Maybe There Are Sexual Ethics After All

Any of us who follow college football at even the most casual level know about the long and storied career of Joe Paterno. In so many ways he has been the model of what a college football coach should be. Anyone who can do that job at the same school for 60+ years must be a pretty amazing person.

But the most recent news releases suggest that he will definitely no longer be the Penn State coach after this season, and some are still suggesting he may not make it to the end of the season.

This very tragic ending to an amazing career revolves around sexual misconduct – not Coach Paterno’s conduct, but someone in the program.

Maybe there are sexual ethics after all.

If you’re watching the presidential campaign at all, you also know that one of the Republican candidates – Herman Cain – is embroiled in a scandal revolving around “sexual harassment.” Cain demands that we think that he is innocent – and he may very well be. His accusers demand that their claims of harassment be taken seriously. One of them described Cain as a “serial denier.”

Whatever the ultimate outcome of this blip in the race for president will be – the very fact that it is an issue revolves around sexual misconduct.

Maybe there are sexual ethics after all.

Over the past ten years or more, if you have kept up with religious journalism, you no doubt remember reading about leaders in the church who fell victim to the problem of sexual misconduct. To make matters even more complicated and ultimately harmful to our witness to the world, these leaders are all too often people who put family values, sexual purity, and anti-homosexual ideas at the center of their ministries.

At some level, among at least more Christian leaders than we would care to admit, there is a lot of reaction formation going on – we preach hard against the very things we are tempted by and often do.

Maybe there are sexual ethics after all.

Reading through Dave Kinnamon’s UnChristian, you quickly discover that one of the black eyes the word Christian has in our culture is that we are perceived to be “anti-homosexual.” I’m convinced that a part of the reason for that perception is that we tend to be more tolerant of heterosexual misconduct than we are homosexual misconduct. We give selective attention to texts that condemn homosexual behavior, while ignoring or at least not giving the same attention to those that condemn heterosexual misbehavior.

Maybe there are sexual ethics after all.

I don’t want to be guilty of a kind of simplicity that misses the point, but it seems to me that the New Testament is rather clear about sexual morality. We often focus on talking about sexual immorality – but would do much better to talk more about sexual morality.

Simply put that means that if we are single, we live a celibate lifestyle. In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul seems to suggest that is difficult to do and likely requires a spiritual gift. If we are married, sexual morality demands that we have a healthy, fulfilling relationship with our spouse – one man and one woman. That’s God’s ideal. Like living a celibate lifestyle, the ideal marriage probably isn’t going to happen without the aid of the Spirit as well.

That’s it. Any other sexual behavior must fall into the category of immoral – and be viewed as undesirable by believers. Every example noted above would simply not exist if those involved were committed to a view of human sexuality described above.

Unfortunately young people and young adults are living in a culture where it is entirely possible they have never heard sexuality talked about so plainly. They live in a culture where almost every aspect of media – from movies to television, literature to advertisement, Facebook, Twitter, and everything else – bombards them with the idea that sexual conduct is simply a personal choice. If it seems or feels good to you and your partner at the moment, then it must be okay.

If that’s the modus operandi of our culture when it comes to sexual behavior, don’t be amazed at how many stories we see in the news, hear about at work and church, and maybe even experience in our own family settings where it suddenly dawns on someone that “maybe there are sexual ethics after all.”