Telling the Truth about Men, Women and Sexual Harassment

My students are usually surprised at how much sex is in the Bible.  From Adam and Eve running away naked, to the sexual exploits of Noah and Lot’s children, to Abraham’s various wives, to Jacobs various wives and maids, the rape of Tamar, to Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, not to mention the women who can’t get pregnant and God shows up and the babies appear.  And that’s just Genesis.  There are plenty of more stories.  The best one may be the story of David and Uriah’s wife Bathsheba.  David used his power to rape and take advantage of Bathsheba for the sake of his own pleasure.  When Bathsheba gets pregnant, David tries to cover up what he has done and finally has Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah killed.

The point is we did not invent power and sex in the 1960’s.  It has been a problem for as long as men and women have roamed the earth.  Sex is a power we all use and abuse.  So much of what happens with sex is biologically and culturally determined.  We are sexual by nature and our culture trains us to be sexual. We are taught what it means to become intimate with someone.  We are taught the purpose of sex, its relation to having babies, the role of contraception, what turns us on and what does not.  We are taught what is sexy and what is not.  We are taught who is supposed to do what and when we are permitted to do it.  But what we are seeing today is a culture that is no longer sure what is permitted and what is not.

We learn the rules of sex from parents, friends, television, movies, books and most important in our time, the internet.  And once you disconnect sex from love and marriage and turn it into a commodity, it gives some the impression that anything is permitted. When I was in India a few years ago and spoke to some Indian young men, they talked about their impressions of women in the United States after having seen “some American movies.”  They assumed all American women are eager to have sex at any moment, that American women are eager for men to grab them at will.  When I told them they were wrong, they thought I was lying. They thought of America as a place where anything was permitted.  Let’s be honest: There is a problem with the way we have or have not established sexual boundaries and limits.

So, what do we do?  First, we call people to account.  The prophet Nathan tells David God knows what you did and is not pleased.  David feels bad and says he is sorry.  David had to learn to respect women and to respect himself enough to care. Did he understand why what he had done was wrong and did he gain a new respect for women?  Did he learn that he could not do what he wanted to do just because he felt like it?  Could he be trained to be a different kind of man? 

If you study the David story, you will know the answer to the questions.