As we wrap up our consideration of morality, culture wars, and consent, next Jesus moves the focus from outward washing to what is transpiring on the inside of a person. “Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them . . . For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come.”
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(Read this series from the beginning at Part 1 and Part 2.)
Then Mark lists behaviors that actually defined morality in the community for whom this gospel was written. Morality, remember, is socially defined. Morality begins with what a culture defines as right and wrong, as good or bad behavior. Individuals then decide what they define as moral behavior in agreement with or in contrast to the morality of their culture. Some moral positions have been proven to bring harm intrinsically, and are present within all cultures. Other moral issues have been deemed harmful by specific cultures and are only prohibited in those cultures. We can learn a lot by listening to the morality of other cultures as they can reveal things our own culture has yet to learn. Listening to others has the power to reveal to us areas where, as in our reading this week, we may be disregarding something that is intrinsically harmful while prohibiting things that are intrinsically life-giving. How many times have we grown up to discover that something we thought was wrong wasn’t harmful at all while those things we used to deem as perfectly fine in reality were hurting or damaging us? It’s helpful for those of us living in religious or theistic cultures to remember that something is not wrong simply because our God said so. Something can be deemed wrong because it is intrinsically harmful and some things have been mislabeled by all cultures.
What first hints to me that Mark’s list was shaped by its culture is the inclusion of “adultery.” At the time this was written, adultery was not egalitarian. The concern was never for a woman whose husband may have cheated on her, as our culture often defines adultery today. Adultery was defined only as when a man engaged in sexual intercourse with a woman who was betrothed or already married to another man. Adultery did not refer to sex with a single woman. It only concerned itself with the property rights of the man to whom the woman belonged (see The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, vol. 4). This is because the culture making this list was deeply patriarchal. Today, many of us have experienced how deeply destructive a culture and practice of patriarchy intrinsically is. Adultery can still be part of our morality discussion today, but we should define it in more egalitarian ways to honor the rights of all partners, to all people in marital or committed relationships deeply harmed by the un-consented, violating fracture of those commitments.
Culturally, it’s still easy for us today to say amen to most items of this list. Some of them are universal. Things like theft, murder, greed, malice, deceit, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly (recklessness) are things that many of us could still agree violate the golden rule of treating others the way we would like to be treated and doing no harm to other people. Where we get into culture wars today is in how to define sexual immorality and lewdness. I find it ironic that those who are quick to accusing others of sexual immorality are most often guilty themselves of the immorality of arrogance. And however we land on what we define to be sexually immoral or lewd, our own sexual ethic should at least include consent and the practice of doing no harm. Too often what certain sectors of Christianity define as sexually immoral is between two consenting adults and hurts no one. We must ground discussion on what is and isn’t sexually immoral on a definition of morality that looks at the intrinsic results of the behaviors in question, not just imposed dogma. Is something intrinsically death-dealing or is it life-giving and mislabelled? We too often turn our gaze and pretend not to notice things that are intrinsically death-dealing while we scrutinize and forbid behaviors that intrinsically do no harm.
So, while holding in our hands the golden rule, let’s begin a discussion on consent. Genuine consent has five foundational qualities. It must be ongoing. Anyone can change their mind about what they are doing at any time, and so consent can be retracted at any time. Consent must be freely given. Someone’s yes must be offered without them feeling pressured, forced, or afraid to say no. Consent must be specific. Saying yes to one act doesn’t mean you’ve said yes to others. Consent must be enthusiastic. This means actually wanting to do something, and not feeling like you should or that you have to do something. And lastly consent is informed. Consent is violated by lying or deceiving someone. (For more info see https://www.nsvrc.org/)
Beginning any discussion on sexual immorality at the much deeper level discussion of consent, sets us up for a discussion that many raised in Christian purity culture have never had. Discussions on consent allow us to uncover a more holistic way of understanding and defining sexual morality.
Consent is an egalitarian discussion. It doesn’t privilege any gender above another, or penalize one while ignoring others. Beginning the discussion of what is sexually moral and what is sexually immoral with discussion of consent includes us all.
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