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No words capture for me quite so well the plight of ancient codes of law like the Ten Commandments. We still, however, have to make decisions in a complex world. How are we to do that? In this column I seek only to illustrate. Conclusions are not yet possible.</p> <p>For most of my life I have contended that sex can be both good and holy only inside a relationship of ultimate commitment called marriage. This point of view has been echoed in the pronouncement of ecclesiastical institutions. If love and sex are separated, I contended, then people begin to use one another for their own gratification. When you “use” a person, you are making out of them a “thing” and thus you dehumanize them. I am still convinced that this is true in the majority of cases. A true story, however, removes this assertion’s ultimate authority.</p> <p>I met a young man once whose story showed me that “good” and “holy” are words that cannot escape being tempered by the external situation. This man was gay. He had been raised by parents who abhorred his homosexuality. They told him over and over again that his “desires” were dirty, distorted and evil. Without recognizing what they were doing, they created in him such self-hatred that he made their judgment his own. He loathed his body and its biological yearnings. He grew up refusing to admit to anyone what he knew he was. His self-definition was of one he hated. He had his first sexual encounter as a late teenager in a bathhouse in San Francisco. To this day, he has no idea who his first lover was. He only knew that he was an older man; how much older he did not even want to guess. No words passed between these two people who shared this experience. Bathhouses are not places in which relationships are formed, but where sexual needs are gratified.</p> <p>The young man was scared, but driven. Impersonal though this sex act was, he told me later, this was the first time in his life that he had ever experienced the fact that his body had value, that it could give pleasure to another. At last he had been in the presence of someone who did not define him as grotesque, but as desirable and enjoyable. We might well judge this encounter as a shallow experience in which love and sex were totally separated, but this young man found it to be life-affirming. I make no judgment. I only ask the ethical question: Was this act good or evil? My earlier moralistic standards were challenged, perhaps they were relativized.</p> <p>Experience time after time has tempered my moral judgments. My career in the ministry spanned the years between 1955 and today. An enormous revolution in sexual understanding took place during those years. I cannot remember the last wedding I performed in which the couple was not already sexually active, even living together. Sex only inside marriage may have been the norm once, but it has become the rare exception today. How am I to understand this changing pattern? Is the bitter judgment of rampant immorality my only option? I decided to look at history.</p> <p>Sex only inside marriage was the unquestioned value of the medieval Christian Church. That standard, however, was designed to fit the circumstances of that day. No effective birth control existed then, so sexual activity ran the risk of pregnancy. In that day, girls entered puberty later than they do today (14-16) and tended to get married one to two years later. Life expectancy was short. During that brief period between puberty and marriage a rigid separation of the sexes was mandated by society. A chaperone system that governed, at least the socially prominent female population, was fixed and real. The chief enforcer of sexual separation was usually an unmarried member of the parental generation, perhaps a maiden aunt. No great effort was made to guard the virtue of girls born into the families of peasants. No effort was made to curb the use of prostitutes. A double standard was clearly in place. Males were almost encouraged to act out their sexual prowess as long as they did not compromise the “virginal purity” of the girls of the upper classes. Sexual abstinence prior to marriage for proper young ladies was the standard that fit this world view. Then came the revolution.</p> <p>Democratic patterns smoothed out the class system. Girls began to be welcomed into careers from which they had previously been barred. The need for females to receive higher education then opened, which in turn began to spread significantly the time span between puberty and marriage. Better diet and better health practices began to drive the age for the onset of puberty down. Coeducational schools became the norm, not the exception. The chaperone system all but disappeared. The automobile opened new doors of mobility and privacy. Suddenly we awakened to the realization that we had stretched the time between puberty and marriage from 1-2 years to 10-15 years. Is it reasonable to expect sexual activity to be repressed for so long a period of time? Can moral rules control biology? Is such an expectation natural, healthy, possible or even desirable? The risk of pregnancy was almost totally removed by safe, effective and legally available birth control methods. Suddenly no one was listening to the words out of the old code that basically said only: “Thou shalt not!” If a sexual practice becomes almost universal, does condemning it put you into a dialogue with reality? Or does it simply reduce your voice to the fringes of society? Can a medieval standard live in a modern world in which all the cultural patterns, which undergirded the medieval standard, have disappeared?</p> <p>Is faithfulness to one’s partner in marriage an absolute or is it a relative value? Once again, I share a true story.</p> <p>I once knew a young married couple, who though deeply in love faced a debilitating tragedy. The woman suffered a stroke at age thirty-five, which instantaneously rendered her both paralyzed for life and sexually incompetent. Did that tragedy also serve to end the sexual life of her husband, who was thirty-six? He loved her and he cared for her for a long period of time with both sensitivity and compassion. As the years went by, however, he found himself increasingly resentful and even bitter. He never considered the possibility of separation or divorce. He honored the fact that their marriage vows had been to take each other “for better for worse…in sickness and in health.” Despite his best efforts, however, his relationship with his wife became fragile. Neither had much ability to give to the other what the other needed.</p> <p>Almost by accident, it certainly was not planned, this young husband met a widow who was more than fifteen years his senior. They enjoyed many of the same things, however, and their friendship grew. Ultimately, it became a sexually active relationship. That relationship in turn brought a new dimension to both of their lives. In traditional religious circles, however, this relationship would be condemned as adultery. Even this man’s paralyzed wife seemed to be a beneficiary. Her husband was less resentful, less bitter and thus a far more loving caregiver. The traditional rule of marital faithfulness was violated, but the real issue was whether one should look at this situation through moralistic eyes or life-affirming eyes. Was anyone hurt by this relationship? No one in the triangle of persons made demands on another that could not be met. If the fullness of life is the goal and intention of the traditional moral code, then when this value and that code are in conflict should the fullness of life or the moral code be followed? Must not the rigidity of the law always be set aside in the service of the fullness of life?</p> <p>Another moral debate hinges on the question of suicide. Is it ever right to take one’s own life? No, has been the answer to that question emanating from the Christian Church for centuries. Until very recently, one who committed suicide was not given the privilege of an ecclesiastical funeral. Suicide represented human failure and was thus condemned as sinful. Today, however, physician-assisted suicide is legal in several nations of the world and in some parts of the United States. The debate on this issue rages in our courts, in our legislative assemblies and even in our churches. What has changed?</p> <p>The primary change agent has been modern medicine. Disease after disease has either been defeated or the survival rate has been stretched beyond all conceivable limits. Today life expectancy is twice what it was in the middle Ages. There are, however, some unintended consequences to our medical brilliance. Where is the line between expanding life and just postponing death? When the quality of life is gone and all that remains is a breathing cadaver, is the inability to avail oneself of the release of death a virtue or has it become a vice? Is not the ultimate freedom to which life can aspire the freedom to decide when to bring one’s life to a peaceful end? Do people who are medically determined to be in the final months of their lives have no right to determine how and when they will die? This debate could not have occurred one hundred years ago. When the circumstances of life change, however, must not the rules created to guide us through life also change? Time does make ancient good uncouth.</p> <p>We have only just scratched the surface of the modern debate on ethics, but what we have established is that every rule is ultimately relativized. Does this then mean that we sink into a sea of relativity in which there are no rules, no ultimate standards? I do not think so. The ultimate law of the universe is still, I am convinced, the law of love through which the fullness of life becomes possible. The inescapable question thus becomes how will love be practiced in the circumstances of our very modern world? The burden of freedom with its relentless call to maturity is found in the juxtaposition between life-affirming principals and our existential situations. It is there that modern ethics are born.</p> <p>John Shelby Spong</p> <p>Read the essay online <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=2c7f1dd2a7&e=db34daa597">here.</a></p> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <table border="0" cellpadding="20" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top"> <div style="color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><h2 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 30px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Question & Answer</h2> <p><span style="font-size:18px">Nancy Sells from Hendersonville, NC, writes:</span></p> <h4 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 22px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;"> Question:</h4> <p>With all the information available today, why can’t biblical scholars deduce, as you do Bishop Spong, that the New Testament writings are interpretive based on Jewish writings and on traditions? Why don’t they do the comparisons between the Old Testament writings to the writings of the gospel writers</p> <h4 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 22px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Answer:</h4> <p>Dear Nancy,</p> <p>Thank you for your questions and for being part of that great weekend at the First Congregational Church in Henderson, NC. That church is one of the great congregations in America, made so by a combination of outstanding clergy leadership and the Walter Ashley Lectureship that brings scholarly teachers into that church year after year. It was a privilege for me to be the Walter Ashley lecturer for the fifth time this past fall.</p> <p>The question you ask is so basic. The gospels did not drop from heaven fully written. During the years after the crucifixion (30 CE) and before the first gospel was written (72 CE), the story of Jesus was passed on in the synagogue. During 42 years at a minimum, the memory of Jesus was wrapped inside and interpreted through the Hebrew scriptures. The messianic images of these scriptures were applied to him; the utterances of the Hebrew prophets were used to incorporate Jesus into those utterances. The liturgical life of the synagogue was used to organize the memory of the life of Jesus – so that he was said to have been crucified at the time of the Passover and transfigured at the time of Dedications or Hanukkah. Then Jesus was made to offer harvest parables at the time of Sukkoth, the harvest season of the Jews, to cleanse and heal people at the time of Yom Kippur, to have John the Baptist proclaim the arrival of the Kingdom of God at Rosh Hashanah and to have Jesus deliver the Sermon on the Mount at the time of Shavuot.</p> <p>The gospels were thus never intended to be literal accounts of what Jesus said or did, but interpretive accounts of Jesus told against the background of the life of the synagogue. All Jewish readers of the gospel understood this. When the church became predominantly Gentile, however, around the year 150 CE, biblical literalism entered the picture. To literalize these Jewish scriptures is a Gentile heresy, born in Gentile ignorance.</p> <p>Many parts of the Christian church continue to live in that Gentile ignorance. That is why many Christians do not see these obvious comparisons. Part of what I feel compelled to do is to help people read the gospels through Jewish lenses. That is the major theme of my latest book: <em>Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy</em>. It will be at least another century before the revelation as to how the gospels were intended to be read will fully have won the day. I am confident that it will ultimately prevail. Religious ideas change very slowly, but they do change and they will change.</p> <p>I am glad you are part of this change. Share it.</p> <p>My best,</p> <p>John Shelby Spong <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=e8370a00b8&e=db34daa597">Read and Share Online Here</a></p> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <table border="0" cellpadding="20" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top"> <div style="color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><h2 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 30px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Announcements</h2> <div style="text-align: center;color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;"><a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=9e4fe7a3dd&e=db34daa597"><img align="none" height="192" style="width: 300px;height: 192px;margin: 0px;border: none;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;outline: none;text-decoration: none;text-transform: capitalize;display: inline;" width="300" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/bc420875-886b-4db3-946d-345f18afbad1.jpg"></a></div> <h2 class="aolmail_null" style="text-align: center;color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 30px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;"><span style="color:#000000"><span style="font-size:24px">Bishop Spong speaks at Northern Michigan University and St. Paul’s Church</span></span></h2> Bishop Spong will present two public lectures on Saturday, September 13th in Marquette with an afternoon talk from 1 to 3 p.m. at Reynolds Recital Hall and an evening presentation from 7 to 9 p.m. followed by a book signing at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.</div></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr><tr><td align="center" valign="top"> </td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></center><center><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" id="aolmail_canspamBarWrapper" style="background-color:#FFFFFF; border-top:1px solid #E5E5E5;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" valign="top" style="padding-top:20px; padding-bottom:20px;"></td></tr></tbody></table></center></div> </div> <style type="text/css">#AOLMsgPart_2_0717faf4-45b7-45cc-9626-ea217f7df911 td{color: black;} @media only screen and (max-width: 480px){ .aolReplacedBody table[id="canspamBar"] td{font-size:14px !important;} .aolReplacedBody table[id="canspamBar"] td a{display:block !important; margin-top:10px !important;} } </style>