About That Sex Post From The Gospel Coalition...

Look, I have zero problems with erotically-charged spiritual imagery. Sure, it doesn't always work. But sometimes it does work because many of the elements of human love-making offer a powerful and intimate portrayal of God's mystic love for humanity.

This type of imagery is not a new concept for faith-based literature. Sexual language has, for centuries, offered theologians and laypeople alike the words and expressions to describe God's interactions with people.

But enter The Gospel Coalition. If you're unfamiliar with TGC, they are a conglomerate of theologically reformed writers/thinkers who have, for years, promoted and theologized a gospel laced with misogyny, spiritual abuse, colonization, and many of the other sins committed by some of America’s most popular churches. Their gospel is rigid, male dominated, and usually lacks any kind of nuanced or diverse understandings.

This week, the men who call the editorial shots at TGC decided they'd pump out a goodie for us, an exclusive release of an excerpt from Joshua Ryan Butler's forthcoming book, Beautiful Union: How God's Vision for Sex Points Us to the Good, Unlocks the True, and (Sort of) Explains Everything.

Yes, that’s a mouthful of a title, one that might need buyers to give their consent prior to purchasing.

While Butler's book doesn't come out until April, the snippet that TGC posted yesterday offers us more than most of us will ever need or want to know about his so-called Beautiful Union.

Butler, one of the lead pastors at a church called Redemption in Tempe, Arizona, titled his excerpt, "Sex Won’t Save You (But It Points to the One Who Will)."

And then, with the literary imagination of a middle-school-aged Puritan, Butler offers us a sexually-charged essay about how the man's role in heteronormative sexual intercourse points us to Jesus and our Savior's desire to enter each of our courts with praise.

"I used to look to sex for salvation," writes Butler before getting to his first big point: "Sex is an icon of Christ and the church."

Yes, sex is an icon of Christ.

Butler says that when a man and a woman become one flesh, they are not only celebrating their marriage to one another but also pointing all of us to consider the marriage between Jesus and the church. Relying heavily on the Apostle Paul's theology for marriage in Ephesians 5, Butler says:

"Sex is an icon of Christ and the church. In Ephesians 5:31–32, a “hall of fame” marriage passage, the apostle Paul proclaims, “‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church."

Butler goes on to say this: A husband and wife’s life of faithful love is designed to point to greater things, but so is their sexual union!

And that, according to Butler, is a "gospel bombshell!"

But how does a husband and wife's sexual union reflect the relationship between Jesus and the church? Butter says it's all about generosity and hospitality. He writes:

"What deeper form of self-giving is there than sexual union where the husband pours out his very presence not only upon but within his wife?"

In other words, when a man ejaculates on or in his wife, says Butler, the man represents Jesus longs to do the very same exact thing to a welcoming, hospitable, and readied church.

"Hospitality… involves receiving the life of the other... what deeper form of hospitality is there than sexual union where the wife welcomes her husband into the sanctuary of her very self?"

He means vagina.

But Butler, still stroking his theology, isn’t close to being finished. He says there is a very significant (and biblical) distinction between the roles that a man and a woman have during intercourse. The man is the giver. The woman is the receiver. The man enters. The woman welcomes. In fact, Butler says: The most frequent Hebrew phrase for sex is, literally, “he went into her”

Now, just in case we don't fully understand the point he's made at least 5 times, Butler expounds on his theory with a honeymoon narrative in Cabo: the groom goes into his bride. He is not only with his beloved but within his beloved. He enters the sanctuary of his spouse, where he pours out his deepest presence and bestows an offering, a gift, a sign of his pilgrimage, that has the potential to grow within her into new life.

Did you catch that? When Butler says "he pours out his deepest presence and bestows an offering, a gift, a sign of his pilgrimage," he's talking about semen.

Y'all I can't... the sign of his pilgrimage? 🙄Please. Reformed men are so dramatic and over compensating with their biblical reflections.

That very picture, the moment when a man bursts forth onto or into his wife, giving her his offering, his gift, his seed... THAT, according to Butler, is a profound and vivid picture of the gospel.

And then Butler retells his little erotic sex narrative, except this time, it's Jesus in the Cabo honeymoon suite mounting his bride.

I'm not kidding.

Butler writes: She [the Church] gladly receives the warmth of his [Jesus's] presence and accepts the sacrificial OFFERING he bestows [not only] upon the altar [but also] within her Most Holy Place.

Our most holy places? Like, our spiritual vaginas?

While writing this part, did Butler ever put himself as a representative of the Church in the picture that he paints of Jesus engaging in a sexual encounter with the Church?

I mean, does Butler let Jesus come inside his sanctuary, his holy place? Did he fully think that mental image through? I mean, maybe. Maybe Butler's faith is heteroflexible. Yet his view of marriage is definitely not.

So, chances are, he doesn't fully grasp his own imagery. He's far too preoccupied with the idea that a man showcases Jesus to his wife every time he "goes into her".

The misogyny of Butler's gospel is downright grotesque.

For Butler, the man equals Jesus. And… the woman is the receiver of Jesus from a man.

There are so many problems with this kind of language.

The fact that Butler paints a sexualized picture of a woman needing to always be hospitable, "a welcoming sanctuary" for her husband's seed is dangerous. It's a not-so-subtle promotion of r*pe/sexual assault. It proclaims an understanding that a woman can't say no to her husband's needs. But it also suggests that when she does say no to her husband, she's also saying no to Jesus. Because according to Butler, the man's role equals Jesus, suggesting that a woman cannot fully receive Jesus without the aid of her husband.

The language is all so problematic and yet so typical of TGC’s gospel.

Love-making language can certainly be used to describe the relationship between God and humankind. But as soon as you add gender and equipment to the description, it quickly morphs from beautiful and holy to patriarchal and misogynistic.

But The Gospel Coalition has long been a proponent of male-dominating Christianity, a penis-driven faith in God that's riddled with overcompensating theological projections. Butler's small D energy is more of the same drivel. It's not about a union that is both beautiful and reflective of greater things, it's just a gratuitous male-focused "offering" that should get shot into a tissue and flushed down the toilet.