13
Hypocrisy, Sex, and Other Causes of Skepticism

Frank Turek tells a story of what happened to his friend David. After David taught a class in apologetics, a young man approached him with an objection: “I once was a Christian, but now I’m an agnostic, and I don’t think you should be doing what you’re doing.”

“What do you mean?” David asked.

“I don’t think you should be giving arguments against atheists,” the young man said. “Jesus told us to love, and what you’re doing is not loving.”

David started to answer the objection, but was met with several more in rapid-fire succession. (I spoke about this common tactic in chapter 2.) After trying in vain to answer a couple, David finally decided to end the charade and cut to the chase. He said, “You’re raising all of these objections because you’re sleeping with your girlfriend. Am I right?”

As Turek recounts, “All the blood drained from the kid’s face. He was caught. He just stood there speechless. He was rejecting God because he didn’t like God’s morality, and he was disguising it with alleged intellectual objections.”201

Now, please note that I am not recommending this as a typical example of how to properly end a conversation with a skeptic, as appropriate as it may have been in this particular case. I bring it up to point out that the arguments I have presented in this book are only going to get you so far. People are incredibly complex creatures, and doubt is usually rooted in a tangled ball of intellectual, psychological, emotional, and moral issues.

In this book we’ve stayed primarily in the intellectual realm. I’ve argued that unbelievers often need some help in the areas of theology, history, logic, and philosophy. We should, when necessary, gently instruct them in these subjects, using evidence and argument to help them see that the Christian worldview is more reasonable than all the alternatives. But even if you succeed in convincing a person that your argument is sound and your worldview is true, that won’t necessarily get him to become a Christian. There are myriad other factors at play, and we’ll discuss a few of those in this chapter.

Before we get to that, though, I want to emphasize that just because rational discourse doesn’t always get people to repent and turn to Jesus doesn’t mean it’s a waste of time. There are at least two major benefits to focusing on the more cerebral aspects of skepticism.

First, if the skeptic’s doubts are primarily intellectual in nature, teaching her the truth should go a long way toward helping her change her mind. I don’t know who started this saying, but I’ve heard it a lot: “No one’s ever been argued into the kingdom.” It’s just not true. I recently read conversion stories by Edward Feser202 and Kevin Vost.203 Both were ardent atheists who became Christians after being overwhelmed by the weight of the philosophical arguments. As Feser explains,

I don’t know exactly when everything clicked. There was no single event, but a gradual transformation. As I taught and thought about the arguments for God’s existence, and in particular the cosmological argument, I went from thinking “These arguments are no good” to thinking “These arguments are a little better than they are given credit for” and then to “These arguments are actually kind of interesting.” Eventually it hit me: “Oh my goodness, these arguments are right after all!” By the summer of 2001 I would find myself trying to argue my wife’s skeptical physicist brother-in-law into philosophical theism on the train the four of us were taking through Eastern Europe.204

C. S. Lewis had a similar conversion story.205 Perhaps that is why Lewis was such an advocate of sound argumentation as an evangelistic tool. In The Screwtape Letters, the demon Screwtape warns his young apprentice not to try to use argument to keep people from God: “Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. . . . The trouble with argument is that it moves the whole struggle onto the Enemy’s own ground. . . . By the very act of arguing, you awake the patient’s reason; and once it is awake, who can foresee the result?”206

We must not underestimate the power of the truth to jar a person out of a spiritual slumber. Sound theology and philosophy can have a wonderful effect on people. For example, Vost is sure that if he had known and understood the writings of Thomas Aquinas earlier in his life, he wouldn’t have been an atheist so long.207 That is an appraisal Feser, an Aquinas expert and advocate, would be sure to affirm.

Second, if the skeptic’s doubts are not primarily intellectual, your conversation will make that clear. As you walk through the arguments, it should become obvious that the unbeliever is not rejecting God because religion is irrational or because “there just isn’t enough evidence for Christianity.” He may say that the problem is intellectual, but as you talk through the various positions, you will see that there are actually some other reasons keeping him from faith. Although that realization leaves much work still to be done, at least the facade will be down and you will better understand the nature of that task. You’ll be able to focus on psychological, emotional, and moral factors that are actually driving the person’s skepticism. To those issues we now turn.

Christians Behaving Badly

In Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity, John Loftus explains that three major events in his life caused him to abandon his faith. He associates these events with three people: Linda, Larry, and Jeff. Linda was the co-worker with whom John had an affair, Larry was the professor of biochemistry who convinced John that the universe was billions of years old, and Jeff was one of the many pastors and church members with whom John had a series of conflicts. A vicious church split finally caused John to reach a breaking point: “The damage was done both psychologically in my experiences and intellectually as I continued to study the issues. Massive doubt crept upon me until I didn’t want to be a part of any church much at all.”208

Loftus’s reasons for unbelief are quite typical. We’ve already addressed his intellectual and theological issues (the Larry factor) and we will talk about sex (the Linda factor) later in the chapter. For now, let’s look at the Jeff factor: the issue of Christians acting immorally.

People who call themselves Christians can be jerks. There is just no way around this fact. Loftus tells about being really hurt by not getting a call from his pastor when he was down and out, but there are a million examples available. From sign-wielding preachers of hate yelling at gays, to motorists with fish stickers on their cars who cut people off and then flip them obscene hand gestures, believers don’t always show much gentleness and compassion. After authoring The End of Faith, Sam Harris was motivated to write his Letter to a Christian Nation in part because he received so many letters telling him how wrong he was not to believe in God. He notes, “The most hostile of these communications have come from Christians. This is ironic, as Christians generally imagine that no faith imparts the virtues of love and forgiveness more effectively than their own. The truth is that many who claim to be transformed by Christ’s love are deeply, even murderously, intolerant of criticism.” 209

How should we deal with skeptics who have been mistreated by Christians? Our first response should be to repent. There is no doubt that Christians are often immoral, and this does immense harm to the cause of Christ. As Gaudium et Spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church [Joy and Hope]) points out, “Believers themselves often share some responsibility for [atheism]. . . . To the extent that they . . . fail in their religious, moral, or social life, they must be said to conceal rather than to reveal the true nature of God and of religion.”210 After reading John Loftus’s book, Dr. Norman Geisler sent him a letter apologizing on “behalf of the body of Christ.” Geisler noted that “the legalistic, unkind, and hypocritical way you were treated was simply unchristian and uncalled for. . . . There is no justification for unloving behavior on the part of Christians.”211 This is a good place to start.

You can also point out, though, that immorality by Christians is not actually a good reason to deny the truth of Christianity. For one thing, being a believer does not exempt one from having moral failures. As James Spiegel explains in detail in his book Hypocrisy,212 being redeemed does not mean that Christians become perfect. Certainly God is moving us toward perfection, and we should be striving for that ideal, as we saw in chapter 6, but in this life we will always fall short of complete godliness. The fact that Christians still sin says nothing about whether Christianity is true.

Also, not everyone who acts in the name of God is a Christian. Jesus was very clear that we can know true Christians by their character:

By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.

Matthew 7:16–20

He also said, “As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34–35). If a person claiming to be a Christian is completely unloving, there is cause to believe they are not truly a member of Christ’s body.

Hypocrisy and general ungodliness play a major part in skepticism. If your conversation partner seems more resistant to Christians than Jesus or Christianity, it may be because she has been hurt by believers in the past.

Heartbreak

When Russell Baker was five years old, his father was suddenly taken to the hospital and died. As the New York Times columnist recounts in his best-selling autobiography, it was a pivotal event in his life:

For the first time I thought seriously about God. Between sobs I told [the family housekeeper] Bessie that if God could do things like this to people, then God was hateful and I had no more use for Him.

Bessie told me about the peace of Heaven and the joy of being among the angels and the happiness of my father who was already there. This argument failed to quiet my rage.

“God loves us all just like His own children,” Bessie said.

“If God loves me, why did He make my father die?”

Bessie said that I would understand someday, but she was only partly right. That afternoon, though I couldn’t have phrased it this way then, I decided that God was a lot less interested in people than anybody in Morrisonville was willing to admit. That day I decided that God was not entirely to be trusted.

After that I never cried again with any real conviction, nor expected much of anyone’s God except indifference, nor loved deeply without fear that it would cost me dearly in pain. At the age of five I had become a skeptic.213

Baker’s heartbreaking (and all too common) story is quite revealing in regard to the psychology of skepticism. I’m sure most of us can think of someone we know who is angry at God about some tragedy in his life. Often, it seems, this goes hand in hand with a denial of God’s very existence. A recent study led by psychologist Julie Exline of Case Western Reserve University supports this notion. In studying college students, her research indicated that “atheists and agnostics reported more anger at God during their lifetimes than believers. A separate study also found this pattern among bereaved individuals.”214 If atheists and agnostics are angry at God, what does that say about their skepticism? It seems to suggest that the intellectual label they wear is motivated by their hurt more than rational analysis of the evidence.

Fatherlessness

Baker’s situation, unfortunately, made him particularly prone to such a reaction. As Paul Vitz argues in his provocative and persuasive book Faith of the Fatherless,215 the absence of a father, or presence of a defective father (e.g., one who is abusive or weak or cowardly) can play a major role in young men becoming atheists.

Vitz’s “defective father hypothesis” suggests that a broken relationship with one’s father makes it very difficult to accept a supposedly loving father in heaven. Vitz developed this theory while studying the lives of history’s “great” atheists, including Hume, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Russell, Sartre, Camus, Hobbes, Voltaire, Butler, and Freud. All either had fathers who died when they were very young or were “defective” in some major way. James Spiegel notes that this principle also applies to many modern-day skeptics as well, including Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens.216

Of course, this does not mean that all fatherless kids will become atheists, and there are many qualifications and subtleties to Vitz’s argument that I won’t get into here. However, his point is something to keep in mind when talking to skeptics. Humans naturally conceive of God according to the pattern set for us by human fathers. When that father isn’t there or isn’t loving, “an atheist’s disappointment in and resentment of his own father unconsciously justifies his rejection of God.”217 In a culture where a third of our children are growing up without their biological dad and 40 percent of babies are born to unwed mothers,218 you can expect to run into this problem more often in the future.

Social Pressures

Vitz himself became an atheist in college and offers a frank assessment of his motives: “On reflection, I have seen that my reasons for becoming, and remaining, an atheist-skeptic from age eighteen to age thirty-eight were, on the whole, superficial and lacking in serious intellectual and moral foundation.”219 He notes that he accepted the ideas presented to him by academics without ever actually studying them or questioning them in any way. So why did he accept them? One reason was “social unease.”220 Vitz was embarrassed to be from the Midwest, which “seemed terribly dull, narrow, and provincial” compared to the big city. He wanted to “take part, to be comfortable, in the new, glamorous secular world” into which he was moving, as did many of his classmates.221 He also wanted to be accepted within his scientific field, so just as he had learned to dress like a college student by putting on the right clothes, he learned to “think like a proper psychologist by putting on the right—that is, atheistic—ideas and attitudes.”222

Michael Shermer, editor-in-chief of Skeptics Magazine and executive director of The Skeptics Society, has a similar explanation for his de-conversion story:

Socially, when I moved from theism to atheism, and science as a worldview, I guess, to be honest, I just liked the people in science, and the scientists, and their books, and just the lifestyle, and the way of living. I liked that better than the religious books, the religious people I was hanging out with—just socially. It just felt more comfortable for me. . . . In reality, I think most of us arrive at most of our beliefs for non-rational reasons, and then we justify them with these reasons after the fact.223

Well, I’m not sure if most people do that or not, but it is clearly a bad way to arrive at answers about the big questions of life. Skeptics who practice this method are not evaluating evidence and making reasoned decisions. They are choosing a worldview because they like how it makes them feel to be accepted into the “in” group.

The Cost of Discipleship

G. K. Chesterton famously said, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”224 That sums up another reason for skepticism: Following Jesus is hard!

For example, Vitz admits that “personal inconvenience” was another major factor in his atheism: “Religion takes a good deal of time, not just on Sunday mornings; the serious practice of any religion calls for much more than that. There are other church services, as well as time for prayer and Scripture reading, not to mention time for ‘good works’ of various sorts. I was far too busy for such time-consuming activities.”225

Philosopher Mortimer Adler became a Christian while in his eighties, after spending decades refusing to make that commitment. During that time he admitted that converting to a specific faith would simply be too hard for him. It “would require a radical change in the way of my life, a basic alteration in the direction of my day-to-day choices as well as in the ultimate objectives to be sought or hoped for. . . . The simple truth of the matter is that I did not wish to live up to being a genuinely religious person.”226

In cases like this, skepticism is simply the rationalization of a desire to stay comfortable. People don’t want to take on the commitment that becoming a Christian requires, so they claim that it must be false.

Pope John Paul II noted that this attitude can also lead to resentment and even hatred of religion.

The fact is that attaining or realizing a higher value demands a greater effort of will. So in order to spare ourselves the effort, to excuse our failure to obtain this value, we minimize its significance, deny it the respect that it deserves, even see it as in some way evil.227

That would certainly help explain some of the contempt we see for Christianity among modern skeptics. If you run into an unbeliever who offers scorn rather than reasoned arguments, this may be why.

Immorality

Now, for the big one. Of all the motivations and reasons for skepticism that I encounter, immorality is easily the most common. In particular, sexual sin seems to be the largest single factor driving disbelief in our culture. Brant Hansen calls sex “The Big But” because he so often hears this from unbelievers: “‘I like Jesus, BUT . . . ’ and the ‘but’ is usually followed, one way or the other, with an objection about the Bible and . . . sex. People think something’s deeply messed-up with a belief system that says two consenting, unmarried adults should refrain from sex.”228 In other words, people simply do not want to follow the Christian teaching that sexual intercourse should take place only between a man and woman who are married, so they throw the whole religion out.

Why is sex such a big deal for skeptics? You might think it is a bit like the social pressure factor. Sex feels even better than being welcomed into a group, so we choose to live promiscuous lives rather than admit that there might be a God who doesn’t want us to do so. However, I believe there is much more to it than that. Sex is in a special category all its own.

To make that case, let’s start by discussing how immorality in general relates to skepticism.

As I wrote in part 2, to sin is to rebel against the nature of reality.229 Sinning is not about breaking some arbitrary and capricious rule; it is to live contrary to the inherent order and purpose of the world. For example, I talked about the man who worshiped and served alcohol rather than his wife and kids. This is immoral. However, it is not wrong because he broke some arbitrary statute God made up against excessive drinking or because he didn’t live according to the random advice found in some parenting guru’s Handbook for Dads. It is wrong because this action is contrary to the inherent nature of fathers, husbands, wives, children, and alcohol. The man’s wife and kids are objectively and innately more valuable than booze, and the inherent purpose of a husband and a father is to give of himself for their good by protecting and providing for them, among other duties.

To reject the natural order of things is sin. It is a denial of reality. As Chesterton wrote, the only sin is to call a green leaf gray.230 It is to say to the creator of the world, “I will not accept the world as you made it. I don’t want to submit to reality. I want to make my own reality. I want to determine my own meaning in life and live by my own value system. I refuse to accept my status as creature. I want to be the creator. I want to be God.”

This is an important starting point for our discussion of sin and skepticism, because the easiest way to justify sin, then, is to deny that there is a creator to provide reality with nature, thereby denying that there is any inherent order and purpose in the universe.

Let’s say I’m the dad who would prefer to drink away my paycheck rather than take care of my family, and I am looking for a way to defend that choice. One simple method would be to argue that “fatherhood” has no inherent meaning; it’s just an arbitrary cultural construction. Thus, I can live however I want. Indeed, I may go further and posit that the traditional notion of fatherhood is constraining me from living life to the fullest. The whole idea was probably developed by evil church authorities as a way to consolidate power. I need to throw off the shackles of this capricious and harmful restriction and find true “freedom” apart from my family (as they do not have any more objective value than anything else anyway). So I deny that God exists. This leaves the universe purposeless and enables me to do whatever I want. Voilà! Suddenly I’m a skeptic.

Aldous Huxley admitted that this is a common reason for skepticism:

I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently I assumed that it had none and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. . . . Those who detect no meaning in the world generally do so because, for one reason or another, it suits their books that the world should be meaningless. . . .

For myself as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom; we objected to the political system because it was unjust. The supporters of these systems claimed that in some way they embodied the meaning (a Christian meaning, they insisted) of the world. There was one admirably simple method in our political and erotic revolt: We could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever. Similar tactics had been adopted during the eighteenth century and for the same reasons.231

Indeed, similar tactics have been used extensively up to the present day. If you are looking for two great resources that document the extent to which the work of the world’s “great” atheistic thinkers has been “calculated to justify or minimize the shame of their own debauchery,”232 I recommend Intellectuals by Paul Johnson233 and Degenerate Moderns: Modernity as Rationalized Sexual Misbehavior by E. Michael Jones.234 Also, James Spiegel has a nice summary of their arguments in The Making of an Atheist.235 The bottom line is that these skeptical scholars didn’t reach their conclusions by following the evidence where it led. They didn’t “discover” that the world was meaningless and then proceed to live accordingly. They lived sinful lives (usually involving some type of sexual deviancy) and then produced theories that justified their actions.

This connection between immorality and unsound thought is clearly scriptural. Paul tells the Ephesians that they

must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.

Ephesians 4:17–19 NIV1984

Paul blames futile thinking and a lack of understanding on hard hearts. When we compare this passage with Romans 1, it seems that immorality and bad ideas work together in a vicious cycle that spirals downward. Sin leads to false philosophies, which then lead to more sin.

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised.

Romans 1:18–25 NIV1984

So Paul argues that the nature of reality is clear to everyone but people “suppress the truth by their wickedness.” Rebellious people become fools as they deny the obvious meaning of creation because of their sin. Their foolishness leads them to indulge in more immorality. For example, according to Romans 1, everyone knows, at a deep, foundational level, that women and children are more important than alcohol. This is a clear, objective fact about reality. However, the sinful man denies this truth, and in the process becomes a fool, in order to assuage his guilt and indulge in disordered desires. Thus immorality is very closely linked to skepticism, and we need to be aware that sin will almost always be at least an underlying issue in our conversations.

Why Sex Is Such a Big Deal

If immorality is a cause of skepticism, are there any specific sins that cause more problems than others? Yes. Sexual immorality is perhaps the premier cause of skepticism. You don’t generally see people denying Christianity because they want to justify their gluttony or anger issues but, as we’ve already seen in several examples, they often reject God based on their sexual proclivities. Indeed, my fictional example about denying God based on alcohol may ring a bit false to you for this very reason. People don’t usually become atheists because they have a drinking problem. However, if the same story had the man spending all his time and money on a mistress rather than alcohol, it becomes much more plausible, doesn’t it?

The question is why. Here’s the answer: Sexual immorality is more often related to skepticism than, say, greed or gossip or alcoholism because it constitutes a more radical and serious rebellion against the natural order. This brings a greater degree of dissonance and guilt and a stronger motivation for denying that a natural order exists.

To flesh that out a bit, the true meaning of sex is very obvious,236 and it is very good. As we will discuss momentarily, sex provides us with knowledge of the meaning of life and an experiential insight into the very nature of God. However, because sex provides such an important and powerful revelation, to reject that truth is to rebel against the natural order on a scale far greater than most other sins. To take part in adultery, homosexuality, or abortion,237 for example, is a greater rejection of God than being a gossip because these actions involve openly rebelling against truth that is so obvious and so holy. As we look at the meaning of sex, we will see more clearly why trying to live contrary to its true nature is such a serious offense.

Sex Reveals the Meaning of Life

We saw in chapter 4 that the meaning of life is love. We were created to give of ourselves to others for their good. Have you ever wondered how Adam and Eve knew this? After all, they didn’t have any books to read or Internet sites to surf. I suppose they could have just asked God directly, but somehow I don’t think that was necessary. Adam and Eve knew that life was all about love because they could see each other naked (Genesis 2:25). They knew from the very form and nature of their bodies that they were made to give of themselves to each other. One doesn’t have to be a great detective to see how male and female bodies were designed to go together and that this involves an act of mutual self-giving.

John Paul II calls this the “nuptial meaning of the body.” He explains “The body includes right from the beginning . . . the capacity of expressing love, that love in which the person becomes a gift—and by means of this gift—fulfills the meaning of his being and existence.”238 Adam and Eve could see that they were meant to have sex, and that this truth was inseparable from the fact that they were meant to love. As Matthew Lee Anderson writes:

In the act of sex itself, the man gives himself to the woman and the woman (by way of freely opening herself) gives herself to the man. In that sense, Christian sexuality is not simply an expression of an abstract or vague inner desire—it is a dynamic encounter between a man and a woman in the fullness of their humanity before God, which is constituted by their mutual self-giving to the other for the other’s good.239

As Dietrich von Hildebrand notes, “The sexual gift of one person to another signifies an incomparably close union with that other and a self-surrender to him or her. The sexual union is thus the organic expression of wedded love, which intends precisely this mutual gift of self.”240 In nuptial sex man and woman give themselves to each other completely and totally; nothing is withheld. Their bodies and spirits are given to each other in full self-surrender. This is true love. Anderson continues,

Authentic human sexuality is something more than a physical act done for the purpose of bodily stimulation or pleasure. It is the mutual self-giving of two persons in their external dimensions, inaugurating a union that encompasses the totality of their lives. It is an overflow of love that starts in the heart and shows itself in the very members of our flesh.241

Sex Reveals the Nature of Life in the Trinity

We also saw in chapter 4 that the meaning of life is not arbitrary. It’s not as if God had several different options to choose from and finally decided on “love” as the purpose he would impose on humans. Love is the meaning of life because God is love. We are called to interpersonal communion because God himself is a communion of persons in the Trinity.242

Indeed, to be in communion with another person is one part of what it means to be created in the image of God. Genesis 1:27 states: “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” That is why Adam was incomplete without Eve. He could not reflect the image of God without Eve to love. The image of God is not found in Adam alone or in Eve alone, but in the union of Adam and Eve.

The sexual union of Adam and Eve is the clearest image we have of the life of the Trinity. Nuptial sex, then, is about as close as we are going to get on earth to experiencing the complete mutual self-giving that takes place within the persons of the godhead. But someday we will experience that Trinitarian life fully. Sex, therefore, is a foretaste of heaven. I have said throughout this book that the culmination of God’s redemptive purposes is to draw us into the life of the Trinity. God intends for us to partake of his very essence for eternity. The clearest physical picture we get of that blissful state is sex. Of course physical sex on earth will pale in comparison to the spiritual intimacy we will share with God in heaven. The great mystics who have tasted of both testify to this. However, physical intimacy does offer us a small clue. Peter Kreeft writes:

This spiritual intercourse with God is the ecstasy hinted at in all earthly intercourse, physical or spiritual. It is the ultimate reason why sexual passion is so strong, so different from other passions, so heavy with suggestions of profound meanings that just elude our grasp. No mere practical needs account for it. No mere animal drive explains it. No animal falls in love, writes profound romantic poetry, or sees sex as a symbol of the ultimate meaning of life because no animal is made in the image of God. Human sexuality is that image, and human sexuality is a foretaste of that self-giving, that losing and finding the self, that oneness-in-manyness that is the heart of the life and joy of the Trinity. That is what we long for; that is why we tremble to stand outside ourselves in the other, to give our whole selves, body and soul: because we are images of God the sexual being. We love the other sex because God loves God.243

Sex Enables Us to Participate in God’s Creative Activity

Love is inherently creative; it cannot be contained. The joining of two persons in love results in more people to love. I believe this admittedly mysterious principle of reality was at work in the creation of the world and continues to be at work in the creative process that sustains the world. God did not start everything and then leave it to operate by its own power. He continually upholds it by his power. If God stopped his creative work, all life would cease. Amazingly, humans get to play a part in this process. Being made in the image of God includes the ability to participate with him in creating new life. It makes sense, of course, that this life would come as a result of sex. Just as Adam and Eve were created out of God’s love, their children are created out of their love.

Why Sexual Immorality Is So Bad

If the meaning of sex is to practice love and share in the life of God, then the reason for the biblical injunction that sex should only be practiced between a man and a woman who are married becomes far more clear: That is the only place the fulfillment of sex’s purpose could take place.

For example, sex is about love. But extramarital sexual affairs are not about love. They are about each person using the other as a means of physical pleasure. This is not love. Love by its nature is the giving of self for the other’s good. Sex outside of marriage is about making another person a tool for self-gratification. Even if the sex partners genuinely care about each other (and frankly, usually illicit sex is very explicitly about selfish desires: “I have a right to be happy”; “He just makes me feel so good about myself”; “We just hooked up for the night because it was fun,” and so on), sex without marriage is not a complete self-gift. Something of each person is always withheld, not the least of which is lifelong commitment.

Also, sex outside of marriage removes the image of God from the equation and keeps us from participating in the Trinity. The fullness of God’s nature and creative plan is experienced in the sacrament of marriage only. It is impossible in homosexual or adulterous relationships. These practices, as well as other sexual sins, disavow God by their very essence. They are a blatant and aggressive slap in his face, so to speak.

As such, they have a great effect on other areas of life. After all, if a person is willing to deny the obvious meaning of sex, to what part of the natural order will they conform? In other words, if they won’t affirm and submit to the natural order in this area, they have essentially rejected the natural order in all areas, thereby making any and every action morally acceptable. Feser notes that abortion and homosexuality have traditionally been regarded with such horror not because they are worse than other sins on some scale of judgment but because they are positively unnatural and

they constitute an affront to the foundations of morality. If there is no such thing as a natural order . . . then there can be no basis for morality at all. But those who commit an act of sodomy or abortion seem to thumb their nose at the very idea of natural order, to put themselves above and beyond it.244

I believe this is one reason why, in the passage above from Romans, Paul lists “sexual immorality” as the first consequence of foolishness and idolatry. He follows that with a longer list of vices, but gives preeminence to homosexuality before moving on to iniquities such as envy and even murder.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

Romans 1:26–32

Sex is intended to be the source of great light in our world. Sexual immorality, however, leads down an increasingly dark path. It seems that once a person has embarked on that road, there is a point at which the easiest way to justify himself is to simply deny that God exists. That is one reason sexual immorality is perhaps the major cause of skepticism.