Christian Sexuality

a user guide

This is a project I've had on the back burner for some years now. See the csaug page at Cyberchurch for the current state of play. If you have the cyberchurch password you can also see the csaug page inside cyberchurch.

It needs to be written by a team, not an individual, but I'm happy to start it until the team comes together. Most notable, it needs input from both genders of course! The female input it gets at present is second-hand, and this is IMO second-best. But it's better than nothing. Similarly, it needs input from both married and single people, and some from the formerly married would be good too.

I'm convinced that both the Church and those we minister to are suffering a great deal because of our state of denial on sexual matters. A decade ago, on my old web page on masturbation, I posed the following challenge:

I think the sexuality of God is the most pressing topic of theology. We are made in God's image. What part of God's nature is reflected in human sexuality, and what are the ways of properly realising this potential?

Or in other words, if pornaias simply means sexual sin, what does that mean in practice in our society?

I don't think there's any chance of getting human sexuality right without answering these questions. I suspect that they need to be answered in the order I asked them above. Go to it, theologians.

To the best of my knowledge, those questions are still unanswered. This project will not answer them directly. Instead, I seek to investigate the practical issues here, primarily for the purpose of providing help to those who need it, and who have a right to expect the church to give it.

Many people feel betrayed by the way the Church has deliberately chosen not to inform them, or has even in some cases chosen to deliberately misinform them, on the topic of sex and sexuality. I am not one of them, although I do remember vividly just how badly those who promoted Father and Son Movement material in the 1960s blew their credibility with me and my schoolmates. Even we knew that it was a pack of lies. But in its defence, it was a start, it was well-intentioned, and it did contain mostly true statements. The problem was that we were in no position to tell which was which.

Many personal tragedies can be in part at least blamed on this material and similar stuff that is still around. csaug will not directly answer those hurts, although some may find a healing in helping me work on it. Its primary purpose is to help to prevent further personal tragedies. If it prevents even one, it will be worth it.

YiCaa