Sex God/Doc's Notes
From Neoredemptive
For the record, I've been unusually tired and grouchy lately, so I am probably not going to be charitable enough as I write up my thoughts. I expect I'll have to come back later and "nice" things up a bit, but bear with me, I'm in the process of reading this book so you should probably think of this page more like a personal notepad than as a proper review.
First, aesthetics. The book had a very strange smell. Strange, like the glue was mixed with just a touch of cheap perfume. It seems to have faded in the hours since taking it out of the Amazon box, and I ordinarily wouldn't comment on such a thing, but then again, this is the first time in a long time I've been struck by a book's smell. Also, the visual style of the book, inside and out, is surprisingly pink (salmon?) with occasional accents of blue, and I'm really not digging on look, especially as it carries over to solid-colored pages in the book itself. Neither am I digging on
making multiple paragraphs
out of a single
sentence or phrase
of
English
prose.
Another style/presentation issue is the use of endnotes. I dislike endnotes as a general rule -- they make it unnecessarily difficult to follow the author's excurses and identify their references. I can tolerate one endnote every few pages, but if you're going to have at least one note per page then please, please, please use footnotes instead. To this point, the endnotes in Sex God seem to have been written as if to insert parenthetical comments, stories, apologies, or simply to ask questions of the reader, but their positioning in an appendix completely outside of the regular page flow of the book pretty much completely prevents them from having their desired impact. So all of you young Christian authors out there who want to emulate Rob's style, please at least do me the courtesy of using footnotes instead.
Yet another style issue: vignettes. The book is peppered with fractional stories about people. but very few of them have resolutions. (One in Chapter six stands out to me because, well, it's the first that's stood out to me.) Some of these stories hit very close to home for me, and the ones that are the most familiar to me seem to always be the ones about which the text gives the least hope, the least vision. Congratulations, Rob, on being the kind of pastor that people can divulge their particularly nasty sexual brokenness to; now what is a good pastor to do with these stories, besides using them to tug at the heart-strings of countless anonymous readers?
But already I'm drifting from style into themes from the text, so let me explore some things that stood out to me in and about the text.
I don't know about the circles anyone else hangs out in, but if I use the word "spiritual" around most of my friends, what springs to mind for them has pretty much nothing to do with "being under the providential authority of the Spirit of Jesus Christ to the glory of God the Father". Most "spirituality" I've seen has more of a scent of content-free gnostic self-righteousness, and has much more to do with the zeitgeist than the Spirit of the Living God. So I get a little worried about the promise at the end of the introduction to explore the connection between sex and "spirituality" where the latter hasn't been very well identified. There are plenty of non-Christian memes that already claim to be part of that space, including tantric yoga and significant chunks of the New Age movement in the west. A lot of things can be said using the word "spiritual" that are true assuming a Christian definition of "spirituality"; these same statements take on horrific distortions when read using a non-Christian definition of "spirituality". Then again, perhaps I'm simply spoiled by coming off of reading Sex and the Supremacy of Christ, which emphasizes explicitly that our sexuality is not so much about spirituality as it is about God, and not just any abstract God we might stumble upon but rather the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (surprise, surprise).
Bell's concept of sin is presented in Chapter One -- "God Wears Lipstick" -- and it boils down to "dehumanization". When someone is treated as being less than human -- a burden, an object, a tool, a toy, a prop, a support, whatever -- something awful happens, both to the dehumanizer and the one so dehumanized. While I certainly don't disagree with this idea of itself, I'm worried about what is left unsaid. Particularly, if sin is a problem between and among people, then what's God's stake in the game? Is God merely saddened by our abuse and moved to compassion, or is He also Himself sinned against and therefore a necessary participant in setting right that sin (redemption)?
A technical aside -- Bell claims in this chapter that "[t]he first Christians called this the 'new humanity'." He makes this claim without a reference or endnote. It was my understanding that the first Christians called themselves "people of the way", and that they began being called "Christians" fairly early on (starting in Antioch). Paul certainly uses the image of a "new person" (Greek/anthropos), but it can hardly be called his dominant metaphor (no more dominant than, say, calling himself a "slave of Jesus Christ", or calling believers those "chosen" of God). So I'm curious where this claim comes from. What worries me a bit is that Bell has previously cited Ken Wilber approvingly, who is known for using precisely this phrase in conjunction with promoting a thoroughly non-Christian theological framework. It doesn't help, then, when Bell also prefers to talk about humans containing a "divine spark" (a gnostic phrase) instead of talking about us bearing the image and likeness of God (the Imago Dei).
In Chapter Two ("Sexy on the Inside") Bell lays out what I think is intended to be his working definition of "sex" for the purposes of this book. Forgive a bit of a technical discussion, but this does lead somewhere important: Bell says "[s]cholars believe that the word sex is related to the Latin word secare, which means 'to sever, to amputate, or to disconnect from the whole.'" Those words are indeed related -- our word "sex" comes from the Latin word sexus which derives from the "sec-" root. Yes, secare also derives from this root; so do many other Latin words [1], carrying meanings from military retreat to wielding an ax. Etymology is a tricky game, and there is need for great care in using it to find the "real meaning" of words; otherwise, we leave ourselves open to sandbagging and bullshit (those two words being themselves prime examples). Yes, our word "sex" derives from a Latin root that relates to difference, distinction, or division; it is a far leap from this to saying that:
[o]ur sexuality, then, has two dimensions. First, our sexuality is our awareness of how profoundly we're severed and cut off and disconnected. Second, our sexuality is all of the ways we go about trying to reconnect.
Here Bell takes a flying leap from Latin etymology to a theological statement about what sex is, and it seems to me that the latter demands better sources than etymological word-games. What's worse, this leap takes us to a fundamentally unbiblical conclusion: it implies that Adam and Eve had no need to became "sexual" beings until after the fall, because prior to the fall they were not cut off or disconnected from God or one another and therefore had no need to "reconnect". This leaves sexuality necessarily bound up with sin and the curse, and with no grounding in the creation order; but clearly this contradicts Scripture because the pre-fall cultural mandate includes "be[ing] fruitful and multiply[ing]" -- which God (to whom is due all honor and praise and glory and thanks) has enables us to do only by way of sex. We can follow the lead of some of the early Roman theologians and speculate that before the fall we reproduced through some unknown asexual mechanism (children bursting forth fully-formed from the foreheads of their parents or some such nonsense), but such ideas are nothing but worthless speculation and have no place in a Biblical discussion of sexuality.
So here I am on page 40 of the book, and already I'm getting skeptical because the premise of the book appears to be a flawed definition. Again, perhaps I was just spoiled by Sex and the Supremacy of Christ. But my hope to reach page 175 without becoming snarky and nit-picky is again threatened on page 42 where this working definition turns a book that's supposed to be about sex into yet another book about spiritual formation in the broadest sense, because "sexuality" is really "energies for connection". So relational sins like being non-committal, anti-social, or arrogant are unhelpfully lumped together as "sexual dysfunction[s]". Because, apparently, "sexual dysfunction" in the strictest conventional sense just doesn't describe enough ways for people to foul themselves and each other.
To be clear: I don't disagree with Rob regarding the sinfulness of hurting each other, gossiping about each other, failing to forgive each other, not working to make peace with each other, or getting severed from each other. They are sins, make no mistake. Their prevalence within the Christian community is indicative of deep pathologies that need to be brought into the light and brought under the healing redemptive ministry of Jesus Christ. My worry is that "sex" is being used here in a word game to make spiritual formation sound tantalizing, to draw attention by shock instead of a proclamation of truth. I even wonder if these sorts of games might feed into a kind of gnostic elitism within the church by stroking the egos of a self-selecting "in" crowd who "get" the secret connection between gossip and sexuality that Rob Bell has uncovered but that the un-gnostic unwashed masses fail to recognize (imagined, superficial, or tangential though that connection may be).
I also can't let crap like this slide: Bell says that "you can't be connected with God until you're at peace with who you are." This notion is popular in New Age circles, and shows up a lot in church pop psychology, but thinking Christians have always consistently rejected it. There are only two ways to be "at peace" with who you are Biblically: you can either choose to be at peace that "who you are" is a rebellious ungrateful enemy of God, or you can repent and receive Jesus as your peace. But the former doesn't sound very peaceful, and the latter can only come as a consequence of a connection with God. This is why we preach grace and not works-righteousness, why we preach revelation and not natural theology, why we preach redemption and not therapy; if God is not already in the process of rescuing us and of connecting Himself with us (as ultimately expressed in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ), then there can be no peace, because our natural state is war against our maker, each other, and ourselves.
And so we begin chapter three, "Angels and Animals", in which Bell outlines an anthropology -- a view of humanity, neither solely beast (controlled by flesh) nor solely spirit (giving no thought to physical desire). Bell mostly walks the right line here, refusing to denigrate body or spirit, insisting that we not settle for a false, fractional vision of humanity. Unfortunately, Bell again falls into a common gnostic error, setting up "body and spirit" as two forces in diametric moral opposition, flesh trying to make us wicked and beastly and spirit trying to make us impossibly good and pure. The high change of failure is not what makes it wrong to try to be "angels"; such an effort is wrong because our bodies were made "very good" in creation and are given to us "richly to enjoy" (1 Tim 6:17). Being "animals" is not wrong because desire, hunger, and sexuality are (of themselves) bad; our wickedness is in our habit of exalting these appetites so as to dethrone the Spirit of the Living God in His temple (our bodies).
On the upside, however, it appears that Bell has completely dropped his redefinition of "sexuality" for this chapter, since disconnection/reconnection don't show up as "sexual" themes at all (for this chapter anyway). The word "Sex" has, thankfully, reverted back to something closer to "the animal desire to hump".
Chapter four explores "lust" as a proxy for exploring "sin"; lust (sin) makes promises it can't deliver on, contorts right longings into wrong obsessions, ensnares God-like love and replaces it with slavery to our discontentment. In the best tradition of spiritual formation, he runs with the "replace a bad habit with a good habit and a positive motivation" theme.
Another stylistic quibble, I'm noticing Bell repeatedly referring to "the author of Ephesians" and not to "Paul, the author of Ephesians". This is, I suppose, a tip of the hat to modern textual criticism that questions whether Paul in fact wrote Ephesians. But if Bell is willing to go (seemingly) out of his way to remain credible in the eyes of that community, why is he making such tenuous or undocumented reaches about etymology and historic context elsewhere? Are the opinions of learned linguists and historians thoroughly uninteresting and completely subsumed by the need to retain the respect of liberal theologians?
Chapter five articulates a theology of the cross, and it's yet another case where my response is a hearty "yes, and". I do believe, for example, that Jesus, in going to the cross, placed himself within a system of power and greed and retribution not to feed it but to break it. I do believe, for example, that in going to the Cross Jesus experienced and participated in our brokenness, our loneliness, our disconnection. But I also believe that on the cross Jesus "became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Cor 5:21), that Jesus bore our sins in His own body (1 Peter 2:24) to make propitiation for the sins of the people (Hebrews 2:17). So while I appreciate the poetic image of God daring to risk loving us, I am not comfortable speaking of the transaction of the cross strictly in terms of how God suffered so as to commiserate with our suffering (and to invite us to participate in His suffering). Yes, God entered into human history as an oft-spurned lover inviting His estranged back to Himself and demonstrating the deep humility of His love for us. But in so doing He did not cease to be creator, judge, father, "the truth", or warrior.
Despite Bell's claim (p.97), it is not "popular" in our day to think of God as creator, judge, father, truth, or warrior. Seeing God as suffering in/with/under the world is an extremely popular concept in pantheism, panentheism, and panpaganism, but it has nothing to do with any form of historic Christian thought.
One more hugely important theological "nit": It was not sufficient to Jesus' mission that there be "rumors" of His resurrection. There certainly were rumors, but our faith rests not upon these but upon the historical fact that the tomb was empty on the third day. Were this fact false -- if such rumors proved to be only mere rumors -- we who have put our faith in Jesus are to be pitied above all others (1 Cor 15:14-19).
Chapter six opens with a discussion of submission, with exegesis of Ephesians 5:21 following (roughly) that of Keener and Grenz, although (to his credit) he's more even-handed with it than many. Bell also has apparently completely abandoned his earlier working definition of sex (search for connection), because now "sex is not the search for something that's missing. It's the expression of something that's been found. It's designed to be the overflow, the colmination of something that a man and a woman have found in each other. It's a celebration of this living, breathing thing that's happening between the two of them" (p.123).
Chapter seven explores the connection between sexuality and exclusivity. Bell does make one interesting, popular, and fallacious suggestion: that, for an unmarried but sexually active couple, "maybe it's already a marriage in God's eyes, and maybe their having sex has already joined them as man and wife from God's perspective." First, if this is the case, most are not still having sex with the first person they ever had sex with (and, therefore, by Bell's argument, married), so they're still committing adultery by Jesus' standard in Matthew 19. Second, in the Hebrew traditions which Bell here uses to interpret the text, sex was always the (literal) consummation of an event which included public, ecclesiastic, and legal recognition of the marriage, which clearly does not apply to our hypothetical unwed fornicators.
Chapter eight explores sexuality and unity. Bell claims that, in Adam calling Eve "bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh", he is essentially saying, "where I am weak, she is strong, and where she is weak, I am strong" (p.150), but this is precisely contrary to how the text reads; if bones represent strength and flesh weakness, then Eve is "strength of Adam's strength" and "weakness of Adam's weakness", which does not at all suggest complementarity. In exploring the word Hebrew/Echad, Bell starts down the right track of marriage being intended as a picture, but doesn't carry the thought to a Christian completion. It's meant to be a picture of wholeness and not brokenness, yes. But where does that wholeness come from? Paul would answer that it comes from Christ, that the marriage is not merely a picture of some generic wholeness, but rather the particular wholeness of Christ united with His bride, the church. While Bell's thoughts on the essential unity of the self needing to be maintained in sex are right at the abstract level, he immediately trots out the usual ham-fisted application: the guy wants sex but not conversation, so it's not a real communion. What about the girl who wants conversation but not sex? Isn't that just as much a violation of being wholly united in marriage? (In fairness, Bell did mention earlier that sex is indispensable to marriage, but where does that leave a sexless marriage? Is it not a marriage at all? Has it been effectively annulled? Is it biblical to say so, or must we instead turn to 1 Corinthians 7 to elucidate the problem?)
Chapter nine kicks off with the usual pseudo-Roman Catholic, pseudo-Aristotelian notion of an asexual human life being "higher" than a sexual one, of the person who has "renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven" having "transcended" the "married state". This notion derives from a false equivocation that "because of the kingdom of heaven" means the same thing as "for a state of union with God" (it doesn't), so one could argue that Bell is just flipping the error of demeaning singleness (which he decries) on its head by denigrating marriage. He seems to back away from this ledge as the chapter goes on, however, leaving celibacy and marriage on equal footings before God. He also casually drops the question of "what happens when the man and woman are complete in and of themselves?", which the theological neatnik in me can't let slide, because we will never be "complete in and of ourselves" -- our completeness will, as best I understand it, always be "in Christ". He also says that the scriptures are "ambivalent about whether a person is married, [a]bout whether a person is having sex"; true in the first part, but utterly false in the second -- the unmarried should not be having sex, and the married should be having sex to the glory of God, and there is no ambivalence on either point.
In chapter ten, Bell wraps things up with a story of a wedding in which a couple, each of them apparently already a divorcée, release balloons to symbolize letting go of their messy sexual history and entering their union afresh. A few years later, they got a divorce. This leaves Bell two pages to comfort those of us -- by all accounts, most of us -- for whom sex is not what God intended, but instead has taken on more of pain, hurt, regret, jagged edges, and suffering than of union with one another and communion with our maker. He believes that, in spite of this, God is good, and we are still to trust Him. But, for me anyway, this is a wholly unsatisfying ending, for the same reason I hate most Christian sex books -- because it's easy to wax poetic about how it's supposed to be, but if an author is going to be sloppy and half-assed about even the easy parts, how can I have any expectation of them having something worthwhile to say to those of us buried in sexual brokenness beyond "God didn't mean for it to be that way, and He is good, so trust Him"? An assertion of beatitude will not cut it when God's very character is rightly on public trial, and a little bit of pastoral wisdom and application would do a LOT of good right about here (and a lot of places before).
In these notes I've largely focused on what I don't like. Let me reiterate what I've said elsewhere, that there is a lot that I like in this book; what bugs me most is that Bell seldom takes the important next step with his ideas into connecting them with anything distinctly Christian, and what bugs me second most is that he's consistently sloppy about the important theological details in ways that consistently err in favor of the consumption-oriented egoist, self-righteous gnostic, or "Hath God Truly Said?" pseudo-theologian.
