Reflections on Sexual Ethics
It was quite the sermon yesterday, covering premarital sex, polyamory, porn and masturbation. Phew! Below are some of the quotes from the message that bear more thought and reflection. Which one strikes you most? Why? What might God want to say to you?
“In my pastoral work I’ve started to suspect that the more someone was exposed to religious messages about controlling their desires, avoiding sexual thoughts, and not lusting in their hearts, the less likely they are to be integrated physically, emotionally, sexually, and spiritually. I’ve also noticed that the less integrated physically, emotionally, sexually, and spiritually someone is, the more pornography they tend to consume.” - Pastor Nadia Bolz Weber, Shameless
If masturbation causes you to lust and therefore not love another human, then you should not masturbate. However, if masturbation doesn’t lead you to lust but is about self-pleasure that causes you to know God more and connect to your body more, then masturbation could be a gift. - Kelly Edminston, Shame Free Sex Talk
“... just as humans have eaten sweets since the dawn of time, so too have human beings created erotic images as soon as we figured out how to scratch them on the insides of caves. But what was different a generation ago was that we didn’t have access to things like Slurpees and Pornhub. Both the sweets and the sex available to us 24/7 today are exponentially more condensed in form and more convenient to access than anything our ancestors could have imagined. And I wonder if the cost of this, among other things, is a loss of pleasure, not an abundance of it. Can we enjoy the pleasure of our middle-aged spouse’s body after consuming two straight hours of internet porn featuring impossibly perfect, hairless, willing, youthful actors? How do we appreciate the sweetness of an apple after consuming 32 ounces of Mountain Dew?” - Pastor Nadia Bolz Weber
“The problem with porn is not that it is dirty. The problem with porn is that it’s easy… It lets us have easy orgasms without commitment. We don’t have to learn to listen. We don’t have to develop relational skills. We don’t have to accommodate our partner… We never have to make love.” - Rethinking Sex Ed by Doug Hammack
“I wonder how we could begin to honor sexual pleasure as something that can connect us more deeply to ourselves and others and God, yet still speak the truth about the ways in which our behaviors around sex can also do the opposite. Perhaps we could start by remembering what St. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians: that all things are lawful but not all things are beneficial.” - Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber