Rules For Shameless Sex

I saw a Christian magazine cover this week (Sojourners) called, Rules for Shameless Sex. It sounded like a good sermon title. But it wasn’t my idea so I resisted. But shameless sex is a helpful in trying to understand an area of life that has such potential for good and evil.

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In the article by Keith Graber Miller, the author gives us an example of the church’s shame-filled history of dealing with human sexuality. Miller says that in our distant past the church prescribed 10 years of penance for coitus interuptus, lifelong penance for oral sex and only seven years of penance for premeditated murder.

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That shows the twisted understandings that lie in our institutional past. here a few of Miller’s rules or guidelines:

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1. We need to talk openly and directly about sexuality in our homes and churches

2. We need to recognize how embodied our lives are, and we need to embrace the fundamental goodness of that embodiment.

3. We need to become thoughtful critics of exploitative images in our culture.

4. We need to recognize that what we really yearn for in life is intimacy rather than the stimulation of genital nerve endings.

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It seems to me that this is a valuable contribution to a necessary and ongoing dialogue for us all.

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Peter

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