A Town Called Restoration and What it Means for Sex and Singleness
We live in the Wild West, an entirely new world of love and romance. The world is increasing ideas and disappointments, apps, and ideologies faster than you can say, "swipe left." In a world of hurt, confusion, loneliness, and shame, could the church be “a town called restoration” in a sexually-broken world?
If you have been paying attention, we are doing a series called A Town Called Restoration on the book of Ruth. Set in a very dark time in Israel's history, it offers a bright shining light of hope for individuals, love, and the community. When darkness seems to be enveloping everyone, there is always hope for anyone. I see the local church as the expression of God's people that can offer community and comfort in the face and space of a dark, confused world.
The confusion we feel is embodied in an opinion piece in the Washington Post by columnist Christine Emba. The article's title expresses its central point, "Consent is not enough. We need a new sexual ethic."
Her point made in a variety of ways is that all the work done to respond to the many sex scandals over the years has landed on one simple premise that is now the standard for western culture: "sex should be enjoyed by two consenting adults." I experienced our culture's deep conviction regarding this as my middle child went to Penn State New Student Orientation. A major theme of the orientation was the importance of "protecting" our child with a clear definition of "mutual consent." The meaning given is with the FRIES acrostic, "Freely given, Reversible, Informed, Enthusiastic & Specific." Though I applaud the effort, I agree with the columnists that you cannot create an ethic from a legal definition.
Ethics pour from our stories.
Our stories are nurtured in our communities.
In a post-Christendom world, we live without a central storyline, and our world has shattered into tribes. Currently, most tribes don't have a story outside of their exodus from their Christian past.
None of these are stories from which to build a sexual ethic.
As Christians, we have a deep and rich sexual ethic that values the union of a man and woman as created by God within the context of Hesed, the Hebrew word for faithful, covenant love. Hesed is the best way we can understand God's love. God communicates his passion through loving action and, more importantly, through promise. The prophet Jeremiah points ahead to Jesus, fulfilling all of God's promises in the Old Testament and extending it to the people of God in the church, saying,
"I will make an everlasting covenant with them; I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me so that they will never turn away from me." - Jeremiah 32:40
God, when he wants us to understand the love he shows us, offers us not loving words or loving actions but a promise. We know God's love in the context of covenant promise. Marriage, as a symbol of God's expression of love for His people, is the way God calls us to experience hesed, his covenant love, and it is in that context, that story, that His people are to enjoy sexual union with one another.
This story is hard to understand outside the community of God that nurtures and tells it. In a world that is living out a different story, single people and tempted married people are drawn to find sexual satisfaction outside of the covenant love found in a spouse.
In past generations, Christians have spoken pragmatically about how bad it is to have sex, and young people have grown up feeling shame around their sexuality. In reaction to these sentiments, more recent generations have been silent about topics of sexuality, afraid to shame their kids the way they were shamed. This path also is lacking.
Christians have always chosen to live differently than the culture regarding sex and intimacy. That will always be the case, regardless of the culture, from the US to Kenya, to India and China. Central to the Christian story is that Jesus' union with the church is a metaphor for the union between a husband and wife. "For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery, but I am talking about Christ and the church" (Ephesians 5:31-32).
This is a profound mystery, and sexual union should always be a profound wonder and curiosity. That wonder must be protected. Whenever the church thinks about protecting something, it tends to look to politics, but policy does not have an inspired track record on these issues.
Could it be that the best way to protect and support a beautiful story of intimacy, oneness, and sex is to have a great church? Here are just some ways churches can support the beauty and wonder of intimacy enjoyed in the context of covenant, faithful love.
Churches preach and live out grace. In a sexually-broken world, people need a place to land and heal, to be known and accepted. The world has no place for those who break their ethic. The Christian ethic, being much higher, recognizes that there is no one innocent who does not need grace. Therefore, we expect confession, we preach grace, and we live without stones to throw.
Churches can create space for friendships. The stronger the friendships someone has, the lower their vulnerability.
Churches can offer pre-marital mentorship. 938 Church couples have a process that helps them learn the skills that marriage requires.
Churches can network and provide support to protect people from the need to cohabitate for economic reasons.
Churches can talk plainly about marriage struggles, normalizing the difficulties of marriage and lowering the bar for people to express the need for help in their marriage.
Churches can build strong communities that bring married and single people together.
A diversity of community brings unique strengths to help protect from the spiritual mediocrity of simple, affiliate groups (e.g. a group of married people between the ages of 25-27, or a group of single men between the ages of 30-35)
Married couples can help introduce and network for their single friends who desire a godly marriage.
Single people can offer fresh insights, questions, and energy often missing when they are not present.
Married couples can display God’s covenant view of love through a marriage centered on Christ.
Single people can model a life fully devoted to Christ and his mission to their married friends.
The people of God are an extension of God's covenant love. As the people who have received this promise, the people who are the recipients of God's never-ending goodness. We are responsible for being God's image-bearers and extending his acts of goodness to one another. We, united to Jesus in His promise to his church, are a covenant people, living out the promise and call of Jesus to love one another.
As we love one another, we extend his storyline of grace and the experience of that grace.
His grace is restorative.
We become a community of restoration, even a Town Called Restoration.