Divine Disgust – Sexual Confusion

Divine Disgust – Sexual Confusion.

“Enough! How long will you defend the evil-doers? How long will show kindness to those who do wicked things? You’re here to defend the defenseless, to give justice to the weak and fatherless, to maintain the rights of the oppressed and needy. Your job is to rescue the powerless and stand up for them, to deliver them from all who exploit them!” (Psalm 82:2-4).

As we continue to grow in our relationship with God, we discover that we yearn to progress in loving what God loves and hating what God hates.  If we are not growing in those two areas of God’s character, it’s doubtful we even have a relationship with God to begin with. Following the example of Jesus in the gospels, loving the sinner while hating the sin itself is crucial to our growing in the character of the Lord. If God finds certain behavior morally disgusting, but we find it acceptable, then we are not where we should be. It might be surprising to realize that God can have hate in His heart. We know that God is full of love, that He is in fact Love. But hate? That is a difficult concept to digest. But think about it more, and it starts to make sense. Like the Father He is, God loves us so much that He hates whatever might be destructive to us, whatever might come to harm us or our relationship to Him. God’s hatred for evil comes out of His eternal protective instinct. Another thing to think about… God is purely righteous, virtuous, filled with goodness through and through. Out of His goodness, He established a moral universe. Since the profoundly tragic fall of mankind, the overall moral universe remains, but immorality has to be dealt with and judged. Because of the way God created the world, there are rights and wrongs, the moral and immoral, the righteous and the unrighteous. God hates the wrongs. It’s no wonder the early Christians called them the ”deadly sins.” God wants to give us life, the evil one wants to give us death. God hates whatever might be deadly to us. God hates whatever in the world was not a part of His righteous plan for the world. Simply put, God’s hate comes out of His righteous love for us and His world. Yes, God hates. But He hates whatever is worth hating. God speaks plainly in His Word about what He loves and what He hates, about what God embraces and what He rejects. The category entitled “Divine Disgust” is intended to be a biblical catalogue of what God hates, what God finds abominable. Naturally, as we are becoming aware of what God hates, we will also learn what God loves. The truth is, if we are being transformed into the likeness of Jesus and thus the character of God, we show our fearful love of God by joining Him in hating what is evil. (Proverbs 8:13).

ABOMINATION: (Hebrew, “towebah”) = An activity that God considers morally disgusting; a detestable behavior; any action or attitude that is loathed with a passion by God; behavior that God has judged as spiritually abhorrent and unacceptable; something that God hates and finds deeply repugnant; something that is deeply offensive to God’s sensibilities; any action or attitude that God thinks is repulsive, revolting and utterly alien to God’s nature.

“If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination… Do not defile yourselves in this way.” (Leviticus 20:13, 18:22-30). “A woman shall not wear any clothing that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment, for all who do so are an abomination to Yahweh your God.” (Deuteronomy 22:5); “For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural for the unnatural with each other. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful…” (Romans 1:26-27).

 Sexual activity in Scripture. Leviticus 18 presents us with a list of sexual offenses according to the way God created the world. This chapter outlines what is not Nature’s Way, that which is morally repugnant in the eyes of Creator God. This passage mentions incest, bestiality, and homosexuality in particular. These were specifically mentioned because  the land of Canaan, and most of the pagan religions, would consider these sexual activities an aspect of worshipping their gods. Yahweh wanted nothing whatsoever to do with how the pagans worshipped. It was defiling to the human body and outside His plan for human sexuality. It’s interesting that even being a transvestite is considered an abomination. In the New Testament, the Greek word “porneia” is used to include a wide variety of sexual sins, including prostitution, incest, fornication, sexual activity outside marriage (adultery), homosexuality, lesbianism, promiscuity and pedophilia. Any sexual activity outside the boundaries as stated in Genesis 2:24-25 and quoted by Jesus in Matthew 19:4-6 is considered outside the divine model for sexual activity. All humans are greatly susceptible to these sins, and the blood of Jesus will cleanse any of us from those moral failures.

The definitive word from Jesus: “Haven’t you read the Scriptures about creation? The Creator made us male and female from the very beginning, and for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, sticking to her like glue. He will be literally joined with his wife, and the two will become one flesh. Husband and wife will be two persons united into one.” (Mathew 19:4-6).

The Biblical Principle of Separation. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, God created the world with boundaries. Some things in Creator God’s structure of reality are meant to be separated. When this divine plan is not followed, there is chaos, confusion, and disorder.  The pagan religions embraced the idea of blurring the boundaries established by God. God made an ordered universe, with created things in their proper place in nature. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks maintains in his commentary on Leviticus, “Just as there is a scientific order to nature, so there is a moral order, and it consists of keeping separate the things that are separate, and maintaining the boundaries that respect the integrity of the world God created and seven times pronounced good.” The listing of sexual sins in Leviticus 18 are in this context of separation. There is to be no sexual blurring between male and female, humans and beasts, nor between blood relatives. That type of sexual activity is simply not how God ordered the universe, and so it is against His sacred plan for humanity. This principle of separation even extends to things like interbreeding different kinds of animals, weaving together wool and linen for clothing garments, planting a field with mixed seeds (Deuteronomy 22). The distinction of the sexes is sacred, a vital aspect of His creative design for humanity.  Jesus makes this point very clear in Matthew 19 (and in Mark 10), when he highlights the fact that God created us male and female from the very beginning. The genders are a part of God’s structure of our reality on earth.

Sexual Union. Let’s consider the spiritual aspect of marital relations. Stretching way back to the beginning of the universe, it looks like Creator God designed a secret plan to have intimate fellowship with all those humans of His, all made in His image. God has desired fellowship with us since the beginning. He instituted marriage for us, male and female, from the very beginning. With that in mind, a man and a woman join into a union of 2-becoming-1 flesh. Hebrew scholars have noted that “flesh” in this Genesis context actually suggests something close to a blood relative. That’s how intimate this marriage was to be. God designed marriage to be pleasurable, fruitful, fulfilling, satisfying. And God wanted the marriage to be a foretaste of the desired union with each of us. God, believe it or not, yearns to be intimate with each of us, and what better illustrates that union than a joyful experience of a marital union at the human level? Marriage is a sign that points to the spiritual unity planned for us inside God. So the intimate, pleasurable and fruitful marriage is actually meant to be a sacramental sign, pointing us to our destiny as believers, a spiritual union with Christ! The physical union signifying the spiritual union, the physical reality of marital relations giving us a vivid picture of the spiritual reality of living within Christ. The sexual act, as wonderful as that is, is not intended to be the end of the story. It is meant to suggest the spiritual relations we could enjoy with God. Marriage reveals the type of relationship God wants with each of us. Physical sex, which pretty much involves every aspect of our being, is a profound part of what it means to be human. Sexual activity in a marriage enables each spouse to give pleasure to the other out of love and devotion. Dare we say that our intimate fellowship with Christ, which also demands our all, is a spiritual version of marital sex?

Distorting the Design. Marriage is God-defined, God-designed, and God-ordained. No human person has the right to redefine marriage, tear apart God’s plan, or remove its sacred foundation. God’s plan from the beginning was to create a home in which a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife in a permanent, faithful relationship. The 2-in-1 union of husband and wife was intended to, among the other obvious joys, provide an exciting reflection of the relationship between God and a believer. So what happens when a society tries to dismantle God’s design? A same-gender relationship, for instance? Or sexual activity outside of a faithful marriage of husband and wife? When that happens, God’s plan is torn asunder and tragically obscures the understanding of God’s desired union with us. If the sacred illustration of God’s purposes for each of us is broken or rejected or distorted, then the true picture of spiritual union with God will become unknowable. There will be no reference point. Without a pure human experience to point to, how could anyone even begin to imagine the type of relationship that Christ wants us to have with Him? It’s no wonder that the downfall of marriage and family spells the downfall of the Christian faith in a society.

Room in the House of Refuge. It looks like Paul wanted to focus on the worldwide community of believers more than the individual believer in his letter to the Ephesians 5:30-32. After quoting Genesis 2:24 like Christ did, Paul goes on to say, “Yes, I truly believe that we are all living members of Christ’s body, and as I relate this to marriage, it is indeed an enormous mystery. I may not understand all of this, but I can tell you this… the marriage of 2-becoming-1 is meant to be a vivid picture, a clear illustration of the union between Christ and the Church, the oneness that exists between Messiah and His universal household of faith.” Isn’t it amazing to think about the fact that Christ wants to contain the whole world inside Himself if it comes to that? Since creation, God has wanted to enjoy a unity with His people. As individual believers, we are inside Christ, and as a universal body of believers, we are likewise inside of Christ. God is our eternal home base of love, and fortunately Jesus says that the more the merrier!

Healing the Shamed: An Adulteress.

“In the middle of Jesus’ teaching in the temple courts, the religious scholars and the Pharisees broke through the crowds and brought a woman who had been caught in the act of committing adultery and made her stand in the middle of everyone. Then they said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, we caught this woman in the very act of adultery. Doesn’t Moses’ law command us to stone to death a woman like this? Tell us, what do you say we should do with her?’ They were only testing Jesus because they hoped to trap Him with His own words and accuse Him of breaking the laws of Moses. But Jesus didn’t answer them, instead He simply bent down and wrote in the dust with his finger. Angry, they kept insisting that He answer their question, so Jesus stood up and looked at them and said, ‘Let’s have the man who has never had a sinful desire throw the first stone at her.’ And then He bent over again and wrote some more words in the dust. Upon hearing that, her accusers slowly left the crowd one at a time, beginning with the oldest to the youngest, with a convicted conscience. Until finally, Jesus was left alone with the woman still standing there in front of Him. So He stood back up and said to her, ‘Dear woman, where are your accusers? Is there no one here to condemn you?’ Looking around, she replied, ‘I see no one, Lord.’ Jesus said, ‘Then I certainly don’t condemn you either. Go, and from now on, leave your sinful ways.’”  (John 8:3-11).

Whether intentional or not, the story of Jesus and the adulteress has shame as a central feature. The woman was shamed from every angle of the story. She was caught while in the very act of adultery by the religious authorities. She must have been feeling a profound mixture of guilt and humiliation. The Pharisees then brought her directly to the Temple Court where Jesus was in the middle of a teaching session for the people. There was undoubtedly a large throng of people there listening to Jesus, and the Gospel reported that the accusers made her stand right there in the middle of the crowd. Shame must have been coming out of every pore. Complete shame. And then comes the shame of being unfairly singled out by the mob of accusers. Where is the man who was also committing adultery? Why was she the only one who was humiliated and brought before the people, and not the man as well? After all, the authorities were basing their accusation on Leviticus 20:10, in which it is clearly stated that both the man and the woman committing adultery were to be stoned to death. So, the fact is that the authorities were disregarding the full Law, which makes them self-righteous hypocrites. Meanwhile, the woman is cowering, vulnerable and defenseless, in full view of everyone. She was looked at as a scandal and a sinner. What else would she feel but profound shame?

The Pharisees wanted to set a trap for Jesus, and the shamed woman was their perfect opportunity to put Jesus in a bind. If Jesus objects to the stoning, the authorities can accuse Jesus of breaking the Law of Moses. If He agrees to the stoning, He can be reported to the Roman authorities, since the Romans have outlawed execution for adultery. There is also the matter of mercy here. If Jesus approves of the stoning, He could be accused of ignoring the importance of mercy for repentant sinners. If He disapproves of the stoning, He is charged with being a Law-breaker. From all appearances, Jesus is stuck. But Jesus is playing chess while the Pharisees continue to play checkers.

Somehow I picture Jesus standing there in front of the woman, defending her against her accusers, defiantly standing with both arms outstretched around her in protection. In a moment of emotion and high drama in the Temple courts, Jesus wisely and calmly turned down the temperature. He even wrote in the dust with his fingers to give everyone a chance to take a breath and think about what’s going on. He pointed out that all the accusers have had their own moments of sinfulness, they are not without sin themselves, and they all ended up dropping the stones and slinking away. The Torah required two witnesses for an execution, and they all departed. There was no one left but Jesus and the shamed woman. He didn’t condemn the adulteress, but neither did He condone what she did. He faced her and told her she was free to go, but that she was to leave her life of sin. Do not continue in this life, says Jesus. And that’s the last we hear of her.

Jesus lovingly faced the shame and sin head-on. He didn’t ignore it. But in His grace, the shame was put to rest. It’s almost as if He scorned her shame, much like he did on the Cross. We can hopefully believe that since He didn’t condemn her, she didn’t condemn herself as well. Jesus restored her dignity so she could begin a new life. He gave her a divine vote of confidence and showed that He believed in her. In the presence of Jesus’ love, there was no room for shame. Instead of experiencing rejection and judgment, she became a beloved object of God’s grace. And her shame was healed in the process.