A Gathering Voices post by Lynne M. Baab
True confession. I like romance. I like thrillers, murder mysteries and adventure movies best when they have a romantic subplot. I like books and movies that are straight out romances. I like to watch people fall in love.
I like reading about and watching people navigate feelings of attraction, and I like it best when the attraction results in love, commitment and life-long faithfulness. Admittedly, few novels and movies portray love that lasts a lifetime, but I relish it when they do.
My enjoyment of romance, and my even greater appreciation for portrayals of life-long love, came to mind when I read my friend Caroline Simon’s new book from InterVarsity Press, Bringing Sex into Focus: The Quest for Sexual Integrity. Carol uses six “lenses” to discuss sexuality: covenantal, procreative, expressive, romantic, power and “plain sex.” She argues that we all use these lenses at different times when we think about (or engage in) practices including sexual intercourse inside and outside of marriage, flirting, seduction, pornography, prostitution, and homosexual sex.
Carol’s writing is so clear. Carol has been a close friend since we were in our early twenties, and I knew her while she pursued doctoral studies in philosophy and later flourished in her teaching career at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. I have always enjoyed talking with her about complex issues because she thinks so clearly. Reading her book is a privilege because it is a window into her thought world, characterized by straightforward, helpful and oh-so-clear analysis.
Carol advocates the covenantal lens as the primary lens that Christians should use to think about sexuality – sexual intercourse in the context of a life-long commitment. But she says that most people use other lenses as well, and she argues that we should use them to some extent. I have come to the conclusion that there’s (mostly) nothing wrong with my love of romance because (a lot of the time) I value romance in the context of commitment. There are moments in my marriage when the plain sex view is significant – simply enjoying sexual intercourse as a bodily gift. Other times the expressive view of sexuality needs to take a slightly greater role – my awareness of being female and created by God to be a sexual being.
My favorite part of the book was Carol’s discussion of chastity. Carol describes chastity as much more than a synonym for virginity; we can be chaste as single people or as married people. We are chaste when our experience of and involvement with sexuality is whole, life-giving, rich and full. She writes that chastity is “the virtue that helps us focus our sexual energies on committed relationships” but is also “the successful integration of sexuality within a person that results in inner unity between bodily and spiritual being.” Chastity enables a person “to use one’s sexual powers intelligently in the pursuit of human flourishing and happiness.”
Here’s a longer quotation that summarizes her ideas well: “Chastity allow us to take our sexuality with us wherever we go without treating other people as collections of sexualized body parts. If we are married, chastity allows us to desire our husband or wife as a whole person – body and soul. Chastity allows us to make love in a way that celebrates our wife’s or husband’s whole embodied self, extended from remembered times and to anticipated times. Chastity helps us be faithful to our husband or wife in health, in sickness and ultimately in death. If we are single, chastity allows us to be sexual while refraining from intercourse and without being restless. Whether married or single, chastity allows us to be happily and robustly embodied – to be content, yet aware and appreciative of our own body and the bodies of others.”
(Stay tuned for more on chastity next Thursday. Sorry I can't put page numbers beside the quotations. I read the book on my kindle.)
