A New Christian Sexual Ethic
Debates over questions of polyamory, non-monogamy, and open relationships already shows signs of getting stuck in the historical and false dichotomy of licentiousness or celibacy, which has plagued theology since the early days of the church.
Then, somebody disagreed with me over a post I made on Facebook. I still don’t know who they are, but…conversations were had about me – without me, until a heart-felt and sad moment when I learned what the church leaders had decided must be done.
Questions about masturbation, birth control, premarital sex, homosexuality, nonbinary gender, and even open relationships need more than the unsupportable claim that “The Bible says it’s sinful”… because time after time the evidence does not support the mainstream conclusions. All these things can be sinful, and so can married, heterosexual, reproductive sex. The Biblical teaching about sexual sin does not draw the same lines as the dominant Christian traditions – whether conservative or liberal.
We cannot just dismiss the problem of sexual sin. It just looks completely different than what I expected when I set out to study it!
A life of wisdom calls us to understand why we make the moral and ethical decisions that we do…and be able to explain it to others.
Here are some of the complicated issues we have to address in order to do this successfully:
For years now, I have avoided the mundane, the ordinary, the path of the common folk. Let me rise above the banality of living in the “real world,” as they call it, and find the magic of life. Separation from the sinners. A retreat from the world into the monastery of the soul. Let me … Read more
A few years ago I was teaching a group of students through the book of Genesis and we paused in Chapter 4 when one of them pointed out a fascinating conversation between God and Cain. If anyone has ever been in a conversation that didn’t work the way you want it to, you would probably … Read more