is premarital sex wrong? Part I

On The Ooze I ran into a fellow who brought up an interesting point. The question was, "How do we help out those who have had sex before marriage and feel guilty about it?" Wonderful points were brought up, and then there was one post with the suggestion, "Tell them to stop feeling bad because there's nothing wrong with it." I emailed him asking him what he meant by that, and he gave me two websites to check out promoting that premarital sex is not sinful. If you're interested (and they ARE interesting) they are Liberated Christians and Free Christians.

In reading over the material, and admitting that they had some very good points (often we integrate norms and morays in society into our religion and build values from them), it seemed to me that they were saying premarital sex is O.K. just because scripture never tells us not to do it. One thing that did bother me was that they said that premarital sex is a form of loving others, "and isn't that what Jesus called us to do?"

I agree that we often take social do's and don't's and tie them into religion. "Bad words" is an example. Nowhere in scripture are we commanded to avoid using certain words. We are called to avoid corrupt talk and slander, but this is something completely different from using "bad words" in our speech. Yet can we say that premarital sex as wrong is just a tradition? I don't think so. I think premarital sex is wrong because it doesn't fulfill but rather violates Christ's command to love others in several ways:

1) It degrades the worth of the opposite sex. They become mere sex-objects and mere sex-toys, not real human beings with feelings, emotions, consciences and souls.

2) It dishonors future spouses; this flies right in the face of love. Premarital sex often wreaks mischievous havoc in even strong marriages.

4) It dishonors our bodies - do I even need to mention how it might hurt us physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally?

5) It draws us to be ruled by our own selfish desires rather than us being led by Christ.

And, mostly:

6) Premarital sex does not have anything to do with Christ's love. Premarital sex, as I understand it, is driven by mere passion and impatience, driven by selfish lust. The "love" in that is a selfish, lustful love. The love that Christ embodies is a selfless, serving, sacrificial, and kind agape love. How can such promiscuous sex be Christ's love when it is inherently selfish?

One very good question the Oozer handed to me through his return email: "Should we be anymore concerned with [premarital sex] than with any other sin (such as gluttony, envy, pride, etc.)?" We all know it happens--certain sins are put on a pedestal while others are nearly disregarded (how many Christians will shake their heads at an unwed mother while scarfing down four hundred twinkies?). My reply is thus: "We need a better understanding of sin and we need to just love everybody, regardless of what they've done, what they're doing, or what they're going to do."

The Oozer said that the Bible nowhere condemns premarital sex. In this post I addressed the topic from a philosophical rather than theological stance; in tomorrow’s post, I’ll address it from the scriptures and show that the Bible does, indeed, condemn premarital sex as wrong, and that it is something that should be avoided at all costs.