Sex & The Single Christian
Choices That Can Change Your Life
Not About Sex
The commandments given Moses by God dealt mainly with
selfishness—thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife—which
treated thy neighbor's wife as property of thy neighbor, showing
little if any concern for her as a person. And the same
commandment goes on to name several other things of thy
neighbor’s we shouldn’t covet—including his donkey or his slave,
male or female. The tenth commandment was not about sex, it was
about learning to be satisfied with the things we have and not
constantly envying others. We, human folk, Church Folk, tend to
misinterpret this scripture, making it about sex. We equate sex
with sin and sin with guilt and we who live under grace and not
the Law nonetheless tend to live a curiously legalistic
existence, fearing the wrath of God not so much for treating one
another like crap—which too many of us do each and every day—but
for turning down the sheets with Leroy. Many of us commit
adultery or fornication and then quake in terror, fearing hell
if we die in our sins. But each and every day we mistreat one
another without a second thought, without any perceptible
concern about our spiritual jeopardy.
We are, in fact, applying man’s rules and man’s behavioral
standard to God, treating God like some Galactic Accountant who
keeps a running tally of felonies and misdemeanors which will
determine whether or not we get the hot seat. Which is
completely anti-scriptural and antichrist, and shame on our
pastors for allowing this ignorance to go on. Many of our
pastors simply lack the moral authority to do much teaching on
the issue of sex because they themselves are carrying huge guilt
around because of their own clandestine behavior. We treat sex
as though adultery and fornication were, somehow, the only sin
if not the most grievous sin, when the bible teaches us sin is
sin [I John 5]. God hates it all. But, in our culture, many of
us engage in these patterns of giving in to sexual immorality,
feeling guilty about it, repenting, only to then start all over.
Far too many of our sisters, particularly our divorced or single
moms, are simply lonely. And they cave into loneliness moreso
than lust, to these clowns who prey on lonely women. Some of
these clowns wear clerical collars.
Sexuality is both a human strength and a human weakness. In the
proper context, it is a fulfilling and wonderful experience.
Outside of that context, it can be a terribly destructive weapon
that destroys lives and cripples self-esteem. Most of all, it is
something rarely discussed from the pulpit much beyond a
crowd-pleasing condemnation of the behavior, a criminalizing of
something God ordained to be perfect and extraordinary. And it
perpetuates guilt, which holds God’s people in bondage because
we don’t understand what the bible actually says about this
stuff and, more importantly, what those words mean. Many if not
most of us police our behavior on assumptions, on spiritual
hearsay or stuff we done heard someplace. And too many of our
pastors simply allow this vague kind of oral history to
substitute for sound doctrine. It’s much easier to holler at
people from the pulpit, telling people sex is sin. Sex is not
sin. But that’s what pastors allow even married people to
believe, this nonsense handed down one generation to the next,
guilt-tripping folks while holding everyone to an impossible
standard of chastity the pastor himself doesn’t always achieve.
It’s much easier to point fingers and scare people about The
Galactic Accountant, about how God will send you to hell for
having sex, than it is to tell you why. Beloved, we will never
grow as Christians until we stop being lazy. Until we stop
governing our lives and measuring our spiritual growth on the
basis of stuff we done heard someplace. Stop waiting for the
pastor to tell you who you are and what to do, make him tell you
why. Pastors: stop being lazy, open the Book and teach.
Choosing Boo: Hearing the call of the Holy Spirit and being lured away by our loneliness.
Choosing Boo
Many people, faced with a choice between their God and their
Boo, choose Boo.Which is utterly stupid. Because Boo never
lasts. Ever. And we always think it will. We always think, this
time, we'll get it right. And four months, six months later,
we're wounded and broken and wondering why. It's all such
foolishness, the time and energy and money we spend on this
nonsense, how great a distraction all of this is. Imagine who
you could be, what you could be, where you could be, if you
hadn't wasted so much time in that relationship. That
relationship that ended just like every other relationship: with
you barely speaking to this person you'd invested so much of
yourself in. If Boo were a Christian, marriage would be in this
equation somewhere. The fact you're forced to make a choice
between God and Boo guarantees this is a broken relationship
just waiting to happen, and you are therefore risking your
eternal soul over foolishness. But people are frightened of
loneliness. People are human beings with real biological urges
and needs. And a spiritual life loses much of its appeal when
faced with the looming specter of celibacy. So people delay,
deny, put off a commitment to God, carving slices of their
humanity, when God intended us to be a whole people, a well
people. But there is likely no bigger crippler of God’s people
than sex. And that’s mainly because (1) pastors don’t preach
about it and (2) we, as God’s people, are just sort of winging
it, living our lives by assumption. Cutting ourselves off from
God. It's a lack of faith which stems from the puritanical moral
standard we've set for sexual behavior, a standard based upon
vague and ambiguous spiritual hearsay rather than any firm
understanding of what the bible says (or doesn’t say) about sex.
In our minds, we set this bar so high, going completely cold
turkey (and with most churches claiming the bible condemns
masturbation as well—another untruth (see Part 4). we know we
can never maintain that standard for long. I mean, how long can
you hold your breath underwater? Abstinence is the sexual
equivalent of holding our breath underwater.
Churches universally gloss over this business of breath-holding
by insisting, "The Holy Ghost can keep ya." And, yes, that's
true. But learning to function within the Holy Spirit, learning
Who He is (most of us still refer to the Holy Spirit as an "it")
and learning what His Office (His function) is and how He works
in our lives, takes time. Christian conservatives tend to
bristle at this, and Christian charismatics tend to focus too
much on the sensational aspects of the Holy Spirit (tongues),
but the Holy Spirit is real, is God at work in us. But learning
to trust Him, learning to operate within the Spirit is kind of
like a Jedi mind trick: it's not something that comes about
intuitively or easily. Throwing single people to the wolves with
a pat on the shoulder and "The Holy Ghost will keep ya!" is what
we do. But if we were honest with ourselves we'd discover likely
two-thirds of unmarried congregants are struggling with this
issue, a struggle the church continues to inadequately address.
To my experience, there is very little teaching going on in the
black church about sex. There is the gold standard: sex outside
of marriage is wrong. Period. Hold your breath. Singles classes
incongruently being taught by married folk, folk who get some
whenever they want it and, therefore, have an intrinsic
disconnect between themselves and the realities of single or
divorced people. So people don't come to Christ. Well, not yet.
We have developed this culture of spiritual hearsay—a vague
understanding that we should never have sex under any
circumstances—which confuses faith with morality and practices
religion by means of guilt. The result is two-fold: a large
segment of Christians who are burdened by guilt over their
sexual relationships outside of marriage, whose guilt is at
times overwhelming, cutting them off from God and, therefore,
whose faith seesaws back and forth based on how long they’ve
managed to be celibate this time. The second group is a group of
hardened Christians who, weary of the seesaw, have simply
stopped trying to reconcile their sex lives with their spiritual
ones. They’ve just shorted out the guilt circuit, raising holy
hands on Sunday while conducting their sex lives exactly the way
the world does. Both extremes are wrong.
Preachers will tell you the bible holds up a moral standard,
which is sex outside of marriage is wrong. Well, first, the
bible does not hold up any moral standard whatsoever. The bible
is, literally, the orderly and progressive self-revelation of
God. It proclaims the truth of God’s love and the redeeming
power of Jesus Christ. Our sense of morality is the product of
our decision to accept or reject that truth. Different people
are at different stages of spirituality and discovery. The word
of God was never intended to be a one-size-fits-all standard [I
Cor 8:7-13]. It was not intended, for us, as a legal document.
It exists for one purpose only: to reveal God to us. The more we
allow Christ into our hearts, the more decisions we’ll make that
please Him.
Second: nowhere in the bible does it say sex outside of marriage
is wrong. There are admonishments and warnings about specific
sexual behavior (see the Levitical Code), and the Apostle Paul
lays out warnings about the dangers of following lustful desires
and pastoral instruction about sexual purity, but there is no
passage in the bible that literally or specifically states thou
shalt not hit it. Look all you want—it's not there. The church's
position on singleness is not God's law, it is man's doctrine.
Doctrine is something that is taught; a particular principle,
position, or policy taught or advocated, as of a religion or
government. The Word of God is inerrant. Doctrine is not. Which
is not to suggest the church's doctrine is in error, but it is
to separate scripture (God's Word) from doctrine (our response
to it). I'd guess 90% of Christians reading this are shaking
their heads now, this "God demands celibacy" and/or "The bible
says sex outside of marriage is wrong..." stuff is so deeply
ingrained in Christian culture, that to even suggest the
exegesis behind such claims is faulty puts me automatically on
the defensive. So, don't believe me: do your own research. Look
for yourself. It ain't there. However, the doctrine is, I
believe, correct. Doctrine is a conclusion based upon a
collection of empirical scriptural evidence. While we may not
find the command-line detail of thou shalt not..., taking the
bible as a whole, taking the scriptures into context, the
conclusion we arrive at is that, yes, God intended sexual
intimacy to exist within a Holy covenant. My fight is not with
the church's position, but the distortion of scripture routinely
employed to support it.
Christians quaking in fear of losing their mortal souls need
better pastors. God doesn't toss us out for committing a sin or
even eleven hundred sins. The fear and guilt we experience is
not God withdrawing from us, it's us withdrawing from God. We
toss God out by cutting Him out of our lives—which is exactly
what happens when you choose Boo over God, when you withdraw
from Him because you're so ashamed of what you've been doing.
All that quaking is over some stuff you done heard someplace,
that you've broken God's commandment or God's law by having
pre-marital sex. Well, we're not under the Law, we are under
grace—which doesn't give us a green light to sin [Romans
6:14-15], but it's worth pointing out, being under grace, there
are hundreds of laws we no longer follow. A presumed legalism
should not be our motive for remaining pure outside of marriage.
God responds not to our words or even our deeds but to our
motives. If you are abstaining only because you are afraid of
hell, that is not a motive God honors. You are wasting your
time. A Christian abstaining simply out of fear of hell is like
a dry drunk. A dry drunk is just a drunk who stopped drinking.
It's not a real or sustainable commitment. A recovering
alcoholic, on the other hand, is engaged in the struggle to
change. Has come to terms with their own weakness. Has submitted
themselves to a higher power.
Pastors who preach the doctrine of Santa Claus—He sees you when
you're sleeping, He knows when you're awake, He knows when
you've been bad or good—diminish God's inestimable sacrifice at
the cross of Calvary, reducing it to a child's fairy tale in
order to police behavior. We, as spiritual leaders, should not
be in the policing behavior business, but, rather, should be
proclaiming truths both eternal and infallible and letting you
be a grown up and handle your own business.
What We Leave Behind: Little pieces of ourselves; breadcrumbs dropped along the way..
Casting The First Stone
We, as ministers, as pastors, have a dual responsibility: (1) to
report accurately what the bible says and stop helping God out
by changing or, in this case, limiting the meaning of words in
scripture, taking those words out of context, adding in words
that aren’t there or, worse, omitting words that are but that
don't fit our agenda. Just as important, (2) to model the
personal example of Jesus Christ, Who, the record presumes,
lived a celibate life and didn't marry just to get some. Wasn’t
it Jesus Christ who refused to stone the woman caught in
adultery [John 8]? Did He endorse that behavior? Of course not.
But this is the elemental work of grace: to stop looking at
human failure in a legalistic fashion. To stop trading in moral
absolutes. To stop keeping score. To forgive ourselves and to
forgive one another. And to allow God dominion over our lives.
Most pastors, if they preach anything about sex at all, preach
this garbage of God sending people to hell for having sex.
Preachers need to stop preaching that, need to stop treating us
like children. In our zeal to do God’s work, we frequently tend
to help God out by reporting doctrine as scripture [Matt 15:19].
We stand before you and proclaim, “The bible says thus and so…”
when the bible, in fact, says neither thus nor so. Rather, under
certain conditions we should more accurately proclaim, “Our
doctrinal belief, the conclusion we have come to about how we
choose to live our lives, is that sex outside of marriage is
wrong.” That’s much more accurate. I'm not arguing the doctrine
nor the pastoral advice of purity in singleness, I'm saying most
of us tend to use faulty exegesis. We arrive at the same place,
but most pastors I know arrive there by means of legalism
and threat, holding a gun to the head of people already
struggling with loneliness and personal weakness. None of which
is love, and none of which is, I believe, an accurate
implementation of biblical teaching.
Christopher J. Priest
14 September 2008
editor@praisenet.org
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Part 2: What The Bible Actually Says
