sexuality – Authentic Hope for Answers

The alternative to having moral absolutes is either total hedonism – everyone does whatever he wants, or standards imposed by dictators or politicians – the politically correct. Moral absolutes can only come from our Creator God who, logically, knows what is good and right for his created species.

Our secular Western society has followed the path of rejection of God with his moral absolutes and is trying out the other options. As time goes by, the results of these options is causing a lot of confusion, both in society and in the personal lifestyles of numerous people. The problem is that while humans can discern what is good and evil – we have that moral capacity – we are unable, without Heaven’s aid, to determine what are absolutes that apply to all people everywhere. Yet clarity here is a profound human need, for it is bound up with feelings of guilt which may or may not be authentic, and which can cause serious psychological health issues.

It seems that our bodies and consciousness are fashioned in such a way that we feel guilt when our conscience tells us we have transgressed our own personal moral code. No-one likes to feel guilty! It is an unpleasant emotion – and yet it is universal. Whatever may be our understanding of good and evil, we know when we have contravened our own moral standards. This raises the issue as to how to deal with this bad feeling. Some repress such disturbing thoughts, and press on regardless, but that leads to hardening of the heart and inability to wisely judge between right and wrong. Others are overwhelmed with self-condemnation and remorse; their self-image goes through the floor, and they suffer psychologically, unable to forgive themselves. So how to deal with guilt is a major concern for many people, as psychologists can testify.

This is especially the case with sexual misconduct, which takes many forms. If we have no clarity about moral absolutes here, we flounder in all kinds of guilt feelings with the attendant psychological pain and confusion.

This morning I read in the Bible the list of sexual sins that God prohibited in Leviticus chapters 18 and 20. It is quite an impressive and detailed list of forbidden sexual acts. Some, including homosexual acts, are described as “abominations” in God’s eyes. Others proscribe sex between close relatives. But what struck me was who was giving these absolute prescriptions. At the beginning of each chapter, it says, “The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the children of Israel and say to them…” In other words, these were not merely human ideas coming from the prophet Moses: he was told by the Lord God, the Creator of sex (!), how this special gift of sexuality was to be properly experienced. When God uses the word “abomination”, that indicates a serious misuse of the sacred gift of sexuality.

Back in the beginning, when God made man in his own image (Genesis 1.26-28), he made them “male and female” and encouraged them to have sexual relations so as to “be fruitful and multiply”. God instituted the family by creating a wife for Adam and presenting her to him (Genesis chapter 2). These facts are the basis for justifiable moral absolutes. God, who created us in his image, serves humanity in providing such clear moral guidance that prevents our guilt if we follow his law. To depart from those guidelines, to disobey the “Maker’s instructions”, is to bring upon ourselves the terrible discomfort of real guilt before a holy God to whom one day we will have to give account.

Clive Every-Clayton

The first page of the Bible gives us much key information, vital for our personal self-understanding. A lot of unnecessary stress and confusion results from the inability to grasp the biblical basis for our identity and reality.

Some of that confusion has to do with our sexuality. Abandoning the sound basis of the Creator’s wisdom and guidelines leads human sexuality into all sorts of distortion, immorality, abuse, and perversion. Without the Bible’s light, human efforts have proved to be totally unable to invent better moral guidelines for their sexual behaviour.

The Bible’s foundational truth that God made humans “male and female” is no banal statement: it is one of immense importance. It means, to begin with, that men are not women. That was obvious all along, of course, but now it has scientific basis: God created the two sexes with different chromosomes that distinguish them from each other. There is an essential biological difference between the sexes.

When God designed the human body, he made a distinction between the male and the female body. The woman’s body is unique in its capacity for giving birth to babies; the male body has the unique capacity of impregnating the female. God’s design is blatantly obvious in the way the sexual organs of the two sexes complement each other in sexual union. It is in this way that God planned for new human beings to come into existence. Indeed, his words of encouragement and blessing, right from the start in Genesis 1.28, indicate his plan for his human creatures to enjoy an intimate sexual relationship with a partner of the opposite sex, with a view to having children. That is not the only reason for sexual intimacy in marriage: it is also blessed as a means of expressing love between the couple.

The Creator and Designer of sex had a wise purpose in view – so his creatures would enjoy the blessing of his gift of sexuality as they follow his instructions.

Unsurprisingly, throughout the Bible, sins like adultery, homosexuality, prostitution, fornication, and other forms of sexual immorality are proscribed. These acts deviate from God’s will and purpose for his creatures, and they bring upon those who practice them a lot of dysfunction physically, emotionally, and psychologically. They also separate offenders spiritually from God’s blessing and cut them off from the highest human fulfilment God wants for them.

How blessed, by contrast, are those who, following the Maker’s instructions, remain chaste before marriage and faithful within marriage! This is how sex was supposed to be enjoyed – free from all the fearful and harmful hang-ups that come from immoral behaviour.

Sexual temptations, the seductions of our uncontrolled desire, the weakness of our resistance to sin, and the pressures of an immoral society, are such that many fall into sexual misconduct and find sex to be a source of suffering. The number of cases of gonorrhoea has never been so high in the UK since statistics were first kept. Other sexually transmitted diseases cause people serious harm. Those abused and mistreated become bolder to go public with their sad stories. Too many broken marriages bring desolation and psychological stress to too many children. Couples just living together enjoy less peaceful trust that their relationship shall endure. And all who in any way fall into immorality have to manage somehow the guilt feelings that cause profound psychological distress, sometimes so deep in their subconscious they are scarcely discerned.

While God can forgive sexual sin, he would rather spare them from such agony, if only they paid heed to his instructions.

Clive Every-Clayton

Tag: sexuality

Moral absolutes?

Male and female he created them