationship had been formally ended with a divorce or the other had been legally recognized with a marriage.  But what we do see is that Paul seems really upset about the way this situation has simply shattered relationships--between the father and the son, for sure, and also between the father and his wife, not to mention whatever fallout there is with extended family, like siblings or stepchildren.  The arrangement Paul describes cannot have come about without someone treating someone else like they were disposable--whether the father had been so cold to his wife that he treated her like garbage, or the son was willing to wreck his relationship with his father to have his stepmother as his girlfriend, or both of them had treated the woman in this scenario like a prize to be won rather than a human being.  In other words, at some point, somebody treated another person's heart like it was disposable, and used others in the situation like they were objects and commodities rather than relationships of love and mutual obligation.

That seems, honestly, to be the real issue for Paul.  A lot of church folk get bent out of shape over things that Paul really is less concerned about [more on those in conversations to come--we'll get there], but what Paul really seems upset about is when we treat others like they are merely disposable consumer products, easily exchanged and thrown away for another model, like everything is for sale.  We don't seem to notice in our land and time how much we do commodify people--or that it is a flaw, rather than a feature of late-day capitalism.  But that's where Paul seems to be truly riled up--somebody in that messy situation in Corinth decided that other people's hearts weren't as important as their own physical impulses or need for romance, and Paul is upset that somebody's heart got made into collateral damage so easily.  The son's position had to come down at some point to some version of, "I don't care about your relationship, Dad and Step-Mom--I want her for myself." And regardless of how much input the stepmother did or didn't have [let's be honest, this was not likely to be a situation where she was given much say in the matter, too], at the very least the son has decided that he's willing to split up his father's relationship for the pursuit of his stepmother.  That sounds like one person is treating someone else like he is disposable, and the other person like she is a product there for his consumption. And that is a shame--a literal damn shame.

I want to suggest as we move forward that this is the real key to understanding Paul's take on relationships--and sexual ethics as a subset of those relationships.  It's a matter of treating others, not as objects here for our use and disposal, but as beloved children of God, made in the image of God, whose minds, hearts, and bodies are worthy of the same love as we afford ourselves.  When that becomes clear as our guiding star, it has a way of putting some issues into greater urgency than our culture gives them, and also makes others seem much less controversial than the Respectable Religious People would have us believe.  At the heart of everything is how we love--and loving people means not objectifying them or regarding them as disposable consumer products.  And if that is true, then all of our relationships are in regular need of revision so that we don't end up "using people and loving things," as the old saying goes, not just the relationships with romantic or physical dimensions to them.  

A great deal changes--or is at least poised to change--when we no longer see our relationships framed in terms of "rights I can demand" and instead live them out in terms of "people worthy of honor to whom have mutual obligation and care." But that's the first step in this minefield--and along the way, we may well find something unexpectedly good, beautiful, and compelling about living our lives for the well-being of others.  Tomorrow, we'll dare to take the next step past the barbed wire.

Lord God, enable us to love other not as objects of commodities, but as your beloved children, who are worthy of our care, respect, and dedication.