To put it another way, some aspects of the Resurrection life are presently unavailable to us, like flying. (1 Thess. 4:17) That’s why I don’t stake my identity on my earth-bound mobility. I know that sexuality will change at the Resurrection, and so I do not stake my identity on my current sexual desires and practices.

In some form we’ll have mouths, hands, livers, etc., but genitals will have become useless? That seems decidedly strange. Especially since sexuality is the major physical practice whereby physical beings “become one” (in the Bible’s own terminology), and the eschatological community is often envisaged as being a universal communion, a communion made “one flesh” in the Body of Christ.

Besides, according to certain stories in the Hebrew Bible, angels have sex.

Does anybody else think this sounds like it could be one of The Teenage Mutant Turtles’ take on God?

To quote Max Scheler:

“…in ressentiment morality, love for the ‘small’, the ‘poor’, the ‘weak’, and the ‘oppressed’ is really disguised hatred, repressed envy, an impulse to detract, etc., directed against the opposite phenomena: ‘wealth’, ‘strength’, ‘power’, ‘largesse’.

Idolatry is too often an empty category into which we toss whatever or whomever we hate or envy: the rich, the suburban, the conventional, the status quo, the ignorant, etc.

We use the word “idol” too easily, which isn’t to say it’s a meaningless word, just that it often says more about the person using it than it does its referent.

First, Alison’s definition of idolatry lends itself rather easily to a theological Mad Lib. “Idolatry is seen to be an involvement in the human cultural reality of death from which God longs for us to be free” just as validly becomes “Sin is seen to be an involvement in the human cultural reality of death from which God longs for us to be free.” This has been one of my recurring burning questions – what, actually, constitutes idolatry? I haven’t found much of anything resembling a cohesive consensus as to what idolatry is; Alison’s description isn’t very useful inasmuch as it is completely redundant.

Second, I take issue with his argument that “the ‘just is’ of being gay or lesbian is indeed objectively part of a ‘what for’” – that is, that one’s sexual orientation is a central element in one’s identity, one’s raison d’etre. Jesus’ teaching that even blessed sexual relationships will not persist after the Resurrection (Matt. 22:29-32, Mark 12:24-27) makes me wary of assigning a person’s core identity to any aspect of his or her sexual preference or practice. To do so is to tie a person’s identity to a factor that cannot last. This is, no doubt, why love is placed at the top of Paul’s list of the three theological virtues – it alone can persist when the incontestable reality of God is fully apparent. Sexuality, like faith and hope, may be a good part of creation, but it is ultimately destined to be “cast off”. That’s one of the reason why I really liked the Rowan Williams quote from the other day – it recognized that the apostolic writers were not, in fact, concerned with sexuality as a matter of ultimate importance.