In this podcast we focus on the Russell Brand affair over the last few days. The whole thing has made me realise just how deeply sick we are as a culture: the way the accusations were made, the hypocrisy of the media, the social media reaction, and the contrast with Christian sexual ethics.
* Apologies for the audio quality – I made a mistake with the microphone so isn’t as good as it should be – will be back to normal next week! *
Also available on the audio podcast.
What can we learn after yet another prominent Christian leader falls to sexual temptation? Is there a problem in the way we preach the gospel? Here I argue that the church desperately needs another spiritual reformation.
The preacher and evangelist Ravi Zacharias died recently. It didn’t take long after his death for reports of sexual misconduct to come up. One example is that he sexually harassed some women working at one of the spas he co-owned. According to the article:
“He would expose himself every time, and he would touch himself every time,” one of the women told CT. “It was where he went to get what he wanted sexually.”
Zacharias masturbated in front of one of the women more than 50 times, according to her recollection. He told her he was burdened by the demands of the ministry, and he needed this “therapy.” He also asked her to have sex with him twice, she said, and requested explicit photos of her.
These deeply sad and troubling accusations are happening hard on the heels of revelations about Jonathan Fletcher last year. It seems that we’ve had a string lately of high-profile Christian leaders who have been embroiled in sexual scandals. I think this should trouble us as the church, particularly evangelicals: why is it that so many leaders have fallen this way?
One lesson that it’s very important to learn is that leaders are people, just like everyone else. Everyone has the same temptations – leaders are not immune from them. Christians should not put anyone on a pedestal, except for Jesus. Only he is sinless!
One of the problems with our society today is that we are very ‘celebrity’ obsessed. I think the modern media, especially social media, exacerbates this problem. We tend to flock around people who we like to listen to. The Christian world is far from immune. I can recognise it in myself: when I go on Christian conferences or teaching days, I like to recognise the names of the people who’ll be speaking. In itself I don’t think this is necessarily a problem – but the problem comes when we expect people gifted to teach and lead to be perfect. The Messiah complex!
So, let’s remember that Christian leaders are Christians. They can fall, and they need our prayers. As a Christian leader myself, albeit in a much smaller capacity than Ravi Zacharias – I hugely value people praying for me.
So, all Christians are liable to fall to temptation, and it’s good to remember that. But I think there is a deeper issue here. Does the fact that so many Christian leaders have fallen in this way suggest that there is a problem with the gospel being preached?
I wonder if part of the problem is that many evangelical churches have come to reduce the definition of the gospel. I wrote about this before, and again recently when I wrote about grace. This is what I wrote back in July of last year:
One of the ways I think evangelical churches (including, and perhaps especially, conservative evangelical churches) subtly distort the gospel is by portraying the Christian life like this: it’s all about avoiding sin.
It’s a bit like one of those car-racing video games – every time you see a pothole or an obstacle coming, you have to move so you don’t hit it. I think we often unconsciously visualise the Christian life in this way: we live our lives day-to-day, trying our hardest to avoid sinning, and asking God for forgiveness when we fail and the help not to sin again. I call this view ‘almost the gospel’ – it’s so close, and yet not quite there.
This applies to sex and sexuality. Our culture says that our happiness will be found when we are most sexually fulfilled. But God says we will be most happy when we submit our sexuality to him. Only he can fill our deepest longings. This is something which I think a lot of churches don’t really focus on. Or at least, they may talk about it intellectually but it hasn’t really hit home emotionally.
I wonder if this is the problem when it comes to Christian leaders falling sexually. I mean, the things they’re accused of doing are not little slips. It’s not like accidentally switching on an adult channel in a hotel late at night. It’s directly abusive of others. It reminds me of 1 Corinthians 5v1: “It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate”. The kinds of things RZ and JF have done, or been accused of doing, would not be tolerated in our secular society.
Christian leaders are sinners, but they should be mature Christians. They should have a knowledge that God’s ways are best, that God alone can satisfy. I just can’t conceive of someone doing the kinds of things that Ravi Zacharias or Jonathan Fletcher are accused of doing without understanding that it’s deeply wrong and sinful. Someone who slips up and sins out of weakness is one thing. Someone who has an established pattern of sin over the course of several months or years – that’s another level.
I honestly think the real need of the church at the moment is for spiritual reformation. We need to learn deeply the truth of these words:
Taste and see that the Lord is good;
Psalm 34:8-10
blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.
Fear the Lord, you his holy people,
for those who fear him lack nothing.
The lions may grow weak and hungry,
but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.
Over the last few months and years, I’ve begun to realise the truth of this Psalm in a way that I don’t think I’ve ever been taught before. God is not some kind of arbitrary rule giver, who gives us rules to stop us being happy. One of the reasons we are so tempted by sexual temptation is because it promises us happiness beyond what we think God would give. But the truth is the exact opposite: only God’s ways can give us true happiness, in every area.
Is the reason that we keep on falling this way is because much of the church simply does not recognise the goodness of God?
A few days ago I read a helpful article by Jay Stringer about Ravi Zacharias. In that post he said:
When a man will not engage his sexual brokenness, the inevitable outcome is a system that heavily polices cross gender relationships. We don’t honor women by refusing to extend relationship or leadership to them. We honor women by doing everything possible to locate the sexual brokenness and manipulation that exists within. Being like Jesus means that we learn how to have close relationships with female friends in a way that is marked with humility, honor, and delight. The image of God is both male and female (Genesis 1:27). If you want to know who God is, but you want to “protect” yourself from women, you’re excluding a whole lot of God.
I think this is spot on. We live in a society which is going made about sex and sexuality. I just think so many people, especially young people, don’t know which was is up any more. What the world doesn’t need right now is the church failing in exactly the same area! In fact, we as the church should be like a city on a hill – showing the world the light and life that comes from knowing Christ.
We should be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:1). We should start treating each other like family, as that is in fact what we are. And we should be walking in step with the Spirit (Galatians 5:16), rather than trying to use our own personal version of the Billy Graham rule to stay pure. This means men and women treating each other like brothers and sisters, like true friends. God has the power to overcome the idols of our society and remake us in his image.
A couple of years ago, Aimee Byrd wrote a book called “Why can’t we be friends?” Subtitled – “avoidance is not purity”. This sums it up for me: I think many churches teach a kind of ‘avoidance’ strategy when it comes to purity. This isn’t going to work, and I think this is why too many Christian leaders have fallen.
If you think of the Christian life primarily as being about avoiding sin, then your greatest enemy is temptation. It’s only a matter of time before you fall – even more so for Christian leaders. This is a particular problem when our society seems to be so sex-obsessed. One effect means that we will only see members of the opposite sex in terms of temptation.
If, on the other hand, we see the Christian life as being about seeking after the Lord, his goodness and his ways, then it will be a different story. We can start to see others as people made in God’s image, given his beauty. We can start relating to them with the love given by the Spirit, beyond merely human love.
I believe we in the Western church right now need to seek after the Lord like we haven’t done in a long time. It’s time to stop talking about doctrine and instead to start believing it.
Lord, please send a spiritual reformation upon your people.
A few weeks ago I read a post over on the Think Theology blog called “When I grow up” by Andrew Wilson. I often enjoy his articles and this was no exception.
He quotes C.S. Lewis:
I think our present outlook might be like that of a small boy who, on being told that the sexual act was the highest bodily pleasure, should immediately ask whether you ate chocolates at the same time. On receiving the answer ‘No,’ he might regard the absence of chocolates as the chief characteristic of sexuality. In vain would you tell him that the reason why lovers in their raptures don’t bother about chocolates is that they have something better to think of. The boy knows chocolate: he does not know the positive thing that excludes it. We are in the same position. We know the sexual life; we do not know, except in glimpses, the other thing which, in Heaven, will leave no room for it.
The traditional understanding is that marriage will cease in the new creation, largely based on Jesus’ words in the synoptic gospels (which we’ll look at a bit later on in this post). At the risk of being heretical – or at least controversial – I want to question the traditional understanding. I’m a firm believer that if you don’t ask questions, you don’t learn – and I hope this might be an interesting exercise. This question is important because it raises a lot of interesting questions about the future and the new creation.
Recently in our church we preached through Genesis 1-3 on Sunday mornings. These chapters are absolutely foundational to the Bible and deserve to be studied in some depth. One thing which struck me this time was the way the Garden of Eden is described as a temple – i.e. the place where God dwelt with mankind. In fact, Gordon Wenham makes the suggestion in his commentary that the Garden of Eden, although small to start with, was supposed to expand to fill the whole earth as Adam and Eve fulfilled God’s purposes (filling the earth and subduing it – Genesis 1:27, 28). Of course, sex is a perfectly natural part of mankind’s role of “filling the earth” – procreation is of course one major reason why sex difference exists in the first place.
Without going into all the details (you can listen to my sermon if you want some more background), the point is that all of life was supposed to be lived in the presence of God, walking with him. There was no “sacred / secular” distinction – everything was sacred. Human beings were to do all the good things which God had created for them (of course including sex), enjoying everything as gifts from a good Creator and giving thanks to him.
It was a perfect world, human life as it was (and is) supposed to be. A world of love and peace, a world where humans were in harmony with God, creation, and each other. Of course, the Fall spoiled all that. But Jesus came to redeem us and bring about God’s new creation.
Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth,’ for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling-place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death” or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’
Revelation 21:1-4 NIV
When Jesus rose again, he ‘kick started’ the new creation – he began the process by which God is bringing about his new world, his new kingdom. This passage in Revelation is a beautiful poetic picture of what that world will be like: it doesn’t give any details, but it says there will be a ‘new heavens and a new earth’ – a new creation. It will be a place where God dwells – just as he did with Adam and Eve. In other words ‘heaven’ will not be sitting on a harp with a cloud, some kind of ‘super spiritual’ existence, but it will be solid, real, embodied. This is a point which N.T. Wright makes forcefully in his enormous book The Resurrection of the Son of God. I came away from that book with a resolve never to simply speak of ‘going to heaven when we die’ but rather to speak of the Christian hope – as the creeds put it – of the “resurrection of the body”.
Both my daughters like Kevin DeYoung’s book “The Biggest Story”, which is a book for children explaining the whole story of the Bible, how it fits together. The subtitle of that book is his one-sentence summary of the whole Bible – “How the snake crusher brings us back to the garden”. I think this is a good summary: the serpent crusher – that is, Jesus – brings us back to the Garden of Eden. The Fall excluded us from the Garden, but through the death and resurrection of Christ we may enter in.
It’s interesting that some of the imagery in Revelation makes an explicit link with the Garden of Eden, e.g. the tree of life from Genesis 2 appears again in Revelation (22:2 – compare with 2:7, ‘To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.’) So the future creation is explicitly linked with the Garden of Eden.
Now at this point, you might be wondering what the new creation will be like. Let’s think about that.
As we’ve already seen, we know that the new creation will be embodied. Our bodies are not simply meat bags to be discarded, but will be transformed to be immortal (1 Corinthians 15:42). Although the Bible doesn’t go into specifics about what the new creation will be like, I think we can gain a picture from what Jesus says about it as well as what he was like and what he did post-resurrection.
We know there will be eating and drinking. Jesus often describes the kingdom of God as a ‘banquet’ (e.g. the parable of the wedding banquet – Luke 14:15-24). At the Last Supper, Jesus says to his disciples: “I will not eat it (the Passover meal) again until it finds fulfilment in the kingdom of God.” And then he says: “I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” (Both quotes from Luke 22). In Acts 1:4 we are told “On one occasion, while he was eating with them“ – so Jesus did eat after the resurrection. In fact, according to John’s gospel one of the first things that Jesus does for his disciples after his resurrection is cook breakfast for them (John 21:12).
So, eating and drinking – more than that, feasting – will be part of the Kingdom of God.
We could also say that there will be relationships – the disciples all knew Jesus, talked with him – he wasn’t some kind of ghost.
And we know that, whatever else we can say about it, the resurrection life will be more glorious than anything we can even imagine at the moment:
What no eye has seen,
1 Corinthians 2:9 NIV
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived’ –
the things God has prepared for those who love him
Let’s pause a moment to consider. If we were only considering all these verses and themes – without thinking about Jesus’ comments about marriage – do you think sex would be more naturally included, or excluded? It seems to me that sex is (a) part of God’s good, unspoiled, creation in Genesis 1-2; (b) a natural part of the human body (it is one of the things our bodies are designed to do). I don’t think there is any indication from the limited amount here that the resurrection body will be so radically different that sex will no longer be possible / desirable etc.
One of the things I’ve been learning over the last few years is that God’s laws are best – in other words, we find life to the full (John 10:10) when we submit to Jesus and his ways. This is why David can say in Psalm 19: “The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes … they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb.” He can say that because it is good to obey God. It is not simply morally right but actually best for us in every way.
God designed us to love him and love others. We are actually happiest when we are doing what we are created to do. Enjoying God is not simply about sitting in a room somewhere enjoying him quietly, but enjoying him by walking with him in his ways.
Sometimes I think people view ‘heaven’ as about enjoying God in some other way. You can see something of that in what C.S. Lewis said at the start – Heaven ‘will leave no room for [sex]’. But I’m not sure this is a Biblical way of looking at enjoying God, if we take the creation picture of Genesis 1-2 seriously.
Genesis 1-2 is about life to the full, life lived with God, in full enjoyment of all that God has created, giving thanks to him for everything. Sometimes Christians make out that God’s ways are ‘austerity ways’ – we have to reign back everything in order to obey God. There is a degree of truth in this, in that we have to take up our cross to follow Jesus – but this is about saying no to wrong desires, while at the same time saying yes to right ones.
Jesus calls all of us to give up everything for the sake of the kingdom, but what we receive back is a hundred times better (Matthew 19:29). I will deal later on with the objection about people who are single in this life. The point that I am trying to make here is that God doesn’t simply want us to ‘enjoy him’ in a sense which is divorced from our ordinary lives. I simply don’t think the Biblical picture is to enjoy God in some sort of disembodied spiritual way which is superior to the ‘creational’ ways that God gave to Adam and Eve.
Jesus deals with the question of marriage and the resurrection in the gospels – in fact, it is recorded in all three of the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke). This is often seen as the clincher, and it needs to be taken seriously.
All of the accounts in the gospels basically match up, so let’s look at Luke’s account from Luke 20.
27 Some of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came up and questioned Him: 28 “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother has a wife, and dies childless, his brother should take the wife and produce offspring for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife and died without children. 30 Also the second 31 and the third took her. In the same way, all seven died and left no children. 32 Finally, the woman died too. 33 In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For all seven had married her.”
34 Jesus told them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage. 35 But those who are counted worthy to take part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. 36 For they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are sons of God, since they are sons of the resurrection. 37 Moses even indicated in the passage about the burning bush that the dead are raised, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. 38 He is not God of the dead but of the living, because all are living to Him.”
Luke 20:27-38, HCSB
I have highlighted the key verse – Jesus says at the resurrection people “neither marry nor are given in marriage”. Doesn’t that answer the question and settle the matter?
Let me make a few observations about this passage.
The point of the Sadducees asking the question was to logically debunk the idea of the resurrection – they are trying to trap Jesus. They do this by drawing on the Law, which required a man to marry his late brother’s widow if she was childless. In their (very contrived) scenario, a woman was married by seven men. They say: “at the resurrection, whose wife will the woman be?” – they are making the point, “how ridiculous, Jesus! The resurrection is a stupid idea!”
So the first important thing to observe about this question is that it is a question about the resurrection – not about marriage. Marriage is simply their way of exposing their problem with the resurrection.
As such, Jesus’ answer is primarily about the resurrection – not about marriage per se.
The second thing to note here is about death. The Sadducees seemed to assume that a marriage would last beyond death, and used that to ‘prove’ the resurrection was a silly idea. But marriage does not last beyond death, as w know from Romans 7:2 (“by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law that binds her to him.”)
And, more pertinent to the matter at hand, death is integral to the definition of marriage: “Till death us do part”. Marriage is a “life-long union of a man and a woman”. What would happen to marriage if death was taken out of the picture? Marriage can no longer exist without death – because it can no longer be ‘life-long’.
I think this is why Jesus moves directly from saying people in the resurrection will not marry to “they can no longer die” – they are logically connected. Marriage, in its current definition, needs death to exist. Then Jesus says “They are like the angels” – which I think is a confirmation of eternal life. At the resurrection we will be like the angels inasmuchas we will have a life which is not limited by death.
So, here’s the thing: Jesus says that marriage will not exist at the resurrection. I think what he is saying to the Sadducees is, “you haven’t considered what eternal life will be like.” He is not saying that sex will not exist, or any of the other things which go with it (children, for example). I don’t think he is making that point specifically – rather, just answering the Sadducees’ rather contrived point about marriage and the resurrection.
I don’t like speculation, because there are many things we are simply not told in the Bible! But sometimes I think that people talk about the new creation in a wistful way, almost as if it will be less than what we have now. This is not the case, as I hope I’ve already shown.
But let’s consider the matter at hand in the context of life which is unending. Part of the problem is that none of us can really imagine what it would be like to live eternally, to watch a million years go by without having to worry about time running away!
I wonder if sex and relationships might still exist, even with children. At the moment a marriage is life-long, and that is about the length of time it takes to bear and raise a family. But what if a million years passes? Can we even imagine life extending that long? Could it ever be plausible, for example, in life which exists eternally, to raise a family with someone, have a long time with them, and then remain friends but part ways? Is marriage in its current format a temporary arrangement largely because we are short-lived?
Part of the majesty and glory and infinity of God is displayed through the relationships that we have with each other. There is so much diversity among people. I have a different relationship with everyone – C.S. Lewis made the point in friendship that each friend brings out something different in us. I think this is true, and I wonder if this is part of what the new creation will be like.
I don’t want to speculate too much here: God hasn’t given us much detail about the resurrection life for a reason. Still, I think it’s important to have some kind of vision.
When I discussed this issue a few weeks ago, one of the points that someone made to me was about singleness: isn’t this over-emphasizing sex, while denying the fact that Paul says it is better to be single? I’d like to deal with that question, although with the caveat that I won’t be able to say everything you would want to say. (One of the problems with this whole area is that it touches on some very big issues to do with the Christian life!)
One of the most important things to understand about the Christian life is that it is a life of sacrifice. It’s not a life of ease – if Jesus wore a crown of thorns, why should we expect a bed of roses? This isn’t to say that we need to all practice self-flagellation, but rather that it should be the normal practice for Christians to give things up for Jesus. He says in Luke 14:33, “those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.” The path of following Jesus is the path of denying ourselves and taking up our cross (Mark 8:34).
Saying this – I think it’s important to remember that Christian self-denial is not simply denying ourselves for the sake of it. Here’s an exchange from a bit later in Luke’s gospel:
Peter said to him, ‘We have left all we had to follow you!’
‘Truly I tell you,’ Jesus said to them, ‘no one who has left home or wife or brothers or sisters or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.’
Luke 18:38-20
Peter says that they have left everything to follow Jesus, and Jesus replies no-one who has left anything “for the sake of the kingdom of God”. This is the first important thing to note: self-denial is not self-denial for its own sake. Its supreme purpose is for the sake of the kingdom of God – to better love God, to better love others, to be able to bring others into his kingdom. Perhaps we give up the idea of a relationship we know is wrong out of obedience to Christ. Perhaps we stay single in order to preach the gospel – there are many throughout history who have remained celibate to devote themselves to the Lord’s service.
A single man or woman may be in a better position to preach the gospel – would Paul have been able to go on all his missionary journeys if he had a wife and family to look after? I was struck reading Billy Graham’s autobiography how there was a big tension between his ministry and his family. He spent months away from his family at times – it wasn’t easy for any of them. John Stott and Dick Lucas are just two names who remained single for their whole lives (as I write, Dick Lucas is still around – but I doubt he’ll be getting married any time soon!) – and yet think about how God used them to bless many others.
Jesus goes on to say no-one who gives up anything “will fail to receive many times as much in this age” – so the second thing to note is that there is a blessing received in obedience to God, whatever we may have to give up. God is generous, not measly. God is not a God of austerity! I think this is vitally important to grasp – sometimes we think that God calls us to deny ourselves just because he doesn’t want us to be happy. But the truth is that God’s ways, as we’ve already seen, are always better and always lead to more happiness in the long run.
C.S. Lewis said this in the introduction to his sermon The Weight of Glory:
The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.
I think he’s right: self-denial is not an end in itself. It carries a purpose, a purpose which is actually more fulfilling. And, of course, everyone is called to practice it – those who are married and those who are single.
Finally, Jesus finishes “in the age to come eternal life” – there is eternal life to look forward to. No-one who misses out in this momentary lifetime will miss out on anything, because there is something so infinitely greater coming that it’s not even worth comparing with our lives now. I find it easier to believe that forsaking marriage now (for the sake of the kingdom of God) doesn’t mean that you’ve missed the only chance you’ll ever have.
And this goes back to the way that we see eternal life: if eternal life is something radically different to our lives now, then if we can’t do something in this life then we’ve missed the chance forever (even if eternal life is much better!) If, on the other hand, life now is a sort of ‘dress rehearsal’ for the way that things are going to be in eternity, then no-one is going to miss out on anything.
And – let’s be honest – those who do get married in the here-and-now also have something to look forward to. As a married man, and a father, I can say with certainty that marriage and fatherhood are not everything! Sin spoils everything – every marriage or parent/child relationship is marred by sin. There are moments I wish I wasn’t married or didn’t have children. I, too, don’t believe I have everything in this life – I am longing for the day when faith will be sight and sin will be no more. Can you imagine how wonderful it would be to have a relationship which wasn’t marred by sin?
It’s the same with everything good in this world: every relationship, every friendship, even our hobbies and pleasures – every good thing is marred by sin. Even as we enjoy them we experience the effects of the fall, and we long for the new creation!
I appreciate that this has been a long post and I’ve covered a lot of ground. Let me try to draw things together.
I don’t think that sex is ultimate – far from it! I do think it is a good gift of God, which he has given us to enjoy. From the evidence I see through the Bible, I don’t see any reason why our lives in the new creation should be so radically different that there is no place for sex. I believe Jesus’ comments in the gospels – the only place in the Bible where it is specifically mentioned – do not necessitate the understanding that sex will be absent in the new creation. I believe he was talking about the institution of marriage in its current, “till death us do part” form – a form which will pass away with death. And those who forsake marriage in this life for the sake of the kingdom do a good, holy and noble thing.
Could I be wrong about all this? Of course! I am not wishing to be dogmatic about anything here – simply to ask questions and probe into the mystery of the new creation.
The good news is that, for all who believe and trust in Jesus, there is eternal life to look forward to – whatever we believe about it now!
Sex is like fire. In the fireplace it keeps us warm. Outside the fireplace it burns down the house. Ray Ortlund.
Apologies if I’ve reminded you of a song by the Kings of Leon (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, consider yourself fortunate). I came across the quote above recently and I found it immensely helpful. Sex is a powerful thing – within the confines of marriage, it is contained and we enjoy its benefits. Outside of marriage, it destroys everything. This is exactly what I believe we are beginning to see as a society.
I’ve been reading a book called Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage and Monogamy by sociologist Mark Regnerus. It’s a fascinating – albeit slightly terrifying – read. Then, yesterday, I read an insightful article about the #MeToo movement, entitled: “Sex was Never Safe: Why Consent is Not Enough in the Post-Weinstein Era.”
They have helped to bring home to me just how lost our society is about sexual ethics. The Regnerus book is about how sex has become ‘cheap’: in an era where fewer people are choosing to get married – and those who do get married do so later on in life – there are very few barriers to sex. One of the things which struck me most was research about how many people have sex on the first date – in fact, Regnerus theorised that having sex is often the thing which causes people to move from fairly casual dating to more formally being in a relationship.
The whole book simply worked to underscore for me the fact that so much of our society is now based on a fairly consumer attitude to sex: people ‘try out’ different sexual partners, waiting for the one who will bring them most personal satisfaction. Sex is seen as a commodity, not something sacred which is to be held within the confines of marriage. Easy access to pornography has had a big impact. And it goes on.
The upshot of all this is that our society seems to massively value sexual freedom – the search for personal sexual fulfilment, with very little in the way to channel or restrict that freedom.
Then, we have the #MeToo movement. A lot has been written about the #MeToo movement, so I’m not going to rehash all that here. In many ways I can sympathise with it. But I think Joel Looper, author of the article I linked, picks up on something significant – is there an inherent contradiction with sexual freedom and #MeToo? His argument is that if we want to solve the problem which #MeToo is highlighting, this will logically entail the end of the Sexual Revolution. He says:
The Sexual Revolution was possible because women had ready access to birth control. Not long before, only men could sleep around without the fear of becoming pregnant. By the 1960s women could too. Among heterosexuals at least, the freeing of women to enjoy sex without that pesky natural consequence of the sex act also freed men. Sex became, in economic terms, a buyer’s marker. It was easier for both men and women, but especially for men, to obtain. The average age of marriage in the United States in 1970 was twenty-three for men and twenty for women, but by 2015 it was twenty-nine for men and twenty-seven for women. Marriage was no longer even typically a precondition for sex. By the mid-1990s, having a couple partners before finding the “right one” had become normal, perhaps almost normative in most parts of the West.
This is exactly what Mark Regnerus’ research was highlighting. Sex has become cheap, and is no longer seen as needing to happen within a committed relationship. This is the fruit of the Sexual Revolution. Although things didn’t change overnight, what we see today is the logical consequence of what happened back in the 60s.
The only value we see today is consent. That is, so long as the sex is happening between two (or more) consenting adults – then no problem. One-night-stand? Fine, so long as it’s consensual. Sex on the first date? Fine, as long as it’s consensual. What the #MeToo movement is highlighting is non-consensual sexual abuse of various different stripes (some more serious, some less so). But what action is needed to change anything?
What have we learned? What is the take-home value of #MeToo? Is it that men need more education? That society must be more vigilant in punishing men who commit sexual crimes? No. It is that consent does not constitute robust enough criteria for sexual intercourse. All the education in the world will not change the male libido. It is hardwired into men. Sure, most men are trustworthy most of the time. But many men are somewhat untrustworthy some of the time, and a few men (or is it far more than a few?) are downright dangerous. Birth control and at least sixty years of open discussion of sex have not changed this.
The point is that consent is not enough. Consent will never be enough to prevent people doing things they shouldn’t sexually. It can’t be changed with education, or by a movement on social media. A few months back I questioned whether education was enough to end sexual harrassment in schools (short answer: no). So what can be done?
Reestablishing the connection between marriage and sex is only part of the solution since – after all, women are sometimes assaulted by strangers and other times by their own husbands. We must have the cultural memory to recall that until quite recently sex, again in Berry’s words, was “everybody’s business.” The wider community had an interest in what went on in people’s bedrooms, even between “two consenting adults,” because people could be harmed behind those bedroom walls. They are today more than ever. Relationships are shattered behind those walls, worlds crumble, and often enough it is the male libido that is the destroyer of worlds. Anyone who denies this, whether in theory or practice, is living a fantasy.
Reconnecting sex and marriage – not, as the article says, the whole solution – yet it is part of it. Sex is not simply about personal freedom and individual choice. It’s not about individuals pursuing happiness, or “two consenting adults”. But sex has a wider scope – it is part of society. Society has an interest in what two people do behind closed doors – sex matters to more than just the two individuals concerned. Of course, as the author states, if we accept this – then it will spell the end of the Sexual Revolution.
As a society, it seems we have a choice to make: either we carry on as we are and pursue sexual freedom – which will lead to the kind of things the #MeToo movement is protesting, as well as other side effects such as driving men and women further apart. This is the way we are heading at the moment, and, if I may return to the quote I started with, we are beginning to see how hot the fire can burn.
Or – as a society, we realise that sex matters beyond two consenting individuals, that #MeToo is a symptom of a sex-obsessed society which cannot be solved simply by education, and that marriage is the only real solution we have (or at least, a nonnegotiable part of the solution).
One of the things I’m often struck by is how everything would be better if people simply listened to what God wanted us to do in the first place. Sex is designed as a wonderful gift from God, to be used within the context of a lifelong union of a man and a woman, but outside of that it is immensely harmful. Peter says in his first letter: “Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11). I think it’s possible to see how our sinful desires, in this case sexual desire, wages war against us. We desire to find fulfilment in sex, which leads many people to shopping around for the best sexual partner available to them. But the irony is, they do not find fulfilment. The only fulfilment is found in obedience to God, in line with the way that he has made us.