1 Corinthians 6:13
The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.

Evil is insidiously multidimensional. In one regard its presence degrades our hope in others — especially those we look up to for their authority or celebrity. Such was the case over the past two weeks in the wake of the Ashley Madison data hacking; the celebrity names associated with Christianity came first.

The problem is not that celebrities have let Christianity down, but that far too many have counted too much on celebrities to validate their faith.

Yet another dimension of evil is its ability to victimize even perpetrators. We sometimes try to dismiss this for fear that understanding a person’s reason will justify their actions. Relativism has led us here — because evil in the face of truth and goodness cannot be explained into feasibility.
Ashley Madison CEO Noel Biderman regularly gloated over a “1:1 male/female ratio among the under 30-set.” The reality of the hacking data revealed just 15% (5 of 35 million names) were women.
The Daily Telegraph reports that, “(FBI) examinations of the database suggest many of the female profiles on the site were created by a relatively small number of individuals.” Ashley Madison effectively acted as a sexual predator to entice and seduce men in order to extract money (membership dues).

The monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside marriage is that those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all the other kinds of union which were intended to go along with it and make up the total union. — C.S. Lewis

Evil’s final act in this moment will be to destroy the lives of victims and perpetrators alike — through divorce, job loss, depression, anxiety, and suicide. It is savage and vile. But we are not left to ourselves. We are not without hope. Evil cannot eclipse the multifaceted beauty of good.

Ultimately the Christian sexual ethic is not about less sex, or even regulated sex, but more integrated sex. Sex that flourishes and fulfills on every level of the marital experience.

In his book Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis provides the contrast, “The Christian attitude does not mean that there is anything wrong about sexual pleasure, any more than about the pleasure of eating. It means that you must not isolate that pleasure and try to get it by itself, any more than you ought to try to get the pleasures of taste without swallowing and digesting, by chewing things and spitting them out again.”

 

Today’s Readings

1 Samuel 25 (Listen – 7:12)
1 Corinthians 6 (Listen – 3:03)