During my senior year in high school I moderated two discussions on human sexuality. I was asked to do this by my life sciences teacher, one who I greatly respected. She was not, as far as I knew, a believer, but we had similar views on human sexuality to two different ends. I believe in abstinence for biblical reasons, while she believes in them for scientific ones. She rightly says that abstinence is effective 100% of the time. However she also believed that contraceptives should be made available and their proper use should be taught if passions were to be exercised. Over the past few years I have considered what that meant.

You don’t have to be a Christian to believe in a biblical principle. There are plenty of unbelievers who believe that murder and stealing are wrong. It is where conventional wisdom of man and what the bible says align that we often have to ask ourselves why we believe something, because our view of that topic may be distorted by cultural influences. Consider the command in Ephesians 5 for wives to submit to their husbands. This command was culturally supported for many centuries, but the reason why was often muddled leading to trouble. In Ephesians 5 Paul calls us to reflect the love and submission of Christ by husbands loving their wives and wives submitting to their husbands, but Western Civilization adopted this principle as a way to be prejudiced against women. Men who leverage their power over their wives abusively do not follow the bible, because they do not see the biblical reason for their wives to submit. They just assume that it is because they are supposed to lord over them, not as a reflection of the humility of Christ.

Abstinence is a powerful part of the Christian culture. It is a part of our cultural ethos to dedicate ourselves to a life of refraining from sexual contact until marriage. This is a biblical idea which started with the first man and woman. In Genesis 2:22-25 there is a marriage ceremony between Adam and his wife Eve. It is officiated by God, and afterwards in reflection the Holy Spirit quickened the hand of the writer of Genesis to write verse 24 which says, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh.” Here we have a basic description of the standard of sexuality that the bible calls us to. We are to leave our parents, cling to our spouses, and have sex. All of this is after entering into a covenant with God and this other person that they would be as our flesh, as described in verse 23.

Adam and Eve’s courtship was very quick, and there were no other women for Adam to engage with sexually up until that point. So what about the time between when we start having sexual feelings towards others and when we get married? Isn’t it wrong to suppress your sexual desires? Why do we have sexual desires I will answer this question using the example of Christ.

Jesus Christ has existed eternally. He is the Son, the 2nd person of the trinity. He is in every way God. He is God with the Spirit and Father. He is one with them, and they are one with him. In being God Jesus is omnipresent. This is to say that Jesus Christ is God, and he is everywhere all the time. God is everywhere all the time. (Jeremiah 23:22-23) (more…)