Sexuality, Health, Faith and Healing
By Devon Dick
Recently, the Ministry of Education in my home country, Jamaica, published The National Policy Reintegration of School-Aged Mothers into the Formal School System which mandated that after pregnancy school girls should be re-integrated into the public school system. Pregnancy remains the primary cause for the drop-out rate of female students. Some estimates claim that 84% of teen mothers do not return to school to complete their education. Therefore, this policy framework calls for interagency involvement to ensure the reintegration of teenage mothers to complete their secondary school education.
This directive to re-integrate teenage mothers into the school system is irrespective of how the girls used their sexuality to lead to pregnancy. The pregnancy might have been the result of sexual experimentation, it might be due to esteem problems and trying to find and experience love, it might be a result of being sexually explicit and illicit behaviour. It might be a result of using sexual enhancers and energy drinks such as P—y Drink, which remove all sexual inhibitions without a companion sexual enjoyment or fulfilment. The Gleaner newspaper reported Viagra parties for teenage boys and it is possible that a teenage girl attended one and a pregnancy resulted. The pregnancy might be a result of sexual deviancy-seduction, incest, rape-but the call is for re-integration of school aged mothers into the public educational system. We do not know and seem not to care.
I would like to use this recent decree from the Ministry of Education that school aged mothers should be reintegrated into the public educational system as a case study and model for my discussion of sexuality, health, faith and healing because reintegration is one facet of healing, and combining the four elements is worth reflection.
Healing is firmly related to God’s will and purpose. Jesus the Messiah offers healing which includes and involves the physical cure of individuals afflicted by disease, disablement and mental disorder. However, in the ministry of Jesus, healing was clearly more all-embracing in effect and reality. While the understanding of healing as physical cure must be retained and embraced, it would be very much less than what it ought to be if this is how it is seen and no more. Christians believe that the gift of medicine is God’s provision and a form of healing. However, healing has other dimensions which are deeper and wider that physical cure. This has been the witness of Jesus, the greatest of all healers.
From Jesus we learn that healing has to do with wholeness. This wholeness is absolutely comprehensive. Persons went to Jesus or were taken to Jesus for healing of a physical nature but heard that their sins were forgiven. Physical wellness or restoration was not the exclusive thing that the healing offered. In Mark. 2:5 we see When Jesus saw their faith, he said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.
The forgiveness of sins is a dimension of human wellness. Theologian and psychiatrist, Tony Allen, states that forgiveness heals the spirit which is demonstrated by healing of psychosomatic, stress related, lifestyle disorders. In John 5:14, we see Afterward Jesus findeth him (invalid and impotent man of Bethsaida) in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee. Healing is more than physical cure. It is also wholeness- spiritual well-being.
When a person has been healed and is assured that he or she has been made well or whole means that he/she has been saved. This salvation goes beyond physical healing – Matthew 9:20- 22 states,
And, behold, a woman, which was diseased with an issue of blood twelve years, came behind him, and touched the hem of his garment: For she said within herself, If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole. But Jesus turned and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole. Salvation is a sign that the powers of domination no longer have the capacity to hold people bound and have things their own way.
Luke 17: 12-14 states, And as he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off: And they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go shew yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed. Jesus sent the ten lepers to go and show themselves to the religious authorities. This was for their reintegration into society from which they were alienated, their own sense of belonging and assurance that healing meant more than leprosy gone. Healing has socio-religious implications for the sufferer as well as the whole community.
Gillian Paterson, theologian, said if individual sickness is seen as the product of a sick or sinful environment, then the primary locus of healing must lie in the factors that prevent human beings from living ‘life in its fulness’. Those factors may be poverty, or oppression, or fear, or homelessness. They may be loneliness, social rejection or lack of love Gillian Paterson. Healing confronts social ills.
Healing involves restoration, wellness of the whole being, reconciliation with God, self, others and the whole creation. Healing brings together the spiritual, moral, social, political, economic and environmental factors. Burchell Taylor, Biblical Scholar, said “Healing brings wholeness and soundness in terms of well-being even if there is impaired physical functioning still in evidence.” Healing power exceeds the power of those who create disorder, dislocations and fractured and fragmented human relationships. Christ Jesus took upon himself the infirmities of human life and brought about salvation which is wholeness of life – healing. It represents liberation from sin. This is open to all who are willing to receive it by faith.
The people of faith, the members of faith community are called upon to experience healing as well be facilitators of healing. In all of this the presence and role of the Faith Community, that is the collective presence of disciples who ascribed to certain doctrines and lifestyle, are pivotal. The Faith Community is the community of the healed as well as a healing community.
The Faith Community’s response is therefore to be a mirror of the wholeness of the healed life as well as ministering agent of it in the broken, wounded, hurting community. How will this work out in practice?
The quality of wholeness displayed by the Faith Community becomes the pattern of wholeness to which it witnesses in word and deed. Four years ago, Caster Semenya of South Africa, the world champion 800 metres runner, had her private and personal medical history public by the IAAF. She was the eighth gender case target of the IAAF in four years. Semenya is a hermaphrodite with internal testes and no ovary nor womb. [This month Germany recognized inter sex gender when a person’s reproductive or sexual anatomy does not fall into the male or female biological categories.]
After Semenya won gold at the 2009 Berlin World Championships, she was humiliated and made butt of jokes. Garnet Roper of the Faith Community wrote that the IAAF was “at best colossally insensitive and at worst outright racism.” Semenya was treated as an outcast. She was alienated from the athletic circuit. Semenya should not have been prevented from running with other athletes. We should never allow any woman to suffer like this again.
The Faith Community becomes the place where barriers and divisions that exclude, marginalize, define persons in terms of inferior and superior. Therefore, we ought to affirm the humanity of persons rather than defining them based on their sexual practices or propensities. Therefore, it would not be ‘gay’, but rather persons who are in a homosexual relationship or persons who practise homosexuality. A person is more that what he or she does sexually. Everybody is somebody, first and foremost. The commitment is to take blessings into the world, embodied and expressed as members of the healed and healing community. The people of Faith must be committed to serve for the benefit of all.
Health is more than physical and mental well-being. It has also to do with how we deal with the environment. The World Health Organization’s definition of heath is: “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”.
Wholeness and heath are interrelated. Allen argues that there are three dimensions to health namely the physical which deals with the person as matter or as a biological aspect, the mental or psychological dimension which deals with the person as a thinking and feeling being and finally there is the spiritual which gives the person meaning and purpose and addresses the ultimate questions of life-who am I and how do I get here and what am I doing here.
Sexuality describes the whole way a person goes about expressing himself or herself as a sexual being. Sexuality is not just about SEX, although people often define sexuality in terms of genitals, what we do with them, and who we do it with.
The Church has had an uncomfortable relationship with sex. According to dub poet Mutabaruka, the Church believed that sex was evil so they devised the story about Virgin Birth. Jerome (347-420), early church Father, saw women as the gateway to the Devil, the way to evil and hence clergy did not marry and the ascetic life was favoured. Then in the Middle Ages (5th to 15th century) the attitude toward sex in marriage was restraint. Messer said Christians would not have sex on Thursday as a mark of respect that the first Lord’s Supper was held on a Thursday,
Christians could not have sex on a Friday because Jesus was crucified on a Friday, No sex on Saturday out of respect for Mary who was mourning on Saturday, no sex on Sunday because Jesus was raised on a Sunday and none on Monday out of respect of persons who are poor. Hence the term “Thank God it is Tuesday”. How things have changed with a Flair Magazine stating that “based on a survey, pastors make the best lovers in the sack”. The day that story came out there was a cricket match at Sabina Park. So Rev. Karl Johnson, General Secretary of Jamaica Baptist Union, asked a lady he did not know who was sitting beside us what she thought of the Flair article which said pastors scored high as best in bed. The quick retort from this lady was pastors are the best at sex because they get so much practice with the church sisters. Later we found out that her father was a pastor. Obviously, the attitude toward sex by the clergy has changed over the years.
Elaine Storkey, philosopher, sociologist and theologian, argues that the obsession with sex is part of a bigger search “for personal identity, meaning and spiritual integration…Sexuality is a creature of God. Sex is not God . . . Sex, then, is something which God has breathed into creation; something God has placed close to our identity as humans”. It does not mean we are not human if we do not have sex. Sexuality is . . .The total of who you are, what you feel, and how you respond. Sexuality is expressed in the way you speak, smile, stand, sit, snicker, sob, dress, dance, etc . . .
Storkley claims that sexuality is about us as sexual beings in all our relationships that make us human. We express our sexuality in friendships, marriage, parenting, neighbourhood and work relationships. There are boundaries and different ways to express that sexuality depending on who and the context. We say yes to hugs, warmth, and closeness with family, friends, neighbours and coworkers but no to incest in family or sexual harassment at workplace, or sex with neighbour’s wife.
After sexual expressions have been corrupted and sexual exploitation there needs to be forgiveness, salvation and wholeness and healing.
Men, generally, are treated differently after committing offences against sexual norms and experience healing quicker and reintegration into society perhaps because it is felt that men cannot help themselves. Forty-four year old Mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford, who admitted to buying and using cocaine in the last two years, said crudely that he enjoyed enough oral sex at home with wife, Renata, so that consorting with prostitutes was not a temptation for him. Police documents quoted Ford’s associates as saying that the mayor consorted with a woman suspected of being a prostitute and made a sexual proposition to a female staff member. A couple days ago, Silvio Berlusconi, Italian Prime Minister, was found guilty of having sexual relations with an underage prostitute. This and other sexual allegations has not affected his political power or economic influence in Italy.
Similarly, American President Bill Clinton was impeached subsequent to having oral sex with Monica Lewinsky. Lewinsky engaged in oral sex with Clinton several times in 1997. Clinton is still seen as an outstanding person and is not an outcast of society. US President Thomas Jefferson fathered children with his enslaved lady Sally Hemings and he is revered in US history.
However, it is alleged that Winnie Mandela committed sexual indiscretions while Nelson was in prison and she is generally treated as an outcast. Olivia Pope character in “Scandal,” the hit TV show, is about a powerful political operative of African descent in a relationship with a Caucasian president. She loses her powerful job while the president is in place. Men after sexual indiscretions are integrated in society fully while women are usually not so well treated by society.
School-aged mothers not only should experience healing through reintegration into the school system but during pregnancy should be allowed to continue their education in the public school system just like the male student who got her pregnant. They should be accepted, affirmed and appreciated in the community. They should be allowed to experience forgiveness, salvation and physical cure. They should be helped to be in harmony with the natural environment. This healing means that the offspring will be equal to all members of the community of faith and humanity.
Part of the reintegration of teen mothers in the education system is to inform them that sexual instincts are not wrong in and of itself. Sex urge is one of the strongest of all desires of the human body and has to be controlled based on their values and channeled towards healthy purposes. Part of the healing of our young mothers is for them to realize that sexual instincts are God-given for their good, for the continuance of human race, giving and receiving love, affirmation and appreciation. An important lesson for school aged mothers is that sex has been given in order that they could procreate safely, express intimacy, experience excitement and engage in mutual pleasure.
Sex should be mutual, respectful, honouring and loving.
There are 17 agencies in Jamaica cooperating on the reintegration of School-Aged Mothers into the Formal School System, but unfortunately the Church and Medical Council are absent from this formal discussion. May I encourage both the Church and Medical Council to get involved in the reintegration of School-Aged Mothers into the Formal School System as part of the healing and health of the sexuality of school aged mothers.
Devon Dick is a Jamaican pastor, evangelist, writer, and journalist. This essay was adapted from a lecture given at the 40th Annual Dr. Ena Thomas Memorial Lecture and Symposium on November 24, 2013.
Bibliography
Allen, E. A. Caring for the Whole Person. Kingston: Marc Publications, 1995. Messer, Donald E. Contemporary Images of Christian Ministry. Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1989.
Paterson, Gillian. Whose Ministry? A Ministry of Health Care for the Year 2000. Geneva: WCC Publications, 1999.
Torrance, David (Ed). God, Family and Sexuality. Handsel Press, Scotland, 1997. The National Policy Reintegration of School-Aged Mothers into the Formal School System. MOE, Kingston; 2013
Taylor, Burchell, Healing in the New Creation, Bethel Baptist Church,Kingston, Jamaica, May 30, 2008
(Unpublished)
Taylor, Burchell, ‘Worship that Heals the Broken,’ Bethel Baptist Church, Kingston, Kingston, June 10, 2013 (Unpublished)
Witnessing to Christ Today. Promoting Health and Wellness for All. Tubingen: WCC, 2010
