Introducing Christian Sexual Ethics

Introductory Questions
1. Why should I take this class?
2. Who are the teachers?
3. How is this class organized?
4. What is expected of me as a student?
5. How long are the sessions?

In this teaching, I want to establish that Christian sexual ethics are biblical sexual ethics. We’ve learned what’s right and wrong from many sources: parents, schools, churches, friends, TV, Hollywood, social media, etc. Sadly, these sources often conflict with each other, generating a great deal of confusion. For this class, we’ll use the Bible as our standard and authority. We won’t spend time explaining our reasons for believing the Bible is trustworthy and authoritative since that would take us too far afield from our focus.1 Rather, we’re presupposing the Bible’s inspiration:

2 Timothy 3:16-17
16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction,
and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every
good work.

Even if you don’t accept the Bible as God’s definitive revelation, this class can still help you understand where a lot of people are coming from when it comes to these difficult and controversial issues. For example, a 2014 Gallup poll2 found that three out of every four people in the United States see the Bible as the “inspired word of God” in some sense. Multiple sources report that more than a quarter of Americans believe the Bible should be taken literally. So whatever your views of the Bible are, this class will help you understand how many of us think about sexual ethics.

In America today, we have two major worldviews competing for acceptance: naturalism and creationism. These meta-narratives diverge right from the start when they tell the story of human origins. Although I realize hybrid forms exist, I want to present each of these in their starkest forms for contrasting purposes.

Creationism: you are the imago Dei.
From this perspective, humanity is the crowning act of God’s creation. Rather than speaking us into existence like every other creature, He formed us from the dust and tenderly breathed into our nostrils the breath of life. God places incredible value and dignity in our species.

Psalm 8:3-9
3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, 4 what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? 5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. 6 You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, 7 all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, 8 the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. 9 O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Naturalism: you are an accident.
You are the accidental byproduct of time and chance. Some proteins happened to swirl around in a puddle in just the right way so that the first single-celled, self-replicating organism emerged. Over time,  organisms made mistakes in copying their genes, resulting in mutations. Detrimental mutations reduced the chances of reproduction, ensuring an upward climb towards complexity that culminated in the human race. William Lane Craig offers the following account of how naturalism leads to nihilism:

“Man, writes Loren Eiseley, is the Cosmic Orphan. He is the only creature in the universe who asks, “Why?” Other animals have instincts to guide them, but man has learned to ask questions. “Who am I?” man asks. “Why am I here? Where am I going?” Since the Enlightenment, when he threw off the shackles of religion, man has tried to answer these questions without reference to God. But the answers that came back were not exhilarating, but dark and terrible. “You are the accidental by-product of nature, a result of matter plus time plus chance. There is no reason for your existence. All you face is death.”

…If God does not exist, then both man and the universe are inevitably doomed to death. Man, like all biological organisms, must die. With no hope of immortality, man’s life leads only to the grave. His life is but a spark in the infinite blackness, a spark that appears, flickers, and dies forever…For though I know now that I exist, that I am alive, I also know that someday I will no longer exist, that I will no longer be, that I will die. This thought is staggering and threatening: to think that the person I call “myself” will cease to exist, that I will be no more!

…And the universe, too, faces death. Scientists tell us that the universe is expanding, and everything in it is growing farther and farther apart. As it does so, it grows colder and colder, and its energy is used up. Eventually all the stars will burn out, and all matter will collapse into dead stars and black holes. There will be no light at all; there will be no heat; there will be no life; only the corpses of dead stars and galaxies, ever expanding into the endless darkness and the cold recesses of space—a universe in ruins. So not only is the life of each individual person doomed; the entire human race is doomed. There is no escape. There is no hope.”3

Likewise, Tim Keller writes:
“If this life is all there is, and there is no God or life beyond this material world, then it will not
ultimately matter whether you are a genocidal maniac or an altruist; it won’t matter whether you
fight hunger in Africa or are incredibly cruel and greedy and starving the poor. In the end what
you do will make no difference whatsoever…Ultimately, everything we do is radically insignificant.
Nothing counts forever.”4

Thus, your creation theology is a major key to how you view sexual ethics. Broadly speaking, the four
main ways of approaching sexual ethics are:
1. Animalistic: give in to instincts and impulses, regardless of what society says
2. Socially constructed: accept the mores of a given culture
3. Ascetic: pleasure is inherently evil; sex is dirty; deny bodily pleasures
4. Biblical: God is the designer who invented pleasure and gave us boundaries

In this class, we’ll explore the fourth category. In order to begin doing that, we’ll need to spend some time thinking about how God feels about pleasure before considering what boundaries He has graciously given us for our own good and His glory.

¹ For reasons why the Bible is trustworthy visit restitutio.org/apologetics
² http://www.gallup.com/poll/170834/three-four-Bible-word-god.aspx
³ Williams Lane Craig, “The Absurdity of Life without God,” presented April 11, 2001 by the Veritas Forum at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, subsequently published by Reasonable Faith, reasonablefaith.org/the-absurdity-of-life-without-god, accessed January 17, 2017. Available on YouTube at youtube.com/watch?v=_fOIWRiC3vQ
⁴ Tim Keller, Making Sense of God (New York: Viking 2016), pp. 66-7.