Speaking entirely from within a Christian context, what ought to be a Christian sexual ethic? I am rather convinced that the starting place has to be the full and entire dignity of the human person; and the freedom of the human person. Any system of thought that reduces the human person to an object is inherently dehumanizing and destructive. In that sense, puritanicalism and hedonism are fundamentally the same thing: Both are acts of indulgence by which to claim ownership of another person; as ultimately the result is viewing a person as an object, a thing to be possessed. Rather than a person to be ministered to.
Now, if it is unclear what I mean by "minister", I am using the somewhat literal sense of "render service to".
In other words, a Christian sexual ethic regards one's own relation toward another as "I for thee" rather than "Thee for me".
And this is where I think much of modern Christian discourse on the subject of sexuality misses the mark considerably. Sexuality tends to be reduced into a kind of moralistic view. Thus one finds language in which a person who ceases to be a virgin prior to marriage is spoken of as though they have become less-than, as though a person's value is ultimately only attributable to their ability to become the sexual property of another.
I've seen some, and myself heard similar when I was younger, that speaks as though "sexual sin" is the "greatest sin". And all manner of strangeness, without real biblical or theological support is provided. E.g. attempting to use the language of marriage in Genesis as "becoming one flesh" and extract the strange idea that when two people engage in sexual intercourse they lose a part of themselves, literally, and then really do become literally less-than they were. That if someone has premarital sex then they have become "less than" and thus have something less to offer to their future partner. These are deeply dangerous ideas that are psychologically and spiritually harmful.
Christian ethics emphasizes, instead, that self-control and self-restraint are good things because the indulgence of our passions can, and frequently does, lead to harm. Because through the passions we de-humanize other people by not loving them and respecting them as full human persons. So when in ordinary Christian practice and teaching we confess that marriage is a sacred mystery by which two persons commit to one another to minister to one another out of love, it is not that the one possesses the other, or that sex renders one less-than; but that we are called to restrain our passions in every area of life out of love for others, and so sexuality is not a special case as opposed to say other forms of human passion. Though we should recognize that the sexual exploitation of others can be and usually is far more harmful than some other forms of exploitation. But as long as the language is that of puritanical, coercive, objectification it ceases to be a Christian ethic and is simply another expression of indulgence, another indulgence of those very same passions.
Analogy by speaking of another passion of the flesh: Greed. We confess in the Christian Church that we should not seek to hoard wealth, and to cheefully and happily give of what we have for the benefit of others, especially the least of these. If someone comes along and tells us that, yes, giving is good and greed is bad, doing so in order to ultimately line their own pockets, they may use the language of generosity to coerce others to giving to them--they are merely indulgeing their own greed and so all their talk of generocity and giving is empty and morally bankrupt. What is the difference, then, between the greed-hungry who uses generosity as a tactic to take possession than the one who tries to use "sexual purity" as a tactic to take ownership and possession of another? And that, is, I believe, precisely the kind of thing we often see in much of the contemporary discourse on sexuality in the modern Church.
It is not an ethos borne of charity, but one borne out of sin and indulgence. And the natural recourse is that people, when pressed under for too long, will respond, and often respond quite profoundly. And without recognizing this as a symptom of a deeper malady, one--essentially--just pours salt in the wound and runs the infection deeper--applying harsher pressure causes more harm.
I'm not sure that this post explains my thoughts as well as I was hoping. But I am hoping to try and address what I think is a very large issue--and one that I don't think is being handled particularly well when everything is being reduced to mere moralism.
-CryptoLutheran
