The Sexual Lives of Others: Like Catnip to Everyone---Even Christians

Two days ago I wrote a simple enough little piece (here) in which I rather cursorily addressed the question of whether or not I should attend the wedding of some gay friends. A preacher's wife snorting coke during a televised Easter service wouldn't generate as many comments as that blog post did. I wouldn't have gotten any more responses if I'd written that I'd discovered absolute proof that Jesus was a schizophrenic Muslim magician. I guarantee you that in the time it's taken me to write this, four more Christians have left comments on that post to the effect that Jesus hates sin, and would no sooner attend a gay wedding than he would assist Satan in trimming his hooves.

I went and checked. I was wrong: five Christians just left me a message along those lines. And that number will double by the time I'm through here.

Before I was a Christian, I thought Christians were definitely more focused on sex than they were anything else. Now that I am a Christian, I still kind of think that.

But so what? That's just people, isn't it? It doesn't matter who you are---Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Jew---it's a sure bet that in the course of any given day, you spend more time thinking about what other people are doing---and why, and when, and how, and with whom---than you do anything else. And there's nothing particularly wrong or malevolant about that. Saved or not, we're all first and foremost Social Creatures.

I do think, though, that it wouldn't kill we Christians, when condemning Today's Offensively Secularized Culture as often as God knows we do, to remember that we, right along with everyone else, are constantly and everywhere proving that we're fairly fixated on what others are doing with their time, energy, and (most of all) sexuality.

Non-Christians are irresistibly fascinated by the behaviors, imperatives, and core motivations of others. So are Christians. So is everyone else in the world.

God can forgive us for how readily we surrender to our desire to be involved in the personal business of others. But it's clear that he's in no particular rush to cure us of that desire.

Comment here.