Posted by Holly Ordway in Christian Life | 0 Comments
Book Review: Sex God
I’ve worked through several books in the past few months: Unhooked, A Return to Modesty, and Can’t Buy My Love, looking at how each of these authors dealt with the challenges facing women in this culture. But though each author had valuable insights, I wanted more: an attempt to understand why things are the way they are, and where we can go from here. So I’d like to wrap up this series of reflections with a book that, to my mind, gives us a way through: Rob Bell’s Sex God.
Let me start out by saying that I really, really liked Sex God. I look at what Bell has written, and I see a keen view of who we really are, what we’re meant to be, and why things are such a freaking mess so much of the time. I also see that his ideas are bound to raise some hackles… which is part of why I think he’s on the right track.
Probably the coolest idea in Sex God is the idea that sexuality isn’t limited to “having sex.” Instead, Bell argues that sexuality is an expression of our deepest human nature. It informs and shapes everything that we are and do – in a positive way. It is about connection… but it doesn’t have to be connection in the form of physical sex.
Bell also articulates the challenging idea that sex is actually meaningful, which is a truly radical idea in today’s culture. Our culture insists that if you’re not having sex, you must be repressing something; if you can have sex but choose not to, there must really be something wrong with you! That idea is so heavily underlined in our culture that it’s very difficult to choose to live chastely and be up-front about it.
Bell’s argument for the significance of sex is not new: CS Lewis takes the same line, for instance. But Bell’s voice is valuable our culture has been changing, and rapidly, going in a direction that increasingly emphasizes instant gratification of all desires: physical, material, emotional, even spiritual. Bell’s point is that we are in control of our bodies, and that what we do with them matters. We do not have to gratify our desires just because we have them. (We also do not have to spend, spend, spend just because we have a credit card.) We can make meaningful choices, choices that either diminish or enhance our dignity as human beings.
This attitude is threatening to our culture, but for the individual it is truly liberating – for women, for men, for feminists and conservatives alike.
Let’s look at Bell’s insights into how sexuality relates to freedom. What does it mean that we are “free” to have casual sex, to use our bodies in whatever way we feel like? We’re supposed to be empowered by rejecting the “rules” of biblical morality that tell us that we must be either chaste or faithful within a permanent Christian marriage. I certainly used to think that those rules were either silly and outdated, or oppressive and unrealistic. Through experience, I’ve started to recognize that they’re neither. But what’s wrong with the freedom of casual sex?
I’ll quote Bell at length here, because I think he says it so well:
“In the ancient Greek world, people used a phrase to describe this understanding of what it means to be human. They would say, “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food.” They understood a person to be a collection of physical needs – you’re hungry and there’s food to satisfy your hunger, you’re tired and there’s sleep. They concluded that sex is just like food, so when a man was “hungry,” he would go to a prostitute, saying, “Food for the stomach…” … The “stomach for food” perspective continues to be a dominant worldview, even to this day. The problem is that it’s rooted in a low view of human nature. The assumption behind it is that people are going to have sex because they can’t help themselves. This perspective is presented as freedom and honesty and just being who you are and doing what comes naturally, but it’s built on the belief that certain things are inevitable. What it really teaches is that people cannot transcend the physical dimensions of their existence. It views people much like animals.”
When we view physicality as the end-all and be-all of our lives, we’re in a dead end. It means that we don’t really have choices or freedom, and what we feel doesn’t really matter. In that view, there is no accounting for why it’s demeaning to be objectified, why constant gratification of the physical senses is alienating rather than empowering, why rejection hurts, why we constantly yearn for emotional connection and feel that something is missing when we focus on material things.
To me, Bell’s bold assertion that we are not just animals, and that what we do with our bodies matters, is liberating. Yet at the same time, I can see that some readers will try to dismiss his ideas as naive. It’s much easier to take the cynical line and say that Bell is just not being realistic. He’s well aware of that attitude, in particular with respect to his views on sex education, noting that:
“so many live with a low-grade sense of despair, thinking they’re helpless, that this is simply how it is. Nowhere is this chronic despair more visible than in a lot of sex-education curriculums, many of which are based on the premise that “kids are going to do it.” If you deconstruct that, what do you get? A loss of hope. [...] The criticism of the “sex is for marriage” view is usually presented as the voice of realism. Are people actually capable of restraint? But it’s not realism. It’s the voice of despair.”
The voice of despair: the voice of women who are so devastated by the “hooking up scene.” The voice of women who are pressured to view sexuality as sex. The voice of women trapped in a cycle of abuse or self-harm by deadly images of beauty and sexuality. The voice of women and men in a culture of consumption, one that does not value chastity or any form of self-restraint. I hear these voices all the time. Rob Bell offers us a way to say something different: to speak in a voice of hope, not despair.
Hope is not easy. Ours is a culture of irony, that takes nothing positive at face value. Even if we understand intellectually that our bodies are a precious gift from God, it’s easy to get steamrollered by the force of our popular culture, giving in a little bit each day, having our strength eroded by constant mockery or temptation. It’s an enormous change to go from thinking of our bodies as ours to dispose of, use and enjoy, as we please, to the idea of our bodies as belonging to God. Our culture certainly doesn’t encourage us to go for the difficult, challenging path of responsibility, but that’s where we need to go if we’re to become whole and healthy.
I’ve just touched on one aspect of Sex God, but the whole book, short as it is, is full of challenging insights into how sexuality works (and matters!) in our lives. For me, personally, it is a deeply hopeful book, the first one that I’ve read that articulates how the choice of celibacy can be an affirmation, not a denial, of my own sexuality. It’s a book that’s very open-ended, pushing us to think rather than drawing all the conclusions for us; it’s a book that reminds us that our sexuality is a good thing, a gift from God, that we have choices about how to use it, and that those choices matter. Now that’s empowerment.
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