Facing the sneers of our post-Christian culture

When people despise the faith, how should we proceed?

Blaise Pascal, who we’ve been considering over the last couple of months, offers help. In his native France of the 17th century, he faced his culture’s sneer with a joy-filled, three-pronged response. He advised that we speak to Christianity’s respectability; its desirability; and its truth. The order is important. It will be nearly impossible to convince our friends of anything they would hate to be true. Humans are too good at self-justification for that.

If I don’t want something to be true, I set the bar for evidence incredibly high and basically nothing will satisfy me. If I want something to be true, I set the bar for evidence very low and nearly anything would convince me. We are heart-led creatures and therefore, if we want to persuade our friends and family, demonstrating the respectability and desirability of the faith is essential.

With that in mind let’s turn to this month’s thorny question. Last time we considered the subject of judgment. Now we turn to questions about sex. How on earth can Christians be so out of step with the culture on this key issue? Surely it’s only bigotry and backwardness that keeps us clinging to our outdated views? Let’s consider a Pascalian response…

Respectability

The Christian sexual ethic has built our world from the ground up. Ever since Jesus abolished the sexual double standard of the ancient world and called men to the same levels of respect and commitment expected of women, the world has been transformed beyond all recognition.

The original ‘sexual revolution’ (as historian Kyle Harper calls it) happened not in the 1960s but 19 centuries earlier, giving us our modern notions of equality, consent, romance and freedom, as well as teaching us the evils of abuse and exploitation. And more than shaping our morality, it has built our civilisation, as evolutionary biologist Joseph Henrich has maintained in his book The Weirdest People in the World. The Christian ‘marriage and family program’ is the key to the West’s prosperity over the centuries. To find out why, Henrich’s data-driven 700 pages are a fascinating read.

So the Christian sexual ethic is not just the most influential and successful vision for sex and sexuality ever put forth, it’s also attractive…

Desirability

The good news at the heart of Christianity is a romance: Christ, the Prince of heaven, loves us, a grubby pauper. If we become one with Him, he takes our debts (our sins) and gives us His riches (His righteousness). Best of all we get Him – we are one forever, like in a fairytale marriage. The Christian, therefore, looks at marriage and sees a profound picture of divine love. And it’s a picture we get to imitate. Our love stories can testify to God’s. We believe that God is love, history is a love story, and the two states we can be in – marriage and singleness – point to that love story. As Sam Allberry says, marriage shows us the shape of the gospel while singleness shows us its sufficiency.

The fact that sex is kept within the safety of marriage protects the weak and vulnerable from exploitation and gives dignity to sex and bodies. Christians think our bodies are less like playgrounds and more like temples which explains why abuse is so egregious: it is a desecration. Christianity makes sense of our deepest feelings about the wonder of sex when it goes right, and the horrors of sex when it goes wrong.

Truth

Jesus taught that marriage is the lifelong, ‘one-flesh’ union of a man and a woman (Matt. 19:1-6). This covenant love is a union across difference (just like the union across difference of Christ and the church, Eph. 5:21-3). And the ‘one flesh’ act of sex belongs in the ‘one flesh’ union of marriage. For those wanting alternatives, Jesus gives one other option (which He recommends even more): chaste singleness. But those are our two options.

It’s sometimes said that Jesus never speaks about sexuality, but that’s untrue. The heart of the Christian sexual ethic is contained in Matthew 19. But as we hold firm to Christ’s teaching we do so not grudgingly but joyfully. Here is a vision for sex and marriage – for God and humanity, for life and eternity – that has built the modern world, bringing equality to the sexes, sanctity to sex, consent to the bedroom, stability to the family and much, much more. Jesus’ vision for sex and marriage is good and true, yes. It’s also beautiful.