Sexual ATTRACTION isn't an issue
Submitted by Forgiven on March 27 2002 13:21:35
In reply to Re: Lots of interesting points submitted by sally on March 26 2002 15:15:28
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It took me some time to think through your previous reply dismissing my attempt to speculate about the nature of the relationships between Jesus and John, Paul and Timothy etc. Then I finally got it; the error is in your overreaction to the sexual attraction. It is my argument that sexual attraction just is - it's not a matter of choice, it's purely an issue of personal preference; I happen to like him because he's a good thinker, but with him there's a bit of sexual attraction as well SO WHAT?!! As long as I don't do anything about it - i.e. seek to establish a sexual relationship with the person, or fantasize about them, then nothing sinful has occurred. It just doesn't matter. This is the routine experience of every school teacher who has a class full of people some of whom they find attractive; the trick is surely not to do anything about it! Of course part of the problem is that we tend to put Paul, Jesus and Barnabus on such pedestals that we forget they were human beings (doctrine of the incarnation!). It is fundamental to Christianity that Jesus became a man. As such he would have found certain people sexually attractive. He would have coped with that without sin - but that doesn't mean that he won't have noticed that they were sexually attractive. And given that heterosexual attraction is not inherently more or less wrong than homosexual, the suggestion that there may have been a sexual attraction between Paul and Timothy - or even Jesus and John - is as anodyne and unexciting as the suggestion that there was a sexual attraction between Jesus and the woman who wiped his feet with her hair. The point is that he didn't do anything about it - and it is our duty as Christians to be equally pure. But that doesn't mean pretending that there isn't a sexual attraction - just not acting on it. (There is a separate debate about exactly when the frontier of inappropriate behaviour is crossed, let's not get into that.) It is in that context I want to defend my relationships with my YFs. In any one of them, there is a variable amount of sexual attraction - but the issue is for me to not act inappropriately with them. In that context a clear commitment to a Christian faith with the traditional understanding that homosexuality is wrong by the YF makes it all a lot simpler; the temptation to consider the possibility of something more is minimised. But in the context of what I've written above, I really won't abandon my friendships because they happen to be with people where there is a sexual attraction. |
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