This past Thursday night (Aug. 21), I attended Sex and Faith: An Honest Conversation on the campus of UNC Greensboro. The panel discussion was sponsored by the UNCG Wesley-Luther student group, St. Mary’s House (the UNCG Episcopalian student group), Hillel (the UNCG Jewish student group), the UNCG Wellness Center, UNCG SafeZONE, and Planned Parenthood of Greensboro. Representatives and leaders from each sponsoring organization made up the panel. I preface this post by saying that my comments are in no way meant to be an attack or judgment on any person, or group, represented at this “honest conversation.” I do not have reason to doubt the panelists’ sincerity or love for people. While we’re not called to judge people per se, as thinking individuals, and especially as Christians, we are called to judge ideas, and the ideas presented during this event were so utterly confused that it’s difficult to know where to begin a critique.
The conversation ranged from a discussion of how Christian thinking about sex came to the point of teaching that “sex is bad,” to the purpose of sex, to demonstrations, on replicas, of male and female condom application, to homosexuality, to abortion, and everything in between. Not everyone on the panel claimed to be a believer in God or follower of any faith tradition. The majority of the panelists did admit to coming out of a conservative Christian background. Unfortunately, the panelists by and large demonstrated a lack of critical thinking skills and many in attendance were sold a false bill of goods regarding sex and faith.
When I initially began writing this blog post I started analyzing several different claims made by the panelists regarding church history, biblical hermeneutics, etc. But there was simply too much involved to write an adequate critique in a blog post. Thus, I have decided to focus on the elephant in the room that seemed to be invisible to the well-meaning panelists and apparently most everyone else in attendance.
IS CONSISTENCY TOO MUCH TO ASK?
Multiple times throughout the evening it was mentioned that consent and communication were the key issues regarding sexual activity. It was also said that sexuality is part of being human. Please make no mistake, I THINK RAPE IS DEPLORABLE and sinful for both biblical and philosophical reasons, and I agree that sexuality is part of being human because we are sexual beings. Unfortunately, the panelists left these “keys” to healthy sexuality and this notion of sexuality being part of human nature floating in midair with no ground for their support.
The claim was made that sexual ethics move with time and are always evolving. A similar claim was made that views on reproductive rights move with time as well. I asked if this meant that at some point in the future we could have this same “honest conversation” and the panelists would be saying the polar opposite of what they had been saying. After all, if sexual ethics are always changing, then such a scenario certainly seems feasible. The answer I was essentially given was that, while such a thing was possible, they didn’t foresee it ever happening because we had moved past such restrictive views of sex. After all, it was asserted, the Bible condoned slavery, we’ve moved beyond that, and we certainly can’t foresee ever going back (for more on that assertion, see HERE, HERE, and HERE). The Bible should apparently keep up with the times (notice that this implies that our sexual ethics are changing for the better, thus necessitating the fact that there is a good for sexual ethics toward which they are moving, if in fact they are moving). One panelist specifically said there were no absolute answers regarding sexuality as long as consent was given, the sexual act was mutually pleasurable, and the partners were communicating (or something to that effect). I asked if that (i.e. no absolutes as long as consent and communication were present) was absolutely true for everyone for all time. Most of the panelists exploded by emphatically saying they were just giving their opinions and there are no absolute answers for everyone. After making such a claim, the panelists continued to emphasize the non-absolute (according to their view) that consent should absolutely always be present. The evening was concluded with the moderator imploring the audience to never let anyone tell them they weren’t beautiful or worthy of respect, because if someone said that, they were just wrong, absolutely wrong apparently.
The problems with the views expressed above serve to undermine and negate virtually everything that was said during the discussion, regardless of whether I agree with any of the other views expressed by the panelists. Think about it, if there are no absolute answers (though, I would say the word “objective” would be more accurate, but we’ll stick with “absolute” for now) to questions about sexual ethics, then consent and communication cannot be absolute requirements for what constitutes good sexual behavior, nor can sexual ethics ever change for the better, they can simply just change. It was even stated that how you fulfill your sexual desires is completely up to you, as long as there is consent and communication (to paraphrase). But you can’t have it both ways. Either there are absolute/objective standards as to what constitutes good sexual behavior or there are not. If there are not, then the best you can do is talk about your opinion regarding the “evils” of rape, for example, but you cannot say it’s actually wrong for anyone and everyone. You may not like it, and that’s a great reason for you not to rape anyone. But you may also not like vanilla ice cream, but that doesn’t make it wrong for anyone else to eat it. If, however, there are absolute/objective standards as to what constitutes good sexual behavior (i.e. in this case, consent and communication), then that means there is an unchanging law, so to speak, that governs sexual ethics and that sexual ethics aren’t merely a matter of opinion and don’t actually move with time (even though people’s knowledge of, adherence to, or thoughts about such a law may change). So which is it?
Undoubtedly, the panelists would answer that human dignity demands consent to sexual acts and that rape is always wrong. I agree! But if this is the case, then, as we’ve seen, it cannot also be the case that sexual ethics are always evolving and that what constitutes good sexual behavior is whatever fulfills any particular person’s desires. There are several issues involved here that go much deeper than most people realize. The claims are essentially being made that it is good to respect other people, they have the right to not be sexually violated, and that good sexual activity is whatever you want it to be as long as you have consent and communication. But this raises an extremely critical question, what does one mean by “good”?
WHAT IS GOOD?
We say all kinds of things are “good.” Consensual sex is said to be good, I hope the Tar Heels have a good basketball team, I think homemade vanilla ice cream tastes really good, etc. As was said earlier, if good sexual behavior means the same thing as good tasting ice cream, then all we are talking about are various personal opinions regarding sexuality, in which case nonconsensual sex cannot actually be bad but rather just disliked. But of course that is not what the panelists were trying to communicate. They obviously think, rightly, that it’s objectively bad for all people, in all places, at all times to engage in nonconsensual sex. Hence, there must be something about the nature of “good,” when properly understood, that is more than merely subjective opinion.
Think about your eye for example. Is an eye that lacks the ability to hear a good eye or a bad eye? You have no way of knowing do you? Eyes are not meant to hear, thus an eye lacking that ability has no bearing on whether the eye is good or bad. But what about an eye that, for whatever reason, lacks the ability to see? Is that a good eye or bad eye? It’s a bad eye. Why? Because it fails to fulfill the purpose that eyes are directed towards, which in this case is seeing. This is true regardless of anyone’s subjective opinions about what eyes should or shouldn’t be or do. Thus, classically understood, good is that which fulfills the end/purpose of some thing according to that thing’s nature (i.e. what it is). A thing is good to the extent that it’s perfect, and a thing is perfect to the extent that it lacks nothing according to its nature (ex. a good eye). Notice that is a completely objective standard of goodness. Once we know what something is we can determine what the purpose of that something is and thus, what constitutes the good for that something.
Biology is simply the easiest place to see this, whether we’re talking about the purposes of our eyes, heart, lungs, etc. We know that it is objectively bad when they fail to fulfill their purposes or their purposes are inhibited. We can apply this principle to man as a whole. We know what human beings are, thus we are able to know what the purposes of our various faculties are, and therefore what constitutes our good. One key piece of this is that we know man has intellect and that the purpose of his intellect is to pursue truth. If you disagree with this then you’ve just confirmed the premise by essentially saying my claim is false and people should only believe what is true. Exactly!
Moral goodness enters the picture when we combine man’s intellect and will. Here’s what I mean. Everyone, and every thing, seek their perfection (whether intentionally or not). We all pursue what we take to be good for us. This is simply self-evident. No one does anything simply because they know it’s bad. Even when we do something we know we shouldn’t do we do so because we see some good that we think outweighs the bad of the action (ex. think of the thief who knows stealing is wrong but sees the good of obtaining what is stolen as outweighing the fact that he knows stealing is wrong). Again, we all pursue what we take to be good for us. Reason tells us what is actually good for us. Therefore, the rational person will pursue what is actually good for them regardless of their subjective feelings, opinions, or desires. But why should we do what is rational? Because that’s what our purpose is as thinking human beings (the intellect pursues truth, and our will should follow our intellect). Hence, when someone chooses to act in a way that is contrary to the various purposes towards which they are directed, we call that being immoral, and hence irrational. Immorality is simply man’s attempt to pursue in the wrong way something good. Biblically, this is what the Bible calls sin. But our reasoning thus far is not strictly based on the Bible, even though the Bible agrees as we will see later. Rather, this thinking is called natural law because it is based on the good of some thing according to its nature (i.e. what it is).
PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER
Let’s quickly apply this thinking to the claims made in the panel discussion. Recall that the claims essentially made were that it is good to respect other people, they have the right to not be sexually violated, and that good sexual activity is whatever you want it to be as long as you have consent and communication. In order for these claims to be objectively true (i.e. true for all people, in all places, at all times), there must be some reason apart from the panelists’ own subjective opinions. But if the panelists admit these claims are objectively true, then they have undermined their other claims regarding sexual ethics constantly changing and there being no absolute/objective standard that constitutes good sexual behavior.
Why is it good to respect other people? Part of what it means to be a human being is the fact that we are social beings. As Ed Feser says,
Now it is part of that nature that we are social animals, as Aristotle famously noted. That is to say, we naturally live in communities with other human beings and depend on them for our well-being in various ways, both negative (such as our need not to be harmed by others) and positive (such as our need for various kinds of assistance from them). Most obviously, we are related to others by virtue of being parents or children, siblings, grandparents or grandchildren, cousins, and so on. Within the larger societies that collections of families give rise to, other kinds of relationships form, such as that of being a friend, an employee or employer, a citizen, and so forth. To the extent that some of these relationships are natural to us, their flourishing is part of what is naturally good for us.1
From this it follows that others have the obligation to refrain from imposing on us to do wrong/evil. An obligation entails one’s right to that freedom from imposition. And given that these rights stem from what we are by nature, they are natural rights and not rights granted to us by society or invented by ourselves. Feser goes on to say,
At the most general level, we are all obliged to refrain from interfering with others’ attempts to fulfill the various moral obligations placed on them by the natural law; the most basic natural right is the right to do what is good and not to be coerced into doing evil.…And of course we cannot pursue any good or fulfill any obligation at all if our very lives could be taken from us by others as they saw fit, so that the natural law entails that every human being (or at least every innocent human being) has a right not to be killed. Yet other rights would follow from various other aspects of the ends set for us by nature.2
Therefore, it is objectively good for us to respect others, and they have a natural right to not be sexually violated. But this is only because we have a common human nature with certain purposes towards which we are directed that guarantees us these natural rights and constitutes the necessary fact that violating these rights is objectively bad. Again, this is objectively true for all people, in all places, at all times. It is not a matter of opinion, it is not some right granted by the state, it is not up to majority vote, it is not some ethic that evolves with time, etc. Even if someone made a law, or society decided, that rape is good it could not actually be good anymore than we could change the laws of geometry by passing a law saying all four-sided geometric figures are actually circles.
Natural law also tells us a great deal about what actually constitutes good sexual behavior. Given that good is that which fulfills the purpose of some thing according to its nature and that it’s bad to do something contrary to, or inhibiting of, that nature, what exactly is the purpose of sex? The panelists often mentioned various purposes of sex like pleasure, love and care between sexual partners, procreation, bonding in relationships, etc. Surprisingly, they were often on the right track while still missing the key issues. Pleasure puts the cart before the horse. Eating is pleasurable, and social, but it is such so that people will eat and thus nourish their bodies. Likewise, sex is pleasurable so that people will do it and thus carry on the human race. As J. Budziszewski says,
Pleasure comes naturally as a by-product of pursuing something else, like the good of another person, and the best way to ruin pleasure is to make it your goal.3
So what is the purpose of sex? It is two-fold. The first purpose should be quite uncontroversial. All of our systems are self-contained except our reproductive systems. We only have half of the complete system and are directed towards our opposite for completion. Thus, the biological purpose of sex is obviously procreation. That does not change according to our intentions for having sex. Sex would not exist if not for procreation (asexual reproduction is possible). This does not mean that couples must only have sex when they want to have children, but it does mean that any sexual act that is contrary to this procreative type of relationship is necessarily bad. Hence, the natural end of sex is children. But human children need, and have the natural right to, the long-term care of a mother and father.
Therefore, the secondary end of sex is the emotional unity of a man and woman for the rearing of children. I would argue this leads to some form of marriage, namely monogamy, but that is a topic for another time. Again, given that we only have half the necessary components for the completion of the biological purpose of our sexual faculties, we are directed towards another soul for completeness. But only our opposite can complete this purpose. C.S. Lewis mentions two aspects of this emotional purpose of sex. He says venus seeks sex itself, and eros seeks the best for the beloved. Eros functions to channel venus into the stability that a family requires. Sex, and thus venus, is unavoidably emotional, even if we successfully bury or ignore those emotions, and eros is essentially the perfection of venus. The procreative purpose of sex is directly infused with the emotional purpose of sex. To again quote Feser,
…what is good for human beings in the use of [sexual] capacities is to use them only in a way consistent with this [dual]…purpose. This is a necessary truth; for the good for us is defined by our nature and the [purposes] of its various elements. It cannot possibly be good for us to use them in any other way, whether an individual person thinks it is or not, any more than it can possibly be good for an alcoholic to indulge his taste for excessive drink…4
This follows regardless of the subjective reasons someone my have for desiring to pursue the good of sex in the wrong way (whether that be sex outside of marriage in general, hooking up, homosexual behavior, etc.). Even if such a desire were completely genetic, it would not follow that acting on those desires is actually good for the person anymore than it would follow that being born blind entails that one’s eyes are good. We all have desires on which we ought not act, as the panelists would certainly agree. They would never say someone with a genetic or deeply engrained desire to rape others should act on those desires. But apart from understanding and appealing to our nature as human beings and what constitutes our good according to our nature, they have no objective standard on which to make such moral judgements apart from mere opinion, majority vote, or might makes right.
Therefore, it follows that what constitutes good sexual behavior involves much more than merely consent and communication, and the good of sex cannot be rewritten or ignored based on one’s subjective desires (regardless of the reason for those desires) anymore than one can decide that squares are circles because he desires them to be so. This is simply a matter of reality and not opinion. Again, if this is the case, sexual ethics cannot change over time even though our understanding of or adherence to natural law may vary throughout time. Abandoning any view of human nature and the good that nature entails leads to utter relativism regarding all ethics, including sexual ethics, in which case there can be no actual objective standard of what constitutes good sexual behavior, consent or not. Feser concludes,
“If there are no ends set for us by our nature, then there can in principle be no objective, non-arbitrary way of determining what it is good for us to do, and thus what we ought to do. Hence in the final analysis, and in the main if not in all details, traditional sexual morality and morality full stop stand or fall together. Though liberal advocates of ‘same-sex marriage’ are fervently moralistic, they have no rational basis whatsoever for their moralism.5
PLEASE DO NOT MISUNDERSTAND
Notice that I’ve not quoted a single Bible verse to reach any of these conclusions. That is because this is ultimately a philosophical, and actually metaphysical, issue. That is to say, it’s ultimately a matter of properly thinking about reality and what it means, for instance, to be human. Yet the natural law discussed above is precisely what the Bible teaches and it explains why God says what He says regarding sexuality. We’ve seen what the good for sex is, and as the one who is responsible for making us who we are by nature (i.e. conjoining our essence with existence and sustaining us in existence at every moment we exist), God will ever only will what is good for us according to that nature. Therefore, without even digging into the hermeneutics of various passages about sexuality in the Bible, from a purely philosophical standpoint (and our understanding and interpretation of the Bible is largely driven by our understanding of philosophy/reality), we have good reason to think the Bible would not advocate illicit sex, rape, homosexual behavior, etc. (for more about the details regarding various Bible passages see HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE). Nor does the the Bible need to “move with science,” because any new scientific discovery is not going to add to the very basic empirical appeals above nor to the philosophical argument being made. Science takes for granted much of what has been said above.
Also, nothing I’ve said above leads to the conclusion that those holding my view hate, dislike, fear, or have ill-will towards those who disagree or those who practice immoral sexual behavior. I can judge ideas and not affirm behavior while still loving the person (just ask my kids!). True tolerance necessitates disagreement since we only tolerate that with which we disagree. Tolerance and love (properly understood) do not mean that one must affirm behavior that is objectively bad. In fact, it would be unloving to affirm such a thing.
Finally, why does God say anything about these issues at all? Because God wills our good, and He knows what is actually good for us both physically and spiritually. But we also know from the Bible that sex and marriage symbolize a deeper spiritual relationship between God and people. As Thomas Howe notes,
Rather, if it is the case that the intimacy between husband and wife speaks of the intimacy between God and His people, then this necessarily requires an intimacy of two beings that are sexually different. Because God is different in kind from His people, so the marriage union pictures the intimate union of God and humans. But, homosexuality would deny this union of difference, and symbolize a union of the similarity. But this is what idol worship is. It is the union of that which is, in a sense, created by men’s hands. Even the worship of demons is the union of two that are created beings. This also fits well with the notion that to be unfaithful to one’s wife is symbolic of being unfaithful to God. Homosexuality characterizes the unfaithfulness to God by being united to the world. Infidelity characterizes unfaithfulness to God by being united to some other god.6
Os Guinness says,
Freedom is not the permission to do what you like, it’s the power to do what you ought.
We’ve seen that what we ought to do is based on what we are. Trying to be something we are not is not freedom, it is the annihilation of ourselves. But the fact is, we ALL struggle with being who we ought to be, and none of us do that perfectly. That’s the whole reason we need a savior. Jesus Christ, God the Son in human flesh, lived perfectly as a man ought to live and died on the cross for the payment our own sin deserves. He was raised from the dead three days later defeating the power of sin. Therefore, Paul says in Gal. 5:1, “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.”
If we have trusted in Jesus’ death and resurrection as payment for our sins, then we no longer have to worry about being “good enough.” No one can be good enough. Rather, the Bible says God’s righteousness has been applied to our accounts so that we are free to be who we ought to be as Christ is conforming us to be more like Him on a daily basis. This is what Christians call sanctification, and it’s a life-long journey.
If you’ve never trusted in Jesus as your Savior and don’t know this freedom of which I speak, I pray you will do that today. If you have questions, please ask me! I can’t promise life will be easy or that all unwanted and sinful desires will suddenly disappear. They probably won’t. But we have reason to believe the message of Jesus is objectively true. Therefore, there is a realistic hope, there is change, and there is true love that will never fail, and that is ultimately found in God. He is our final end, the ultimate purpose toward which we are directed. He wants to take us in our purely natural state and do a supernatural work in our lives for His glory and for our ultimate good. The question is, are you pursuing truth and thus what is actually good for you, or are you simply pursuing your own opinion and what you wish to be good? I pray you will pursue truth knowing that I, and others, are willing to walk with you on the journey.
(NOTE: My linking various resources about specific subjects in this post does not entail my endorsement of all the beliefs/teachings of those to which I have linked.)
1. Edward Feser. Natural Law, Natural Rights, and Private Property. http://www.libertylawsite.org/liberty-forum/natural-law-natural-rights-and-private-property/
2. ibid.
3.J. Budziszewski. On the Meaning of Sex (Kindle Locations 465-466). ISI Books. Kindle Edition.
4. Edward Feser. The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism (Kindle Locations 2754-2757). St. Augustine's Press. Kindle Edition.
5. Edward Feser. "Some Thoughts on the Prop 8 Decision," Edward Feser Blog. Aug. 5, 2010.
6. Thomas Howe. Unpublished class notes on Micah.