On Sexual Immorality
2025-12-19
Today I've been thinking about sexual immorality, a hot-button issue for Christians. As a man living in today's world, it seems that being pure of sexual sin is an unfair deal. The idea of not being able to hook up with anyone before marriage or even engaging in any kind of self-pleasure before marriage is a tough bargain. The whole idea of a "romantic relationship" that is non-marital is a recent cultural invention. It's one that seems to delude us into thinking we can have our cake and eat it too. What we call sexual freedom has quietly hollowed out marriage without giving us anything stable in return.
"Oh, well, I just want to make sure that we're compatible before getting married," says the person who then simulates marriage for three years before ending the relationship and learning nothing.
To me, having a girlfriend or a boyfriend or whatever is a cop-out. We are so doubtful that God will put the right person in our lives that we invent these secularized versions of marriage because we're so afraid that the relationship won't be good enough for us. People wonder why divorce rates appear so high. They wonder why more and more young men are remaining virgins. They wonder why more and more women remain childless or become single mothers.
Today, the act of marriage has become so frivolous that it has become functionally unnecessary. Marriage today is simply a status symbol and a legal tool. The spiritual functions of marriage have been completely abandoned by Western society, and the resulting wounds are only getting deeper. Many of my friends lament the state of dating today. We seem to only be able to hurt ourselves and each other despite everyone's mutual longing for true romantic and sexual connection. We're so busy acting entitled to certain romantic and sexual conditions that we've lost sight of the sanctification of marriage and what it means to truly love a husband or wife.
I know that for me, it's a tough deal. It's tougher to get out there and meet women, especially as I go through my late 20s. More than that, the cultural expectations and the established meta of courting rituals makes it essentially impossible to remain sexually pure. Most women see sexual purity as an oppressive regime, which is understandable when taken into historical context.
It's easy for younger men today to lament women's sexual attitudes and say things like "our grandmothers were such better women than the women of today" but when we look back, our grandfathers were such horrible husbands. Women carry their current attitudes largely due to "traditional" men being chauvinists who didn't properly lead a marriage like they were supposed to, and now we have seen the consequences of this. The cultural deadlock makes us all squirm.
So with that, I think it's completely fair for women to pull back on sexual purity. They had the shitty end of the stick for a long time. Still, it's easy for me to adopt an attitude of resignation towards finding a wife. The game has become unapologetically rigged and it's so easy to throw in the towel. On top of that, the ease of access and novelty of pornography makes it even more difficult to remain sexually pure and show God that I'm ready for marriage.
The women on the screen don't talk back.
They can't hurt me.
I can have my cake and eat it too. All the while, I struggle with feelings of inadequacy and loneliness.
It feels like a tall order to be right with God regarding my sexuality. To me, sexual immorality is one of the strongest challenges we face culturally. The vast majority of people are on the hook with it due to how we have positioned ourselves culturally. The Sexual Revolution of the last century was meant to liberate us sexually, but instead it has made us even more lost and confused. I hope that God will help me with my own sexual sin and show me the way towards a purer expression of my sexuality through finding someone I can trust enough to be comfortable with. Lord knows I've struggled with that for such a long time.