Sins of the Flesh
When reading the New Testament, one will occasionally stumble upon some passage in which the writer refers to people being “in the flesh,” referring to their sinfulness. We might not be entirely certain what they mean when the New Testament writers say this, but we can probably all agree what it means when someone today uses that phrase. As much as we would like to make theological claims about all sins being “of the flesh,” when we talk about “sins of the flesh,” everyone knows exactly what we mean. While this may sometimes refer to gluttony or drunkenness, there is something that comes to mind much more quickly. Something that, despite the fact that I would like to see it treated equally to other sins, I still feel a little uncomfortable about even typing in this blog post. Frankly, it’s about sex. When we think of fleshly sins, we are thinking about things we probably shouldn’t say, things we probably shouldn’t look at, and things we know we shouldn’t, well, touch. “Sins of the flesh” are misbehaviors along the lines of human sexuality.
It isn’t clear exactly why we focus on this particular issue so much. Perhaps it is the desire of religious people to cling to a sense of purity. Maybe it is because among sins, this one is culturally conditioned to be especially private. Whatever the case, we can’t really deny that sex and sexuality have a special place in our cultural conception of sinfulness. Among sins, sex seems to be the biggest marker of purity and Christian identity.
When I had just graduated high school, I was hanging out with a friend who happened to be an atheist. She talked about how Christian girls at her school were so judgmental of her, but she knew they weren’t actually Christian because they had already had sex. I didn’t argue with her, but I remember thinking that it was strange to hear an atheist determining who was or was not a Christian. It isn’t really good theology. At least it shouldn’t be considered so. Generally, we consider the unforgivable sin to be the sin of unbelief, not taking a high school relationship a little too seriously. Teenagers are hard enough to get to church; we don’t need to chase them away. Maybe my friend was just wrong, and she didn’t understand Christianity—again not unbelievable for someone who didn’t go to church. But she got that idea somewhere. And if we are being honest with ourselves, she got that idea from us. This is how Christians generally treat sex.
Young couples who live together before they are married have been asked not to return to some churches because they are “living in sin.” I must wonder, who exactly is not living in sin. In 2009, the ELCA published its human sexuality social statement, an act that caused a rift in the church. This statement allowed for churches to call openly gay and lesbian pastors if they felt so moved and also allowed for churches to marry same-sex couples if they discerned the will of the Spirit moving them in that direction. While some might call this obviously sinful and point to three particular verses in the New Testament as proof, the counter-arguments are formidable. First of all, you can find more verses telling women to be silent and veiled in church and telling slaves to obey their masters, but we tend to ignore those verses today. Furthermore, it isn’t clear that all of those verses are talking about what we think they are. Some of the Greek is unclear. Furthermore, it is hard to say for certain that what is condemned in the New Testament is the same thing as the monogamous, consensual same-sex relationships of today. There are a host of other arguments on both sides. Personally, I think the more people who feel welcome in church, the better.
However, even if we all acknowledged that homosexuality was a sin, the response to that social statement would still be strange. Even if certain sexualities were sinful as opposed to others, why would that particular sin be disqualifying for ministry as opposed to any other sin? If the ELCA came out with a statement saying that we had decided to allow people who get angry and yell at people to be called into the ministry, no one would have made an outcry. If we graciously allowed people who had been divorced to participate in the ministry, I doubt anyone would be upset. If we invited people who had lied to someone at any point, gotten drunk on some weekends, or called someone a “fool,” to serve as pastors, the church probably wouldn’t even notice such a statement. All of those things are condemned by Jesus. Are anger and lying not sinful, or is sex really just that much worse? One may argue that the difference between these other things is repentance, but true repentance requires an actual turning around in behavior. To truly repent of being angry, isn’t just apologizing, it is changing your life so that it doesn’t happen again. I’ve never met someone who got angry once, repented, and never lost their temper again. Even if repentance were the difference maker here, we would still fail to uphold our end of the requirements of repentance.
The truth is, we consider anger, lying, divorce, and getting drunk to be parts of the human experience. They may be ugly parts. They may be necessary from time to time, but they are just things we all do, or at least things most of us do. It isn’t clear why we don’t apply the same grace to sex and sexuality, which is also pretty fundamental to the human experience. In fact, that is one thing we all certainly hold in common. None of us began to exist because of anger or lies, but unless someone reading this was born in a test tube, we can confidently say that all our stories began with two people having sex.
In 1 Corinthians 3:3, Paul talks about the Corinthians being jealous and quarreling. He refers to this behavior as being “of the flesh.” I haven’t experienced much quarreling at Grace—maybe I will once I publish this particular blog—but I have experienced quarreling at churches before. I’m sure we all have. I’ve heard stories of people angrily walking out of meetings and refusing to return to the congregation. I’ve seen church people be cruel to each other, jealous for the spotlight, and eager to fight over mundane details. How many wounds do churches bear from years of infighting and how does that impact our mission? These are the sins of the flesh and their terrible consequences.
We have a problem with these words. I’m certain that there are still teenagers who feel overwhelming guilt and isolation because of the sexual feelings they struggle to suppress. Meanwhile church leaders feel no shame in displays of open hostility toward one another. I don’t really think we should start picking and choosing which sins are worse than others. Generally, that results in people claiming that the worse sins are the ones they don’t usually struggle with, and ultimately people just use these dynamics to protect themselves and their ideological companions at the expense of others. However, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to focus on the sins that cause the most harm to the church and the world, especially those most in need. Imagine for just a moment that the quarreling and jealousy that is so prevalent in many churches were treated as shamefully as sex and sexuality are treated now. Meanwhile, imagine that those young people feeling guilty, isolated, and confused about their feelings had a place where they could speak honestly and openly, about the simple human experiences they are having. Imagine if we stopped using “sins of the flesh” to crush others and started using it to guide us to the cross, where even such great and terrible sins like jealousy and quarreling may find forgiveness.
