Homosexuality and Following Jesus by Paul Flaman

Author:Paul Flaman [Flaman, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781926645780
Publisher: BPS Books
Published: 2012-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

Respecting Gospel Values

Although human sexuality in all of its dimensions encompasses much more than sexual pleasure, the latter, in itself, as the great twentieth-century Christian philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand points out, relates to the “merely subjectively satisfying.” As such, sexual pleasure per se does not transcend the immediate experience of it. On the other hand, morally relevant values, such as the dignity of persons, the sacredness of human life, truth, justice, and faithful and self-giving love, transcend our immediate experience. We may have a more intense experience and deeper understanding of their value at some times than at other times. We can experience such morally relevant values not as made up by us, but as “givens” to our experience, and ultimately as rooted in who God is and who we are, created and redeemed by God. Since these values are connected to human persons who are embodied sexual beings, they are also necessarily connected to human sexuality. We can, with the help of God’s grace, grow in appreciating their value.

To love as God, as Jesus, loves requires us to subordinate our pursuit of the merely subjectively satisfying, including sexual pleasure, to respecting God properly and respecting the abovementioned morally relevant values rooted in God. These values are in fact the values of Jesus, his gospel, and the Kingdom of God, or heaven, a central theme in the teaching of Jesus. Among other things, to deny or lose oneself for the sake of Jesus, his gospel, and the Kingdom of God, as Jesus calls us to do (see Mk 9:34-38), requires us not to seek the merely subjectively satisfying in a disordered way, that is, when this would contradict our showing due reverence for God and values rooted in God. If we seek to find “life” by seeking the merely subjectively satisfying in a disordered way, we will become more isolated within ourselves, and, as Jesus says, “lose it” (Mt 16:25). On the other hand, if we deny ourselves by subordinating our seeking of the merely subjectively satisfying to a properly ordered love of God, others, and ourselves, we will grow in becoming like God (see 1 Jn 3:2-3). We will grow in experiencing a true communion of persons with God and others. We will find a fullness of life that is meant to last forever.5 All of this can be applied to the call for all of us, whatever our sexual inclinations, to take up our cross and to grow in chaste love (discussed further in chapter 5 below).

From an evolutionary perspective, heterosexual attraction and any pleasure experienced in heterosexual genital relations have a role in motivating male and female members of a species to join together sexually for the continuation of the species. This does not contradict — but is fully in harmony with — human beings subordinating their seeking of sexual pleasure to respecting God’s plan for human sexuality and marriage, and values such as truth and the dignity of human persons that are rooted in the nature of God.

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