Sex and Humanism: Good Sex Without God!

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First, Discuss Humanism

You wanna know what I like about humanistic psychology (humanism)? It holds the specific conviction that humans are “innately good.” I like this, because it is contrary to Christianity’s core claim that humans are inherently sinful and in need of a Savior. 

While Christianity asserts that God is our Determiner, humanistic psychology states that we are self-determiners. Humanistic psychology is hopeful about mankind’s intentionality and ethical values as exclusive determining forces, whereas Christianity argues that we are hopeless without God stepping in as the essence or source of goodness. Humanistic psychology focuses on mankind as the producers of awareness, freedom, responsibility, life-affirmations, and trustworthiness. Christianity, on the other hand, argues that all of that is impossible without God.  

If you ask me, any nonbeliever who has even a morsel or fraction of those positive qualities is evidence against Christianity’s core claim. 

It amazes me that humanistic psychology and Christianity are pursuing the same goals but cannot agree on the source or the inspiration of it all. When addressing the source, they philosophically diverge so far away from each other.

Now, Discuss Sex

If you have a lot of experience with relationships, you probably have figured out that determination, freedom, awareness, responsibility, trustworthiness, goodness, and affirmations are relevant to sex. But what is the truth on the source of these things in relation to sex? 

Religion has monopolized the truth about sex for a long time. Much longer than necessary. Certain people in Christianity want to define the meaning of sex for us by saying that God has designed it to occur in a certain way, time, or place. You become deviant if you go outside His boundary lines.  

I like these words from certified sex therapist and licensed marriage therapist, Marty Klein:  

“Humanists understand that sex has no meaning—which makes it a rich opportunity.” 

We could argue that human procreation is the purpose of sex. But there is no intrinsic meaning, goal, or purpose, that is to say, there is no meaning outside of what we impose upon sex. We are responsible. But our meaning-making brains can turn awry at times and divert us away from what we all really want and need from the matter. Hence, Marty Klein’s words below makes  sense to me: 

“Some people are scared about sex, and are therefore superstitious. Some people believe sexual morality is impossible without religion. The Religious Right uses the issue of sexual regulation to undermine secular democracy.”

Every Young Man’s Battle

As I revisit the book Every Young Man’s Battle, a Christian book on sexual purity that influenced my adolescence, I am forced to see the sexual regulation that tricked me into consenting to the subversion of my sexual autonomy. 

No, this is not a diatribe against sexual modesty, saying that all men should romp around in every bed in town. Instead, this is a diatribe against the dogma that a man automatically becomes evil just for having private sexual thoughts.  

In chapter 5, Fred Stoeker tells a story about feeling guilty about looking at lingerie models in the women’s section of the Sunday newspaper. He quit porn and his depraved affairs after a couple of years into his “wonderful new life in Christ”, but still found himself fantasizing about women. He even felt guilty about having some sexual humor. To him, that meant sexual depravity was “hiding out” in his life. His eyes “were ravenous heat-seekers searching the horizon, locking on any target with sensual heat.” All of his private thought struggles would eventually force him to define himself as finding a “comfortable middle ground somewhere between paganism and obedience to God’s standards.” 

To me, this reeks of perfectionism. If you are like Fred at all, fantasizing about women, then you are bad, lustful, distant from God, and lacking potential for a successful love life. That is how the book made me feel as an adolescent. I had incessant guilt, since I could never shake that feeling of lust and distance from God. 

He states:

“I might have been the only man in history to attend a married couples’ class for a whole year without even having so much as a single date! But just before the twelve-month mark, I prayed this simple prayer: Lord, I’ve been in this class for a year and have learned a lot about women, but I don’t know any Christian girls. Please show me a woman who embodies these godly characteristics. I wasn’t asking for a date, girlfriend, or spouse. I just wanted to meet someone with these godly characteristics so I might understand them better. God did far more than that. One week later, He introduced me to my future wife, Brenda, and we fell in love.” (pg. 42) 

As an adolescent, this made me feel that my love life or dating life cannot succeed without divine intervention. Abstain from dating long enough, then ask God for a wife, and maybe I will meet her soon. I figured my situation would not occur exactly like Fred’s. But something supernatural had to happen. My dating life had to be like some type of fairy tale to relay to others. I had to be like Fred, a bedraggled moral mess who would eventually become like a chivalrous prince. 

Fred agonized over the fact that Brenda was a virgin and he was not. He made it clear that you do not want to end up like him, feeling dirty and tormented by the past. 

Even if your actions are not sexual, you are still missing the mark if your thoughts are sexual:

“I finally made the connection between my sexual immorality and my distance from God. Having eliminated the visible adulteries and pornography, and having avoided physical adultery, I looked pure on the outside to everyone else. But to God, I had stopped short, and I’d ignored His voice repeatedly as He prodded me in these areas.” (pg. 43) 

Like Fred who could not stop looking at lingerie pictures in the newspaper and sexy women on the street, he estimates that many other Christian men are in “sexual slavery.” He cites a specific couple as a example: the two cannot stop renting X-rated movies with sex scenes. Every time a sex scene pops up, she walks into another room after urging him to not watch the sex scenes. He feels that shutting it off means he has wasted his money, so he continues watching. Fred uses a youth pastor’s observations of his flock as another example of rampant sexual immorality. The causes of sexual impurity among the flock all boil down to laziness, apathy, a greater desire for acceptance among peers, and a lack of authenticity (pg. 46 & 47).  

If you ask me, I see a poor generalization there. We cannot gauge sexual immorality or human sexual nature based on a small sample of youth group kids. But that is the evangelical Christianity I was raised on: poor and pitiful generalizations about everyone else who are falling short, probably fake, and drowning in a sexual swamp.

Matthew, you better work hard to prove your authenticity or else risk being like all the others who are probably going to Hell.  

No wonder my self-esteem was so low in my upbringing. I had to start rebuilding myself at age 20 when I finally accepted the fact that sex is a way of life.

It was around that age when I had my first sexual encounter. I felt so overwhelmed by the feeling of disappointing God. I called my mother on the phone and said I had to kill myself in order to escape God’s wrath. I was so embarrassed by my own spoken words that night. My mother was afraid that maybe I had Bipolar Disorder and asked me to seek help immediately.

In Closing…

The central premise that I gather from the book is that I should monitor my thoughts, because I want to be careful about how they translate into actions. If I do not want my girlfriend/wife aiming her heat-seeking missiles at other men, I am obligated to not aim mine at other women. But if I falter at times and look at another beautiful woman, am I truly an evil, unfaithful man? Do I need to grab the whip and begin self-flagellation? Perhaps one night of porn-watching is not enough to condemn me to sleeping in the basement instead of our upstairs bed. Although she is free to disagree. I really do not recommend regular porn-watching while in a relationship with a woman. I would prefer to focus on her solely. 

But being raised on Christian sexual purity, like the kind promoted in Every Young Man’s Battle, made me treat thoughts and actions as though they are equivalent.

However, let me be clear: 

Getting under the sheets with someone else, against your partner’s consent, is a form of betrayal. Emotional affairs are a thing. Premeditated cheating definitely makes you questionable. Fantasizing a lot about other people most definitely means something significant. I am no certified counselor or psychologist, but something must be said to diminish the shame that typically accompanies sexual temptations or private thought struggles. 

Adding an invisible, all-powerful, punitive entity to my self-monitoring has always felt bizarre and stressful for me. Including God always made me feel like I cannot trust myself to do the right thing. Actually, that is what Christianity claims: we cannot do right without God.

But what do we truly think will happen to a man if we ease the tension and shame? Do we truly think that unbridled debauchery will be the consequence? Or is the tension intensified by the belief that his sexual thoughts make him evil? A sincere belief that I need God to monitor my thoughts only makes me feel like I might aggressively spin out of control into a sexual frenzy that will give me a mouthful and a penis-full of incurable diseases. That is an irrational feeling that perhaps can be diminished by the realization that I am made less evil by the fact that I can decide whether these thoughts spin me out of control.  

Humanistic psychology states that I am my own determiner. I am innately good. I have choice and creativity. I have awareness, freedom, responsibility, and trustworthiness by my nature alone. That runs contrary to evangelical Christianity’s claim that I have to primarily aim to please God who gives me those positive qualities. It is all about Him, and not me. So, abstinence from sexual sin is not primarily about her, though her pain would be the most visible consequence of my mistakes.

Why can I not just abstain from sexual infidelity for its sake alone? Why do I have to do it for someone whose existence I cannot prove? Why can I not have moral decency itself as my sole goal? Why can I not just do it for her? She alone helps to simplify things as we eliminate the invisible intermediary.

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