You shall follow my rules and keep my statutes
and walk in them. I am the LORD your God. (Vayikra / Leviticus 18:4;
ESV)
One of the most controversial aspects of the Bible as far as the
current culture is concerned is its regulations with regard to sexual
behavior. In 1967, in my country of Canada, then Justice Minister,
Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who later became one of our most memorable
Prime Ministers, played a key part in transforming the government's
role with regard to personal moral issues. It was during that time he
made one of his most famous statements: "There's no place for the
state in the bedrooms of the nation" (http://tinyurl.com/trudeau-bedroom-quote
[includes video]). In the western world before then, governments
tended to see regulating personal morality as essential to their
overall responsibility. With the sexual revolution of the 1960s, the
general mood has been that intimate personal issues should be at the
sole discretion of consenting adults. For many, if not most, people in
western society, it has become extremely distasteful that an outside
agency, such as governments, should impose their moral values upon
them. As Trudeau went on to say "what's done in private between
adults doesn't concern the Criminal Code [of Canada]".
So it is no wonder that the Bible, which includes all sorts of
regulations governing sex, would be viewed as old fashioned and
oppressive. Worse than that! Because the older values of the West were
based on a Judeo-Christian worldview, the Bible is blamed for the
oppression from which many believe to have been set free.
Even some who claim to adhere to the Bible's teaching regard its
rules as oppressive. They prefer to divorce passages of liberty and
freedom from anything that smacks of outside control from God or any
other authority. Others believe that these rules were good, but only
for the time in which they were given. Either modern society with its
technological advances and body of knowledge no longer needs what
would have been helpful safeguards in an otherwise backward society
that didn't know better, or the Coming of Yeshua makes rules redundant
as if faith in him automatically produces godly, healthy living.
Let's work through these rejections of the current relevancy of
God's sex rules. First, the concept of good living as an automatic
result of faith in Yeshua is not a biblical concept. The New Covenant
Writings, which are often credited for this misguided teaching, don't
support such a notion. Every book provides directives to follow with
regard to life issues, sexual behavior included. We wouldn't know
these life principles if we didn't read them. Second, viewing biblical
teaching on sexual matters or any other issue as old fashioned
unnecessarily breaks the commonality of human experience through time.
There is nothing in the Bible's teaching about sexual morality that
suggests that it is dependent upon the particular cultural contexts of
their day. It is instructive as well to see how the morality of the
Hebrew Scriptures as given by God to one people group was much later
applied to all nationalities via the New Covenant Writings. While
there is a development of morality in the Bible, we see it becoming
stricter not more liberal as in the cases of polygamy and divorce, for
example. Third, good rules-and God's rules are good rules-are not
restrictive. Understanding the limitations of how something is
designed is key to its effective use. God's sex rules were given to
human beings to provide optimum health and prosperity.
God knows how powerful sexual desire is. Without objective
standards imposed from the outside of ourselves, our drives will
destroy us. The pleasure of sex which is designed to draw men and
women together can easily put us off course unless we remain within
the boundaries set by our loving Creator. Either we submit to God's
sex rules or sex rules.
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