The great harm of sexual sin is not that someone becomes “used goods” but instead that these behaviors become a liability in a marriage, whether future or present. People that trespass sexually and are repentant should not be shamed, but they will have to wrestle through some difficult issues in their matrimony. There can be healing, yet the possible burden of past indiscretions can weigh one down in the race set before all Christians.
The recent National Catholic Prayer Breakfast got me to thinking about the cultural co-belligerence of different Christians and the debt that I owe Catholics for their great work in the theology of the body. Recent trends within evangelical and post-evangelical circles regarding sexuality led to a serious brouhaha earlier this year. One of the main criticisms against my own arguments deserves an answer: Christians must not simply be against bad sexual morality but should also affirm a good one.
Space forbids a satisfactory exploration of human sexuality, but I think we can garner from the Genesis narrative and subsequent biblical exposition that sex is good, unifies man and woman into “one flesh,” produces physical fruitfulness and blessing in offspring, can yield spiritual fruitfulness in virtue and co-formation, and serves as an icon of Christ and His Church. Whether sex is good or not has never been up for debate in thinking orthodox Christian circles. Education, however, has become difficult on the moral front thanks to an overly-permissive society that complies with a pornography culture, a purely biological anthropology, and increasingly delayed maturity and marriage (the two go hand-in-hand). On the whole, the evangelical approach to talking about fornication in particular has been ham-handed and warrants criticism.
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