Hello Julia,
I hope you’re doing well today, and thank you for the post. You said, “Many Christians in their earlier years are not so much told about sex as a sin — or even the usage of pornography or masturbation — as this is a taboo and intimate topic.”
This really struck me because I think you’re right. In the past, Christian sexual ethics were pointed to as a strong witness to the truth of the Christian faith. But today many Christians barely do better than their non-believing counterparts.
In today’s overly sexualized culture, many Christian youths are not even taught that certain sexual behaviors are sinful. In fact, Christian sexual ethics have degraded to the point that many times things like masturbation aren’t even considered sins by their leaders. I remember Dr. Dobson mentioning the subject in his course Bringing Up Boys, saying the subject shouldn’t even be addressed with them because it would just cause embarrassment and that the Bible doesn’t mention it anyway. While I grant him that Scripture doesn’t mention it directly — with perhaps the exception of Onan spilling his seed in Genesis 38 — the concept of why it is sinful is quite clear, and the traditional Christian teaching against it through the centuries has also been clear.
I know of many other prominent Christian leaders who take similar stances as Dobson. I think this is a real scandal to the world — not just that Christians in large numbers are not following sexual ethics any better than the rest of the world, but that, in some cases, they can’t even agree on what those ethics are.
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Bibliography
Dobson, James. Bringing Up Boys. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2001.
Holy Bible. Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006.
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