This is beautiful. I was chatting with my buddy Andrew tonight and he had some thoughts on Jesus and sex. So, his thoughts are below – but the above graphic work is of course his…and beautiful:
Everyone’s laughing about the freak who’s the 40-year-old virgin, and who doesn’t think he’s a freak. And yet, Christians worship a 33-year-old virgin in Jesus. Has sexuality so become the defining mark of our personal existence that Jesus would be rejected if he lived today because of his lack of sexual expression alone? And maybe, with sex holding such a powerful grip on our modern psyche, Jesus IS rejected by people today not because of his radical social policies, but because of his freaky “no sex” lifestyle….Does Jesus’ apparent lack of sexual involvement during his life actually act as something that prevents the (post)modern mind from accepting his humanity…and divinity….?
Related posts:
- Jesus, the Bible & Homosexuality, by Jack Rogers: Chapter 4
- Revised and Expanded Edition of Jack Rogers’s Jesus, The Bible, and Homosexuality
- Jesus, the Bible and Homosexuality: A Review
- Jesus, the Bible & Homosexuality, by Jack Rogers: Chapter 6
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Interesting thought. Indeed, at the time, being an unmarried virgin at 30 would have been unusual in the extreme.
Of course, we don’t know that Jesus *was* a virgin. The Bible is completely silent on what happened between the ages of 12 and 30. It’s entirely possible that He got married in that time, even widowed – although it’s unlikely that He had children (we might expect that to have been mentioned alongside His brothers and sisters!).
It’s dangerous to draw too much from silence.
pax et bonum
Are we sure that jesus never had sex? i mean i know it’s the evangelical assumption that sexual immorality is having sex before you are married, but strangely, i’ve never seen that definition in scripture. if you look at the god given laws on sexual immorality sex between 2 non married people is absent from the list. (exodus 18) this is something i tried asking about 15 years ago in sunday school, but of course, you’re not allowed to ask such questions. what do you think?
JON, read Lauren Winner’s REAL SEX! She speaks on all that you mentioned.
Jon, read Lauren Winner’s REAL SEX. She writes on these things from a non-preachy, non-fundy, point of view.
Those are great questions but I have one myself.
God has spoken to us through his word (the Bible) and speakes of the issues of being married, if this issue was so important to God to share with us then why wouldn’t he share that his son got married? And would it screw anything up if GOD ended up having a child with a human we would have our own seprate race.
I don’t know just some thoughts as I am sitting down here.
Z gets props for that pic… it was Z, right?
Plus Jesus had 12 guys following him around…
Very interesting post. I have to wonder though … do you think people today would really not follow Jesus because he wasn’t sexually active? I guess people may think him irrelevant because of his views or lack of experiential knowledge. I think it’s more likely that people feeling lost and broken, particularly around issues like sexuality might have a level of respect for a guy like Jesus who made stands like he did.
Also, the movie portrays a pretty desperate guy who tried but never managed to have sex. Hardly a parallel with Jesus.
My 2cents. :-)
G. Lloyd Rediger in _Beyond the Scandals_ (which I don’t agree with everything in there as he gets towards the end) has a very broad definition of sexuality, and basically says that Jesus modeled sexuality for us in vast way. Dispite there being no mention of what we would term his “sex life.”
And to Jon earlier on, I do think the Bible mentions sex between unmarried people. Can’t quite recall it all and not in the mood to hunt it down, but I think the laws were that if someone had sex with a virgin (assumed to be a girl), then that man had to marry that girl. And if they didn’t, all hell broke loose. And if the girl was already engaged or promised to someone else, or married, and didn’t cry out and so forth then she was in big trouble. but anyways, yes, there are mentiones of sex before marriage.
Compare fornication (consensual sexual intercourse between two persons not married to each other) and adultury (voluntary sexual intercourse between a married man and someone other than his wife or between a married woman and someone other than her husband) as defined by m-w.com
Yes,Jesus was a Playa Playa actually Mary Magdelin was supposed to be carrying the Sangrail,or (SANGRIAL )Sangria-redwine or blood- the Holy Blood, which was thought to be the Holy grail(cup)who carries a cup, and why is a freaking cup so important-honestly?. but anyway..THe DaVinci code is the basis for this thought pattern( No one knows for sure even if he actually existed or was nothing more the the Story of Krishna (the greek word for Christ), retold over and added to, and such. Seek spirituality to find answers not religion…
Jesus did not come to earth to have sex. He was even born to a virgin. Abstaining from sex was necessary to fullfill the law, and not sin. He did not even think of sex, as it would have been adultery. I’m sure he found women beautiful, of course. But Jesus looked into peoples hearts, to seen what was on the inside. Absolute mind control was required so that he did not secumb to temptation. If Jesus sinned, he could not have done the work of the Messiah.
Rick
wow. by using the picture to get a laugh or two is pathetic. Most people have no clue what there talking bout because they have never felt the touch of God in thier lives. they read the bible? andd? y9ou can read all you want and yes gain that wisdom from it but that doesnt give you anything. jesus christ didnt come to earth to get married or have sex. he was perfect. He came to die for me and you. and he came to rise from the grave and overcome the enemy. He came to be that example. for us to live out which non us do. because we all fall short of the glory of God.
In the beginning, before there was a defined canon (done to consolidate both political and church power), many texts that were better accepted than some included now, in the many early churches, did not give the impression he was a virgin. The previously mentioned Da Vince Code had as it’s basis several Gnostic texts, though his story was pure fiction. In the early days of the Christian Church there was not one Christianity, but many, with each apostle having followers, etc., much infighting, seeking of power, and Constantine, and his council of Micea, arbitrarily settled on what we now consider the collection of writings called the bible as the least offensive to all in attendance. A rather spiritually unsatisfying revelation, when I first found out about it, along with a lot of other things. Christianity today is not the work of God, but of men.