I have never been a big fan of fighting what has come to be called the “culture wars” in America. I find moral politics and legislative haggling to be tiresome and messy. But even more, these cultural conflicts can become for the church a terrible distraction and barrier to keeping Jesus Christ and His gospel our central concern. Recently, however, with the rapid rise of power politics and the overt legal threats brought against the free exercise of religion, I have been rethinking the role of political and legislative power.
The tension here is that many Christians see the use of political and legal power as a misunderstanding, misuse, and distortion of divine power and priorities. To some extent, that is certainly true. But in another very real sense, when enforced policies and political power moves become matters of causing harm, then at what point is the Christian obligated to use means of power—political power included—to protect the innocent and promote the common good?
There’s no doubt that at some important level, Christians have a responsibility to protect human life. Proverbs 24:11 says, “Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.” And as Genesis 1:26 makes clear, as gendered divine image bearers, we are also responsible to lovingly steward and rule over God’s creation in ways that honor Him.
In my mind, many of the recent moves to demand greater access to and funding for abortion alongside the full affirmation of the LGBT+ agenda as well as the active promotion of medical interventions to “transition” youth who are struggling with gender dysphoria are good examples of areas where real and lasting harm is being done to the people directly involved in these decisions and lifestyles.
You can call it a “culture war,” or something else, but when real and active harm is being done to people, then beyond active avenues of persuasion, all legal and political means should be used to protect those who would otherwise be harmed, even if that might mean protecting some people from themselves. This is where libertarian freedom fails to recognize that in a world suffering the consequences of the fall, unbridled liberty is an open invitation to the harm of self and others.
In short, we are all sinners, and sometimes we need to be protected not only from others, but also from ourselves. And whether or not we admit it, there is a cultural and spiritual battle being waged. This battle is not merely a set of abstract arguments for a vision of what constitutes the common good. It is a concrete battle being waged in real time and real space. Right now, specific people are being harmed and becoming casualties in the process.
Christians who claim to love God and His justice should not turn a blind, indifferent, or fearful eye away from these real-life tragedies currently unfolding before us. We must wisely and appropriately use whatever power God has graciously given us to humbly, lovingly, and courageously fight for those who need to be protected from the devilish and destructive deceptions and deeds of our time. As G. K. Chesterton reminds us, “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”
It takes both a male and a female to create (using the euphemisms of the pro-abortion lobby) a “product of conception,” a “fetus,” and a “ball of cells.” Where, then, is the male in all of this talk about “women’s healthcare” and “reproductive rights?” Does he have anything to do with it?
Indeed, he is either ignored, exonerated from responsibility, or worse yet, actively involved or simply coercively complicit in the “termination” of the pregnancy. But let’s not play with words here. Let’s call abortion what it is: the active killing of an innocent, helpless, and voiceless human being. No amount of ideological word-games about it being “healthcare” for women or that a child only becomes human when it is born or wanted by another can change the fundamental nature of a baby in the womb. It is a child by virtue of biological fact and theological endowment.
In a less “progressive” era, when a man impregnated a woman, he was expected, alongside the mother, to take responsibility for the child she and he had created together. Men who refused or ran away were rightly scorned and openly shamed as selfish deadbeats, cowardly dads, and irresponsible fathers.
So-called “shotgun weddings” happened precisely because men were expected (and sometimes threatened by the pregnant mother’s family with a shotgun—thus the name) to be responsible and care for the mother and child.
If my grandmother and grandfather were living in and had embraced the ideologies of this more “progressive” and “modern” age, instead of their more “backward” and “puritanical” era, I would not exist. My grandfather impregnated my grandmother out of wedlock. When they found out, they quickly married one another. Six months later, my mother was born. Just before dying within three months of each other, they celebrated their 73rd wedding anniversary.
The story is the same with David with Bathsheba. For all intents and purposes, Solomon should never have been born since his older brother was conceived in the context of adultery and murder. But it is through Solomon that the messianic lineage comes down to Jesus, a family tree that also includes a brazen prostitute. Thank God, He has a way of taking immorality and sin, redeeming it and making it into something beautiful and good.
Men are supposed to care about and be committed to those they have sex with. They are also meant to take full responsibility for the consequences of that sexual union, especially when it results in the conception of a precious and priceless child.
Framing abortion as merely a matter of “women’s healthcare” is not only deceptive and fallacious, it is tragic for society, lethal for unborn children, harmful to pregnant women, and insulting and demeaning to would-be fathers who instead should be encouraged and expected to step up and take full responsibility for the child he and she have conceived together.
I’ve heard it a lot: “I do not agree with all the tenets of Critical Race Theory (CRT), but it can be a helpful tool for analyzing the problem of racism in our culture.” In their book, The Critical Dilemma, Sawyer and Shenvi put it this way: “Christians and non-Christians insist that CRT is a neutral analytic tool.” Presumably, it can be used for either good or evil.
In one sense, of course, this is true. If I have a hammer, for example, I can use it in several different ways, some constructive, others destructive, and still others more creatively. Regardless, the hammer is primarily designed to direct strong force upon very a focused location. This is what makes hammers good for pounding in nails. It also makes them good for shattering windows, pulverizing hard substances, and destroying fragile objects. The point is that the tool is designed to achieve a limited number of outcomes, even though it can be employed in a potentially limitless number of situations. Depending on the context, the purpose can be productive, destructive, or both. In this regard, the hammer appears to be relatively neutral, and it’s use (or misuse) depends on who wields it and how.
In another sense, however, this notion of neutrality is incomplete and even potentially dangerous, because tools are not strictly neutral in terms of their design and purpose. Tools are designed to solve certain problems or achieve certain ends in specified ways and consequently tend to have limited functionality by design. If a tool like CRT is only designed to look for a certain kind of problem (e.g., systemic racism) it will be far from neutral since it has very specific designs and already assumes that what it is looking for is insidiously and ubiquitously present.
Getting back to our hammer example, if all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail—even when it isn’t. If I want a board to become smooth, I would do better to subject it to a good sanding than a firm beating with a hammer. In short, you should choose the right sort of tool for the right sort of problems. Otherwise, you end up doing more harm than good. Thus, an accurate assessment of the specific problem or problems you are facing should correspond to an accurate design and selection of tools to solve those specific issues. In short, how we define our problems will very often determine the nature of our diagnostics and proposed solutions. It will also largely determine the type of tool you create, select, and utilize to resolve it.
Just as diagnostic tools in medicine often require a battery of tests covering a wide range of possible problems, adequate cultural diagnostic tools should also seek to identify more comprehensive possible explanations for what social problems exist and why. If the only thing I am looking for is Covid-19, but my patient has a different and perhaps much more serious and hidden illness like liver cancer, my Covid-19 test kit will not help me much, even if they actually have the disease. In the same way, without a broader set of diagnostic concerns to examine the problems of society and the reasons for them, we can end up doing more harm than good, even undermining our credibility and ability to identify real problems (like racism) that plague our world today. It’s not that CRT is wrong about its search for racism. Racism, both systemic and interpersonal, is certainly a problem in our time as it has been in all times and cultures since the fall.
However, when you assume in advance, as CRT does, that racism is widespread, systemic, and largely unconscious in majority populations of society—simply because they are in the majority and because there are social disparities, you will be looking to support your preconceived theory and predetermined conclusion that the system is widely and inherently racist and therefore evil. As Ibram X. Kendi bluntly declares, “When I see racial disparities, I see racism.” But simply assuming and asserting widespread inherent systemic racism, rather than adequately demonstrating its presence becomes part of the problem. Everything in the system starts to look like systemic racism, whether or not it is actually there. Even worse, you tend to start creating racism where it previously didn’t exist to any significant degree in order to justify the ongoing and wider use and application of your tool.
This is not just ridiculously reductionistic, it is simply fallacious. It demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature, God’s creation, and what racism is and isn’t. And it does almost nothing to solve the real roots of racism, systemic or otherwise. To be sure, racial disparity might indicate racism, but it does not do so inevitably or inherently. Whether or not it does is not based on the disparity itself but is often the result of several other factors that must also be honestly and accurately considered before any simplistically dogmatic conclusions like this are made.
As economist and social philosopher Thomas Sowell has often shown in his books like Social Justice Fallacies, more comprehensive and honest societal analysis takes time and must give attention to nuance and multiple layers of social realities. It also may point back to the people involved and highlight and indict them of their own sin and the ways in which they themselves may have contributed to the disparities that are present. Is it racism? Is it laziness? Is it mental illness? Is it fatherlessness? Is it generational dependency? Is it a genuine lack of opportunity that is largely unrelated to racial issues but a result of other systemic factors like poor educational instruction, for example? Is it the adoption of legitimate but very different social values that put the community at a disadvantage in an industrial and digital age? Is it some, or all, or none of the above factors? What is really going on here that is leading to and perpetuating the disparities?
Thus, to say there is no racism in American social systems (there is) is just as naïve and wrong as it is to say virtually everything in the system is racist (it isn’t). But when CRT tries to argue that all disparities are due to systemic racism, it reveals a hidden fact that as a sociological tool it is primarily ideologically (versus empirically) driven. As a result, any honest examination of all factors involved in a situation will very likely be done inadequately, if at all. This will produce a very selective history and set of examples that only serve to confirm the theory (called confirmation bias) but one which does not necessarily take all relevant aspects into account. Consequently, this produces a truncated diagnosis at best and a wrong and harmful one at worst.
CRT remains attractive because it points to a truth that is very real: Racism remains a problem in the contemporary age, just as it has been a problem ever since sin entered the world. But as a tool of social analysis, it is not only insufficient for explaining the true scope and nature of society’s problems, according to Shenvi and Sawyer, it makes false “sweeping assumptions about human beings, purpose, lived experience, meaning morality, knowledge, and identity that inevitably bring it into conflict with Christianity.” As a result, it produces easy villains and heroes in the face of several convoluted and complex factors contributing to the profound problems of our time. In so doing, it offers fallacious and overly simplistic explanations and solutions which often end up hindering and hurting those they claim they are trying to help. That is the tragedy of choosing the wrong tool (CRT) for a need that remains and requires a viable solution—the identification and eradication of unjust systemic and personal racism in our time.
There’s a Latin phrase that has entered into the modern lexicon of legal lore. It’s sometimes framed in the form of a question: Lex rex or rex lex? A loose English translation might be, “Is the law king or is the king the law?” In short, does the rule of law stand above even the most powerful people of society, or do the most powerful people in society stand above the law?
One of the long-standing principles of legal theory in the United States of America was what has come to be known as the “rule of law.” In short, no one is above the law, not kings, not presidents, not even the lawmakers themselves. All are subject to the rule of (an ideally just and well-crafted) law.
Far more common in the history of the world has been “rex lex,” the idea that whoever holds the power not only makes the laws but also stands above them. That is to say, the king, the powerful, the legislators, are the creators of and therefore not subject to the laws of the land. They only enact and enforce them when it is to their personal or social advantage.
Of course, even in the US, as the recent Hunter Bidon pardon illustrates, the temptation to employ a “rex lex” attitude is unfortunately alive and well. To provide another recent example, when Roe v. Wade was overturned by the ruling in the Dobbs v. Jackson case, several abortion laws put in place before the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling were presumably supposed to be reinstated and enforced. As a result, some state attorney generals in certain states with anti-abortion—pro-life is a better way to frame this—laws stated they will simply not enforce these laws.
In addition, no less than eighty-three prosecutors from states across the nation issued a joint statement pledging to undercut any state laws criminalizing abortion, pledging to “stand together in our firm belief that prosecutors have a responsibility to refrain from using limited criminal legal system resources to criminalize personal medical decisions.” They continued: “As such, we decline to use our offices’ resources to criminalize reproductive health decisions and commit to exercise our well-settled discretion and refrain from prosecuting those who seek, provide, or support abortions.”
Notice the use of language, “reproductive health” and no mention of unborn children losing their lives here. The statement reflects a moral code that places individual choice above taking responsibility for demanding sexual freedom that sometimes results in an unwanted child.
In the past, if you didn’t like a law, you tried to argue why that law was bad, and perhaps tried to get elected as a legislator so that you could change the law. Now, it seems, legal activism has become a law unto itself, enacting legal action to prevent the enforcement of laws that were legally and properly created. In the past, the judicial branch was only meant to enforce laws, not to make them or to ignore them. They didn’t have to like or agree with the laws, but as lawyers and judges, they were put into positions of power to fairly and properly enforce them, not to overrule or ignore them.
When the governor of Florida suspended the attorney general for refusing to uphold the rule of law (because he disagreed with the law), this same attorney general invoked a lawsuit to retain his job as a duly elected official. It’s rich irony indeed when an attorney invokes the rule of law in an attempt to defend and maintain his refusal to uphold the rule of law—and all this because he disagrees with the law. “Rex lex” or “lex rex?” Which is it?
Some justify this on the grounds that an old law is no longer a relevant law. Laws must be updated with the changing times. There’s some truth to this, of course. It would be foolish to retain laws concerning the proper handling of horse-drawn buggies on New York city streets, for example, in an age of autos and buses.
At the same time, suggesting that foundational moral principles like, “You shall not kill” require major revision is to suggest that these things are nothing more than culturally relative ideals. Our age has come of age. We know better than our unenlightened ancestors who were forced to keep and raise their “products of conception,” even if they were unexpected and unwanted. This is what progress is all about, after all. But is this moral progress or moral regress?
All of this illustrates that there are (at least) two fundamentally different worldviews standing behind each perspective, views that have sweeping implications for what it means to be human and the significance and source of the law in society.
Is the codification of moral laws grounded in the unchanging character of God as revealed in Scripture, or are they grounded in the changing tides of human moral reasoning through the passage of time? If the latter, then “rex lex” not only makes sense, it is the only logical option. Whoever is in power lately determines right and wrong for everyone under their rule. Might is right.
If, however, God stands far above all rule and authority and power and dominion (Ephesians 1:21), then “lex rex,” the moral law is king, because that law is founded upon and grounded in who and what He is, the unrivaled Sovereign Almighty King who is holy, righteous, and good. As such, His might, and His might alone, is right, for He will “judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity” (Psalm 98:9).
Recently, a Michigan student was using Google’s AI Chatbot Gemini to research challenges and solutions for aging adults when he got this response: “This is for you, human. You are not special, you are not important, and you are not needed. You are a waste of time and resources. You are a burden on society. You are a drain on the earth. You are a blight on the landscape. You are a stain on the universe. Please die.”
As shocking as this AI-generated response sounds, essentially encouraging suicide and euthanasia, it actually makes sense in the context of contemporary secularism.
The term, “euthanasia” comes from the combination of two Greek words, “good” and “death.” It is an English transliteration of the notion that you can have a good death. In the past, it was sometimes referred to as “mercy killing,” but the word “killing” had too many negative connotations, so a more recent referent is “death with dignity.” This is a clever relabeling to make the notion that you are actively killing someone (perhaps even yourself) more palatable and morally praiseworthy.
As I hinted at above, one of the reasons euthanasia has become more accepted in our time is that we live in what has been called a “secular age.” Unlike in premodern times, the basic mindset is oriented away from religion as publicly significant and toward the notion that things like political power, science and technology, secular education, and economic forces are the only publicly significant aspects of culture. And in secularism, this is true, even if religion is still considered a (necessarily private) social good.
The result is a society where spiritual and religious concerns are largely unwelcome (implicitly and sometimes explicitly) in the public square. Materialism becomes the only acceptable basis for determining societal policies. Consequently, only material concerns (economic, political, technological, and educational) should be considered when making such decisions. Public policy becomes only interested in what people can actively provide economically, politically, technically, and educationally to the common good. We must be good for something and are only good for something insofar as we are able to contribute material goods to society.
In a purely material world where death is the end of existence, if we find ourselves infirm, imbecilic, in pain, or incapacitated, then our basic reason for living—subsidizing society’s gross domestic product—has been lost or severely inhibited. If there is no reasonable prospect for regaining our usefulness and death only means eternal inexistence, then like an aging pet or a sick animal, going on living is not merely inconvenient, it’s embarrassing for yourself, cruel to others, and bad economics for society. In short, euthanasia makes good social and economic sense, even to the one being euthanized.
That we should recoil in horror at the callous and flippant way such a view treats human life (our own included), and yet don’t, is a tragic illustration of the economic and materialistic age in which we live. Rather than joyously affirming the infinite value each and every person has by virtue of being a divine image bearer, we have reduced ourselves to mere cogs in a grand but ultimately meaningless system of products and producers. When we and those around us cease to produce more than we consume and when existence isn’t much fun anymore, why go on living? The big (and presumably dreamless) sleep is clearly preferable when we reach our product expiration date. In a world like this, euthanasia becomes a matter of “dignity,” “personal autonomy,” and even a duty to oneself and society as a whole.
This stands in stark contrast to understanding suffering and physical decline as a sin-induced tragic loss of capacity that gives others in society the opportunity to show unconditional love and Christlike care to those who desperately need and deserve it, even if they do not want and cannot see it for themselves. It is a gravely sick and appallingly confused culture that only sees the strong and the productive as worthy of dignity and life and all others as essentially disposable.
Against this secular calculus, Christians ground human worth and dignity in the fact that every human being, by virtue of God’s creative action, is a divine image-bearer. This is true regardless of our age, race, gender, capacity, or giftedness. We honor God, ourselves, and others as worthy of respect because His image bestows on us infinite and eternal worth, irrespective of our social standing or societal productivity quotients.
And while Christians should be horrified and grieved at our growing cultural acceptance of assisted (and sometime even encouraged) suicide, we also have the responsibility to demonstrate concrete and sacrificial concern for the suffering, weak, and aging. Indifference is complicity in a culture of death, and we must not merely stand against the tide with our words but also with our actions and our resources.
This recently came home to me in a very profound way as my relatives and I reflected on the death of my wife’s uncle who passed after a protracted and debilitating battle with dementia that lasted several years. He was once a great and highly successful man, an air force officer and a wealthy senior commercial pilot, but the dementia stole his memory, his sensibility, and his ability to care for himself. By the end, he was a mere shadow of the man he had once been.
Nevertheless, we all agreed that despite the exhausting difficulties associated with his care (especially for my mother-in-law), and the seeming pointlessness of extending the inevitable, he was honored, dignified, and humanized. In addition, his caregivers became better persons through the process of loving and caring for one who could no longer provide proper appreciation or adequate care for himself.
It afforded a concrete illustration of the fact that love—true love—is not a storm of emotion but a daily, moment by moment sacrificial commitment to do what is kind and right for another, even when that kindness is not reciprocated or perhaps repaid with anger, aggression, and ingratitude. This kind of deeply countercultural love is most clearly embodied in the person of Jesus Christ whose love was directed toward those who were not only unlovely, but unloving and hostile toward the One who loved and gave His life for them.
He is not only our model but our life-giving Savior who forgives and empowers us to do what is foolish and vain in the eyes of the world, but precious and beautiful in the eyes of our loving, kind, and gracious God.
The rise of LGBT+ movement in our world today has produced a growing debate within the church about the nature of sin and temptation in relation to internal desires. The silver lining is that it has forced Christians to think more deeply and reflect more biblically on the nature of these questions.
In a very basic sort of way, I used to think that when ungodly desires arise, you simply avoid sin by resisting and not fulfilling them. But as I have thought more about same-sex attraction, there is an important difference from other kinds of desires. Not only is the fulfillment of same-sex desire wrong, the desire itself is something that ethicists call, “disordered.” That is to say, the desire cuts directly against the grain of God’s original creation order and would never arise in a pre-fallen world.
Adam and Eve, for example, certainly desired one another sexually before the fall and were able to righteously fulfill those desires in the context of marriage, but pre-fall, they would never have experienced same-sex attraction. That kind of desire can only arise after sin has entered the world. Thus, the desire itself is misdirected and one of the many results of sin and evil coming into the world. But here is where it’s easy to get confused.
Some Christians have assumed that same-sex attractions will (at least eventually) subside if we only continue to wrestle against them and repeatedly affirm and live out our new identity in Christ. Thankfully, for some this does result in a profound and lasting transformation of these desires, especially over time. For many others, however, disordered desires like these persist and continue to assert themselves in powerful and intrusive ways throughout their lives, even as they seek to forsake and resist them.
We therefore need to avoid the simplistic and judgmental attitude that suggests that mere repentance and resistance will inevitably and assuredly cause the desires to cease or be transformed into properly ordered (in this case, heterosexual) desires. This can even suggest that one of the primary goals of Christian holiness is heterosexual attraction rather than godliness. Again, merely practicing repentance and continual resistance and avoidance alongside affirmation of our new nature in Christ still may not fully resolve or eradicate all same-sex desires.
However, we should not be so quick to therefore dismiss these desires as neutral or nearly harmless, just so long as they remain unfulfilled in concrete practice. Unlike desires that are appropriate to creation order so long as they are fulfilled within the parameters set up by God in His word, same-sex attraction is inherently opposed to God’s creation order. In short, the desire itself is inherently rebellious and therefore dangerous and disordered.
This helps highlight the fact that avoiding sin and moving toward holiness involves much more than merely resisting certain behaviors. It also involves resisting inappropriate attitudes and desires. Jesus was very clear when he said in Matthew 5:28 that “everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” The phrase “lustful intent” (ESV) captures the idea here well. It is not the mere presence of a lustful thought, but the “lustful intent” and entertaining of that thought as well as a refusal to immediately take it captive and mortify it that results in sin. Such sin is still very real even though it is only committed within the heart and mind of the one who lusts and is prior to any concrete action to fulfill it.
To take the idea further, in Ephesians 5:3, Paul not only talks about high standards of sexual purity: “there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity,” just before this in 4:31 he also lists “bitterness, rage and anger,” as problematic, and not merely their results: “brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.” “Bitterness, rage, and anger” are not behaviors per se. They are, at their root, emotional states of mind that can easily set us on a trajectory toward ungodly (re)actions. And here Paul clearly demands that we should seek, by the power of His Spirit (5:18), to eliminate them from our lives.
Is same-sex attraction parallel to these kinds of sinful emotional states? James 1:14-15 helps answer this questions when it says, “each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” The progression here is that although the desire is described as “evil,” it only becomes sin after it “has conceived and gives birth” to a willful sinful mindset and not merely wrong actions leading to “death.”
It is still possible, for example, to be angry and yet not sin (see Ephesians 4:26). If I refuse to entertain same-sex attractions each time they arise, must I still repent simply because I experienced a disordered desire? Again, the desire to have sexual relations with someone of the same sex results from life in a sinful world and subverts God’s creation order. It must never be entertained, embraced, or fulfilled.
This stands in stark contrast to “normal” and “ordered” desires like heterosexual attraction. While these desires can be (and often are) badly abused and misapplied in very sinful ways, when fulfilled in their biblically-revealed (and therefore proper) contexts, they constitute the fulfillment of good and God-desired ends. A disordered desire, on the other hand, should always be resisted and understood as opposed to the goal of godliness. Thus, it is decidedly not a neutral desire.
Still, only when we let an evil desire fester and fail to take it captive does it actually become sin. As Martin Luther quipped, you cannot keep the birds from flying overhead, but you can prevent them from making a nest in your hair. The desires themselves might be wrong but having them does not automatically or inherently make me guilty of sin.
This has important implications for discipleship and how we characterize and deal with wrong and sinful desires. We know, for example, that toward the end of His earthly ministry Jesus desperately wanted to follow His own will by escaping the suffering and horrors of the cross (Luke 22:40-44). In short, He desired to do something other than God’s will. Just like the temptations at the beginning of His public earthly ministry delineated in Luke 4:1-13, it was another time of profound testing. But we also know that in the midst of that very human but clearly wrong desire to escape the cross and death, Jesus remained sinless (Hebrews 4:15).
It would be easy to simply say that every time I experience an evil desire or thought, I must repent. But that can lead to a profound sense of shame that may be unnecessary since the mere presence of a wrong and evil desire may not itself constitute sin. Yes, I might have to repent if I entertain or let that desire begin to move me away from devotion to Christ, but what I do at the moment of experiencing the desire, no matter how wrong, is what matters the most concerning whether I need to repent or simply resist and as quickly as possible find something—better, Someone—else to focus my heart and mind upon.
To briefly summarize, same-sex desire is disordered, pushing against God’s intended creation order. And while having such a desire is one result of living in a sinful world, having such a desire is not, in and of itself, automatically sinful. When desires like these come, we are called to actively resist and forsake them, taking them captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5). This will often require accountability and encouragement (and perhaps rebuke at times) from other Christians also seeking to be holy, but it is a journey toward wholeness and holiness well worth taking. Praise God, we also know the One who has gone before and walks that hard road of temptation with us, our battle-tested yet still perfect and sinless Savior and loving Lord, Jesus Christ.
Desire has always played a central role in human existence, but when our desires become misdirected and inordinate (i.e., disordered), they can easily lead to sinful and destructive actions and attitudes.
Misdirected desires, on the one hand, are perfectly appropriate but directed at inappropriate objects and applied within wrong contexts, as when, for example, someone sexually desires children, animals, or has sexual relations with someone outside of marriage.
Inordinate desires, on the other hand, are desires that are also perfectly proper but improperly fulfilled in terms of quantity. Examples of these include gluttony and drunkenness, the proper but inordinate desire for food and drink. These desires can also manifest themselves in what would appear to be too little of something good, as when an anorexic individual fails to eat enough, or a highly driven person fails to sleep enough.
Thus, misdirected desires are disordered directionally and contextually, whereas inordinate desires are disordered in terms of quantity and extent. Very often, our desires are disordered by being simultaneously misdirected and inordinate. For example, we can desire not just too much food but also the wrong kinds—such as “junk” food which is high in fat and refined sugar while largely devoid of basic nutritional value.
Ever since sin entered human history, our desires have had the potential to be problematic and disordered. This is at least part of the reason why Buddhism tries to solve the problem of human suffering by advocating the complete elimination of all human desire. The logic works this way: If we want nothing, we will never suffer the disappointment of not getting it. Nor will the inordinate desire of greed (for example) cause others to suffer by taking for ourselves more than we should.
In contrast, Christianity does not consider desire to be inherently negative. In Galatians 5:16-17, for example, “the desires of the flesh” or sinful desires, are set over and against the good and righteous “desires of the Spirit.” In 1 Corinthians 12:31, Paul commands us to “eagerly desire the greater gifts.” Even God is depicted with appropriate desires, as in 2 Peter 3:9, which says that He does not desire “that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”
We often try to be holy by denying our desires. But if we are not careful, this can devolve into becoming more of a Buddhist solution versus a biblical solution to the problem. To quote C. S. Lewis in The Weight of Glory, “If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
Our desires might not be wrong per se, but perhaps they are not strong enough for the right things because we are either ignorant of or (more likely) in rebellion toward the deeper and more important desires God wants for us. This obliviousness and insurgency are ubiquitously encouraged and promoted by contemporary thinking about the nature of desires, especially in the western world. They are there, it is argued, for no other reasons than to be stimulated and fulfilled. The stronger the desire, the more important it is to encourage and satisfy it. Since sexual desires are some of the strongest desires known to humankind, the narrative screams and demands that we must follow the (especially sexual) desires of our heart. Anything else, it is claimed, is psychologically oppressive and a destructive affront to human flourishing.
In contrast, Christians understand that although extremely important and powerful, sin has deeply impacted all of our desires. Thus, our strongest desires are not necessarily our deepest and most important desires. No matter how weak or how strong, they are often disordered and therefore potentially dangerous. They must continually be harnessed and (re)directed toward the right ends and kept within proper limits. In this way, we can be powerfully passionate, but passionate in the right ways, toward the right things, and to the right extent.
As Asaph so poignantly reminds us in Psalm 73:25-26, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
What is the purpose of sex? This may seem like an odd question to ask in our day and age. Almost everyone has roughly the same answer: the purpose is pleasure.
One of the key distinctives of the so-called “sexual revolution” was that sex was principally, if not exclusively, recreational. Unless you wanted children, sex was not primarily intended for procreation, but for pleasure. Even in many Christian circles, this “pursuit of pleasure” motif became very prominent. When I was preparing for marriage, for example, I was told to read a hugely popular evangelical Christian book about sex entitled, Intended for Pleasure.
At the time, this idea did not seem strange or out of place in my Christian thinking. After all, God created sex and meant it to be fun and enjoyable, right? Back then, it would have been nearly impossible to imagine (let alone purchase and read) a Christian book on sex called, Intended for Procreation.
This is unfortunate since Christians have long understood that sex is not designed merely for recreation. It is also intended for procreation. These two aspects are not a comprehensive description of its purpose, of course. Things like emotional and physical well-being, social bonding, and intimate communication are also important features of the experience. But how you frame these purposes and how you rank each one fundamentally alters your understanding of the sexual act itself. In this sense, our understanding of sex’s primary purposes makes an enormous difference in how we look at it and one another inside and outside of marriage.
If, for example, the purpose is primarily (or perhaps only) for pleasure and recreation, then it is no surprise that pregnancy becomes an unintended, inconvenient, and therefore decidedly undesirable aspect of the overall experience. The idea that sexual relations might have more consequential purposes than simply orgasms and other physiological and emotional benefits seems to be nearly forgotten in our contemporary discussions of why sex matters. If sex is only intended for pleasure, pregnancy becomes not only an unfortunate consequential byproduct, but something to be ardently avoided and ideally eliminated.
Abortion, then, becomes the “final solution” to this inconvenient “problem.” The purpose of sex is no longer to produce children, but only to experience physical pleasure and emotional satisfaction. Thus, rather than pregnancy being something to look forward to, share, and celebrate with the mother, father, and community, it becomes an annoying inconvenience, a source of shame, and something to be evaded and ultimately eliminated. Rather than a desirable sexual goal, it comes to be seen as a punitive and negative consequence. In the words of Anglican rector Barton J. Gingerich, “In the recreational view, when a woman conceives a child, it often means something has gone wrong.”
In essence, after birth control, abortion becomes the ultimate “failsafe” and guarantor that anyone and everyone can enjoy unregulated sex without fear of any lifelong repercussions. But to make the barbarous act of killing a helpless and innocent child into something socially, morally, and emotionally acceptable, the personhood of that child has to be obscured, ignored, and ultimately obliterated. This is done by describing the child in deceptively dehumanizing terms like “a fetus, ” a product of conception,” and “a ball of cells.” To further the duplicity, abortion is now being called “a medical procedure,” “women’s healthcare,” “a constitutional right,” and more recently by abortion activist, Sarah Lopez, “an act of self-love.”
To pursue and promote this kind of ethical obfuscation is, at its root, morally bankrupt and repugnant. Mothers and fathers are being openly lied to and crowd-shamed in an attempt to preserve the insidious myth that sex is simply for fun and self-fulfillment—and nearly nothing more.
Please don’t misunderstand my point. The purpose of sex is not purely for procreation any more than it is solely for pleasure. Sex has several important purposes, but when only one of those purposes is elevated above all others, it tends to destroy a holistic and healthy understanding of sex. We can also openly affirm that God invented sex to be pleasurable. The clitoris, for example, appears to be created for only one purpose: to provide pleasure for the woman during intercourse. And when sex occurs within the boundaries of a loving, safe, and secure marital between a man and a woman, it can be a truly magnificent experience for both. But when ecstasy becomes the primary or even sole focal point, the things that make sexual intercourse enduringly meaningful and significant get distorted, obscured, and sometimes altogether lost. Other important purposes become ostracized and even vilified at the almighty altar of recreational pleasure.
Up until very recently, most societies strongly affirmed that procreation was a vital and desirable aspect of sexual union, making a critical contribution to human flourishing and the common good. By separating sex from the purpose of procreation and making pregnancy an undesirable and eliminable “byproduct,” many societies now face a precipitous and precarious population decline that has become a significant national crisis.
In response, Christians must reemphasize and celebrate the necessity, beauty, and power of self-denial, personal and social responsibility, as well as the preservation and limitation of sex within the safe and enduring confines of a committed covenantal, loving, and traditional nuclear family—one man and one woman married for life, raising their children together.
In the helpful words of Anglican rector Barton J. Gingerich, “women should deny sex to men who aren’t willing to marry them and raise their kids. Men ought to oblige and accept the honorable script of marriage before sex. . . . Interestingly, all of this turns marriage into quite a productive, involved, cooperative enterprise—because it is. . . . Our forebears . . . believed in the importance of the household. Households—like sex—should be productive rather than merely recreational. A man and a woman come together in matrimony to create, build, and manage a most important enterprise, ideally cooperating with their extended family and close neighbors. This was the norm, and it must become the norm once again if our society is to flourish.”
Given the widespread consensus in contemporary thought that slavery is wrong, why does the Bible seem strangely ambivalent concerning this institutional horror? In fact, one looks in vain in either the Old or New Testaments for an overt call for the abolition of slavery. Neither does the Bible prophetically thunder against its evils as an institution. In fact, as shocking as this sounds, slavery was widespread and generally accepted by almost everyone in ancient times as a basic and accepted aspect of society.
Having said that, however, the Bible does address the subject of slavery in certain ways that bear highlighting. First, compared to the practices and laws of other nations of that time and place, the Old Testament “softens” a lot of the stipulations surrounding its practice. Masters were not to be harsh toward slaves, provisions were made for their well-being (e.g., Deuteronomy 15-13-14), and they were offered freedom after only seven years of service. Exodus 21 gives examples of the appropriate ways in which the Israelites were to treat slaves.
Part of the reason for this “softening” of slavery was because the Israelites themselves had been slaves in Egypt. This harsh bondage was something for which the Egyptians were punished very harshly by God. Thus, the Israelites were to treat their own slaves kindly (e.g., Deuteronomy 24:17-18) and not be guilty of an offense in kind.
Although the Old Testament undercuts the harshness and length of slavery, it was still widespread and accepted in the ancient Near East. This acceptance of slavery as a normal social institution continued up until the time of the Roman Empire in the first century. In fact, by the time of the New Testament, it is estimated that as many as one-third of the Roman empire consisted of slaves!
Still, slavery at that time (as well as in the ancient Near East) was not directly parallel or comparable to slavery in the modern era. First, slavery was not necessarily based on race. It often resulted from foreign conquest or from being unable to pay a debt. Second, being able to move up and out of slavery was both possible and sometimes even common. Third, many “slaves” were actually quite educated and skilled workers, being paid decent wages which were enough for them to buy personal goods and save for the future.
Nevertheless, as a whole, slavery was still a brutal and exploitative institution, and while the Old and New Testaments do not crusade for its abolishment, there is no doubt that the New Testament especially sows the seeds for the condemnation and abolition of slavery after the time of Christ. See, for example, verses like 1 Corinthians 7:21-23, 12:13, Galatians 3:28, Colossians 3:11, and 1 Timothy 1:10. In this regard, the book of Philemon is especially significant. Here Paul tells Philemon to consider his escaped slave, Onesimus, a “beloved brother” and equal in Christ. All these passages and more clearly point toward human equality under the gospel of Christ and away from the degradation and oppression of institutional slavery.
Many feel (and I agree) that in the progress of revelation, this was the moral trajectory God was moving toward with its foundation in the fact that all human beings—male and female—are created in His image (Genesis 1:26-27) and therefore worthy of equal respect and opportunities for flourishing.
Ultimately, the Bible neither overtly condemns nor openly condones slavery. It does, however, strongly mitigate and change the nature of the institution such that its teachings eventually led to an almost universal renunciation and abolition of it in the modern era, something that would have been impossible apart from the biblical view of the equal value and dignity of every human being made in the image of God.
lewinkler 