Pondering Marriage, Sexuality, and My Future

I've been finding myself thinking about marriage a lot lately. I've had a lot of questions. What is marriage, really, if you boil it down? Why does marriage exist? I write here today to ponder these questions (and more), and I really mean ponder. I'm typing this up as a way to force myself to think through these ideas and get them out of my head. I don't know that I'll find any answers in so doing, but hopefully it'll leave me with something to share with others to get their input.

These thoughts have been prompted by a number of things. One of those things has been reading about the history of misogyny as recorded in Naked Feminism: Breaking the Cult of Female Modesty by Victoria Bateman. Another has been people I follow online, primarily on Twitter, who have presented ideas and concepts about sex and sexuality that were foreign to me, ideas that raise questions in my mind. One of those big questions is: what is sexual immorality? As I've pondered the Scriptures, I find myself surprisingly unclear on God's sexual ethic.

Superficially, God's sexual ethic seems simple. Certainly, the church has its teachings, its concept of a "traditional" view of marriage...except, is it really traditional? The Christian church teaches monogamy, but that's clearly a newer view of marriage insomuch as many of the famous Jews written about in the Old Testament of the Bible had multiple wives. When God rebukes David for the whole raping Bathsheba incident, God states that He gave Saul's wives into David's arms. The main place I see monogamy asserted is in the New Testament, and primarily where Paul is giving his guidance regarding the selection of church leaders. Also, incest is presented as wrong (the Mosaic law clearly bans it), and yet God insisted that Abraham's "child of promise" (a.k.a. Isaac) would be born to Abraham's wife and half-sister, Sarah.

Going back to the first question ("What is marriage?"), it seems to me that marriage consists of two parts, at least modernly: a familial pledge and a pledge of sexual exclusivity. These are somewhat intertwined in the traditional vows, at least as best as I remember them, but I think it's worth expounding on them a bit. The familial pledge is a promise to treat each other as family. That seems an inherent part of marriage to me, and as I've been thinking about it, it seems to me the key part of marriage. I'll speak more on this later. A promise of sexual exclusivity is also typically included; that is, an agreement to not be sexually intimate with anyone else. Of course, what is included in that is somewhat vague, since there's also the idea of "emotional affairs"—clearly, there is some other component here. It's quite possible that I'm not able to understand this component due to being aromantic. Perhaps we've tried to construct a one-size-fits-all concept of marriage, but...OK, the metaphor my brain wants to use here is the Commander format for Magic: The Gathering. This is the dominant form of casual play (rather than tournament play), but there are a lot of challenges when it comes to agreeing about how powerful decks should be and what sorts of capabilities they should have. A mismatch of desires and expectations here can result in very unfun games, but even more than that, it has pushed out other options for casual play. Not everyone enjoys Commander, but it often seems like the only option available. It seems possible to me that marriage maybe runs into similar issues? Like, we have one basic model of marriage that is presented to us as the form of a committed sexual relationship, but maybe that model isn't actually right for everyone.

That paragraph was getting too long. Remember, I'm just brainstorming here, for the most part. I should probably explain what "aromantic" means. That seems like a good idea. So, all it really means is that I don't "get" romance. I don't know what makes a romantic relationship a romantic relationship. I understand friendship, but I fundamentally don't understand what the "special sauce" that makes a romantic relationship distinctly different from a friendship is. When I think about my desires, I want a friendship that includes sex. That's what I'd want from a spouse. Basically, a committed "friends with benefits" type of relationship.

Getting back to the questions, there's also the "why is marriage?" question. This one seems really important. Like, have you ever asked yourself, "why does marriage exist?" It's kind of like...why does bread exist? Like, there are so many things that we're just used to existing that we never question. Bread exists because somebody somewhere decided to mash grain up and bake it. How'd they get to that idea? I have no clue. It exists because it functioned well as a food, I suppose. It certainly seems more convenient to transport than a bunch of roasted grain.

I'm digressing. Let's return to the question of the existence of marriage. Naked Feminism, as mentioned above, has led me to the conclusion that marriage exists because men wanted to control female reproduction so that they could ensure their lineage; likely, this happened for inheritance reasons. You see, it's pretty obvious who someone's mother is, what with her having to give birth to them, but the father is far more ambiguous. Sure, there are some clues, such as traits, but really, that only gets you so far, what with how genetics works. These days, we can use DNA tests, but those have historically not existed. Thus, the only way for a man to ensure that a woman's children were his was to ensure that she didn't have sex with any other men. Hence the sexual exclusivity of marriage, which has historically applied far more to women than it has to men.

This brings us to Genesis 2:24, the only verse that seems to me remotely reasonable to use to argue that God invented marriage, rather than men inventing it as a way to own women's uteruses. In the NIV, it reads: "That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh." This is a key verse that is referenced for both marriage and sex.

There are a few things that strike me as particularly interesting about this verse. The first is the assertion that the man leaves his parents. Historically speaking, it has typically been the woman that leaves her family and joins her husband's family, and yet this asserts the reverse. In modern Western culture, we are likely to associate this verse with a man leaving the home and becoming an independent adult, but I'll point out that both men and women do that, and in any case, that does not require marriage. Indeed, many singles leave their parents. Genesis 2:24 feels like it's talking about something more significant.

Also of interest, this is coming off of something in the previous verse: Adam stating about Eve, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." This kind of language is often used in a familial context. In this passage, it is also contrasting Eve with all of the animals and the grand naming ceremony of Genesis 2:19-20, which I find notable (remember this for later).

You see, "one flesh" is kind of an odd phrase. There is a very practical interpretation to it, of course: that of procreation. In a very real sense, the sperm of the man and the egg of the woman are united and become one flesh in the form of a new human being. This interpretation is compelling to me simply because it makes so much sense; however, Jesus uses this verse when talking about marriage and Paul uses it when talking about sex, so while Jesus (as God) may have known of the sperm/egg/child possible interpretation (I find it doubtful Paul would've known given the state of science in those days), this practical interpretation is clearly not how it was understood, at least in those contexts.

Of course, as I'm a virgin at this point, I recognize I don't have a clear understanding of sex. While I do expect that to change at some point (and God willing, relatively soon), I am currently operating under a great deal of guesswork. There very well may be an aspect of sex that creates this "one flesh," but if so, I am presently ignorant to it in any real way. All I can work on right now are hypotheticals. So, presently I can account for the following interpretations of the sentiment: the two become one flesh literally by having a child, the two become "one flesh" in some metaphysical sense I am presently unaware of (but acknowledge could exist), or the two become family. It very well could encompass all of these interpretations, mind you.

Regardless of how you interpret it, however, I don't inherently see sexual exclusivity as a part of this; instead, I primarily see arguments for family. My current sense of this is that marriage as we understand it presently carries with it an aspect of both the divinely created familial bond and the manmade (literally) control of reproduction in the form of sexual exclusivity. The main point of adjustment over historical concepts of marriage (when compared to modern concepts) is a significantly greater emphasis on husbands being exclusive to their wives, which has resulted in an emphasis on monogamy, rather than the historically more common polygyny (a man married to many women, a specific subset of the polygamy concept).

This brings us neatly to sexual sin. I have found this to be difficult to wrap my head around for several significant reasons. One is the way the New Testament writes about this. Many modern translations use the horrendously ambiguous phrase "sexual immorality." This means about as much as "American values," a phrase used to avoid committing to any specific values, instead allowing the hearer to insert their own values as some sort of assumed default. As a phrase, "sexual immorality" simply does not tell you what actually is sexually immoral; rather, it merely asserts that some things are sexually immoral.

To be sure, sexual sin is clearly a serious danger. The Old and New Testaments warn against it in various ways. But what does it actually consist of? That's what I want to spend some time now pondering.

First and foremost, we have the clearly named sin of adultery. This is a violation of marriage in some sexual way; primarily, it would seem, by having sexual relations with someone other than your spouse. But what if you've married multiple people? Like, did the wives of David have any say when he added another woman to their number? What makes polygamy not adultery? This isn't an insignificant question!

When we look at the Mosaic law, it does provide us some information about adultery, but the way it's presented almost seems like a violation of the woman specifically. The feeling I get is the issue is that a man is causing a woman to violate her sexual exclusivity with her husband. In other words, a man must honor the marriage of his fellow man by not having sex with the other man's wife. I don't know if I've succeeded in making my point clear here, but it doesn't feel like, based on the Mosaic law, that a married man can commit adultery unless he has sex with a married woman that he isn't married to. That is, it is the woman's marital status that matters when determining adultery, not the man's. This is treating the woman as property, which aligns with my previous assertions about the origins of marriage.

Now, why God would present things this way in the Mosaic law I can but guess. However, God has a long history of working with humanity, and the purpose of the Mosaic law was to serve as a guardian teacher until such time as the true morality, centered in godly love, was made known. As such, the Mosaic law is inherently rooted in ancient Hebrew culture, as law cannot be divorced from culture; the two are intrinsically linked, with law flowing from culture.

This is part of why I find God's sexual ethic so difficult to discern. All human sexuality is affected by the Fall, while God's pure sexual ethic would inherently not be. Thus, the Scriptures often reflect what I can only conclude is a distorted view of God's sexual ethic, distorted inherently by culture. It is almost certainly true that this happens with our own cultures in an axiomatic way (that is, it cannot be avoided).

Returning, then, to the question of adultery: modernly, we understand it as a violation of the marriage vows, typically that of sexual exclusivity. If a marriage consisted only of the familial vow (and I cannot see why that could not be), then adultery in the modern sense of the word could not happen in that marriage. This is the "open marriage" of polyamory; those who conduct themselves in this regard hold onto the familial pledge while eschewing the promise of sexual exclusivity. To be clear, it seems to me that the sin of adultery rests not in the sex itself, but in the breaking of the vow/oath.

Another obvious form of sexual sin is sexual assault (rape, molestation, etc.). These all stem from the same root, which is a violation of autonomy, or more precisely, a lack of consent. I'd also include things like nonconsensual voyeurism and other violations of privacy here. There is little more to say about these, in my mind, simply because it's a rather clear topic. An act may be innocent with consent and sinful without. There is some complexity when it comes to navigating consent, but with maturity, it can decidedly be done. Godly love helps tremendously here, since it prioritizes others.

Lust also results in a kind of sexual sin, though it is perhaps more proper to see it as a root of sins, the seed from which they grow. Lust has to do with dehumanization, and I've written about it extensively and have little interest in repeating myself. Simply put, it sees others as mere tools to one's own gratification, which enables all kinds of abuses. (Speaking of which, sexual abuse was already covered in the previous paragraph, though admittedly in an implicit way.)

Bestiality is explicitly called out as a sin in Leviticus, though it's also implied in Genesis, as a partner for Adam was not found among the animals, hence the creation of Eve. (The framing of that section is a bit weird, though, when you think about it. Like, was Adam supposed to find a partner/mate among the animals?) Likewise, Leviticus is against incest, though I think a significant reason for that has to do with the negative genetic effects of children born through incest. I have a whole long thought experiment about human life spans related to this.

To write about that thought experiment as an aside, the Bible claims that before the flood of Noah's day, humans often lived to be hundreds of years old (some even living to be nearly a thousand). My thought here is that human genetics were significantly stronger at that time. The natural world may also have been less hostile. I see it as incredibly likely that many diseases hadn't yet evolved (I'm certain microorganisms existed before the Fall, but I also suspect that none of them were hostile to life until afterwards, when mutations and evolutionary forces from a fallen world resulted in them becoming diseases). For clarity, I have some issues with the broader theory of evolution, but some aspects of it, primarily those related to natural selection within certain taxonomical levels, does seem correct to me. Anyway, due to the mass extinction event of the Flood, human populations were constrained considerably, which would've forced inbreeding. Then there's the tower of Babel, which would've further segregated the human population into smaller breeding groups. Combine that with the general popularity of incest (Abraham marrying his half-sister Sarah, Lot's daughters having children by him after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the common practice of finding a spouse from one's relatives like with Isaac and Jacob, not to mention one of Abraham's brothers marrying their niece—reading Genesis reveals some very tightly woven family trees), and human genetics get really narrowed. Then there's disease epidemics, mass slaughter in war, famines...a lot of things have served to affect and select human genetics. All of that to say that it is my untestable hypothesis that the repeated mass loss of genetic diversity, especially from the Flood, are at fault for the dramatically shorter lifespans that we see following that event, and in general through to today.

Hopefully that digression made sense. I enjoyed writing it. Anyway, my point is that incest is bad for genetics and children, which is a very good reason to prohibit it.

I'm not sure what else would constitute sexual sin. There is definitely the general issue of making anything into an idol, but I would classify that as idolatry.

Oh! Of course, after taking a break to sleep, I naturally thought of a few more things I ought to mention.

First up is masturbation. Frankly, there is nothing inherently sinful about this so far as I can discern. The fact that asceticism (which is anti-physical pleasure, especially sexual pleasure) has to somehow try to pretend that Onan sexually abusing Tamar is masturbation to find any sort of Biblical case against it is evidence enough, I think. Now, this isn't to say that I don't think people can't masturbate in a harmful or sinful way. For example, masturbating instead of having sexual relations with your spouse when they want those relations seems wrong to me. I think masturbation can also be done in service of lust, but that's not automatically the case.

This brings me to pornography, which is often associated with masturbation. As I've said before, I don't consider pornography itself, nor viewing it, as inherently sinful (though I find quite a lot of it distasteful). I do think people can engage with it in sinful ways, and I also think that those ways are common—and arguably default—ways of engaging with it. To be clear, for me to consider viewing it sinful, doing so has to create harm in relationships. This commonly manifests as a compulsive behavior, but similar compulsions can happen with all sorts of media, such as video games. This is a more complex topic, though, and one I'm not entirely qualified to discuss. Of course, lust, and the lustful application of masturbation, can also become problems here, but just because they can become problems doesn't mean they inherently have to. Frankly, the "grass is always greener" issue is also a big problem that can arise (lust often creates an appealing fantasy, after all), but that also happens with media generally, since the complexity of life gets glossed over.

And then there's prostitution. This is a complex topic that often isn't treated as one. Let's first address the elephant in the room: coerced prostitution. The biggest coercer is economics. If we want people to only get into prostitution because they want to, we have to remove the reasons why they feel like they have to, which is primarily poverty. If you want to reduce how many people become prostitutes, improve your social safety net. Another aspect of prostitution, and something that fuels demand, is that people need intimacy, especially sexual intimacy. There is a lot to reckon with here, and I myself have very uncertain feelings. On the one hand, Paul very clearly instructs Christians to not have sex with prostitutes. On the other hand, we have God instructing the prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute (and buy time with her), and we have the prostitute Rahab welcomed into the community of Israel. There's a long, idolatrous history of prostitution being a part of pagan worship, too. Frankly, I don't know what to think about this overall from a moral sense, but I do want Christians to stop persecuting prostitutes. I want them to be able to feel welcome in the church.

And this is at the crux of what I really want to talk about here: the double whammy that anyone whose sexuality does not match the cultural norm is judged, and sexuality is considered representative of someone's entire morality. Though, in practice, this isn't always the case (so many church sex abuse scandals prove otherwise...), but it can certainly seem like this is the case. Perhaps it's that women bear a greater brunt of this kind of moral reductivism?

Oh, and if you want my thoughts on homosexuality, you can read them here. My basic stance hasn't changed since I wrote that five years ago (though some surrounding thoughts may be different), which is fundamentally that everyone should live according to their convictions on the matter. I'm not gay, so it doesn't impact me personally.

Well, that's quite enough thinking about sexual sins. Honestly, I'm not sure if I'm more clear on the matter than when I began, but I suppose I am somewhat. As mentioned when discussing incest, there does seem to be cause to take into account the possible product of sex, that is children, when it comes to considering sexual ethics. I'm not quite sure how that fits into discussions of sexual sin, but I do feel it bears mentioning. Modern contraceptives definitely complicate that discussion. Sexually transmitted infections are also a significant point of consideration.

Right, well, that's enough preamble. Yes, I said that right: preamble. You see, I wrote the majority of the previous text (everything up to the comment about taking a break to sleep several paragraphs ago) several nights ago when I was unable to sleep. I wrote it between around midnight and 1:40 AM in something of an activity frenzy. I was eventually able to get a few hours of sleep a bit later, but it was a rough night.

And what caused me to have difficulty sleeping that also put all of the above topics in my mind, so much so that I spilled them forth on the page? Why, nothing less than the literally-gut-wrenching, sheer terror of hearing (how do I even word this?) that God would functionally give me two wives. I felt a visceral sense of grounding details that made it feel inevitably real (and writing about this has triggered the terror-reaction all over again, a second trauma).

Superficially, the idea of two wives does appeal to me for many reasons, but that doesn't matter here. No, what matters is the abject terror of social consequences stemming from it. All at once, I went from being the sexual majority to feeling like a sexual minority, one not recognized by society and condemned by Christianity. I can only imagine that I felt something similar to what someone feels when they realize they're gay.

Now, I could be hearing incorrectly. Until even just a month ago, I would've thought that I would've had to have heard wrongly. But prayer seeking clarification has almost (but not entirely) been confirmation that I heard rightly. This is terrifying. I cannot emphasize this enough.

But why is it terrifying? Am I scared of the challenge of balancing the relationships? No, provided everyone is acting maturely, open with communication, and honest, that should be quite doable. Challenging, I'm sure, but doable.

No, the terror does not come from the relationships themselves. It comes from the social consequences, from the stigma surrounding such relationships. How would this affect my relationships with my parents? With my church (I love my church)? Would these people, who are important to me, be able to accept this? Would they consider it from God? Or would they condemn me like the 1 Corinthian man?

Simply put, I do not know. Well, I'm confident that my parents would still love me, and that they wouldn't reject me. I'm not sure how things would go with church. (Speaking more generally, the way the Christian church uses sexuality to gatekeep Christ is wrong, and it's arguably the biggest sexual sin there is.)

I'm not even talking about open relationships here. I'm talking about a three-person polycule (a man and two women). I am also uncertain as to what purpose God may have with this, why Jesus would want it. I said previously that it has appeal to me, yes, but it wasn't something I was (or even am, really) seeking for myself. And yet, as I pray here (as I was taking a pause from typing), I hear that it's "right for me...very much so." What am I to do with that?

Well, if this is a prophetic word to me, all I can say is that prophecies are proven right or wrong by the passage of time—and in this case, if I've been hearing rightly, God has given Himself a deadline: within four years. My desire is to follow Christ wherever He will lead me. I trust that leadership is full of purpose, wisdom, and His righteousness. I need no other righteousness than His, anyway, even as I'd feel tempted to try to grasp the world's—nay, the church's—righteousness. But tradition is not able to save, regardless of the origin. The only salvation, the only hope of resurrection into a perfect society, one built on love, is found in the name of Jesus.

My only final thought is this: regardless of how many, I only want to have sex with sisters in Christ.

As always, thank you for reading.

You can support Sientir in his creative endeavors by subscribing to his Patreon or sharing his work.