Unintended Consequences

This semester one of the classes I am teaching is Theological Foundations for the Christian Life. The primary goal I have in the class is to teach students some basic theological ideas with a constant focus on how those ideas intersect life. We don’t have an altar call at the end of each class session, but the New Testament’s emphasis on the inseparable relationship between what we believe and how we behave makes me think a theology class should constantly be talking about that intersection.

Early in the semester I spend a few days on the topic “Doing Theology in the 21^st Century.” The cultural upheaval of the 1960s and beyond simply can’t be ignored. That doesn’t change the theological ideas, but it does change how we come to understand those ideas and how we talk about those ideas with our contemporaries. 

One of the areas of upheaval since the 1960s is in the area of sexual ethics. I spend a little time contrasting the television images I saw growing up as compared to what they see.  I saw Luci and Dessie sleeping in twin beds, despite Luci’s pregnancy; they see Friends, where it is hard to tell from episode to episode who is sleeping with whom. I would be comfortable suggesting that neither of those scenarios are without problems, but that the subconscious message of modern culture, reflected as some level in Friends, is that tolerance has become the chief moral value of our times. 

Tolerance, of course, is not necessarily a bad thing. Paul, for example, encourages believers in Colossae to “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another.” (3:13) The verb “to bear with” could easily be translated “tolerate.” I’m very glad my wife has “tolerated” me for 41 years, and that my colleagues at Point “tolerate” me as a co-worker. Life could quickly become unbearable for any of us without the willingness of others to tolerate us.

But for Paul, “bearing with” is placed in a context where the idea of “setting your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” (3:1,2)  He clearly isn’t suggesting that “bearing with one another” is an open-ended, anything goes approach to life. Tolerance is not his chief moral value.

The problem with making tolerance the chief value is that it becomes all but impossible – actually impossible – to define tolerance. The tolerance of sexual promiscuity on Friends – and lots of other television and movies, I don’t mean to pick on Friends – convinces us that we should be tolerant of promiscuous behavior – primarily of the heterosexual kind. It is interesting to think about what Friends would look like, had it never been made and was a new comedy in today’s world that insists that we tolerate homo- and hetero-sexual behavior. Could it be produced with five young adults “living together” in a New York City apartment building without a homosexual component?

If you work in the context of higher education, you know that the bureaucratic gods of tolerance have set some limits. Big, well-respected universities are being written up by the US Department of Education over “tolerance gone amuck.” It primarily has to do with young adult males who are bombarded daily with a message that says sexual behavior is little more the fun part of biology and “everything goes.” -only to discover that a girl saying “no” is to be taken seriously. Obviously it isn’t entirely a male problem, and I’m certainly not remotely excusing bad behavior on the part of young males.

But why are we surprised? We bombard young adults constantly with the “sex is fun biology” idea, declaring that only the simpletons among religious people think one should control his or her sexual urges in a way consistent with that old, worn out book called the Bible, but somehow expect their yet to mature minds to understand that there are “gods” who determine how far tolerance can be taken.

The path from tolerance to behavior can be a very short one, especially when there is no guiding principle to define it. It seems so easy these days to think that whatever we tolerate, we should also do. It is hard to read Colossians and think that Paul would define tolerance as either “condoning” or “following the example.” Rather it is more along the lines of caring for a person enough to “bear with” the issues so we have an opportunity work on them together. 

As long as we continue to insist that what Scripture would describe as promiscuity is to be tolerated – we shouldn’t be surprised with the unintended consequences.