More thoughts on sexual ethics...

[Zach]

Hello everyone, Danny here. Sorry I missed this episode, I enjoyed listening to it. I thought I'd give my two cents here.

I'm in a fairly unique position here as an atheist. I'm probably more "sexually pure" than many other Christians. The only person I've ever slept with is my wife and we didn't sleep together until after marriage. Now, I'd never be one to say that what we did was wrong, but I no longer think it's necessarily the "right way" either.

I think Kevin explained very well that fact the Christianity is not against sex or sexuality the way it's often perceived. When my former church talked about purity, they talked about how awesome and beautiful it is to express your love sexually for the one person that God picked out for you , and no one else. It's very romantic. If it's done right, it can be very cool.

However, life isn't always perfect romance, is it? I think one of the reasons we got married so young is that we didn't want to put anymore time in front of our need for sexual contact. That's not the reason we were married... at least, that wasn't the only thing. Of course, we were in love and we still are deeply in love. But if we could do it over again knowing what we know now, would we do it the same way? Probably not.

There were some good things about it. It was a character building challenge. It made some very good changes in our relationship. When we were alone together, we were forced to talk and talk and talk. What else is there to do? But all in all, the whole thing was done for slightly silly reasons. If you believe all the religious stuff behind the theory, it is it's own reward. But as freethinkers, it feels like we just denied ourselves some great pleasure.

I guess what I learned from all this, is that if you are ingrained in a Christian paradigm and you have a problem with "giving yourself" to someone other than your one, true soul-mate; you're going to be in a very tough position. You'll either bite the bullet, resist the temptation and devote yourself to building a strong relationship outside of sex and save it until you're ready for marriage. Or you'll give up, give in and have to deal with a whole world of un-necessary guilt for your actions.

I like what Dan said about the difference between sexual stupidness and sexual immorality. You shouldn't feel guilty for sexual stupidness, it's just a mistake like any other. Learn from it, and move on. The problem is when someone equates mistakes with actual immorality. It may be hard for someone to get out of their head the idea that they've been "violated" or "used" once they've had a sexual experience. Of course, I'm talking only about consensual sex between two adults.... There are of course sexual crimes that are devastating. That's neither here nor there.

So, doing it the Christian way is hard. And it's risky. It's a very high bar to live up to, and if you fail it could be a world of hurt and guilt. If you do it right, you'll probably be all the better for it.

That's all I got to say about that.

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