Reconstructing Christian Sexual Ethics 03: Dating and Relationships

I grew up in the late nineties evangelical purity culture, though perhaps a less pernicious implementation than some I've heard of. If you don't know what I mean, here's the rundown:

• Men are uncontrollable lust machines
• A woman's sexual role is to satisfy her husband, having no sexual desire of her own 
• Sexual arousal is lust and therefore sinful
• Women are responsible for men's lust
• Women who engage in sex before marriage are permanently rendered less valuable as humans
• Everyone should suppress their sex drives until they get married, and then suddenly flip a switch and become healthy sexual beings
  
• If you follow these teachings, sex within marriage will be far better than otherwise
  

Not a bit of that is scriptural, of course. Seriously, find one place that backs any of that up. It's all teachings of man that are elevated to the level of scripture. And it's not even teachings that work. Numerous studies show that purity teachings have no statistical impact on the average number of sexual partners a person has, or the age of first sexual experience, and they tend to result in more accidental pregnancies and abortions. And these teachings result in tremendous sexual dysfunction and shame.

Many excellent books and podcasts exist for people recovering from these false teachings, and it is not my intention to add to them here. I will only say this: no good tree bears bad fruit. The tree of purity culture bears bad fruit. Cut it down and throw it into the fire.

Now, I have a much more pressing question: what should we be teaching instead? When I was growing up, I saw almost no discussion of what a Christian relationship, sexual or not, married or not, looks like. All we really got is "don't have sex until you're married." We've seen that the scriptural position on sex outside of marriage isn't as cut and dried as many of us have been taught.

So if this ground isn't solid, where do we have to stand? Do we default to the worldly ethic of enthusiastic consent, and say that God has no interest in our sex lives as long as we're not harming anyone? By no means! God clearly wants us to give him all aspects of our lives, including this one. But what does that look like?

I haven't seen much discussion of this. There's a lot of discussion of rejecting and recovering from purity culture, but not as much about what scripture-based ethics we build in its place. I am not claiming to have all the answers. But here's how I suggest working through this problem: start with the Christian virtues (the ten clusters we identified earlier, or some other list if you prefer), and see how they all interact with the domain of our lives that includes dating, relationships, marriage, and sex.

Keep in mind, this is not a list of rules. If you're trying to develop a list of rules, you're doing virtue ethics wrong. It's possible some general rules will fall out of it, but that's not the goal. The goal is to learn to think about the situations you might run into, so you have some idea what's virtuous and what's not. So here are our virtues, and my first-pass thoughts on how they apply in this domain:

• Humility before God: Serve God, and see that his ways are higher than your ways
• Consider how your religious beliefs and practices will interact with those of your partner
• Drive for righteousness and restorative justice: Make your life and the world more in line with God's will; mourn sin and repent
• Ask your partner to help you recognize sin and repent of it
  
• Help your partner recognize sin and repent of it
• Work together to make the world more just
  
• Embrace of knowledge, wisdom, and truth: Learn true things, reject false things, and spread that learning
• Do not lie to your partner
• Tell your partner all relevant truths; don't lie by omission
• Recognize and reject when your partner lies to you, or leaves out relevant truths
• Ask the important questions
• Love and respect: Place others before yourself
• Place your partner before yourself
• Recognize when your partner places themself before you
• Consider other people whose needs your actions might affect
• Your former and future partners
• Your family and friends and children
  
• Your partner's former and future partners 
• Your partner's family and friends and children
  
• Joy, satisfaction, contentment, gratitude: Recognize the good God has given you
• Accept that you may not have the relationships you want, and find joy in the ones you have
  
• Accept that the relationships you have may not have all the qualities you want, and find joy in the positive qualities they have
  
• Accept that your partner may not do or be everything you want, and find joy in what you can
  
• Accept that your relationship will end, and find joy in the time you have
  
• Forgive and build peace, covenant, and relationship: Give up revenge, and encourage community
• Build a relationship with each other. Date! Spend time together, learn about each other, do new things together, read books, talk about ideas and dreams and fears
• Forgive each other, constantly
  
• Build relationships with each other's family and friends and faith communities
• Marriage and building a family are the ultimate expression of this, exemplifying God's abiding love for His people
  
• Patience and hope: Remember that God will act in time
• Do not rush or pressure your partner to advance your relationship
  
• Recognize and reject when your partner rushes or pressures you
  
• Encourage each other to enjoy whatever stage your relationship may be in
  
• Kindness, mercy, and generosity: Do good for people, especially those in need
• Do not cause your partner harm
  
• Recognize and reject when your partner causes you harm
• Recognize and reject when your partner causes others harm
• Do your partner good
• Recognize when your partner does good for you
• Recognize when your partner does good for others
• Help each other do good for others, together
  
• Integrity and self-control: Be one thing, all the time; subdue bodily impulses
• Recognize, acknowledge, and communicate about physical drives
  
• Help each other build self-control over those drives
  
• Faithfulness and endurance: Keep your covenants, carry on in the face of all adversity
• Don't break agreements of fidelity with your partner
  
• Don't spread secrets or lies about your partner
  
• Don't harm your partner after a relationship ends
  
• Help each other continue in all the virtues for as long as your relationship lasts
  

I don't see that any Christian would object to the above advice. That makes me think we're on the right track, that our process for understanding Christian ethical behavior with respect to relationships is valid.

 

Now, I'm going to go back over the virtues and point out places where they are specifically applicable to sex. In the below, I'm using "sex" as shorthand for "any physical or sexual interaction," because I can't really justify drawing an arbitrary line for where "sex" begins.

• Humility before God
• Consider whether your relationship ethic is compatible with that of your partner
• This requires that you know both your own relationship ethic and that of your partner; see Embrace of knowledge and truth
  
• Embrace of knowledge, wisdom and truth
• Both partners should understand how sex, pleasure, pregnancy, and sexual safety work in general
  
• Both partners should have all the important information about each other's sexual and emotional needs, desires, and history, including any applicable covenants
  
• Both the above are critical for Kindness and mercy; you cannot show your partner kindness without understanding their needs
  
• Love and respect
• Consider your partner's sexual and emotional needs as more important than your own
• Joy, satisfaction, contentment, gratitude
• Most sexual relationships will not meet 100% of both parties' desires. This is normal. Be okay with that.
  
• Forgive and build peace, covenant, and relationship
• Sex should build relationship with your partner through shared intimacy, vulnerability, and pleasure
  
• Patience and hope
• Do not pressure your partner to advance the sexual intimacy of the relationship, or for existing levels of intimacy at an unwelcome time
  
• Kindness, mercy, and generosity
• Use sex for mutual pleasure and comfort
• Ensure the physical safety of sex
• Remember your partner's emotional needs
• Consider anyone you or your partner have covenant relationships with who could be harmed
  
• All this requires Embrace of knowledge and truth, to know what can cause harm
  
• Integrity and self-control
• Make your sexual actions match your inner goals and statements of purpose
  
• Do not let bodily sexual impulses control you
• Faithfulness and endurance
  
• Keep covenants of sexual fidelity within a relationship
• Do not spread intimate information during a relationship, or after a relationship ends
  

Once again, I don't expect that any Christian would find the above objectionable. At worst, it's incomplete in some fashion. But we are at least forming the basis for a more comprehensive teaching on relationships and sex, in whatever context.

Now, again working from the virtues, are there times when a couple should not have sex (of any kind)? Again, this is not a list of rules. But there do seem to be times when a person should clearly not engage in sex, because it cannot be virtuous in the context we usually find ourselves in. I see only four definite ones:

• If you won't put your partner's needs above your own, don't have sex with them
• Enthusiastic consent is a requirement
  
• Are there cases where sex with enthusiastic consent can still fail to consider a partner's needs? Absolutely. Enthusiastic consent is not sufficient unto itself.
• Also, if your partner won't put your needs above theirs, you are in danger; just run
• If you don't know how to have sex safely, don't do it
• Safe sex and informed consent are requirements
  
• If you don't know your specific partner well enough to understand their physical or emotional needs with regards to sex, you could very well harm them without intending to
• If you have an existing covenant of fidelity or chastity, don't break it
• No cheating is a requirement
  
• If having sex is not consistent with your personal integrity and exercise of self-control, don't do it

These are our bare minimum Christian ethic for sexual relationships. They include the world's minimum ethic, plus some additional demands on us. That's what we would expect to find, I think.

 

Now, how does all the above interact with the idea of marriage? Is it possible to build all of these virtues within in unmarried sexual relationship, in exactly the same way as within a marriage? There have certainly been points in history where that was not possible; in the hardcore patriarchy of the Old Testament, sex with an unmarried woman could ruin her entire life. It would lack the virtues of Love and respect, of Kindness and mercy. But in our cultural context? Within this framework, there is no obvious reason why sex outside of marriage is, in itself, unvirtuous.

 

Further, is it possible for sex within a marriage to not build these virtues, and thereby be less pleasing to God? Absolutely! Not all sex within marriage is God-honoring, by any means! Sexual ethics within marriage go well beyond "Keep sex within marriage" and we fail when we don't teach that. With a near-exclusive focus on premarital chastity, evangelicals lack any teachings about what ethical sex looks like, inside or outside a marriage.

So does God intend for sex to be universally reserved for marriage? Whether we take a mistaken rule-based legalistic approach to scripture, or this virtue-based approach, no such requirement is apparent. If it's anywhere, it's got to be in a virtue I've missed in my framework. Chastity is certainly a virtue that's been included in a lot of lists, but I wasn't able to find it in scripture the way I looked at it.

But importantly, by taking this scripture-based, virtue-oriented approach to sexual and relationship ethics, we have found a path to a Christian sexual ethic that requires more of us than the bare minimum. We are not just reducing our ethics to that of the world. Christ demands more of us.