A Lily Among the Thorns

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Book Reviews
“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed.” Francis Bacon (d. 1626)

A Lily Among the Thorns
Miguel A. De La Torre, San Francisco: Josey-Bass, 2007.

Reviewed by James Garner, Denton, TX

To love and be loved is an essential part of our humanity. To love and be loved fairly is a quest that follows us from infancy to the grave—and, for people of faith, beyond. How are we doing as a society in expressing and receiving ethically based love? More importantly, how are we as Christians in today’s world fulfilling Jesus’ command to “love our neighbor as ourselves?” Are we living and loving the pure sexual ethic that God intends for humankind? If not, why not, and how do we get back to God’s ideal?

Michel De La Torre, repeating the liberationist viewpoints he introduced in his earlier works, Handbook On U.S. Theologies of Liberation and Liberating Jonah: Forming an Ethics of Reconciliation suggests that the culture of biblical times, undeniably steeped in patriarchy, has resulted in an understanding of sexual ethics that is skewed toward male superiority, more specifically males of power and authority. However, De La Torre maintains, if we read the text from the perspective of those who are oppressed (marginalized) by sexual mores that foster sexism or patriarchy, we can better understand how to re-appropriate God’s original plan. He asks us to “reinterpret passages that foster either sexism or patriarchy.”

By such reading of the Bible, De La Torre says we can access voices seldom heard in our society, specifically women, people of color, singles and homosexuals—those who know what it means to live in a hierarchal society, subject to prevailing power structures. To read the Bible “from the margins,” he says, “is to understand it from the experience of slaves, who would have emphasized the Gospel message of John that, ‘the truth has set us free’ (Jn 8:32) or the Exodus story of a God who enters history to lead God’s enslaved people to freedom.”

While some may take issue with the parallels he draws among women, minorities, and gays, the case he makes for liberating the female body, overcoming sexual racial prejudice, dealing compassionately with the homosexual, and promoting a more biblically based sexual ethic for Christians is a convincing one. Referencing the Bible, historical biases and current cultural understanding, he guides us through a reading of the scriptures, viewed “through the lens of patriarchy,” that has been used to justify male superiority as God historically believed to have intended it. Such construct, however, is a

consequence of sin, not the order of things as ordained by God in the beginning, and certainly not appropriately Christian in today’s world.

For women, he says “great liberating sex” can never take place until patriarchy in the relationship with her husband is dismantled and the full humanity of women is acknowledged in both the religious and secular spheres.” Such understanding is far removed from the understanding of the status of women illustrated in the commandment of Exodus 20:17, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house, wife, slave, ox or donkey.” Similarly, De La Torre says that “no conversation about oppressive sexual structures can be complete without an explanation of how race is eroticized for the purpose of controlling bodies of color.” In the sexually charged atmosphere of today’s world, the single is frequently either shunned for her perceived worldliness or is designated as deficient because she is “living for herself.” Then she is ignored at the bargaining table when the Christian framework for sexual ethics, including those for the single, are developed.

Coining the word, “orthoeros,” a term he uses to characterize a justice-based (“correct”) erotic sex and using the word “familial” to refer to that time in Eden prior to the Fall in which God’s perfect will for how humans are to relate to each other existed, De La Torre describes a relationship in which “Adam and Eve were naked but felt no shame” (Gen 2:25). This communal relationship with each other and with God is characterized as being the pattern for the relationship among humans, as well as between God and humans.

Further, Jesus, whose approach to women was markedly anti-patriarchal, invites us to become one with Him as He is one with the Father in John 17:21-23. The “lily” in the book’s title refers to the “liberative sexual ethics” of the book and the thorns are the “oppressive patriarchal structures what have emerged over the past two centuries of Christian thought”—Song of Songs 2:2: “Like a lily among the thorns, So is my darling among the maidens.”

Michel De La Torre, proving that he is an original thinker, does not shy away from advocating “a subversive reading of the scriptures” as a means to overthrow sexually abusive structures. He challenges our conventional thought. And he takes us aback when, in referring to women who have been abused, beaten, broken, tortured and humiliated, he opines that “Christ’s crucifixion is not an act of substitution for our sins; rather it is an act of solidarity in our unjust suffering.”

You do not have to agree with him on every point, however, to gain insight from his resourceful access to theological thought and ethical insights.