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The Ups and Downs of “Redeeming Sex”

The Ups and Downs of “Redeeming Sex”

Last updated on: May 11, 2015 at 12:10 pm by Coyle Neal

The Ups and Downs of “Redeeming Sex” 2015-05-11T12:10:03-06:00 Coyle Neal

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Review of Redeeming Sex by Debra Hirsch

This review is part of the Patheos Book Club.

The single most culturally divisive issue facing contemporary Christians is how the church ought to think about and relate to homosexuality. In Redeeming Sex: Naked Conversations about Sexuality and Spirituality, Debra Hirsch draws on her years of experience from within both communities (the church and the gay community) and offers advice for Christians on how relationships might be built between these communities despite this great cultural battle.

Just a note: the title is a bit misleading. While some of the book is about sex in general, most of it is focused specifically on homosexuality. If you want a good introduction to the general theology of sex, check out this article by Jonathan Leeman.

The primary strength of Redeeming Sex is the reminder to Christians to have an appropriate view of the sin of homosexuality and an equally appropriate love and compassion for those caught up in that sin. This is an important message that has been working its way through Christianity in the last decade or so—to the benefit of Christians and non-Christians alike. For various historical reasons, by the middle of the 20th century homosexuality had become in the eyes of Christians the “super-sin” that we needed to reject with utter disgust and abhorrence. Like alcoholism in the late 19th century or slave-holding in the late 18th century, by the 1970s homosexuality had become the sin which Christians believed they must loudly and publicly condemn without mercy. The result was that despite whatever gluttony, laziness, or pride the Christian might indulge, he could still consider the homosexual a worse sinner—however temperate, hard-working, or humble that individual happened to be.

Image Source: IV Press

Redeeming Sex helpfully corrects this wicked imbalance and encourages us to remember that all of us are equally rebels against God (albeit in varying ways) and equally in need of forgiveness. Hirsch does an especially good job of avoiding condemning that new early 21st century super-sin: intolerance. After all, replacing “homosexuality” with “intolerance” simply shifts the problem around and creates new “super-sinners” to be ostracized and new “fundamentalists” to be the righteous mob. What we really need is an appropriate view of sin that holds all people as equal in the eyes of God, rather than some as being morally superior to others. Drawing on her own life experiences, Hirsch espouses this appropriate view and does it very well.

Hirsch also argues—and is right to argue—that sexual sin in general needs to be treated like any other sin and not as something uniquely vile. Lust, in whatever form it takes, is rebellion against God and needs to be paid for on the cross just as much as slander or anger. Now, with that said, Hirsch probably should have spent a bit more time considering our particular historical moment. For example, she pointed out that in a TV series she was warned not to watch there was far more violence, slander, etc, than sex or nudity. Yet the reason she was warned away from it was that it involved sexual sin.

She uses this to make an excellent point. As with homosexuality specifically, Christians can be far too quick to jump to lust in general as a sin greater than all others. A movie may show ten minutes of bear-baiting and a glimpse of premarital sex, and most Christians would still object more to the nudity than to the cruelty. The problem is, given our current cultural setting, it’s also true that most Christians (or most modern people, for that matter) are unlikely to watch such a movie and then be tempted to go down to the public forum and poke the town bear with a stick just for fun. Sexual sins are not worse than other sins, but in our particular time and place they are certainly more common and more culturally accepted—even celebrated—and as such they need to be dealt with appropriately. That is, we should not treat them as worse sins, but we should remember that for now they may be more of a temptation. In a hundred years the historical circumstances will have changed and a new sin trend will be the topic of discussion.

Those are the strengths of the book; unfortunately it also has at least three serious weaknesses.

First, there is a problem with the view of sexuality presented in Redeeming Sex. Hirsch argues that there are actually two kinds of sexuality—the kind of sex that involves actually having sex, or “genital sex;” and the kind of sex that pervades all human interactions, or “social sexuality.” This latter is the idea that because sex is a part of our makeup as human beings, there is a sexual component to every relationship we have with other people. For example, every conversation I have will in part be shaped by the fact that I am a heterosexual male—to try to argue otherwise would be to ignore a part of who I am and to end up with a skewed view of my conversations. The point is that Hirsch goes encourages us to keep these two categories separate and put them both in their proper contexts.

This isn’t completely wrong, of course. As human beings, sex is certainly a part of who we are, and like any sin or virtue it’s not something we can step away from as if it were a hat we can hang on a hook and forget about. And yet there is still a problem here that Evangelicals fall into pretty regularly. Not everything is everything. That is, we have a tendency to pick one thing and elevate to a central, defining position. All sins are idolatry at heart. All virtues are humility at heart. All political strength comes from patience. What the church needs is to be missional. What the church needs is to be radical. What the church needs is to be relational. And so on.

Again, clearly there’s something worth talking about here—maybe every sin is idolatrous on some level. And yet, when we use language like that we forget that almost every time the Bible talks about idolatry, it is referring to the act of worshipping a statue or image. And maybe all virtues are related to humility, but it is a different virtue from charity. Maybe patience is critical to politics, but so is wisdom—and they are not the same thing. Maybe every church needs to be missional or radical or relational or all three, but they are not exact synonyms of each other. So while there may be a good point to be made in the idea that sexuality pervades all things, we also need to remember that sexuality is fairly discrete in its extent. If we just make everything sexual, we’ve destroyed the meaning of the word and lost the ability to communicate well with each other. This isn’t the biggest problem in the book, but it’s at least one to be aware of. “Social sexuality” really isn’t that useful a category at the end of the day.

A second problem, and a much bigger one, is Hirsch’s view of the church. She argues that far too often we get caught up in the “bounded set” mentality. That is, we think of a church as a place that draws lines around itself and separates believers out from the rest of the world. These lines eventually become walls that keep everyone else out and isolate the church while simultaneously alienating nonbelievers. Instead, Hirsch argues that we need a “centered set” view, which is welcoming to all and encourages people to come and go as they please, helping them on their journey towards Christ. The church becomes more of a way station where anyone can stop and rest and enjoy fellowship than a fortress for only the select few.

As with the first problem, there is something to commend this view. As Christians, we should not go out of our way to be offensive to the world, and we should be welcoming to visitors who attend our services—to say nothing of being generous and gracious in evangelism and in our daily relationships! But when it comes to the church proper, the centered set attitude is not helpful in shaping our worship service or how we think about the body of Christ. At the end of the day, what we do Sunday mornings (or whenever we meet as a corporate body) is to be focused on the worship of God. Our priority is to praise God for who He is and for what He has done on the cross. That is going to offend both people who think they’re not sinners to begin with, and people who think they can pay for their sins by their own effort. Faithful music, prayer, and preaching will always anger those who love their sin. Of course we could change the message of the Gospel to eliminate those things which bring offense, but doing so would result in a gathering of people which is simply not a church—however friendly and welcoming they may be. The priority of the gathered church is the worship of God, not the inclusion of non-Christians.

Hirsch’s discussion of the Lord’s Supper serves as a good example of this point. She talks about how moving it was to see gathered around the Table a diverse group of individuals including an elderly believer, “a gay Jewish man in leather chaps,” a former stripper who had converted, a local doctor, and so on. (pg 182) Now, if what she means by that is that all of these individuals had confessed faith in Christ and repented of their sins, and now gathered around the meal as a remembrance and celebration of what has been done in reconciling them to God, then there is no problem here. But that at least is not the impression given by the text (and if I’m misreading this part I’m quite happy to be corrected here). It appears that instead this church has invited anyone and everyone to come and participate in the ordinance of communion. If this is the case, in doing so this church actively encouraged the unbelievers to eat and drink judgment on themselves. (I Corinthians 11:29)

When we as a church gather around the table, we are reminding ourselves and announcing to the world who Jesus is and what He has done for us and reaffirming our intention to continue gathering until He returns. (I Corinthians 11:17-34)We are identifying ourselves as a discrete body of people whose sins have been paid for on the cross and who have embraced the Gospel by faith. Of course this Gospel is offered to all who wish to repent of their sins and believe in Jesus Christ, but until they have done so they are not welcome to join us in this practice any more than they are welcome to be baptized or to practice church discipline or to engage in any of the other activities of the church as a church. Visitors at a church service are just that—visitors, guests, observers. To intentionally allow someone who is not a believer to participate in these sacraments is to tell a lie about that individual, about what the church is, and ultimately about God and the Gospel.

Now again, I don’t know that this is the practice of Hirsch’s church, and I’m quite happy to be corrected on this point as appropriate. But I do know that as believers we are to protect and respect the Table in a way that glorifies God and tells the world what we believe about Him. I’m happy to agree that the bounded set view of the church has its problems, but we want to be careful not to throw Jesus out in the name of inclusiveness.

Finally, there is a problem with Hirch’s view of human beings—and by extension her view of evangelism. She outlines two different views of people:

“View 1 sees people as sinners first and foremost. They are people under judgment before a holy God and in need of God’s redemption.” (pg 171) This view puts the image of God (the “Imago Dei”) in a secondary place after sin and the need for salvation. Hirsch believes this view is problematic because it downplays human dignity, encourages Christians to emphasize moral reform and getting our sin problem cleaned up, and blocks loving relationships by making sin an unbreakable barrier between people.

“When I am focused on what I consider to be someone’s bad behavior, I am less inclined to want to engage him or her. The person’s behavior stands in the way of any real relationship. I’m unable to see God’s image until after the individual has repented and stopped the ‘ungodly’ behavior.” (pg 171-172)

The second view “sees people as first and foremost created in the image of God. This means all people have an innate Godlike beauty and dignity because they all in their own unique way reflect something of their Creator. Yes, in some individuals, the image is profoundly marred… but in actual fact it is always there by virtue of their being human.” (pg 172) This view, Hirsch argues, encourages us to see what matters most about other people, enables us to relate and commune well with them, and ultimately makes us better witnesses to God’s love and character. For example, she asks

“What does this mean then for our gay neighbors? It means we need to see them as they are: first and foremost as image bearers of our God.” (pg 173)

Once again, Hirsch has made some important points. It is certainly true that we as Christians need to understand and actually see both the image of God and the reality of sin, and we need to see them in every person we relate to. Furthermore, the first view—that of sin dominating over the image of God in an individual—can and has at times led to theological fetishism, a decided lack of love for neighbor, and a failure to obey the command to evangelize.

Even with those admitted weaknesses, Hirsch is wrong about the superiority of the second view. It’s true that View 1 can lead to the problems listed above, but it’s also true that the second view can lead to problems as well. Historically, those who elevate the image of God above the effects of sin are much more likely to do precisely what Hirsch accuses holders of View 1 to do—namely encourage people to engage in moral reform. When you believe people are basically sinful, if you’re being honest the only thing you’re left with is grace. All attempts at cleaning yourself up will fail and falling back on the offered mercy of God becomes the only way out for the repentant sinner. If, however, you believe that the central component of a human being is the image of God, then the temptation is always going to be to encourage the hearer to find that inner goodness and polish it up. And that’s how we get a social gospel, “Christian” motivational speakers, and much of the worst of contemporary Christian music.

By contrast, the Bible teaches that we are not good people who do bad things and who only need help to find that inner goodness, we are—to use the Biblical language—dead people who need to be brought back to life. God does love us despite our sin, no doubt! But God’s love for His people is not a blind love; it is a transformative love. It is a love that brings us to life and changes us so that we can see our sin and say “that is wicked and offensive to God, and I hate it and don’t want to do it anymore.” It is a love that regenerates us, transfers our sin and the punishment we deserve to another, and draws us into relationship with Christ and each other. That love and those relationships are not based on the Imago Dei already within us, they are sheer grace that comes to us despite our wicked rebellion.

All of this to say that ultimately both aspects of humanity need to be taught. We are created in the image of God, and we are desperately wicked. All of us, gay or straight or whatever, are created in the image of God: because of that there are such things as basic human worth and dignity (and were this a discussion about politics I’d want to talk about things like human rights as well). But we are also fallen into sin, so much so that the remnants of the image of God are actually grounds for condemnation for failing to be what we should have been… and nothing more. Our teaching about the image of God should highlight how wicked we have become through the fall, and our teaching about sin should highlight the Holiness of God from whose fellowship we have fallen—and both should point us to the cross as the only place where that sin is dealt with and the lost fellowship and broken Imago Dei are restored.

So, should you read Redeeming Sex? Probably yes, given the discussions going on in the current culture. Hirsch acts as a great model for how to talk to the homosexual community without immediately alienating them. (Others have noted how much of a challenge this is.) Even better, she’s an excellent writer with life experiences to back up much of what she has to say. But do be aware of the problems her book poses and think carefully about some of the practical suggestions she makes therein.

Dr. Coyle Neal teaches Political Science at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, MO.

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