{"id":2305,"date":"2020-12-16T14:52:16","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T14:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=2305"},"modified":"2020-12-16T14:53:00","modified_gmt":"2020-12-16T14:53:00","slug":"normal-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2020\/12\/16\/normal-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Normal People"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Normal Longings<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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The church can, and should, have more than just rules and prohibitions to offer young people negotiating the sexual mores of modern life.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Review by Wesley Hill
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In the early days of lockdown, when I thought I was about to be ordained a priest, I read Sally Rooney\u2019s Normal People<\/em>. I\u2019ve heard it described as a book about, among other things, how Millennials have sex. Though I\u2019m not sure the book is about <\/em>sex, it does foreground the topic, and the discussion is of the sort that made someone about to sign his life away to the church wonder again about how Christians might speak the gospel into this fraught arena of human experience.<\/p>

The award-winning 2018 novel, whose plot is now even better known thanks to its being filmed as a BBC miniseries and streamed on Hulu earlier this year, follows an on-again, off-again couple named Connell and Marianne from their final year of high school in small-town Ireland to their university days in Dublin. He is a working-class boy who devours books and knows how to write, possessing that most alluring combination of brilliance and genuine self-forgetfulness that verges on timidity. She is the daughter of a wealthy and forbidding mother and unliked at school, where she is considered weird, snobbish, and cold. She finds unexpected refuge in Connell. His gentleness is the opposite of what she expects (and wonders if she deserves) to receive. He, in turn, finds that he trusts her to see him without mockery or pretense.<\/p>

From the beginning, their sex has a graced quality. Connell\u2019s previous sexual encounters had been immediately followed by his partners\u2019 describing the experience to the entire school, complete with unflattering exaggerations. \u201cWith Marianne it was different, because everything was between them only, even awkward or difficult things.\u201d Later, thinking back on those early days of sex, Marianne tells Connell: \u201cI didn\u2019t need to play any games with you…. It was real.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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It is there as a tantalizing might-have-been, a mercy tasted and then lost.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Connell and Marianne break up early in their university years, and Marianne begins a relationship with a fellow student who, she informs Connell bluntly, is a sadist. \u201c[H]e likes to beat me up. Just during sex, that is. Not during arguments.\u201d She says it was her idea, to be submissive. \u201cIt\u2019s not that I get off on being degraded as such,\u201d she muses to Connell. \u201cI just like to know that I would degrade myself for someone if they wanted me to.\u201d Elsewhere, in the privacy of her thoughts, Marianne is self-reproachful. \u201cSometimes in the middle of the day she remembers something Jamie has said or done to her, and all her energy leaves her completely, so her body feels like a carcass that she has to carry around.\u201d<\/p>

She doesn\u2019t forget what she had with Connell. Nor, though, does she imagine she can have it back. It is there as a tantalizing might-have-been, a mercy tasted and then lost.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Wherever your desire has led you, whether into violent darkness or intimate light, God intends your mending.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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After months of postponement due to our church being closed for public worship, I was finally ordained over the summer. And I\u2019m still thinking about my question: Does Christianity have something to say to Connell and Marianne\u2014to the Millennials and Zoomers they\u2019re supposed to represent?<\/p>

Much contemporary Christian discourse about sex veers between a religiously inflected version of the societal norm of consent and a bloodless moralism propounded by preachers who manage to leave no impression of ever having been turned on by anyone. But the deepest Christian insight about sex is perhaps also the most basic: that wherever your desire has led you, whether into violent darkness or intimate light, God intends your mending. In her recent book Holiness and Desire<\/em>, Anglican priest Jessica Martin recommends suspending some of our intra-church debates about rules and norms, at least for a moment, while we return to the gospel\u2019s announcement of \u201cthe exclusive tenderness of God for each fragile soul one by one.\u201d What Connell and Marianne remember having with each other isn\u2019t just a lost arcadian fantasy; it is, for Christians, a precious clue to the kind of love they were made for. Muffled within their flawed and agonized longing is a beckoning from Another toward a better future.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Wesley Hill<\/strong> is associate professor of biblical studies at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania and a priest at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Pittsburgh. His PhD in New Testament is from Durham University in the UK. He is the author of\u00a0<\/em>Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality\u00a0(Zondervan, second edition 2016),\u00a0<\/em>Paul and the Trinity: Persons, Relations, and the Pauline Letters\u00a0(Eerdmans, 2015),\u00a0<\/em>Spiritual Friendship: Finding Love in the Church as a Celibate Gay Christian\u00a0(Brazos, 2015), and\u00a0<\/em>The Lord’s Prayer: A Guide to Praying to Our Father (Lexham, 2019). A contributing editor for\u00a0<\/em>Comment magazine, he writes regularly for\u00a0<\/em>Christianity Today,\u00a0<\/em>The Living Church, and other publications. Twitter:\u00a0@wesleyhill<\/a><\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Normal People<\/strong> was published on August 28, 2018, by Penguin Random House. You can purchase a copy from the publisher here<\/a>. <\/em>
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The church can, and should, have more than just rules and prohibitions to offer young people negotiating the sexual mores of modern 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