Robot Girlfriends, Sex and the Gospel

So have you heard about Roxxxy the sex robot? I wish I was kidding you around but sadly I’m not for Roxxxy is a recently invented life-size robotic girlfriend with artificial intelligence and flesh-like synthetic skin. Her creator Douglas Hines said that while she couldn’t vacuum or cook, she could “do almost anything else if you know what I mean” (all he left out there was the ‘nudge, nudge, wink, wink say no more’ bit).

Hines went on to explain that he considered his creation not only a recreational innovation but also an outlet for shy people, or those with sexual dysfunctions.
Well, we all know that sex sells, and so predictably Roxxxy the ‘easy’ robot will garner all kinds of reactions from all kinds of people. You may be reacting to this right now by wondering how a feature that purports to react to serious news can waste your time by including this bizarre and possibly tasteless article?

The thing is, Roxxxy is so symptomatic of everything this is wrong about sex in our modern society. For we live in a world that over-does, over-portrays and over-emphasises sex. This kind of news is actually directly relevant to all Christians because we live in a sex-obsessed (and as a result a deeply hurting) society, and so we find ourselves encountering ‘Roxxxy-like situations’, both personally and publicly, almost every day.

By including this article I am not resorting to cheap attempts to gain a good headline, but rather reacting to something which causes immense hurt and pain to many … an unhealthy and unbalanced understanding of sex. Tiger Woods is yet one more famous person to fall apart in this regard, and really, his story is played out much more privately for all sorts of people every day.

For the problem with our societies endless glorifying of bare flesh and sexual promiscuity is that it totally devalues God’s original intention in creating sex, and therefore also devalues us. It contributes to relational dysfunction, creates intimacy struggles and cheapens our fellow human beings.

It was C.S. Lewis who said that our problem is not that we think too much of sex, but that we think TOO LITTLE of it. What he meant by that is that although we give a lot of airtime to sex, we do it in such a way that cheapens it and the people involved.

The Gospels tell us stories where we find that Jesus reacted with great compassion and gentleness to sexual misdemeanours, perhaps because he understood that at their core was deep human brokenness and isolation. The irony is that sex is actually intended to counter this isolation, to be a means of building healthy intimacy.
It is vital for Christians to remember, that although the church has often been very disapproving of all things sexual (at one time even teaching that when a husband and wife made love the Holy Spirit left the room!), the overall vision of sex in Scripture is not at all disapproving. In fact, one of the real tragedies in Christian history has been the divorce of sexuality from spirituality. After all, we need to remember that God invented sex! The Bible itself actually has a very high view of sex.

God designed us to be sexual beings and that in the context of a committed and faithful relationship there would be for us a point of deep physical, spiritual and emotional connection. In the right place sex has a profoundly spiritual aspect to it.

Of course Roxxxie as an ‘outlet’ for the shy and sexually dysfunctional is only going to make things worse, and won’t in any way fulfill the deep need we have to be involved in a meaningful and giving relationship with another human being. But perhaps we should not only challenge the wrongness of this situation, but also offer a more attractive alternative.

The story of Roxxxy the sex robot breaks my heart and reminds me that the greatest challenge in situations like this is to use our voices to faithfully and proactively describe Scripture’s vision of the sheer beauty, the deep spirituality, and the profound intimacy of the sexual act as God originally created it to be.

Insult Politics

A couple of weeks back the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, was attacked at the end of a political rally in Milan. His assailant hurled a statuette at Berlusconi breaking his nose and several teeth. This assault engendered shock across the world, and much soul-searching within Italian political circles. The obvious question being asked was - has the disintegration of the political debate and the increasing use of insults against political opponents created a “climate of hatred” in which conditions are ripe for the insults to develop into physical violence?

This issue should be one that all South Africans take seriously. Our own political front is awash with deeply personal verbal attacks and insults. Ironically enough, on Reconciliation Day last month, many papers headlined the spat between the ANC Youth League president Julius Malema and the SACP deputy general secretary Jeremy Cronin. Malema, in particular, is renowned for this sort of insult politics, and indeed on Reconciliation Day itself was quoted as deriding the SACP as “greedy yellow communists.”

So what does the Gospel have to say to this sort of insult politics? Well, for a start the teaching of Jesus would challenge us towards serious personal reflection. How often is this sort of ‘insult politics’ played out on a micro level within our own lives? How often have we spoken insults towards others? Whether it was aloud or quietly muttered, or even just thought, it doesn’t seem to make a difference to Jesus. In this way, have we contributed towards a “climate of hatred” within our own community, or perhaps even our own family?

If we are to contribute towards a better society we need to allow ourselves to be personally challenged as to how we speak and think of others and in doing so we can become part of creating and sustaining a “climate of love”. The Bible reminds us how powerful words are, and if we live in a way that recognizes that and uses the power of words positively, we can make a tremendous difference.

I am not advocating that we close down political and personal debates so as to minimize risk. Instead we should fearlessly tackle all kinds of issues, policies, divergent thoughts and opinions in a way that stimulates creative thinking and promotes tolerance of difference. This should be done in a spirit of gentle and humble grace for this was the way of Jesus, and lest we forget, it was a way modeled on the political scene by Nelson Mandela, and indeed is the very reason this country is fortunate enough to even celebrate a Reconciliation Day.

Politicians and Promises

January is synonymous with all kinds of promises and resolutions as we use the change of year to mentally shut the door on the past and throw open a new one filled with the possibilities of fresh starts.
Promises are also synonymous with politicians, with most of us long past truly believing that these promises will be meaningfully fulfilled. This is because we have been let down so often, leaving many of us more than a little cynical and disillusioned.

The award winning website PolitiFact.com even has an Obameter – a bar graph tracking the fulfillment of Obama’s campaign promises. The site informs us that out of 513 election promises made, Obama has so far kept 75 of them while compromising on 20 and breaking 9. The rest of the promises have so far seen no meaningful action, in other words nothing has been done about them yet.

Closer to home our own President Jacob Zuma promised Parliament in June that the government would create 500 000 jobs by the end of the year (2009). In a report they recently compiled, the Business Day confirmed that only 223 568 job opportunities out of the 500 000 had actually been created (see Business Day, 04/12/09). Of course it should also be remembered that in the meantime the recession caused a loss of a million jobs through this year, while the unemployment rate increased to 24.5%.

This only underlines why so many of us feeling even more cynical about politicians and their promises then we do about even our own new year resolutions. Yet, the question needs to be asked – is cynicism really an appropriate response for a Christian?

Of course, we need to be realistically aware that many politicians have proved themselves untrustworthy. And of course, in other areas of South African life there is much to be concerned about especially regarding poverty, crime and disease.
Despite all this, shouldn’t someone of faith look to be aware of the negative and yet not be coloured and shaped by it? As Eugene Peterson reminds us when we narrow our eyes in suspicion the world correspondingly narrows around us. Instead, we should be living with hope and a sense of wonder. Hope, because we know that despite the fallibility of all human beings, God IS in this world and working, and wonder, because we have been called to become a part of what God is doing.

Yes, there is no doubt about it that bad things do happen and people will let us down. Yet, at the same time, God is alive and on the move in this world and if we follow him we can live in the light and hope of that.