END SEXUAL ABUSE: The Fence That Was Never There, and the Theology That Keeps Getting Children Hurt

Preface: Why This Matters Now

Every few months another story breaks. The details differ, but the pattern is agonizingly familiar: a trusted man in a position of spiritual authority — someone who preached sexual purity with visible zeal — has been quietly destroying the lives of children or other vulnerable people for years, sometimes decades, while the institution around him looked the other way or actively covered for him.

Outsiders notice this pattern. They bring it up on the internet with understandable contempt. Christians are left stammering, and the contempt is earned.

There is a direct, traceable, theologically grounded connection between the adoption of extra-biblical, man-made sexual prohibitions and the specific kind of predatory behavior that keeps making headlines. The argument is not that Christianity causes abuse. The argument is that a particular distortion of Christianity — one that piled Greek philosophical asceticism and centuries of celibate-commentariat speculation on top of actual Scripture — creates conditions that the Accuser has repeatedly and successfully exploited.

The Reformation was right about grace. It was incomplete about everything else. There is still mold to scrape off the cheese.

Before we get started, one of the questions Christians ask over and over is, "Okay...so what are the rules now?"

First, Jesus was asked, "What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?" He answered, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent" (John 6:28-29). Faith in Christ isn't merely one command among many. Jesus called it the work God requires. It is the foundation of our unity with Christ, and therefore our new birth through our co-crucifixion and shared (eternal) resurrection life (John 17:20-26).

Then, on the night before He was crucified, Jesus gave His disciples what He explicitly called "a new commandment": love one another as He has loved us (John 13:34-35). He said that right after meeting a present, practical need; Jesus didn’t wash every foot in Jerusalem every day. The apostles repeatedly explain that genuine love (with “love” in Hebrew being more about faithful/loyal actions like “don’t cheat people” than fuzzy feelings) naturally fulfills everything else that God desires toward our fellow man.

The Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 gave Gentile believers four additional instructions. Jesus had already given the apostles authority to bind and loose (Matthew 18:18), and after discussing the matter, they instructed Gentile believers to abstain from idolatry, sexual immorality, meat from strangled animals, and blood (Acts 15:20). These weren't random ceremonial rules. They closely resemble the ancient obligations that Jewish tradition associated with all humanity through Noah rather than Israel through Moses. These were the universally-applicable rules that were not already obvious from “believe” and “love”. The council specifically concluded that Gentiles were not to be placed under the Mosaic Law, making little sense if they immediately intended to reimpose hundreds of Mosaic regulations by implication. The Book of Hebrews is clear about the obsolescence of the Old Covenant (Hebrews 8:13), and Paul repeatedly says we’re dead to the Law of Moses, not under it, not being tutored by it, etc. 

Let’s consider "sexual immorality"; if Acts 15 is describing universal obligations for Gentiles rather than placing them under Sinai, then the natural place to define that phrase is the very chapters where God judged the Gentile nations before Israel ever occupied Canaan. Leviticus 18 repeatedly says the Canaanites were expelled because of things like specific sexual practices, and Leviticus 20 repeats that warning. Those prohibitions weren't grounded in Israel's covenant with Moses, but in God's moral expectations for everyone.

Paul's later discussions about food sacrificed to idols enlighten us more. He never treats the decree as an excuse to invent endless behavior-adjacent prohibitions. Buying meat at the marketplace wasn't sinful simply because it might once have been offered before an idol. Eating whatever was set before them when dining with unbelievers wasn't sinful if no one raised the issue. The concern was participation in the specific idolatrous practice itself, not every remote connection to it. Scripture names actual behaviors, not imaginary chains of association. Therefore, it’s only about the exact enumerated behaviors. Believe, love, and don’t do the things your new heart doesn’t really want (and even pagan kings in Genesis knew they should avoid adultery). The New Covenant is gloriously simple—not because holiness became optional, but because righteousness is found in Christ working in us (Philippians 2:13) instead of an ever-expanding list of man-made rules.

What about all the other instructions scattered through the epistles? They aren't a second Mount Sinai hiding in the back of your New Testament. They're descriptions and encouragements for people who already belong to Christ. The Holy Spirit produces His fruit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23)—and the apostles continually urge believers to walk in step with Him. At the same time, they regularly appeal to another principle: don't needlessly bring shame on the name of Jesus. Work honestly so outsiders respect you. Keep your word. Be kind. Forgive quickly. Live peacefully whenever possible. Don't hand critics easy ammunition. Time and again Paul explains that Christians should conduct themselves in ways that adorn the gospel, silence needless accusations, and display the character of the Savior they proclaim. The emphasis is less "Here are 613 new rules," and more "This is what life looks like when Christ lives in His people."

Made-up extra rules (and humans’ predictable failure to follow them) matter because children are getting hurt. The name of Jesus Christ is being dragged through the mud by men who claimed to speak for Him. The text — the actual text, in its original context — never required what these men were told it required.

Let's start there.

Part One: The Fence That Was Never in the Bible

I want to give Christians some peace. I am about to make a statement that will be easy to agree with at first, but has many implications that Christian groups on both ends of the political spectrum and that believers through most of history have failed to cope with: God’s standard for sexual morality is consistent throughout Scripture. There, that wasn’t so bad, right? 

The Pharisees were serious people. Their goal was to be "set apart." They cared enough about honoring God that they invented extra rules — a fence around the Law — to make sure they never accidentally got close to violating it. Jesus did not compliment them for this. He said their additions were a heavy yoke that nobody could carry, and that they weren't lifting a finger to help (Matthew 23:4). His yoke, He said, is easy. His burden is light.

The Pharisee spirit did not die in the first century. It has found a comfortable home in every generation of Christianity since, and it operates by a reliable mechanism: a cultural assumption gets attached to a biblical text, the assumption gets repeated until it feels like what the text says, and eventually the assumption is the text, as far as most readers are concerned. The question worth asking, every time, is the one the Jerusalem Council asked in Acts 15: what does the text actually require, and what did we just kind of... add?

On the subject of sexuality, Christians have added an enormous amount. Three sources did most of the damage.

Greek philosophy. Aristotle taught that semen contained the generative essence of life (pneuma), and that its highest purpose — its telos — was new life. Aristotelian logic then held that things should only be used for their telos. This idea had massive influence on educated early Christian writers, not because it came from Scripture, but because those writers were steeped in Greek philosophy. Paul warned the Colossians explicitly against exactly this kind of thing (Colossians 2:8). The irony that the organ in question also handles urination as a primary function — making an exclusive-use argument anatomically absurd from the start — did not trouble the philosophers.

Ascetic movements. Certain strands of early Christianity were deeply suspicious of bodily pleasure as such. Clement of Alexandria argued that intercourse was only legitimate for the explicit purpose of reproduction. Origen, not content to merely argue this point, reportedly acted on it in a more permanent fashion by castrating himself. These were serious, sincere thinkers. They were also going well beyond anything the text says.

The celibate commentariat. For roughly a thousand years, the people writing Western Christianity's moral theology were celibate monks and clergy. This is not a criticism of choosing celibacy — Paul speaks of it as an option in 1 Corinthians 7. But, it means that the moral consensus around sexuality was shaped largely by people whose lived experience of it was either distant or nonexistent. Their conclusions were influential, and they blur the lines about where Scripture ends and inherited philosophical assumptions begin.

These three streams blended over centuries until the assumption calcified: the Bible must condemn this somewhere. When people actually go looking, with the text in hand and a good concordance, the condemnation is surprisingly hard to find.

Part Two: What Leviticus 15 Actually Says (and Doesn't Say)

Leviticus 15 discusses bodily discharges. This is not glamorous material — nobody is cross-stitching it onto a pillow — but it is directly relevant to the question.

The key passage, paraphrased plainly: if a man has an emission of semen, whether alone or with a partner, he washes, he is ceremonially unclean until evening, and then life goes on. That is it. No “offer a guilt sacrifice”, no “bring two pigeons and apologize”, no “explain yourself to the elders”, no “You monster!”, just “take a bath and wait until evening” (before offering animal sacrifices at the Old Covenant’s Tabernacle or Temple).

This is extremely important, because Leviticus is not subtle when something is an actual sin. The book has the literary restraint of a car alarm. When Israel sins, there are dead animals, atonement language, and sometimes stern warnings with plagues attached. Leviticus 15 does none of that for semen emission. The passage is about ritual cleanliness, not moral wrongdoing.

Modern readers hear "unclean" and think moral filthiness. But in the ancient Israelite system, "unclean" meant something closer to temporarily not eligible for temple activities. Other things that made you unclean included childbirth, menstruation, touching a dead body, certain skin conditions, and mold in your house (the Bible's way of saying that you might want to call a contractor). None of those are sins. If they were, OB-GYNs would owe God an apology note. When Leviticus places semen emission in the same category, the implication is clear: this is a biological event requiring ritual washing, not moral condemnation.

Under the New Covenant — the one Christians are actually living under — the entire ritual purity system is obsolete. The Temple is gone. The Aaronic priesthood is superseded. The categories of clean and unclean tied to the sanctuary no longer apply to the people of God. The author of Hebrews said the Old Covenant was going away, so no one is under the Old Covenant anymore. Peter gets a vision in Acts 10 in which God tells him, explicitly, to stop calling things unclean that God has declared clean. This is why most Christians eat shrimp, wear mixed fabrics, and don't inspect their houses for mildew with priestly authority — though some HOA boards are giving it their best shot. Even if Leviticus 15 were still operating as a ritual impurity law — which it was, and only that — it would not function as a binding moral law for Christians today. The machinery it ran on no longer exists.

The God who was specific enough to prohibit boiling a young goat in its mother's milk — three separate times — said nothing in Leviticus 15 that requires a sin offering, a guilt offering, or an apology for a semen emission of any kind. He said: wash, wait until evening, carry on. God designed us and built in reasonable maintenance procedures, including easy-to-reach anatomical features (1 Corinthians 12:18) and a way out of temptation that He promised to provide (1 Corinthians 10:13). It is not a stretch to connect those dots.

Consider, too, Jesus’ Parable of the Sower, in which a farmer broadcasts seed indiscriminately on footpaths, rocky places, thorns, and good soil — most of it never producing anything at all. If “seed waste” were the moral emergency centuries of tradition made it out to be, the Parable of the Sower is a strange example for the Author to have chosen. Think of all the righteous patriarchs with barren wives and/or who remained married until death in old age. God never told them to stop having relations. We’ll discuss other non-procreative hobbies when we get to the Song of Solomon.

Part Three: The Onan Confusion

At this point someone inevitably says: what about Onan?

Genesis 38 is a frequently misunderstood passage — right up there with Revelation and whatever your uncle currently believes the mark of the beast refers to. Onan's story has been used for centuries to condemn masturbation. The word "onanism" was literally coined for this purpose. There is just one problem: if you actually read the chapter, his offense had nothing to do with the mechanics.

Under Levirate marriage law (later codified in Deuteronomy 25:5–10), if a man died without children, his brother was obligated to marry the widow and father children in the dead man's name. This was not optional sentimentality. It was a legal and social obligation involving inheritance, family lineage, and the economic protection of the widow.

Onan slept with Tamar — his deceased brother's wife — and then deliberately withheld what the arrangement existed to provide. Why? The text makes the motivation explicit: the children would not legally be his. He would continue to inherit his brother's portion while leaving Tamar economically vulnerable. He was using her for his own gratification while cheating her out of her legal protections.

What the God that defends widows (who defended a widow by killing Onan) judged was not a sex act. It was exploitation, deception, and the deliberate sabotage of a vulnerable woman's legal rights. The word "onanism" is therefore a several-centuries-long misreading of a story about a man who cheated a widow out of her inheritance — which is, incidentally, exactly the kind of thing Jesus had very strong opinions about.

Part Four: The Matthew 5:28 Problem — and Its Solution

"But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." (Matthew 5:28, NIV)

Here is the thing the English translation buries: the Greek word rendered "lust" in this verse is epithumeo. And epithumeo also means "covet."

This matters enormously, because the Septuagint — the Greek Old Testament that Jesus quoted and that New Testament writers cited constantly — uses that exact same word in Exodus 20:17: "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife." Same word. Same grammatical object (gyne, meaning "wife" or "woman" — Greek makes no distinction). The two passages are essentially parallel. Jesus was not introducing a novel thought-crime doctrine. He was quoting from the Ten Commandments of the Old Covenant in terms his Septuagint-fluent Jewish audience would have recognized immediately.

And here is why that matters legally, for Jesus Himself: He could not have raised the moral bar of the Law of Moses without violating it. Deuteronomy 4:2 is explicit — "Do not add to what I command you." Deuteronomy 12:32 repeats it. If "mere attraction equals adultery" were a new standard Jesus invented, He would have been guilty of exactly the legislative overreach the text forbids. Jesus never sinned. Therefore everything in the Sermon on the Mount was already in the Law. He was illuminating it, not expanding it. He used the “thought crime” the audience was familiar with, coveting, to reinforce the connection between hate (Leviticus 19:17-18, a frequently forgotten law) and murder that He had just made.

What did "covet" actually mean, in the Jewish tradition Jesus endorsed? The rabbinic definition — from the scholars Jesus told his audience to listen to in Matthew 23:2–3 — is precise: to covet is to want something to the point of seeking to take it away from someone else and claim it as your own, leaving its rightful owner without it. The illustration used in Jewish teaching: if your neighbor has a nice car and you daydream about driving one like it, you have not coveted. If you begrudge him the car, or start scheming to acquire that one for yourself, you have. Intent to take what belongs to another is the line.

There is also a contextual clue most English readers miss. The Old Testament is consistent that adultery specifically involves another man's wife. Leviticus 20:10 and Deuteronomy 22:22 both define it exactly this way. A man cannot commit adultery under Torah unless the woman belongs to another man. This makes "covet your neighbor's wife" the natural reading — Jesus is targeting the same act the tenth commandment targets: scheming to take what belongs to someone else.

This reading has support within the early Church, too. Theophilus of Antioch — writing in the second century, well before Augustine's more restrictive framework hardened into doctrine — reads Matthew 5:28 in direct connection with "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife," framing the commandment as being about not even thinking evil toward another man's wife, not women in general. 

What about the amputation language that follows — "if your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out"? Jesus healed people everywhere He went. He never gouged out a single eye or severed a single hand. This is hyperbole in the tradition of Jewish wisdom literature, emphasizing the gravity of scheming against someone's marriage under a Law that demanded the kind of holiness only God possesses (Matthew 5:48; Paul told us that we’re not going to make it and that we should opt for grace instead) — not a literal prescription, and not a commentary on solitary activity. More examples of cultural hyperbole are “throw yourself into a fire before embarrassing someone”, “gossip murders three people”, and “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? That last one is from the same Sermon on the Mount we’ve been discussing, by the way.

The bottom line: the plain Greek, read against the Septuagint it was clearly echoing, says don't scheme to take another man's wife. That is serious, consistent with everything else the Law says about adultery, and fully supported by the text. It is not a blanket condemnation of mere lust, attraction, desire, imagination, or the private contents of your own mind. That broader reading required centuries of ascetic tradition, Greek philosophical influence, and accumulated interpretive weight to produce. Read epithumeo the same way in both Matthew 5:28 and Exodus 20:17, and that reading largely dissolves. Paul said to put “lust” (Remember, to the original Greek hearers this is coveting: a strong urge, the home-wrecking instinct, a cause of fights and murders, not mere desire) to death in Colossians 3:5; this “lust” is rightly called “inordinate lust” (out-of-bounds desire, things prohibited by Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20; remember that Paul wrote to former pagan orgy participants) throughout the New Testament by the more literal translations (except in instances like Jesus emphatically wanting to eat Passover, which you can see in an interlinear/Greek Luke 22:15). When the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew into Greek, there was a problem. The Greeks lacked a word for the Hebrew concept of sexual immorality back then because their own standards of sexual morality were very different. The word the translators went with was porneia which provides the root word for words like pornographic. It approximately means “things hookers do”, and here’s why: in Greco-Roman culture at the time, men were allowed one wife (which kept the inheritance simple), but the husbands could go out and get access to any orifice from any gender of slave, prostitute, temple prostitute, etc. There was no judgment baked into the word, it just meant “stuff not going on with the respected, noble-born mother of your children”. Now look at 1 Corinthians 5:1. Paul was concerned about the porneia reported among them, specifically that a man in their congregation was shacked up with his father’s wife. Did any of you ever read that verse and think he was paying her? Since it’s not about hookers, where does Paul derive his prohibition of their relationship? Leviticus 18:3,7-8,24-28. This discussion is also at work wherever English translators choose “fornication” to stand for porneia, which was chosen as another placeholder word for the Hebrew sexual rules. “Fornication” refers to sexual activity that occurs out of wedlock; it is a common topic among those who advocate for the one-man-with-one-woman paradigm. The biblical existence of righteous polygamists (Abe, David, etc.), concubines, concubines used for breeding additional slaves (Exodus 21:4), etc., along with a few regulations about prostitution but no outright ban of the practice call into question the utility of the “sex outside wedlock” concept outside of the extra rules humans have imagined.

It cannot be wrong to want what it isn't wrong to have. It cannot be wrong or disrespectful to anyone to think about what it isn't wrong to want. David (1 Kings 15:5) and Abraham (Genesis 26:5) were righteous polygamists — so noticing that someone might make a good addition to the family, especially in a world where identical twins exist, isn't coveting. The narrators of the early books of the Bible that commented on the hotness of the heroines were not “eyeballing”, either. I am not telling you to run out and develop various addictions or to be a leering pervert making people uncomfortable. (Clearly, I'm also not endorsing depictions of sinful copulation or abuse.) If you have a marriage that is working according to the standard Evangelical model, that's a blessing. You probably don't even want any of the water from the mud puddle at the edge of the pasture just past where the Pharisees put up the fence. If your spouse cannot see the merit of this argument, it would be unloving to act against their wishes. Do the loving thing, and have concern for the “weaker” believer, as Paul would say. Can things presently thought to be inappropriate in the Bible Belt be addictive for some people? Yes, just like the alcohol Jesus made in John 2. Can those things mess with the attraction people feel for their spouses? Yes. Has a spouse ever benefited from someone “looking at the menu” while out but bringing their appetite home? Also yes. Does viewing certain materials increase demand for them? No more than eating the meat market products when Paul recommended them. Will knowing that some things people thought were forbidden actually are permissible diminish someone's urge for those things? Yes. Since sinning increases in the presence of Law (Romans 7:5), and Sin's strength is Law (1 Corinthians 15:56), then figuring out that something doesn't even rank as naughty frames it as a lawful-but-not-profitable decision, something easily dismissed as a waste of time and money in most cases. Romans 4:15 says where there is no Law, there is no sin; Romans 7:8 says that apart from the Law, sin is dead. After reading this, Christians can even safely read salacious material like Ezekiel, Song of Solomon, and the frequent mentions of public nudity, public bathing, and public "relations'' throughout the Bible now that they can place Paul's warning of "obscene stories" back into its pagan context.  

Part Five: What Paul Actually Said About Human-Made Rules

Paul's letter to the Colossians is unusually direct here:

"Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules: 'Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!'? These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence." (Colossians 2:20–23)

Paul explicitly says that "do not handle, do not taste, do not touch" rules — which have the appearance of wisdom — accomplish precisely nothing against actual sinful impulses. He says they "lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence." Colossians 2:21–22 may also be the most tactful description of the relevant anatomy ever committed to writing. Paul's language about "things that perish with use" like penile erections could not be more precise or polite.

The fence the Accuser built around Christian sexual ethics has accomplished exactly what Paul predicted it would accomplish: nothing against genuine sinful impulse. What it has accomplished instead is sending generations of men into ministry, education, and youth work carrying physiological burdens Scripture never asked them to carry — and some of them have put that weight down in the worst possible ways. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Part Six: The Pastoral Emergency

Here is the concern, stated plainly.

If a form of personal relief has been declared sinful by accumulated tradition rather than Scripture, then the men most committed to following that tradition are the ones most likely to be walking around in a chronic state of unaddressed physiological pressure. And chronic, unaddressed physiological pressure does not historically produce good decisions.

This is not a speculative concern. The crisis of sexual abuse within institutions — churches, schools, youth sports, and anywhere trusted adults supervise children — has been documented exhaustively. Celibate priests who obeyed the modern Pharisee rules and then eventually preyed on altar boys provide the most infamous example. The problem extends well beyond clergy: teachers, coaches, scout leaders, youth pastors — trusted men who, in many cases, tried to hold an invented line while losing the fight in the actual battle.

The Accuser, as it turns out, is interested in getting men pent up enough that actual sin — with actual victims — starts to look manageable.

Here is the blunt pastoral word: if unaddressed pressure is making you want to be a predator — to pursue someone who cannot or would not consent — then handle your own business and cast the impulse away. Immediately. That is not a defeat, that is refusing to hand the Enemy a loaded weapon.

Priests, teachers, coaches, scout leaders, anyone in a position of trust over vulnerable people: the text does not require what you have been told it requires. Take care of yourself, and leave everyone else out of it. It is not a sin. It is, among other things, a protection — for you, and for everyone in your care.

Part Seven: Song of Solomon and the Text Nobody Preaches On

There is a book in the Bible that has caused centuries of interpretive discomfort — not because it is obscure or difficult to translate, but because it is clear once you know what you are reading.

The Song of Solomon (Song of Songs, Shir HaShirim in Hebrew) is a collection of erotic poetry about two unmarried people. It is in the canon. Rabbi Akiva famously had to defend its inclusion at the Council of Jamnia around 90 AD, arguing it was the holiest of all writings. It survived. The early Church inherited it. Then, for the most part, Christians quietly stopped reading it literally.

The allegorical interpretation — that it is really about God's love for Israel, or Christ's love for the Church — is not wrong as a layer of meaning, but it has functioned as a way to avoid what the text is actually describing between two actual people. Those people are doing actual things, and the text does not apologize for it.

The timeline matters. The couple is not married for most of the book. Song of Solomon 3:4 references the "mother's house" — a detail that, in the ancient Near Eastern context, signals the characters are not yet wed. They are still negotiating the dowry as late as 8:12. The physical descriptions throughout are happening before the marriage is formalized. This is not an error. It is the text.

Song of Solomon 4:16 has the woman inviting her lover to "come into his garden and taste its choice fruits" — imagery recognized as a reference to the female body since the earliest Jewish commentaries. The invitation is to oral-genital contact. Song of Solomon 2:3 uses the image of sitting in the beloved's shade and finding his fruit sweet to the taste, the same imagery from the other direction. Song of Solomon 7:1–9 describes the woman from the ground up in considerable anatomical detail, with the "navel" of verse 2 alternatively translated by multiple scholars as the vulva — the "rounded goblet that never lacks blended wine" is not a description of bellybutton juice. Song of Solomon 5:4–5 has the undressed woman rising from bed alone, her hands dripping — a detail several commentators read as arousal and self-stimulation. Her lover had not yet arrived. The narrator does not interrupt to express concern. Song of Solomon 8:2 has her offering her beloved "the nectar of my pomegranates" — a fruit that was, throughout the ancient Near East, a consistent symbol of female fertility and sexuality. This is not a wine review.

What follows theologically from taking this seriously?

First, oral stimulation — for men and for women — is described approvingly in a context that even precedes marriage. If Scripture, at its highest level of holiness (Rabbi Akiva's description, not a modern one), condemned these acts, the Song would be the last place to find them celebrated between unmarried people. No disclaimer is issued.

Second, manual stimulation by a woman alone is also depicted without comment or condemnation (in case you were wondering after the lengthy coverage of the male side of that in the Leviticus material). 

Third, the entire architecture of the book assumes these activities are not "sex" in the covenantal sense. The acts that produce children, that merge bloodlines, that create the "one flesh" relationship — those are what biblical language consistently reserves the word "knowing" for. Everything in the Song of Solomon that precedes that threshold is in a different category. Unregenerate high schoolers and ancient Israelites apparently agreed on where the line sat regarding "going all the way," which is at least some evidence that the Gentile conscience Paul describes in Romans 2:14–15 is doing exactly what he said it would.

On the allegorical reading: it does not rescue the traditional restrictive interpretation. If the text depicts these acts as a beautiful picture of God's love for His people — as the allegorists insist — then the acts themselves cannot simultaneously be morally shameful. You cannot use something as a metaphor for holiness while maintaining that the thing itself is sinful. That is not how metaphors work.

Beyond the exegesis itself, there's a practical upside worth naming: de-stigmatizing the nonprocreative acts the Bible does not condemn, and that our culture presently lumps together under one blanket word, "sex," would likely decrease the number of unwanted pregnancies and abortions — hardly a trivial side effect for people who claim to care about both.

Part Eight: The Reformation Was Right but Unfinished

The Reformation recovered grace. This was enormous. After centuries of a works-based economy in which sins could be traded against purchased indulgences, Luther and his successors restored the New Testament's own insistence that we are saved by grace through faith, period, not by performance (Ephesians 2:8–9). Christ is the end of the Law for all who believe (Romans 10:4). By one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy (Hebrews 10:14). This is not negotiable.

However, the Reformers did not scrape all of the mold off the cheese. Many retained Augustine's sexual ethics wholesale, including his reading of Matthew 5:28 as a broad condemnation of mental attraction. They kept the ascetic suspicion of physical pleasure. They kept the Aristotelian obsession with the telos of sexuality as reproduction. They reformed soteriology magnificently, but they largely left the definitions of sin, which had drifted for centuries, exactly where they found them.

The Reformation is roughly five hundred years old — a long time by human standards, an eyeblink in the history of Christianity. There is more work to do. The pattern of reform — recovering what Scripture actually says, stripping away what accumulated tradition only claimed it said — is an ongoing process, not a completed project. We are not obligated to stop the Reformation at the point where the Reformers got tired.

Paul warned in Galatians 2:4 about false believers who "infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves." That dynamic is not ancient history. Every generation produces its own version of people building fences six inches inside the yard, making believers feel guilty about things Scripture never condemned, and in the process making believers smell like a bunch of hypocrites instead of the aroma of Christ (2 Corinthians 2:15). When someone thinks a thing is wrong and does it anyway, that is sin, regardless of what the thing actually is (Romans 14:23) — but the solution is not to white-knuckle harder against an imaginary prohibition. The solution is to read the actual text.

Sin's strength is the Law (1 Corinthians 15:56). Romans 7:8 says that apart from the Law, sin is dead. When people discover that something they believed was forbidden is actually biblically neutral, the forbidden-fruit power it held over them tends to evaporate. Knowing where the real line is — and that it sits considerably farther out than the fences suggest — frees people to stop fighting a war they were never enlisted in, and start living the life they were actually saved for.

Part Nine: What the Bible Actually Cares About Regarding Sexuality

None of this means that “anything goes”. The Bible teaches strong sexual ethics, but notice what they actually focus on:

Faithfulness in covenant relationships. The "one flesh" language of Genesis 2:24, cited again in Ephesians 5, describes something real and weighty — the permanence of union (rather than the exclusivity – remember the righteous polygamist patriarchs), the possible merging of bloodlines through reproduction, the creation of a family unit, and the mutual responsibility of husband and wife for one another's care (Ephesians 5:29). This is not trivial.

Consent and the protection of the vulnerable. Deuteronomy 22:25–27 distinguishes between assault and consensual sex with explicit moral clarity. The Onan story, properly understood, is a story about a man who exploited a woman who could not protect herself. The Bible is overwhelmingly, repeatedly concerned with widows, orphans, the powerless, and the marginalized — and calls out those who prey on them.

Non-exploitation and a few specific abominations. This is the thread running through Leviticus 18–20, through the prophets, through Jesus' ministry, through Paul's letters. The prohibited acts are prohibited because of what they do to people, what relationships they violate, what power they abuse. Idolatry is an affront to God. He’s grossed out by specific activities between men, involving animals, involving women on their periods, etc., and that’s His right as our Maker. Incest exploits family authority. Adultery violates a spouse's covenant and breaks a home. Ritual prostitution involved people with no meaningful choice (as well as idolatry). 

What the Bible is not primarily focused on is what a person does alone, in private, involving nobody else. Masturbation, nocturnal emission, and marital relations were, per Leviticus 15, all wash-and-wait situations, equally; Paul endorsing marital relations means none of that is a problem for Christians.

Part Ten: Why This Particular Argument Generates So Much Heat

It's worth pausing to name why this specific subject produces more resistance than almost any other exegetical correction in this book.

People were taught it was unquestionably sinful. Discovering that the biblical basis is thinner than advertised can feel threatening — not because of the conclusion itself, but because of what it implies about other things taught with the same false confidence.

It carries enormous inherited shame. Few topics have been more weaponized against ordinary people's sense of self-worth, particularly in adolescence. The stakes feel personal in a way that, say, a debate about the timing of the Millennial Kingdom does not.

It requires actually reading Leviticus. Most Christians have not read Leviticus carefully. That is understandable — it reads like a maintenance manual. It is also a problem, because you cannot have this argument responsibly without doing the reading.

It challenges tradition. People love tradition almost as much as they love arguing on the internet about whether tradition is being sufficiently honored.

None of these reasons make the underlying exegesis wrong; they just explain why it lands harder than it should.

Part Eleven: We Need to Stop Looking Like Hypocrites

The outside world has noticed the pattern: the megachurch pastor caught doing meth and using gay prostitutes, the loudly anti-pornography pastor caught with a secret subscription, the purity-culture speaker whose personal conduct disqualifies everything he said publicly, the youth minister who preached abstinence to teenagers while abusing some of them privately, and so forth. The headlines have a sickening sameness, and the non-Christian world is watching.

Most of the ways Christians end up looking hypocritical on this subject trace back to the same root problem: we accepted and enforced some standards that were never in the Bible, and then acted surprised when people failed.

Most churches preach that ordinary human desires are sinful. Men sit in pews being told that normal physiological responses are satanic attacks to be resisted, and that failure is a sign of spiritual inadequacy. They feel enormous shame over functions Leviticus treated as a wash-and-wait. The shame does not produce holiness. It produces secrecy. Secrecy is the Accuser's favorite operating environment.

We put men carrying this shame into positions of authority over vulnerable people — youth pastors, priests, coaches, teachers, counselors, many of them sincere and godly, also walking around carrying burdens they never needed to carry, with no biblically sanctioned relief valve because they were told all the relief valves were sinful.

Beware of treating only symptoms rather than causes. When abuse scandals break, the institutional response is typically to relocate the perpetrator, quietly settle, manage the narrative, and eventually produce a new policy document. The theology that helped create the conditions is never examined. The fence is never questioned. The next generation is sent into the same system with the same invented prohibitions and the same predictable results.

The solution is not to abandon the Christian faith or sexual ethics, either. The solution is to go back to the text rather than what philosophy and centuries of celibate speculation taught us to read into it.

Part Twelve: A Word to Those Who Were Hurt

If you were abused by a Christian — a priest, a pastor, a minister, a teacher, a coach, anyone — all of this is not what you need most right now. What happened to you was wrong. It was not your fault. An institution that protected the person who harmed you, instead of protecting you, was not behaving as the Body of Christ. God repeatedly told His people to look out for the widows, the orphans, the powerless. You deserved protection. You deserved the truth. 

My argument is that the potential for the evils you experienced was exacerbated by specific, traceable, correctable theological errors. I wish I could undo what was done to you. I just want fewer people to go through what you went through.

Part Thirteen: A Word to Those in Ministry

You are in a position of trust. Children, teenagers, and vulnerable people come to you or your institution believing they will be safe. Read the Scripture again. All of it. In context. Leviticus 15 says what it says. Colossians 2 says what it says. The Greek behind Matthew 5:28 and the Septuagint’s Exodus 20:17 is the same.

If unaddressed pressure is creating risk for the people in your care, address it privately, in the way God's word, God's design, and common sense plainly permit. This is not a compromise.

If you are already in a pattern of behavior that puts vulnerable people at risk, stop. Get help. Remove yourself from positions of access. The grace of God is real and is not withheld from you — but Zacchaeus received grace and then addressed what his conduct had cost others. 

The people under your care are made in the image of God. They are not available for your relief. No amount of pent-up pressure, no "it was just once," and no "they came to me" can excuse what you already know is wrong. The text is clear about this even where it is less clear about other things: exploitation of the vulnerable is what Onan died for, and it is part of what the Canaanites were removed from the land for. Jesus spoke some of His most memorable words about those who hurt children (Matthew 18:6; okay, that’s about believers, but work with me here).

Take care of yourself. Take care of the people in your care. These are not in conflict. The fence was never real. The responsibility to protect always was.

Conclusion: Let Scripture Speak

The Council of Jerusalem answered some questions for us: what does the text actually require of us on this side of the Cross, and what did we as Christians just kind of... add?

The answer, on the question of non-procreative sexual activity and sexual ethics broadly, is that we added quite a lot. We added Aristotle's telos logic. We added the ascetic ideal of sexuality constrained exclusively to reproduction. We added the instincts of celibate men who were not always well positioned to adjudicate these questions. We added centuries of tradition that became indistinguishable, in most people's minds, from the text itself.

What the text actually requires is simpler, and considerably more protective of the people who matter most: the vulnerable, the young, the powerless. It requires consent, covenant faithfulness, non-exploitation, and care for those who cannot protect themselves. It does not require perpetual shame over ordinary physiological function, or the kind of crushing suppression of normal human experience that predictably backfires in exactly the ways we have watched it backfire.

And if Moses himself were fielding the follow-up questions, he might put it more simply still: take a shower, and please stop emailing me about this.

The Reformation was a recovery of what Scripture actually says about grace. That mission is not finished. There is more to recover, more accumulated weight to lift off people who were never meant to carry it, more fences to take down that were never in the text to begin with. And there are children who need Christians, and everyone in positions of power, to get this right.

The burden we bear is lighter than the Old Covenant. Our yoke is easier than the Old Covenant. Life did not get worse under grace.

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