Thread by @timkellernyc

Thread: Because of the more-than-usual antipathy toward my tweet about sex only within marriage, I think some response is warranted. 1st, many disagree with the term ‘dehumanize’. We obviously mean very different things by this term & lots of my critics disagree among themselves.

So I won’t defend my use of the word. It’s not crucial. But much of the pushback is about more substantial issues.

I do need to respect the expressions of anger-because of the background experiences of abuse that may be behind them. Yet here are reasons for the sharp 2/11

conflicts in viewpoints we are seeing:

1. Many of the hostile responses assume a highly western, white, individualistic, therapeutic understanding of the self—in which sexual expression is a key part of authenticity. It is the reason one finds sexual boundaries oppressive. 3/11

2. This therapeutic view of identity has been imposed on you by your culture. It turns sex into a commodity. It is not good for you or for society. To question it read Rieff, Lasch, and Taylor’s Sources of the Self. 4/11

3. Christians believe we were purposed to live in certain ways by God, & to violate God’s design is to violate our own natures. Secular culture says we determine our own purposes-but that fails. See MacIntyre’s After Virtue. (I will write another tweet thread on this alone) 5/11

4. We believe sex was not created just for pleasure but for mutual self-giving toward a deep, permanent union that creates character and new human life. In sex outside of marriage, we maintain our independence and fail to give our whole selves to the other person. 6/11

5. We believe sex was created for persons to say non-verbally but powerfully to one another: “I belong completely and exclusively to you.” It must not be used to say anything less than that or you are not respecting sex’s power, depth, and force. 7/11

6. We believe that, because sex was created as an agent for self-giving, when you have (even consensual) sex outside of marriage, very often one or both gets exploited, the sex drawing you toward deep union as it was made to do. 8/11

7. If you cultivate sex for self-affirmation instead of self-giving, you diminish sex’s power to function as a commitment apparatus and covenant renewal agent within marriage. You harden or dehumanize yourself. 9/11

8. Ultimately these beliefs about sex are grounded in the Bible. But after 45 years of pastoral work speaking to countless people and seeing their experiences of sexuality, all these beliefs have been held up by my experience as well. 10/11

9. If one person does self-giving within a marriage covenant, but the other spouse is exploitative, the damage can be great. That is why a) enormous care should be taken in who you marry and b) why Jesus granted divorce because of “hardness of heart." 11/11