Citizen Columns

Citizen Columns >> Answer (December 6th, 2007)

Question

How does your faith group handle sex education?

Answer

Here's my reply, but for more, see Fr John Matusiak's answer to a similar question on the OCA website. An excellent discussion of the whole subject of sexuality can be found in Fr Thomas Hopko's "Christian Faith and Same-Sex Attraction: Eastern Orthodox Reflections" (Conciliar Press, 2006).

Many Orthodox Churches are still tightly bound to a particular ethnic group. And that means that cultural factors play a huge role in how the various churches handle sex education, especially in the home countries. Other parishes are thoroughly multicultural, mixing Canadian converts and people from a variety of Orthodox cultures. While there is no one approach to sex education, there are a number of shared assumptions.

We begin by taking the focus off sexual relations. As human beings, we are first of all in relation with God. We are created in the image and likeness of God, and are therefore incomplete as human beings without Him. But we are also proud creatures who most often prefer to go our own way. The collective and cumulative result of those choices has left us, as individuals and as the human race, far from our true vocation and from our Father's home. We lost the purity, goodness and beauty of what communion with God and with each other was meant to be. But the good news is that we are also redeemed. Christ's life, teaching, death and resurrection make possible a restored life of full communion. We test everything, including sexuality, through the lense of this created-fallen-redeemed experience. And therefore the task of parents and church is to put whatever sex education children receive elsewhere into this context of ultimate meaning.

From the beginning, Christianity faced two opposing temptations. There were those who denounced all sexual activity as unworthy of the truly spiritual person. This was opposed by another extreme that felt free to indulge every passion, since Christ had liberated humankind from bondage to rules. Christians eventually found a balance that blessed sexual life in marriage, but equally blessed celibacy for the sake of Christ, as a witness of the coming eternal kingdom in which all physical relations are transcended

Father John Jillions