Burning a flag or sticking pins into a photo, or spitting or swearing; all of them are signs of disrespect, some of them are punishable by law. They are also all dependent on stories and contexts for them to make sense. Sticking a sharp object into chemically coated and coloured paper, needn’t mean anything at all, neither should the act of setting fire to a piece of rectangular cloth. However, since as human beings, we are meaning makers and moral actors we operate on instinct that our actions serve a narrative purpose.
In some cases the meaning of our actions are revealed easily (spitting at someone say), in others a lot depends on our being able to read the language being sued. When Saddam Hussein was deposed as leader of Iraq in 2003, the symbolic toppling of his statue by American troops was easy enough to understand, but when the locals began slapping the statue with their shoes, (or just waving them in the air) I felt decidedly confused. The actors on our news screens (mostly Middle Eastern men) thought they were sending a clear enough message, after all they all knew what shoe waving meant, but their action was as non-sensical as any foreign language might.
Our ability to express abstract ideas through physical symbols and actions is one of the most astonishing things about the human race. Things like: subtlety, innuendo, double entendre, suggestion and nuance can all be conveyed with the slightest adjustment of an eyebrow, or, depending on the context, a tap of a chair or a nudge of an arm. The fact remains that only seven percent of our intended meaning is carried by the literal words we speak (thirty-eight percent in tone and fifty five percent in body language). By symbolic and intended meaning, our actions have the power to transform benign things into holy relics with dramatic effect. As the cliched NASA illustration goes, even the man sweeping the floor can believe himself to be ‘putting a man on the moon’.
Believing (and living as though) our actions carry importance is all part of how we escape reality’s nihilistic terror. Storming the Capital means more than storming the local supermarket and thus we (the actors in the moment) believe that our actions make us history makers rather than petty criminals.
The point of all this is to say that way we live out our lives points to a shared belief that reality is bigger than and more than merely material. We all live in such a way that, despite whatever professions to the contrary we might make, showcases a belief in a non-physical (but ultimately real) world. Our lives and our actions, so we believe, are best understood as being more than simply the some of their component parts.
Reality is therefore (at least) double-layered, and we know this long before anyone tries to teach us about ‘heaven’ or propose a multiverse. We know this since being able to effectively navigate the world and build relationships with others relies on our ability to effectively interact with both the visible and the invisible parts of life, the explicit and implicit.
There exists, you see, both the sign and the signified, and both are real and neither require the other to exist for them to be real. The reality that the sign points to (the signified, the implicit and the invisible), would exist even without this physical expression. The way most cultures have thought about this, before materialism became so widespread and dominant, is to talk in terms of a heavenly and an earthly space, a spiritual realm and a corporeal one.
As a Christian I believe that the implicit, subtle, unseen, and spiritual aspect of reality is good, and that our physical world is also good. Whilst each also contains elements of corruption (deviation from the good), life works ‘best’ when they work in harmony with one another. Things that are beautiful are beautiful precisely when they represent a happy union of the two.
Now, what does all this mean in practise?
Our bodies and our images, as well as our actions and our acting, mean something and in fact are signs by themselves. For all our talk about our bodies being malleable bits of machinery, we still think that wearing a suit to a funeral means something different to wearing beach shorts, say. We hold that observing a time of silence in memorial matters, as does crying in grief or cheering in celebration. And whilst many of our actions rely on cultural norms, many of them do not. Smiling means the same thing everywhere, as does a clenched fist. The materialist must hold that utility explains all that the value of hugging can be seen purely by the physical benefit we receive, in this case the oxytocin that gets released and the resulting connection it creates, that leads in turn to an increased chance of survival. Much of (all of?) our behaviour, according to the materialist, can thus be explained purely on the basis of our organism’s fight to exist. We are finely tuned survival machines.
It may well be the case that such actions can be explained in this way, but they can’t be explained away. Need we choose between kissing and microbe exchange? A personal explanation of things you see, does credit to more of reality than a material one and allows for a fuller union and harmony between heaven and earth.
Rightly and effectively does chivalry, courage and honour call out to a man insisting that he subjugates his purely instinctual and animal actions to a higher and fuller duty. Such things make a man out of the ape.
With all this in mind we can say that since what we do with our bodies actually matters so, as part of it, our sexual activity matters. A man and a woman being joined together aren’t just doing something, they’re saying something as well. The image of them lays claim to a union and fittedness inherent in the world; two equal and opposite forces, feminine and masculine, heaven and earth are joining together. This has symbolic and imaginative power, and not only for erotic purposes. And just as the best works of art have many levels and intricacies to them, so too do our actions. The physical action may mean something, but the physical action done within the confines of a covenantal commitment means something more. We are moving the minerals of the world into deeper levels of organisation and meaning. In this way our happiness in life is enriched, by imbuing our behaviour with higher purpose. Mopping the floor does something, but it also means something and when done for higher reasons has the power of alchemy to make drudgery divine.
Holding this to be true, we must also notice that two male or two female bodies, or one male and two female (or any other arrangement) being joined in sexual union is also saying something. They are images and actions, not of fittedness but of subversion. You see by our actions we can take an image and corrupt it, and since we are actors in a cosmic drama we all do so knowingly and wilfully, sometimes shaking our fist at the way of things. This is to say nothing of the feeling between the people involved, it’s simply to say that the images make striking statements and send clear messages.
If we hold that our acting is meant to uphold and live in union and partnership with the Heavens then we must make it our aim to conform our acting to this largest and most grand narrative available to us.
This isn’t something that affects only our sexuality, though this is one of its most dramatic arenas; this is something that affects all of life, from how we live out our maleness and femaleness to how we raise our children, order our governments, relate to foreign powers and treat our neighbours.
Our actions have symbolic value, and that matters.