The Rubber Nose of Biblical Sexual Ethics

About a year ago, I read Steve Farrar's Finishing Strong: Going the Distance for Your Family. It's a good small-group book for middle-aged men which advises them to keep striving for moral perfection. Farrar asserts that perhaps only one in ten Christian men are able to reach the end of their lives without hitting major moral failings and that avoiding such requires a conscious and concentrated effort to lead a moral life. But even those men who have wrecked their families or lives can finish the race strongly. Life is a marathon and marathon running necessitates personal self-discipline.

It's a pretty good book. But among other issues, one chapter particularly misused Scripture to prove a point. It addressed the importance of marital fidelity and used the example of King David and Bathsheba. Farrar asserts that David's great fault was his failure to stay loyal to his wife and family. He failed to be a man and he and his family suffered great consequences for it.

There's a serious problem with this reading of the text. David's sin, as it was presented in Scripture, was not that he was disloyal to his own wife, but that he bedded the wife of another man. His sin was not against his own family, but against Uriah by trespassing on his sexual property.

Farrar is right: it's wrong to cheat on your wife and violate your marriage covenant. But that moral statement cannot be supported through this passage in 2 Samuel.

Such mistreatment of what the Bible says about sexual ethics is commonplace. Yes, the Bible condemns adultery. But how does it define adultery?

It is clearly an offense against the husband in the Mosaic Law. A woman has no cause for complaint if her husband sleeps with another woman. There is no implication that an adulterous husband sins against his wife until the time of Malachi. The pervasive sense in the OT is that adultery is primarily a form of theft against the cuckolded husband.

Jesus extends Malachi's teaching to assert that adultery is an offense against the woman in Mark. Matthew's Jesus, however, takes the same source material and says that a man only commits adultery himself when he takes an already-married woman. In the same gospel, Jesus says that even contemplating such activity is itself a sin.

Paul echoes Jesus by asserting that a woman commits adultery if she divorces her husband and marries another. Otherwise, the NT is silent about about the parameters of adultery, but makes general condemnations of the practice. The epistolary writers apparently assumed that their readers knew what they are talking about by the word 'adultery'.

But we can't make that assumption when explaining what the Bible says about sexual ethics. There was clearly a change in the definition of adultery over Israelite history and much of that definition would not square with the sexual ethics of modern American Christianity. We believe that a wife is wronged with a husband is adulterous. Steve Farrar would agree with that statement, as would Malachi and Mark's Jesus. The prophet Nathan, who Farrar quoted, however, would not.

I'm certainly not advocating a libertine Christian sexuality. Quite the opposite. But I am saying that the Biblical portrait of sexual behavior is complex. Terms like 'adultery' and 'fornication' -- and yes, even homosexuality -- must be studied in such a way that we do not conflate modern and ancient understandings.

These thoughts came to mind as I read Every Man's Battle and Every Woman's Battle for a class. They're good books that provide practical advice on important subjects. But their explanation of Biblical sexuality consists of pretty sloppy prooftexting. It's not enough to point out that the Bible teaches against sexual immorality and impurity (Man's 45-47). These terms must be defined because we have no reason to believe that the cultures of modern America and 1st Century Judea attached identical definitions.

When I read Finishing Strong in a small group, I spotted the David/Bathsheba error immediately. None of the other men did, but instead expressed admiration at Farrar's teaching. It was, of course, correct: it is wrong and wimpy to cheat on one's wife.

I kept my mouth shut and did not point out the egregious exegetical error. I didn't want to undermine the legitimacy of Farrar's point.

But on such a critical topic as sexual purity, would pop Christian authors not aid themselves by basing their writings on sound exegesis? And if their goal is to encourage Christian men and women to live holy lives, do they not hinder their goal by misusing Scripture?