Am I Less Human If I’m Sexually Unfulfilled?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:04.000 | The most fully human and complete person who ever lived was Jesus Christ. He never
00:00:10.000 | married, he was never in a romantic relationship, and never had sex. If we say
00:00:16.120 | these things are intrinsic to human fulfillment, we are calling our Savior
00:00:21.240 | subhuman. That is the voice of Sam Albury speaking before the Church of England's
00:00:27.400 | General Synod in London on February 15th, 2017. There he talked about separating
00:00:34.040 | self-identity from sexual fulfillment. It was a profound moment captured on video. Sam
00:00:40.280 | joins us today on the podcast from his office in Oxford. This video clip of your
00:00:45.520 | brief address went viral, as they say, Sam. Take us into the clip I just played.
00:00:50.200 | What's the setting and what was unfolding at the moment?
00:00:54.120 | Yes, so the General Synod is the governing body of the Church of England, which is
00:01:00.040 | the kind of main Anglican denomination in England. And so it kind of acts as the
00:01:06.000 | Parliament of the Church, and so it gathers twice a year. I'm one of the
00:01:10.840 | elected members on that Synod. It has a mixture of bishops, clergy, and laity.
00:01:15.760 | And that particular session of Synod, we were having a debate about
00:01:22.440 | whether the Church of England should allow and accept and bless same-sex
00:01:27.960 | partnerships and/or whether it should redefine marriage to include same-sex
00:01:32.960 | couples. So that was the context of the particular meeting. I've always known
00:01:40.160 | that the debates and the meetings at Synod are live-streamed. There are
00:01:45.240 | peculiar people out there in the world who like to watch Church Synod debates
00:01:49.920 | for some reason. But I hadn't literally no idea that the words I was going to
00:01:54.280 | say in that room would be kind of extracted and put online and shared with
00:01:58.560 | other people. And to be honest, I'm really glad I didn't know that because it was
00:02:02.400 | hard enough trying to work out what to say to that room of people without
00:02:07.200 | having to think through who else might be listening in as well. So I was very
00:02:10.800 | deliberate with every sentence I spoke to kind of be speaking into a
00:02:15.760 | particular context and speaking in the light of other things that have been
00:02:19.640 | said during that Synod meeting and during that particular debate. So there
00:02:24.480 | were a bunch of bishops and clergy and kind of lay representatives there in
00:02:29.360 | that particular room. And by this stage I think we'd had about 90 minutes of
00:02:33.160 | debate. We were given a, I think, a two-minute limit on what we could say. So
00:02:38.040 | yes, it was an interesting afternoon. I had a lot of people
00:02:41.480 | praying for me, so I felt very conscious of that as I stood up to speak.
00:02:45.800 | Excellent. So what was the end result of this particular debate? Well, the vote
00:02:51.160 | was specifically about whether—it all sounds very kind of mundane and
00:02:56.280 | bureaucratic—the House of Bishops in the Church of England had produced a
00:03:00.080 | report. The actual debate was on whether the Synod should recognize that report.
00:03:05.400 | Got it. So we weren't actually—the conclusion of the debate wasn't going to
00:03:08.840 | be, "Shall we vote to allow same-sex marriage?" Although that was the topic,
00:03:12.560 | the vote was, "Should we recognize—not even endorse, just recognize a report that
00:03:18.760 | the bishops have produced?" We didn't, in the end, recognize the report that the
00:03:22.920 | bishops had produced. That wasn't going to change too much of the world. But
00:03:26.560 | the significant thing was it was the first time this Synod had had an open
00:03:30.880 | debate about that issue. That makes sense. Well, that brings me to the big thing I
00:03:36.440 | want you to address today in this episode. There you were limited to two
00:03:40.280 | minutes. Here you can elaborate on this incredible point about sexual expression
00:03:45.720 | and human dignity, and the fact that I want you to unfold that point for us
00:03:50.480 | here today. Yeah, so there are a few things that are assumed, and the
00:03:55.240 | arguments for allowing same-sex partnerships in the church or redefining
00:03:59.240 | marriage, there are a few things that keep being said in support of that that
00:04:03.680 | I very strongly disagree with. One is, you alluded to in your introduction, that
00:04:08.200 | actually sexual expression is essential to self-identity. As believers, we
00:04:13.880 | should have a problem just with the concept of self-identity. Jesus doesn't
00:04:18.280 | put the word "self" in front of identity. Jesus puts the word "self" in front of
00:04:22.440 | denial, and there's a reason for that. It's not our job to come up with our own
00:04:27.240 | identity. It's our job to learn who we are in the light of who God says we are.
00:04:32.480 | So just that whole concept of self-identity, I think, is entirely
00:04:38.160 | wrong-headed from the start. I love the testimony of the Samaritan woman in John
00:04:42.680 | 4 after she's met Jesus. She goes back to her town, and she says to them, "Come meet
00:04:47.880 | a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?" And I just love
00:04:51.680 | that. That's the testimony of all of us. Jesus is the one who shows us who we
00:04:54.840 | really are. So that's one thing just to say. The other thing is that the more
00:04:59.760 | significant part of this, which is the idea that you have to be sexually
00:05:04.000 | fulfilled in order to be complete as who you are. And we kept hearing in these
00:05:09.520 | discussions, and you still hear it in discussions today, that if you are not
00:05:14.080 | sexually fulfilled, you're somehow diminishing who you are. You're less
00:05:19.000 | complete. You can only be a shriveled version of who you are meant to be. And
00:05:22.360 | that is assuming a very particular anthropology, one that I think is
00:05:26.280 | massively unbiblical, because it implies that the center of our humanity, the
00:05:32.240 | center of our personhood, is our sexual feelings. That they are the core of who
00:05:37.360 | we are, and therefore they have to be expressed and fulfilled in order for us
00:05:41.560 | to be authentically us. And the point I was really trying to make is that
00:05:46.040 | Jesus challenges that. Just in the way he lived his own life, he challenges that. As
00:05:50.960 | you quoted me, Jesus is the most fully human and complete person who
00:05:55.160 | ever lived, and yet he was celibate. And so the moment we say that you have to be
00:06:00.040 | sexually fulfilled or romantically fulfilled or married in order to be a
00:06:05.200 | full human being, we are saying Jesus wasn't a full human being. And that
00:06:10.520 | insight came to me because of two things that have happened in
00:06:14.400 | previous months. The first was I was having a conversation with an
00:06:18.040 | evangelical megachurch pastor who was telling me that he was having problems
00:06:23.400 | with the traditional understanding of Christian sexual ethics because he said
00:06:27.200 | you can't make someone live without romantic hope. That's just
00:06:33.160 | not a plausible way for someone to live. And I just remember reflecting on that
00:06:37.200 | and thinking, again, that assumes a very particular anthropology. One that
00:06:42.200 | actually doesn't apply to Jesus. And the second thing that happened was I was
00:06:46.000 | preaching through 1 John. We got to the part, I think it's in chapter 4, where
00:06:49.520 | John teaches us that if you deny that Jesus Christ came in the flesh, that is
00:06:54.000 | the spirit of the Antichrist. And I remember thinking, who does that these
00:06:57.480 | days? That was a kind of a first and second century type issue. Does anyone
00:07:01.200 | actually deny that now? And I suddenly realized, yes, this man who says you
00:07:05.600 | can't live without romantic hope is denying the full humanity of Jesus. And I
00:07:11.000 | suddenly realized that's part of what is undergirding this debate, is a
00:07:14.960 | very misleading and problematic anthropology that locates the center of
00:07:21.400 | our humanity in our sexual fulfillment. And it's actually very, very destructive.
00:07:26.000 | Actually, whether you're feeling sexually fulfilled or not, it's very destructive.
00:07:29.320 | If you are feeling sexually fulfilled, it's destructive because it's saying to
00:07:33.200 | you, this is as good as life gets. This is it. This is life to the full. And most
00:07:38.000 | people who have any sense of awareness will recognize that being sexually
00:07:41.520 | fulfilled doesn't make all of life suddenly feel complete. But it's
00:07:44.880 | particularly destructive to those who are not feeling sexually fulfilled,
00:07:48.240 | because it says to them that the best in life is passing you by. And my fear is
00:07:52.640 | that it's only a few short, tragic steps from someone being told that you need to
00:07:57.360 | be sexually fulfilled to be complete, for them to then hear that a life without
00:08:02.080 | sexual fulfillment isn't worth living. And it's an anthropology that has a
00:08:07.040 | body count. So I just think it's very destructive. There are a lot of people
00:08:10.400 | who are, for one reason or another, unable to marry. There are a lot of people, for
00:08:13.840 | one reason or another, who are not able to be sexually fulfilled in the way that
00:08:16.640 | they may feel they ought to be. And the message of our culture to them is, you're
00:08:20.880 | not really living. And my fear is people are going to believe that. So Jesus, just
00:08:25.760 | in his very life, challenges that. And then in his teaching, he shows us what is
00:08:31.120 | the center of our humanity. And that's the fact that we've been created for a
00:08:35.160 | relationship with our Creator. And so he tells us that he is the bread of life.
00:08:39.880 | He is what our hungry souls need to be fed by. Not romantic fulfillment. That's
00:08:45.280 | not going to feed our souls. Maybe a great gift if enjoyed in the right kind
00:08:49.880 | of ways that we're told about in the Bible. But actually, if we think sexual or
00:08:55.160 | romantic fulfillment is going to make life complete, actually we're putting a
00:08:59.280 | burden on those two things they cannot possibly bear. And so, which is why
00:09:04.080 | we need to keep hearing the words of Jesus, that actually he's the bread of
00:09:07.360 | life. That we are created for a relationship with the God who made us. So
00:09:12.520 | that's kind of where I've been trying to go with that. Interestingly, one of the
00:09:16.320 | biggest bits of feedback after that speech was shared online was just a lot
00:09:21.560 | of single people, not necessarily same-sex attracted, the majority wouldn't
00:09:25.960 | have been, but just saying they felt encouraged in their singleness by those
00:09:30.040 | words. Which makes me think that actually we need to encourage our single
00:09:34.480 | friends more to realize that that's not a deficient way to live. And my
00:09:39.160 | impression is that a lot of Christians in the church who are single are made to
00:09:44.000 | feel for one reason or another as though it is a deficient way to live. So I think
00:09:48.120 | it's a big issue. I think it's a huge issue. Yeah, it's absolutely a huge issue,
00:09:52.920 | relevant to every one of us and relevant even for married couples too. Well, one of
00:09:58.960 | the things I say to some of the younger folks around is that if you marry
00:10:04.000 | someone thinking they're going to fulfill you, you're going to be a bit of
00:10:07.320 | a nightmare to be married to. Because again, you're putting up an expectation
00:10:12.320 | and weight on the human institution of marriage that it cannot bear. Marriage is
00:10:17.960 | not meant to fulfill us, it's meant to point to the thing which does fulfill us,
00:10:21.280 | which is the real marriage with Christ. Amen. Thank you, Sam. You know, one of the
00:10:26.360 | things I most appreciate about you is your frankness, which is obvious here in
00:10:30.620 | this episode, but also your ability to speak with convictional kindness. I think
00:10:35.440 | this was on full display in your Church of England Synod video, a video which can
00:10:40.320 | be found on YouTube. And you know, it's true of your ministry outreach work on
00:10:44.880 | secular college campuses too, and when we return next time on Wednesday, I want to
00:10:49.280 | go there next. I want you to speak to Christian leaders on the front lines of
00:10:52.920 | the sexual identity conversations and culture, because I think you have a lot
00:10:57.400 | to teach us from your personal experiences, and we'll cover that next
00:11:01.400 | time. I'm your host, Tony Reike. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John
00:11:04.400 | podcast with guest Sam Albury. We'll see you next time.
00:11:10.280 | you
00:11:12.340 | you
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