Fast Food Theology - Further Digestion
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In my last post I explored an example of what I called, fast-food theology: namely, the assertion that “wives are God’s main weapon against porn addiction in men”. (Pssst. This post won’t make a lot of sense if you haven’t yet read that one).
At that time, I mentioned that I would be publishing a second post looking at another reductionistic sound-bite that also leaves us in a theological and pastoral mess. That’s still the plan.
However, a couple of online and offline conversations over the last week or so have prompted me to first engage in a little more digestion on the theological relationship between marriage, sex and our propensity towards sexual immorality that I discussed in my last post.
A good-faith dialogue partner has pushed back on my last post’s reading of 1 Corinthians 7:1-5.
He argues that Paul’s words in v.5 (“Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.”) offers “a clear reason… for why spouses shouldn’t deprive each other: *so that* Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control”. This leads him to conclude that part of God’s original, creative design for sex within marriage was to be a ‘prophylactic against the temptation to sexual immorality’.
He’s not alone in this. Many Christians think, argue and claim that
The act of having “legitimate” sex (i.e., sex in marriage) in and of itself prevents you from having, or at least lowers your desire to have sex outside of marriage.
The reason for this is that a part of God’s original purpose for sex in marriage was that it might prophylactically act against sexual sin.
Now, this argument may sound similar to what I argued in my last post. But it’s not. There, I argued that:
“In 1 Corinthians 7:1-5, Paul is not saying that the reason to have sex in marriage is because it will eventually cure you of wanting to have sex outside of marriage […] No, Paul is telling married Corinthian Christians that sex belongs in marriage, and so married people should be having sex.
[…] Put another way, we Christians don’t have sex in marriage so that we stop having sex outside of marriage. We have sex in marriage because God designed sex to belong to marriage. Because God designed sex to serve the purposes of marriage.”
I added:
“I’m not saying that putting sex in its place—spouses giving bodily of themselves in love to and for the other—doesn’t have anything at all to do with growth in sexual holiness.
When we live and love God’s way, we become more and more enraptured with living and loving God’s way. As we become more like Christ, we become less like the world. As the Spirit teaches us to control our bodies in holiness and honour, we learn to resist Satan and flee from sexual immorality. […] We say no to temptation because we first and foremostly have said yes to God’s will.”
Can you see the difference between his and my argument?
I’m arguing that the act of marital sex itself is not the effective means of our fleeing sexual immorality. Instead, the Spirit is that means. He achieves it by way of our spiritual transformation.
My interlocutor agrees with the above. But argues something more than that.
He additionally concludes that the act of having sexual intercourse in marriage is itself an effective means of our fleeing sexual immorality. It achieves this prophylactically, because God designed the act of having sex with a husband or a wife to itself be a prophylactic against unmarried sex.
Here’s where the digestion starts because, for my part, I have several significant theological concerns with this argument as it presents itself:
Plenty of married Christians (not to mention non-Christians) who enjoy regular sex with their spouse still struggle with lust, porn addiction and other expressions of sexual immorality.
To put it another way, thousands of years of data show that getting to have “legitimate” sex isn’t an inoculation against wanting to have “illegitimate” sex.
Perhaps some married Christians have observed a correlation between enjoying a healthy and active sex life with their spouse and a decrease in their temptation to lust after others (or watch porn, or…). But on what basis can they confidently conclude that this is a result of the sexual intercourse they are having, rather than the Spirit’s work transforming them in the way that I argued for above? How can they be sure they aren’t attributing to sex what should rightly be attributed to the Spirit?
After all, plenty of Christian spouses enjoy an active sex life with their husband or wife, but still struggle with a porn addiction. If the act of married sex is itself a prophylactic, then why is it not working for them? Are they not having enough sex? Are they not having enough good sex? Is their spouse not doing it right? Or could it be that it is not sex itself, but the Spirit, which empowers them to flee from sexual immorality?
Perhaps this might lead us to conclude, “Well, we can’t prove that sex in marriage is an effective means against sexual immorality. But we can’t disprove it either. So the jury is still out”.
The thing is, though, I think we can disprove it. Indeed, I think Scripture leads us to necessarily disprove it, because…God designed sex to serve the purposes of marriage, not marriage to serve the purposes of our sex drives.
God did not imbue you or me with sex drives as ends in and of themselves. God did not create marriage to give you and me a context in which we were allowed to give in to our sex drives.
No. God created human sex drives to serve the ends of human sexual intercourse, and he created human sexual intercourse to serve the ends of human marriage… which itself has its own creative and new-creative ends. Put more simply, God made us to want to have sex because having sex is purposed to something beyond itself… and beyond us.
The other day, a dear friend (they know who they are 👋) said that they had read my last post, found it interesting, but were wondering about how to account for the personally experienced biological and physiological realities of sex. Part of God’s design for sex is that (in ideal circumstances) the brain releases chemicals like oxytocin, dopamine, and endorphins, which promote feelings of pleasure, trust, and emotional closeness, thereby strengthening the bond between the people having sex.
Yep! How cool is that?! But God didn’t design our brains and bodies to do all those clever things during (and after) sex for our sakes as individuals. Instead, it was designed in this way to foster and grow the necessary intimacy and trust between the two people he intended to be having sex with each other— a married man and woman..
God created our physiological, psychological and emotional drive to and enjoyment in having sexual intercourse in full service of the goods of marriage…. not marriage as the context in which we can satisfy our individual sex drives so that we aren’t tempted to act on them elsewhere.But even more to the point…
God designed sex to serve the purposes of marriage, not marriage to serve the purposes of our FALLEN sexual drives.
I cannot find any way to theologically assent to the idea that part of God’s original, ordained and so, good, purpose for “inventing” the act of sexual intercourse between a husband and a wife at the time of creation was so that it might help aid them against having sex outside of their marriage. (NB. Once again, this is a different thing from what I have argued above about the Spirit’s transformative fruitfulness experienced and expressed through sanctified living. It’s also a different thing from saying that we experience God’s good design as compelling because it is indeed his good design.)
God’s design for sexual intercourse was perfectly and exclusively purposed in service of the perfectly purposed and exclusive marital union. The only reason having sexual intercourse outside of marriage came into the frame at all is because we humans tragically corrupted that perfect design.
And so, I cannot see how the argument I am countering does not make God’s perfect creative purposes a servant to the human corruption of those perfect creative purposes. I cannot see how it does anything other than get the order topsy-turvy.And when we get the order topsy-turvy, well, here’s where we end up:
This is the terminus of the argument. It’s a terminus which claims that the one-flesh union was (in part) purposed by God to be a way for us to cope with our “animal aggression”. That God purposed a wife or a husband to give their body to the other (in part) so that the other person can use “their spouse’s body as an outlet for sexual tension”.
Some will object that this is an abuse of the argument in principle, not its necessary endpoint. However, in my view, that objection fails to take the argument in principle on its own terms.
You see, the claim that God purposed the act of sex itself (in marriage) to be a prophylactic against sexual immorality is actually a claim about God’s purpose for a spouse. The claim that is really being made is that (part of) a husband or a wife’s purpose is to provide you with the sexual satisfaction you need so that you won’t be (as) tempted to go looking for it elsewhere. A spouse “needs to be OK with the other using [their] body as an outlet” for their fallen and corrupted sexual drive.
This is the inevitable endpoint of the argument. And it is as far from God’s purpose for the marital relationship as we could possibly imagine.
OK. Enough digestion because, as always, this has gone longer than I had intended!
I’ll sign off here and be back soon (I hope!) with an exploration of an entirely different example of the same kind of problematic sound-bite theology.