Sex, marriage, and friendship

Gavin Richardson is a well-known Methoblogger through his blog, Hit the Back Button to Move Forward. Gavin has also recently written an insightful piece in the United Methodist Reporter entitled, "'Sex challenge' misses the mark."

Ed Young, pastor of Fellowship Church in Grapevine, TX, drew a ton of publicity recently from challenging the members of his megachurch to have sex everyday for a week as a way to deepen their intimacy with God and one another (and presumably, to show that the church embraces a healthy sexuality). Gavin's op-ed piece criticizes the sex challenge on one level for the media hoopla it generated (and the vast oversimplification required to communicate it to the press).

But, drawing on his years of experience as a youth minister, Gavin criticizes the sex challenge on a deeper level as well. He argues that emphasizing the sexual relationship in marriage as the basis for the marital relationship itself is misguided. It plays into the consumerist views of the larger culture toward sex and sexuality. (Note the common cultural message: Sex is something you've got to 'get' in order to make yourself happy and fulfilled. If you are not having it at a certain frequency and a certain level of excitement, then that's a sign there is something wrong with you or wrong with your relationship.) And it turns the focus of happiness and fulfillment to the individual's perceived wants and needs instead of to the true, intended mutuality of marriage.

Gavin makes a countercultural move in arguing that the church should be teaching that marriage is - at its most fundamental level - about friendship. It isn't that sex is not important; it surely is. But friendship is a deeper, fuller, and more holistic expression of God's intention for marriage. Gavin makes some great points about how teaching about celibacy, sexual intimacy, and marriage to youth is much more constructive when these issues are approached from the standpoint of marital relationships as friendships in their most fundamental sense.

Clearly, our culture has skewed and unhealthy views of sex and sexuality. The church isn't often good at dealing with those, probably because of our historic ambivalence about sex. And it is true that our concupiscence often finds its most ravenous expressions in our sexuality. Sex is a good gift of God when received and used in the proper ways, however, and the church should be able to talk and teach about that. I think Gavin's critique is suggesting that Ed Young's approach plays into the negative ways sexuality is framed in the culture. We can talk about sex in healthy ways, but to do so it must be discussed within a larger relational framework (of which it is only a part).

I've heard Stanley Hauerwas remark on more than one occasion that the marriage relationship is really about learning how to be friends with another person. I'm actually working on a paper right now about how Christian friendship finds its paradigmatic expression in the marriage bond. So I think Gavin is on to something, and I'm glad his youth have a pastor with such a holistic view of healthy marriages.

How big is your church?

Church growth strategies are based on the notion that there is something redemptive about the numerical size of a congregation.

The error of church growth strategy is teleological. That is, it aims at an improper end. Church growth talks about discipleship and mission, but it puts these in the service of increasing the size of a congregation. Its logic is ground in the belief that large congregations, by virtue of their success in attracting worshipers, must be faithful churches.

I believe the church's fixation on church growth is related to our culture's fascination with megachurches. Americans are impressed by size. Ask any Texan. So when we see a Saddleback, or a Willow Creek, we think there must be something great going on there.

Don't get me wrong - I have no doubt that there is powerful ministry that happens everyday in megachurches. But their "success" causes the whole church to believe that its success is dependent on becoming the next megachurch. So we have a whole lot of pastors and congregations who spend all their time trying to increase membership, as if getting 1000 people in worship on Sunday will hasten Jesus' return.

My reading of Wesley lately has convinced me that he would be scathingly critical of church growth strategy. He was interested in bringing people into saving relationships with God, which can only happen in the context of a Christian community that is focused on disciplined participation in the means of grace. That really has nothing to do with size. It has to do with the right intention, followed by right belief and practice.

The other day I came across a quote in Wesley's "Thoughts Upon Methodism," where he distinguished between the essentials of Methodism (holiness of heart and life) and the circumstantials (the disciplined practice that nurtures such holiness).

He writes, "The essence of [Methodism] is holiness of heart and life; the circumstantials all point to this. And as long as they are joined together in the people called Methodists, no weapon formed against them shall prosper. But if even the circumstantial parts are despised, the essential will soon be lost. And if ever the essential parts should evaporate, what remains will be dung and dross."

Clearly, for Wesley the power of the Methodist approach to Christian faith is bound up in practices that allow people to experience the saving grace of Christ. That has every bit to do with the quality of a community, and nothing to do with its size.

Give me money, Jesus!

The cover story of the September 18 issue of TIME Magazine asks, "Does God want you to be rich?" The story looks at that movement in American (Protestant) Christianity that is perhaps best exemplified by Joel Osteen and his Lakewood Church in Houston, TX. It goes by a number of different monikers: the Prosperity Gospel, the Gospel of Health & Wealth, Name It and Claim It, and Prosperity Lite are a few mentioned in the TIME article.

The approach, as I understand it, goes something like this: God is a good and generous God who loves his children. Besides wanting his children to enjoy eternity with him, God also wants his children to enjoy in material abundance here on earth. Besides, isn't that what Jesus means when he says, "I have come that they may have life, and that abundantly" (John 10:10)? So the faithful are called to be grateful for what they have, in the expectation that their gratitude will be met with a showering of material blessings by God. Expecting blessings is the first step to receiving blessings. Wealth is a sign of faithfulness.

I admit that I have a fairly visceral reaction to this approach to the Christian faith when I encounter it, whether in a TV program, in a magazine article, or on the street. I think the Prosperity Gospel is perhaps the most disturbing development of an American Christianity that is rife with disturbing developments over its history. I find myself agreeing with the magazine's comment that, "Most unnerving for [Joel] Osteen's critics is the suspicion that they are fighting not just one idiosyncratic misreading of the gospel but something more daunting: the latest lurch in Protestantism's ongoing descent into full-blown American materialism."

So let me offer a few, completely unscientific observations about the Prosperity approach to the Christian faith:

1. The Prosperity Gospel could only have developed in contemporary America. We live in a land where the good life is seen almost exclusively as the achievement of a certain level of income, a certain size of home, a certain number of vehicles in the garage, a certain level of intelligence and ambition in our children, and the complete avoidance of anything resembling uncomfortability in the ability to satisfy our "felt needs."

2. The Prosperity Gospel points the emphasis of our faith away from Jesus Christ and toward ourselves. In this sense, it encourages a certain idolatrous preoccupation with me and what I think I need.

3. The Prosperity Gospel blames the poor for their poverty, by implying that they simply don't have the proper faith required to become rich.

4. The Prosperity Gospel rejects serious study of the Bible and the Christian tradition. It ignores the story of Israel and the story of the Christian church in favor of a false story concocted to appeal to the very worst in human nature.

5. The Prosperity Gospel knows nothing of Christian discipleship as a call to deny oneself, take up one's cross, and follow Jesus Christ.

(As a sidenote, I think we would do well to ask the converse question of the TIME article: Does God want you to be destitute? I believe the answer to that question is no. God doesn't want us to be either spiritually or materially destitute. Our Savior preached the good news and fed the hungry. We are called into a relationship with him whereby we are fed in both ways, specifically through the church he has established. And when we answer the call to discipleship, we are called to go forth and feed others - both the poor in spirit and the poor in body.)

The very fact that such a movement as the Prosperity Gospel exists is a call for the church to repent and proclaim the evangelical faith passed down to us through the ages. And the truth of the matter is that God is asking us to do exactly what is contrary to human nature: give up what we have to follow Jesus. We begin to know the fullness of salvation at the point where we willingly sacrifice on our own ambitions, treasures, careers, incomes, and yes, even lives.

If the devil is tempting you to seek "Your Best Life Now" as the true path of faith, go read Job. Then read the Sermon on the Mount. And then a life of St. Francis. And then go work amongst Christ's poor and find out what he means when he says, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor" (Luke 4:18).

And never forget that sometimes the devil comes in fancy shoes and slicked back hair, wearing an expensive suit and waving a Bible in the air.