Vulnerability
In our Sexuality & Spirituality Guide, Rev. Tonetta Landis-Aina shares nine essential criteria to evaluate a faithful sexual ethic. The first criterion is Vulnerability. When we navigate major life changes like graduation, new jobs, or relocating, that thrust us into uncertainty and new communities, we may find ourselves struggling to find connection and belonging.
Vulnerability can be one of the toughest challenges we face when we want to deepen our relationships, not only in sexual and romantic contexts but in all our relationships. It takes an act of courage to be our full selves in this world, not knowing how the world will react.
As we watch elected officials erase us from the bookshelves, forbid language about us in the classroom, and threaten to remove children from loving homes, it is easy to lose trust in our communities, and this can leave us isolated and alone. It is hard to be vulnerable with even those close to us when legislatures are attempting to take away our dignity. To be clear, we do not owe anyone our vulnerability, but we do owe it to ourselves to find the people we can trust, with whom we can be vulnerable with, with whom we can begin this journey toward a faithful sexual ethic. It is only through true vulnerability that we can hope to connect and give birth to spiritual connection with the Divine and one another.
The first criteria by which to evaluate any sexual ethic is through the lens of vulnerability. While Genesis is a problematic book from which to draw proscriptive norms because it was originally intended to solidify Israelite identity and understanding of God in the context of Babylonian oppression, the scene at the end of chapter two should give us pause. After a description of the formation of a new kinship group through the physical joining of a man and woman, the Genesis author explains, “And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.” Karen Lebacqz suggests that as a precondition for developing a sexual ethic, Christians must explore the connection between vulnerability and sexuality. Of the Genesis passage, she notes that the book’s ancient audience would have understood nakedness to be a metaphor for vulnerability and “feeling no shame” in the imagination of the time would have carried connotations of appropriateness. “Vulnerability,” explains Lebacqz, “may be the precondition for both union and procreation: without a willingness to be vulnerable, to be exposed, to be wounded, there can be no union . . . ‘Appropriate vulnerability’ may describe the basic intention for human life– which may be experienced in part through the gift of sexuality. In a Christian vocabulary, ethical sex is sex which is connected to a loss of the need to protect oneself, and thus open to self-transcendence, a healthy moving out beyond the limits and needs of the self into contemplation, reverence, and spiritual connectedness with the other.
Next Steps
You can see the other eight criteria for building a faithful sexual ethic by downloading our free Sexuality & Spirituality Guide, featuring Rev. Tonetta Landis-Aina.
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