Several of the people I have been working with professionally have recently declared their commitment to the Christian faith to be absolute. They have complete buy-in, they have proclaimed. I have consequently felt at liberty to discuss all relevant areas of discipleship with them. We decide upon a course of action. They often profess that they want to refrain from dating for six months or a year because past relationships have been problematic, so they are fully aware they shouldn’t jump into anything. Then they don’t follow the plan. After two to three months, they meet a new Romeo or Juliet and spontaneously drop the agreed-upon standards. Some admit this to me outright. But for others, it’s not mere guesswork as they move in with the new paramour. Perhaps to them, maintaining a shared household indicates they are actually committed. Waiting for marriage does not seem to be integrated into the baseline.
Are Sexual Ethics Different from Past Generations?
I have discovered that trying to convince the average person of faith to follow God’s mandates seems like a futile exercise. People tell me I just “…don’t understand” or that we can’t possibly live by those standards today. I ask them, why not? To me, this is just like saying that nobody can diet, or nobody can live without substance abuse, or that we can’t practice kindness or selflessness because we’re simply too carnal.
I regularly counsel both men and women. Few of them seem to have any concern at all for traditional sexual ethics, even when I present Scripture to them and suggest they follow Christ’s mandate for celibacy in singlehood. They don’t share identical concerns about fidelity in marriage; they know that married couples should not play the field. It is obvious to me, then, that they believe sexual mores apply to married people—but as single adults, they are off the hook. Either God was kidding, or it doesn’t really matter to him today.
How is Your Body a Temple?
On dozens of occasions, I have heard conversations in which some well-meaning person quips, “Your body’s a temple, man.” Typically, they are discussing health issues, including substance abuse, and typically, I bristle because this is a woefully incomplete quote. The sentiment to which they refer comes from the Apostle Paul, and this is the context for it: He was speaking to the Corinthian church, which boasted of engaging in spiritual gifts and practices, but was functioning in an environment of gross immorality. Not only was promiscuity being tolerated, but this lenient attitude extended even to their toleration of incest (I Corinthians 5:1-2). As for the “Body as Temple” quote, the reference specifically concerned believers who had been filled with the Holy Spirit. In the Church at Corinth, the indwelling Spirit of God was being defiled by the congregation’s behavior. The following is an English rendering of the complete quote:
“Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore, honor God with your bodies.” (I Corinthian 6:18-20).
Aren’t Single People Free to Make Their Own Choices?
Is Paul actually saying that sexual sin is a sin against our own bodies? As a grace-driven believer, I don’t want to sound like a legalist, but this mandate appears pretty serious. I believe we would do well to consider how this may be true. If both parties are unmarried and above the age of consent, isn’t it their prerogative to make their own adult decisions about their own sexuality? We are not talking about self-mutilation here. How is anybody being injured? I find that even in asking the question, several cogent insights immediately surface.
In North America in the twenty-first century, AIDS has largely been brought under control. But how about when this life-sucking disease was rampant? You may counter that your partner neither has AIDS, nor herpes, nor any venereal disease. Further, it may be argued that condom use is the norm these days. But condoms are not foolproof, and you may not know for sure about the presence or absence of diseases if you haven’t known your partner very long. And why are condoms necessary to begin with if no issue of sinning against one’s body is presenting itself?
Pregnancy out of wedlock has largely been destigmatized today. That said, we are immediately reminded that it was stigmatized until recently. Why do you think that is?
Sex Among the Poor
I work among the poor, most of whom have no permanent homes. Most of my clients have served lengthy prison sentences. Often, I counsel with their paramours and spouses as well. Last week, I had a new client who stated he had just finished a five-year sentence for not paying child support to his children, of whom he had several. (The ethics of locking a person up for this offense seems murky at best, but that issue will have to be debated in a separate article.) It underscores the reality that many partners are raising children without an additional supportive parent, and they are frequently doing this ineptly. I have had female clients who bore 5-6 children from 4-5 different men and have had all their children removed from their custody due to substance abuse. Then when they are drug-free, they are eager to have a seventh, perhaps an eighth child, because “Now I’m clean, and God brought me the right man.” Okay, I say to myself, you proclaim you’re under God’s influence now, so you want to raise up Christian kids. I get it. But shouldn’t you have first married this most recent man before you let him impregnate you?
Casual Sex in Ancient Times
To reflexively declare that this is not sinning against your own body seems to stretch credulity, from the perspective of one who has ambulated around the block a few times. In a passage attributed to Solomon, the book of Proverbs discusses how the men of that era allowed their seed to haphazardly flow through the community like water through a stream.
Drink water from your own cistern,
flowing water from your own well.
Should your springs be scattered abroad,
streams of water in the streets?
Let them be for yourself alone,
and not for strangers with you. (Proverbs 5:16-17)
Solomon, of course, eventually became one of the worst offenders in this area. I make no excuses for him. Likewise, many of the people I talk to each week also seem very sincere in their objections. But sincerity itself is not an ethical argument. In espousing personal views contrary to the Scriptures they claim to revere, they can be sincerely wrong.
Consistency in Our Thinking
We can give up bad habits if we believe they are bad. Logically speaking, then, many Christians must not really believe that sex outside the boundaries of marriage is immoral today— it’s not harmful or sinful. But it is astonishing to observe how concerned they become when their unmarried partner sleeps with somebody else. What’s the big deal, I have to say to myself with no small helping of sarcasm, if the three of you are unmarried adults making your choices in the manner you consider to be appropriate at the time?
If you are sharing your body with various people—some of them strangers, or at least people you are not committed to– you do not hold an informed view of the sacredness of humanity. Forget all the Brotherhood of Man/Fatherhood of God talk—it wasn’t a reality in your life. You are viewing other humans as playthings, as objects of your pleasure, and not as prospective bearers of the Imago Dei, the Image of God. Humanity is a cheap commodity when you engage in promiscuity. It is evidence that you don’t actually believe in the sanctity of life.
Celibacy as an Attainable Goal for Unmarried Adults
I was celibate for many years, and it was difficult, but not wholly unreasonable. I could diet successfully, and I could fast, and I remained sober at all times, so why not also practice celibacy? I therefore employed those same principles, maintaining the standards I had set, and I believed that in good conscience I really had no choice. I had fully committed my life to serving Christ, and my commitment came with a Student Manual that seemed pretty clear to me.
You have to eat and drink to live. But you don’t have to abuse addictive drugs or have sex to live. Recognizing the logic of this made it easier for me than for some others in my peer group, I guess. Mind over matter was primarily an effective strategy for me, as was the Holy Spirit over mind. On one occasion, I was tempted almost to the breaking point. The woman I had been dating was a believer, and one night when we were alone in her apartment, she began turning the sexual tension into overdrive. I began to respond, but I also immediately began to think about the awful path my life might take if she were to become pregnant. I was not committed to her; In those days, a Christian man would typically marry a woman he had impregnated. The thought of being tethered to this woman for decades deterred me, and I found the strength to earnestly tell her, “We can’t do this.” And we didn’t.
Perhaps because pregnancy out of wedlock has largely been destigmatized, many don’t seem to view pregnancy as a deterrent. Is this not, in all honesty, sinning against our own bodies? Being willing to bring a new life into the world, but not willing to provide that new life with the most stable of home environments? This new way of thinking we have adopted—is it not embracing a sinful ideology?
The Concept of Delayed Gratification
During my unmarried sojourn as a Christ-follower, the concept of delayed gratification motivated me. If I simply wait for a few years, what will it hurt? What is the downside? The sex I will experience after marriage will be remarkable, I was told. And the unvarnished truth is that this presupposition proved entirely correct. Since I was married over four decades ago, I have never stopped desiring my wife, and physical intimacy has been delightful throughout. I have complete confidence in my wife’s fidelity, and my confidence is reciprocated. I realize this is a subjective truth, and I’m not going to work overtime trying to coerce unmarried people into believing it. Let me just mention, in my closing argument, that expert testimony is, after all, valid evidence. My voice is joined by hundreds of thousands of others who have applied biblical principles to their lives and found them life-affirming and true. Generally speaking, you reap dividends from what you have invested in. I invested heavily in exclusive, monogamous sex and reaped predictable rewards.
Observing a Disheartening Trend
As a counselor and a mentor, though, how can I convince others of the correctness of my position? The church’s weaknesses have become pronounced in recent years. Compromise seems to have become the norm, and identifying those who are willing to live consistently has become disheartening. I don’t have answers. I only have questions.
If we don’t express contempt for the violation of God’s clear standards, can we truly establish a credible moral position for affirming any of God’s standards? In the end, I keep returning to the sentiment that when it comes to pursuing God’s redemptive plan, most people just don’t seem to care. If my discouraging outlook is indeed correct, it goes a long way in explaining why the spiritual climate in our nation has become so chilly in recent years. If my analysis is wrong, I’ll be the first in line to celebrate that my conclusions were erroneous. I leave it to my brothers and sisters in Christ to persuade me otherwise, convinced I will be responsive to new data I had not previously considered.
Photo by Oziel Gómez on Unsplash
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