The Third Discourseman
It is often claimed that evangelicals are obsessed with sex. And not in the good way. I don’t think those who make such comments are complimenting us on our high libido, sex drive, or how good we are in bed. Rather, they’re mocking us for our out-of-date, Victorian fear of sex and sexuality. For our constant attempts to place boundaries around acceptable sexual practice. For the fact that our churches preach against homosexuality and sex outside of marriage. ‘Why do evangelicals concern themselves so much with what’s going on in people’s bedrooms?’, they ask. ‘Don’t they know there are bigger issues at hand? Wars in the Middle-East? Homelessness on our door? Our greedy, materialistic, worldly western culture?’. We’re seen as those who have lost all sense of perspective, banging on about an issue that, even if it does matter, is surely not as important as those issues that are actually causing death, destruction, pain and poverty.
Even from within, I’ve heard complaints that evangelicals act as if all purity is sexual purity. As soon as a seminar or Bible passage on ‘holiness’ or ‘purity’ comes up, rest assured this is really just a Trojan Horse to discuss sex, lust and pornography. Are there not other, equally important areas of godliness to focus on?
Now, one might think the obvious defence to such accusations would be to deny them. ‘Of course we care about other forms of godliness.’ ‘Of course we care about wars and poverty.’ ‘Actually, our churches talk about lots of things that aren’t sex.’
But that’s not what I’m going to argue. Instead, I want to double down on these accusations. I want to say, ‘Yes, we do talk about sex a lot. And we’re right to.’ Now that’s not to say that all of the above critiques are without merit. I think it is a shame that holiness and purity at times seem to mean little more than not watching porn. But that’s not for this post. Instead, I want to lay out why it makes perfect sense that churches, and Christians, who are alert to reality, talk a lot about sex.
Sex is Natural
Even under an atheistic or evolutionary world-view, sex is the cornerstone of the natural world. Watch any David Attenborough documentary, and you soon realise that basically all animal adaptations are geared towards defence against predators, being able to hunt prey, and being able to attract a mate. Food, sex, survival. This is the stuff of life. The only way the world came to be full of life is through sex. Sex plays an absolutely vital part in all of natural life.
Sex is Biblical
And this is no less true under a proper Christian worldview. Genesis 1 and 2 don’t highlight much about human activity- once again food, work, sex, marriage are making the cut as the absolute fundamentals of human life. Humans are tasked to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it. Sex is there from the start, as part of God’s positive vision for humanity. It’s a key part of the created order, made with a purpose in mind. The Bible talks about sex a lot.
And the Bible talks about sexual immorality a lot. To say that it’s just ‘one sin from many’ is not quite right. It’s there in Genesis as part of the reason for the flood, and for the destruction of Sodom. It features in two of the ten commandments: do not commit adultery and do not covet your neighbour’s wife. In Leviticus, the section on sexual immorality is one of the most extensive elaborations on a particular ethical topic. It is then a consistent problem throughout Old Testament narrative, with rape, polygamy, adultery, marriage to non-Jews, temple prostitution, featuring at multiple key moments such as the golden calf (implied in Exodus, made explicit by Paul), David and Bathsheba, Solomon’s marriages, and so on.
And then in the New Testament, it regularly features on vice lists, both in the Gospels and Epistles. It often gets explicit attention in the Epistles, more so than any other individual sin (for example in Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6 and 7, 1 Thessalonians 4). And in 1 Corinthians, Paul explicitly claims that sexual immorality is not like any other sin, as it is a sin against one’s own body (6:18).
Some commentators have even argued that sexual immorality , murder (under which falls violence and harm more generally) and idolatry are the big three in terms of sinful categories. That these are the most important and extensive ways in which humans rebel against God.
So we’re surely right to talk about sex, both in support of good sex and against immoral sex. Because God talks in both these ways, all throughout the Bible.
Sex is Contemporary in the World
In addition to this, sex is a very contemporary issue in the world around us. In the last 100 years or so there has been a huge overhaul in the way that the world views sex. New innovations have made it more possible than ever to have regular sex with multiple partners without worrying about diseases or pregnancy. Changes to law have seen homosexuality go from a crime to something to be celebrated and paraded in the streets. Pornography is no longer something you have to ashamedly purchase from a grubby store, hoping no one sees you go in. It’s in all of our pockets, for free, just a few clicks away.
Now to some extent, none of this is really new. In the name of progress, we’ve actually just regressed back to some of the more sexually deviant practices of the past. But it is a recent change to our particular culture and it is necessary, in the midst of such upheaval, for the church to continue to campaign for a more theologically grounded, ethically good, aesthetically beautiful view of sex than the mess everyone else seems to be buying into.
And Sex is Contemporary in the Church
And finally, these issues have of course managed to make their way inside the church doors. Both for we poor Saints struggling under the new temptations all around us and in our pockets, who need to be encouraged not to return to our vomit. And for those insidious church leaders, who would call night ‘day’ and would have the church approve of what God has clearly labelled evil.
There is a deep irony when liberal Christians in the Church of England accuse the conservative church of talking about sex too much. Perhaps they have forgotten that the current LLF process is not the first such discussion to have occurred in the past decades. Perhaps it has slipped their memory that such votes have happened before, with the outcome being that the church voted against gay marriage. Maybe they haven’t realised that we’re the ones quite happy with the status quo, and that they’re the ones who keep bringing this conversation back up every time we thought it was over, in the hope that eventually they’ll get the outcome they want. One wonders whether they’ll be so generous to their opponents if they do get what they want, or whether, once gay marriage has become ‘legal’ in the Church of England, the time for debate will be over, and the vote be final, and the church’s mind be ‘made up’. There’s a real childishness there, simultaneously digging up the same arguments again and again, hoping that eventually it’ll go your way, while accusing your opponents of being the ones who are obsessed and who just need to ‘let it go’.
To conclude: I do not think we should be embarrassed to be seen to be ‘obsessed with sex’. Sex is important, for a whole host of reasons, both theological and contextual. If we don’t keep fighting to set the standard for what good, godly sex looks like, no one else will. Of course, we must avoid becoming a ‘one-issue party’. There is much more wrong with our world than just sexual immorality. But let’s be clear, neither is sexual immorality in our world a small or insignificant issue. It is a huge problem, and one that daily knocks on the church’s door, demanding it be let in. So we need to keep talking about it.
The Four Discoursemen 