A Response to the Sexual Issues of our Time

The question of sex is perhaps the biggest issue for Christians in our time. What I want to do is look at what appears to be the most popular options of our day. In the ancient world it was quite different. Huge drunken orgies were practiced as worship to a god like the golden calf at Mt. Sinai. Rape was commonplace if the person was a slave. Polygamy was a mark of success. And sex with animals wasn't abnormal. This stuff is all pretty weird today so I'm going to focus on the modern sexual culture.

Single with multiple partners:

Or

Open Marriage:

A husband and wife have agreed to allow each other to have sex with other partners and are okay with it. There are only two ways this can be rationalized.

1)Sex can be casual.

2)Sex is loving, but can be with many partners.

Sex is loving, but can be with many partners

“Hey I love you so much. By forever. Hey I love you so much. Bye forever. Etc.”

Sex can be casual:

Empirical research shows people place great weight on social relationships. In fact, most people use their important social relationships to determine their religious beliefs or even their atheism. Cults keep people in incredibly abusive situations due to the social reinforcement and the threat of losing one's social life. Solitary confinement is still considered one of the most extreme forms of punishment. Most people's dying wish is to say that they love their families. Most people have anxiety, stress and depression from social disapproval, even when the social group is in the wrong.

Casual sex either treats sex as:

irrelevant to one's social life

or

the social life itself is irrelevant.

Both seem obviously absurd. Furthermore, rape is commonly understood as a terrible crime tantamount to slavery or murder. It is well known to cause severe mental disorders in it's victims. Committing rape is also known to be a strong indicator that a person has antisocial personality disorder. Such people generally lack all concern for the well being of others.

(Added 9/25/19:  It occurred to me that it might not be obviously absurd.  Specifically, I mean that people may easily agree that the whole social life is important and therefore not casual.  But some components of one's social life are more important that others.  Some may be so unimportant to be considered casual.  In fact, "casual" really refers to the less serious components of one's social life.  But sex must be a social activity.  And the social life must be of great importance.  Therefore is sex an important part of one's social life?  Let's find some common ground.  First, sex is generally agreed to be very pleasurable.  Second, sex is connected to fantasies.  Here's a reference to a study on sexual fantasies.
Birnbaum, G. E., Mikulincer, M., & Gillath, O. (2011). In and out of a daydream: Attachment orientations, daily couple interactions, and sexual fantasies. Personality And Social Psychology Bulletin, 37(10), 1398-1410. doi:10.1177/0146167211410986

What they found is that sexual fantasies tend to fall into two general camps, avoidance and anxiety.  The study found that anxiety fantasies used sex to promote intimacy, love and even self humiliation!  So this type of person sees sex as an important component of the social life.  But the avoidance fantasy type sees sex as aggressive, alienating and reality escaping.  Therefore, the interesting group for us is the avoidance group.  The study also found that fantasies get more intense when couples are having more negative interactions during the day.

This dichotomy can be very helpful for us.  According to this research, the group that sees sex as loving is anxiety and the group that sees sex as casual is avoidance.  But the research indicated that people who prefer casual sex actually see sex as a tool for alienation.  In fact, they found that such people tend to fantasize about leaving their partner when things are going poorly.  The other group does the opposite.

My point is that this research debunks the notion of casual sex altogether.  Instead casual sex is really fantasized as pushing people away.  Now I ask you.  Does it really make sense to view sex as a tool for keeping someone out of your life?  Really though?  That's ridiculous.  Of course some people in this group viewed sex as aggression instead.  But here we move into more obviously evil territory?  "Love your neighbor as yourself" is a Biblical commandment that pretty much everyone in the world today views as worth following.  I can't remember how many speeches I've heard from atheists where they claim this is the only thing of lasting value from the Bible.

We could wonder if there are some people out there the research didn't pick up who are truly casual about sex.  This study only examined 48 couples.  Nevertheless, viewing casual sex as a way of distancing yourself from another person makes perfect intuitive sense.  What I mean is that sex is literally the closest you can be to another person physically.  Even the boundary of clothes and touching genitals is crossed.  Therefore if you do this and have no intimacy, acceptance or love for the other, then it's a powerful statement.  It says that no situation can make me really care about you.  It reminds me of a friend of mine who was watching a movie.  At the climatic finale, he literally jumped to the edge of his seat and gripped the edge with his hands.  His jaw was on the floor.  Soon the credits rolled.  He leaned back in the chair and put his hands behind his head.  He said, "I had no idea what was even going on in that movie."

Casual sex seems very similar.  It's a powerful statement of how far apart two people are.  Hopefully we can agree that casual sex distances people.  Of course plenty of people live in the moment and think they will have casual sex when they actually become intimate.  But the real question is whether love or alienation are good things.  Well it's pretty hard to condemn love.  Sex without commitment is sex without love.  Therefore, sex should have boundaries so that we can organize all the love.  When it comes to viewing multiple partners as multiple lovers, we responded to that above.   End 9/25/19 Update)

The conclusion here is that instead of being casual, sex is very important. In the Bible, sex is considered sacred. Therefore, open marriages cannot rationalize themselves with casual sex. Instead it merely devolves into polygamy, or perhaps wives and concubines. The evils of polygamy are generally accepted today. People aren't treated as equal partners. Human equality is generally accepted today. Husbands and wives expect to be treated as equals.

For example, in Roman times many women were proud to be remembered as a concubine on their grave. This confuses modern people. We assume the husband and wife were equals. But in Roman culture, women were considered to be men with a birth defect. So the husband was superior and the women competed for greater rank under him.

Mixed Orientation Marriage:

In these cases, the couple may share all the components of marriage except sex itself. Nonetheless, this actually makes the same errors as the standard open marriage. Either it treats sex as casual or adopts love with many. The only twist here is that the mixed orientation couple may view the secret sexual relationship as sincere and loving and the public marriage as a mere friendship. The man may consider his secret boyfriend to be his true spouse. It's a bit strange because the public marriage is the one with all of the legal and financial obligations. Ultimately, this strange twist makes the same mistake as before. It treats the nonsexual aspects of marriage as casual or irrelevant to the social life. But they are actually very important. If you don't think so, then allow me to pick up your paycheck and do whatever I want with it.

Living together:

“I love you but I want an easy way out”

Sexual fantasies:

Here the difficulty is determining exactly where the line is. It is impossible to physically have sex when it was not a fantasy first. But then adultery can obviously begin the same way. Therefore the beginnings of adultery seem clearly bad.

The question seems to be this:

If the fantasy were able to be fulfilled with no consequences, then would it lead to something physical?

Jesus famously put it this way. If a man looks at a woman TO fill himself with strong desire for her, then he has committed adultery with her in his heart. Many translations render “fill himself with strong desire for” as “lust.” But I can defend my translation and others would quickly do the same.

Anti Dating:

This is the Christian “purity” view which says committed dating relationships are training yourself for divorce. This is obviously a silly concept. One cannot know that a relationship will result in marriage until it does. It's not like we hit the other person with a club.

Dating with no intention of marriage:

This may or may not involve sex. But it's not really that different from living together. The only difference is that here you not only want a way out, but rather you plan to leave. If the future separation is mutual, then either you are already separated or else you are lying to your community. Lying to one's community like this clearly indicates the huge importance of social relationships. Honestly, examples of that can be multiplied a hundred times. Pretty much anyone could come up with ten of them right away.

Homosexuality:

While Christians have often treated this as a worse sin than others, they haven't been able to find the Biblical support for this. Thus, homosexuals do have a valid argument for cultural change. It isn't monstrous. Matt 19 says that humans have sex and get married because God made us male and female. Therefore, if we were not male and female, sex and marriage would be pointless but not monstrous.

I'm persuaded that Christians have approached this question in the wrong way. The general approach is to come up with some reason why it is wrong. It's difficult to give anything other than merely saying, “God says so.” That is good justification. But it fails to give anyone a vision of the kingdom of God on this matter. In other words, you have to see how much better life in God's kingdom is. That's the only way people can change.

Therefore, I'm persuaded that the correct question is this. For what good reason did God create a homosexual person? I will merely guess at this for now.

1)To never reproduce and be devoted to another calling.

2)Like other sinful passions, demonstrate God's grace by overcoming it.

3)You have to find some unique path or calling in life.

Transsexual:

This argument is befuddled with terminology. If you have male genetics and male body, but also have female brain development, then are you a woman?

Not a normal woman no.

If you merely say you are a woman, then are you?

I can say that I'm Abraham Lincoln back from the dead.

In Matt 19, Jesus affirms that there are people who are Eunuchs who are born that way. This is clearly a person who just doesn't fit into the male female dichotomy. It is a third category, but it is created from parts of the other two. Thus the question is the same as for the homosexual. Let's return to that.

But Jesus indicates that such people have some special gift to remain single. In fact a homosexual who gives in to temptation will never have a child or family as a result. That begs us to ask whether God simply wanted some people to remain single for some other calling and gave them this as a safeguard.