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YOUR BODY IS A TEMPLE:
CONFUSIONS ABOUT LOVE, SEXUALITY, AND MORALITY TODAY

By Max L. Stackhouse 

It has always amazed the prudes of the Christian tradition that the love poetry of the Song of Solomon is in the Bible, with its long passages about the joys of marital bliss. But it is there. The biblical understanding of spirituality entails a respect for physicality. From the beginning of creation, God saw that the very earthy human creature was very good. That good may be defaced, but it is not totally erased by the Fall, even if the body is subject to suffering and death. Thus, when God wanted to express love for humanity, Christ comes to us in bodily form 

Christians, especially Protestants, have had a high view of the body. They hold that people need a covenanted, active marriage as a guard against casual or exploitative use of the body, and to form the context for the procreation and nurture of the next generation; but sex is not evil. In very early verses of the Bible we find the witness, "It is not good that one should be alone." Living in a loving relationship not only provides companionship, it teaches those lessons of love that apply to human relationships and to a relationship with God-fidelity, creativity, and embodied moral bondedness. 

Even the Puritans, although they are often slandered, faithfully followed the Reformers. They developed the idea of the covenant of marriage and were harsh to those who played with intimacy outside of marriage because they wanted to protect what was potentially holy. Some saw the marriage bed as the "other" altar of communion, a place where the foretastes of the joys of heaven are known. This is not simply sexual pleasure or procreation, it is holy love-making. 

This sense of holiness in regard to the body is being lost today. The loss shows in the idolatry of the perfect body that drives some to steroids or to anorexia as well as in styles of body piercing or television shows that turn sex into casual entertainment. To be sure, this is not the first time in human history that people have lost a spiritual vision about sex and the body. Samson and Delilah, or David and Bathsheba could be easily adapted to X-rated movies with only a little imagination. And the sacred myths of some other cultures would require less. 

Even in NT times, messy issues abound. King Herod's marriage was suspect. John the Baptist was beheaded for raising questions about sexual practices at the palace. And the question of divorce, which brought with it the idea of multiple partners, was heatedly debated. The most righteous moral leaders of the time pressed Jesus about this. They wondered if the teachings of Moses that allowed divorce still had importance given changing circumstances. 

Jesus did not debate the laws of Moses, but spoke of creation: "From the beginning it was not so...." The key pattern is the way God created us. Male and female are to become one flesh, for life. Some divorces were allowed due to various distortions of the gift of the body and the fact that we sometimes develop "hard hearts" and betray love (Matt 19:3-9). 

Paul follows similar themes when he responded to the crises in the church at Corinth-where they had, as we would say today, a pluralism of life-styles. One man was living intimately with his mother, others visited prostitutes, and still others turned to "degrading passions." Laws against these practices were not enforced in that society, but Paul did not think that legal tolerance was the same as holy living. "Do not be deceived!" he wrote, "fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, prostitutes, sodomites...-none of these will inherit the kingdom of God. And this is what some of you used to be" (1 Cor 6:9-10). Paul was firm in judgments but also forgiving of those who sought change, and he had seen change take place in people's lives. 

Some at Corinth thought of change, but plunged toward an opposite extreme. They followed some pagan doctors and moralists who believed that sex is bad for human well-being. Their slogan was: "It is not good for a man to touch a woman." These views were so influential in society and in one wing of the church that they wrote Paul about them. Paul opposed this view and outlined the life that people are to live. He writes, "The body is not made for fornication... The fornicator sins against the body itself [but] each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, likewise the wife to the husband" (1 Corinthians 7). 

And he gives as the chief reason for all this, one which he thinks people really already recognize: "Do you not know that the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own... Thus, glorify God in your body" (1 Corinthians 6). 

Today we are in a neo-pagan culture sexually that also has much confusion about the body. We may be even be more confused than the Corinthians, for we have more theories than were available then, and we get mixed signals from our leaders. 

The story continues to unfold about what our President has been doing with his body; but it appears to be morally suspect. Reports about Monica Lewinsky suggest that she was like hundreds of young courtesans over the centuries who used their bodies to get close to power. Scandals have, of course, surrounded the thrones of the world for as long as we have records and village gossips have seldom been without tales to tell about people closer to home. What is new is the loss of a sense of scandal. Nothing seems shocking. And that is what is shocking. 

Perhaps, as some say, we should try to separate the issues. Maybe we should say that what happens in one department of life has nothing to do with another department. There is some wisdom in this. Sometimes, creative people in some areas of life are incompetent in other areas. But if moral incompetence endures, or is defended as a private moral option, it tends to reach beyond the one to the other. Indeed, it tends to have an impact on everything. If the president is thinking about a tryst with a charming, if willing, partner, or about damage control after it is discovered, it is not foolish to think that professional responsibilities are not being fully attended, no matter how positively we may assess other abilities or policies. 

Besides, some things are just not right. He is also not thinking about fidelity to family. It is hard not to feel an ethical sadness, even a moral outrage about all of this. We should not have to face such matters every time we turn around. Can we not morally ask, with Paul: Do you not know that your body is a temple? And do you not know also that your office is a sacred trust? 

It is not only him, and it is wrong to make this a partisan issue. Universities, businesses, and the Supreme Court have had to deal with sexual harassment as never before in our time. And many parents feel utterly powerless at what is put before us through the media. We live in an era with one of the best governmental systems in the world, with the most effective higher education and mass communication systems in history, but the values in them in regard to sexuality and the body are shoddy. Is that really what people want? Is that the best we can do? 

I must admit that I feel an ethical sadness also about the ways some churches have been dealing with these issues. They know there is a problem, but they cannot seem to find balance and depth in the way they treat them. The Southern Baptists recently passed resolutions demanding that women be subject to their husbands, using texts from Ephesians (5:22) and Colossians (3:18). But they did not accent equally the verses that stand just next to the ones they cite. This leaves an impression that misrepresents Christian ethics and biblical insight. 

To be sure, that they are not utterly mistaken in trying to challenge something that needs challenging. The modern idea that we live meaningful and happier lives only if we are totally self-affirming, totally autonomous, totally independent, and totally self-directed, not letting a felt need go unmet, seems to generate a lot of divorce, loneliness, and lovelessness. Against this, these Baptists, like the Promise-Keepers, know that genuine love involves a certain subjection of self, a sometimes submission of personal wants for the sake of relationship and the needs of the other. Further, as few others have done, they call men to pay more attention to families and wives where many have abdicated responsibility. 

But a moral outrage rises precisely because they give a lopsided answer to problems they rightly see. They do not treat the whole of the passages they cite. Preachers who always quote the Bible should know better; their office too is a sacred one. A better view would note that the verse just before the one they quote about women being subject to the husbands says this: "Be subject to one another..." (Eph 5:21). Then comes the advice to wives, then this advice to husbands: "love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her" (v. 25). That is, be willing to be crucified for her. 

Further, just a couple of lines down, the text of Ephesians tells husbands to "love their wives as they do their own bodies...for no one ever hates his own body, but nourishes and tenderly cares for it." If there is a theme of husband-headship in the family in some texts, there are more themes of equality and mutuality. Another verse says that leadership in family life must be fair, "for the wrongdoer will be paid back for whatever wrong has been done and there is no partiality" (Col 3:25). 

But it is not only conservative voices that fail to give the deeper message about body, sex, and family in our time. The mainline Protestant churches-the UCC, the Episcopalians, the United Methodists, and the Presbyterians-are preoccupied with sex these days. They have made great strides in questions regarding the place of women and the rights of minorities; but they remain divided about homosexuality. While most churches have officially taken stands that are in continuity with the classic traditions, many strong voices advocating change are persistent. For some, it is an issue of feminism. If women find increasing acceptance in society, why not others who are "different" from the traditional models? For others, the issue is like racism. If we are finally learning, slowly, to accept minorities, then why not treat this as another minority? But most say that the gay issue is not a woman's issue or a minority question. Is it really about a third sex or a minority people? The advocates do not convince, and they duck the question of how we view the body as created by God, as the locus of Incarnation, and as the temple of the Holy Spirit as their implications play out for sexuality and the formation of faithful covenants of marriage. 

Of course, as the old sayings go, that "it takes all kind to make a world," and we should "live and let live." The doors of the church and social opportunity should be open to all people. Tolerance is good thing, acknowledging the humanity of all is a virtue, and there is no place for gay-bashing in the just life. But confusion enters when social tolerance is said to be not enough. 

We are told that we not only must all accept gay and lesbian persons, but accept as fact that some people are ontologically homosexual and that homosexual behavior is the only way they can find love; but then not only accept a variety of alternative life-styles, but affirm these as equal to heterosexual love by legal approval; then not only to affirm that, but celebrate it as the way God wants some people to live; then not only celebrate it, but religiously legitimate these views of psychological, social, and theological reality by ordination or marriage. Some view it as God's will; to doubt it is hateful and immoral. 

Here is the issue. These escalating demands finally claim, even demand, divine approval. No one can easily avoid coming to a personal judgment on these issues today, for they are before church and society. No one wants to condemn friends or be judgmental about members of our communities, but in coming to an assessment of these matters, we have to decide whether we think the biblical tradition, as classically interpreted, rightly grasps our human condition and should be used in these decisions, or whether it is now obsolete. 

I think this tradition does grasp the nature of our bodies, of sexuality and marriage more deeply than any contemporary alternatives, and that our current opinions will be on firmer moral ground if we draw on it. For all that is good, even great, about our democratic era and scientific-technological-economic culture, we live with a confused generation shaped by a morally ambiguous society in this area. Our national leadership, our educational centers and mass media, our conservative churches and our liberal clergy give us conflicting guidance. 

Yet no civilization has yet survived without a stable family life. No social movement has had an enduring influence if it was not clear about first principles in regard to sex and marriage. No faith has served the people over generations if it did not hold to spiritual truth and call for holy living precisely in regard to the body. It is one of the greatest challenges of this generation to rethink and reshape life and thought in this area, beyond the confusions of our day. 

Stackhouse is the Stephen Colwell Professor of Christian Ethics, Princeton Theological Seminary; his most recent book is Covenant and Commitments: Faith, Family, and Economic Life (Westminster/John Knox, 1997).