The Limits of Logic
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It is hard to resist the powerfully persuasive logic that says God gave us sex for marital union and that, like prostitution or bestiality, solitary sex must therefore be a perversion of God’s gift. But is this God’s logic? I dare not steer my life – much less the lives of others – while intoxicated by my supposed cleverness.
I have a deep distrust of human logic – be it the product of my intellect, or anyone else’s. Human attempts to fit together pieces of biblical revelation caused the greatest theologians and devout Jewish leaders to arrange the murder of their Messiah. Logic inspired Saul to conclude he was serving God by torturing Christians in the hope they would blaspheme the Son of God. Human logic might conclude that lust is morally harmless.
The biggest limitation of human reasoning is that we have at our disposal only a tiny fraction of the facts. Our understanding of human sexuality and of God’s purposes renders human attempts to see things God’s way like trying to see the picture in a million piece jigsaw when we have only a dozen pieces. When railing against masturbation, a respected Bible commentator’s attempt at logic fell to the ground because it was founded on the medical knowledge of yesteryear, which, like most things human, time has revealed to be inaccurate. Many of my own thoughts will fall if solitary sex does not program our sexual response to the extent that I believe it does, or if it turns out that God puts sexual self-stimulation in a totally different category to anything else to do with sex.
To illustrate the limitations of human reasoning, let’s delve deeper into the implications of applying human reasoning to an indisputable perversion: lesbianism. The Old Testament gets no closer to mentioning sexual relations between women than this:
Leviticus 18:22 Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.
Everyone to whom the Old Covenant applied knew that when the Bible said anything about men, the statement often – but not always – applied with equal force to women. Who would be so stupid as to think that the Tenth Commandment – “you shall not covet your neighbour's wife” – means a woman is free to covet her neighbour's husband? In many Old Testament contexts, “man” simply means human. This is obvious from the very beginning of the Bible:
Genesis 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
In short, “ . . . God created man . . . male and female . . .” “Man” here clearly applies with equal force to both genders.
Nevertheless, the context sometimes indicates that the word is applied solely to males. So logic says, look at the context. And logic also says female sexuality and psychology are not entirely identical to that of males, and lesbianism involves different sexual acts to male homosexuality, so different rules might possibly apply. So let’s examine the context:
Leviticus 18:22-23 Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable. Do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile yourself with it. A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it; that is a perversion.
Oh dear! In the very next verse, when referring to bestiality, it is deemed necessary to specifically mention women. Logic would suggest that the omission of reference to women when forbidding same gender sex must have been very deliberate. The obvious conclusion is that it was omitted because lesbianism is deemed by God to be morally neutral. Even though I could argue against this on the basis of the apparently random way Old Testament laws sometimes specifically mention women and sometimes not, it is hard to resist the force of the logic that says lesbianism must be allowed by God. In other words, human reasoning – even when applied to the very Word of God – could cause someone to wander so far off track that they end up condoning perversion.
Christianity is not the product of human reasoning. It is the revelation of the most powerful Intellect in the universe – the God who made our brain cells. Christianity is not a vain attempt to use tiny human brains to guess the mind of Almighty God. True Christianity is about connecting to the God of the universe, the Designer of our bodies, the Creator of sex, and letting him reveal his ways, which are infinitely superior to our own, and letting him rule in our lives in the perfection of his love and wisdom.
I do not want to be so arrogant as to shatter the divine silence in Scripture by sounding off as if my presumptions were the Word of the Holy One to the entire body of Christ. Instead, I urge all Christians who imagine they have divine approval to indulge in any form of solo sex to get down on their knees and seek the face of God about this.
At times, Scripture gives us examples to help us grasp a divine principle and leaves it to us to connect the dots.
For an obvious example, consider Exodus 23:4:
If you come across your enemy’s ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to take it back to him.
Scripture says nothing about an enemy’s horse or sheep or finding his stolen computer. What if his house is on fire? What if he is sick and his crop needs harvesting? God obviously expects us to use our brains and extrapolate general principles from Scripture’s specific examples. Anyone having the attitude of avoiding only those things Scripture specifically names as forbidden, does not have a heart for God.
More than once the Bible tells us to meditate upon Scripture and to discuss it with each other. Clearly, God expects us to think things through as we prayerfully pursue the mind of God.
I can by no means trust my finite intellect. Nevertheless, everything God does is perfectly rational and consistent. I would therefore need to be particularly cautious about any “guidance” that seems contrary to rational thought. This is especially so when on one side looms the danger of sexual perversion and on the other is merely the possibility of missing a little pleasure (and even the possibility of pleasure is doubtful, since solo sex seems to aggravate one’s frustration and the carrot of satisfaction it dangles before our eyes is largely an illusion).
Add to this the fact that our natural tendency is to try to convince ourselves that self-indulgence is acceptable. Furthermore, if solo sex is sin, the Evil One has a vested interest in deceiving us and he is not beyond giving supernatural “proof” to try to convince us that sin has divine approval. One would therefore need exceptionally clear guidance to go against rational thought and be certain that a decision in favour of Do-It-Yourself sex is not being influenced by our own cravings or by the cunning of the Enemy of our souls.
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