Christians made up their stupid “sex rules”

Reading Bible scholars—I was shocked

“Thou shalt not have sex before marriage” — isn’t found in the Bible. But few of the Christian “rules” actually are.

When I looked up Bible scholarship about what they told me as a kid in church, I realized how often it was just made up.

“Thou shalt not masturbate!”

As often as Christians have spoken against people touching their own bodies, the Bible has no references to that subject. How did a religion get away with outright deception, and for so long?

They often said dancing was bad. I look up the references to dancing in the Bible. God dances (Zeph 3:17). From Myriam to David to Jesus, dancing is divine.

But Christians moved along to their next sex obsession—as the dancing ban became a joke. They’re still funny?

Q: Why do Baptists forbid having sex while standing up? A: It might lead to dancing.

Year after year the attacks go on—from masturbation to dancing, from divorce to teenage sex, from single mothers to feminists, gays, transgender people, whoever the Hell is next.

Thou shalt not watch Hollywood movies. Thou shalt not smoke. Thou shalt not have premarital sex. Thou shalt not be naked. Thou shalt not dress sexy. Thou shalt not joke about sex, or talk about sex. Thou shalt not…

It was all just lies.

Here’s some facts. In the Bible, sex by single people is unregulated.

This remains the teaching in Judaism. A guide to Jewish law notes of ‘premarital’ sex: “The Torah does not outlaw it…and the child of such a union is not considered a mamzer (illegitimate).”

Many Bible narratives concern single people being sexual—like the Song of Songs. When Christians discuss the Bible’s ‘sex book’, they say it concerns ‘marital love’.

I only heard from scholars: the couple isn’t married. No talk of marriage at all. “It is possible for the Song of Songs to be perceived as undermining marriage itself,” observes the scholar Iain Provan.

And I thought: Yes, there might be another way to read the Bible.

A way that says love is everything.

Christians said you needed their wedding ceremony. That makes you “good.”

But actually, there is no wedding ceremony anywhere in the Bible. No authorization is given for a cleric to “perform” such an event.

The truth is they invented a “Christian wedding,” and to pass it off as “biblical,” the clerics had to get creative. They grabbed passages like Ruth 1:16–17. Many Christians have said these words:

“Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.”

This is a speech by a woman to her ex-mother-in-law.

The women are not getting married. Ruth the Moabite is taking on Naomi’s Jewish religion. It’s a spiritual event because of that.

For some reason, Christians didn’t quote the speech that actually concerns Ruth’s marriage. In Ruth 4:10, Boaz says:

“I have also acquired Ruth the Moabite, Mahlon’s widow, as my wife, in order to maintain the name of the dead with his property…”

The word he uses—‘acquired’—as the scholar T.M. Lemos notes, is “most typically used for commercial transactions.”

Because in the Bible, marriage is one thing: the purchase of a wife.

There are no “vows” in ‘biblical marriage’. The woman’s consent is not required and it’s not seen as a bond of love. In Genesis 31:15, Rachel and Lea discuss their marriage to Jacob as their father having “sold” them.

In Hosea 3:2, the prophet has bought his wife Gomer for “fifteen shekels of silver, a homer of barley, and a measure of wine.” A bargain?

A daughter could also be sold into slavery (Exo 21:7; cf. Neh 1:1–15).

Are Christians against the idea of women being owned? In a “Christian wedding,” doesn’t the father “give away” the bride to the groom? That’s a transfer of property. Then the ring is put on—an image not from the Bible, but from the history of slavery.

They said marriage is a “covenant.”

Christians talk about that a lot. Covenantal marriage! But a covenant is an eternal agreement with God (Heb 13:20, etc.).

Human marriage is not eternal (Mt 22:30; cf. Rom 7:2).

A marriage, in the Bible, is a contract, dissolvable by divorce. But why did they like the “covenant” talk?

Well, it makes marriage seem like this massive spiritual event—which the clerics are tasked with overseeing.

Changes in Christian theology do tend to boost the power of clerics. They write their own expanding job descriptions, and tell everyone it was “God.”

The way it tends to read is that anything ‘sexual’ is bad — unless you’re married.

But to get into the nuts and bolts of the Bible’s sexual references, it’s odd passages with lots of unexpected details.

Like, what is “adultery”?

That “sex rule” is actually in the Bible: “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” But what does it mean?

Scholars had different information than what I’d expected—but I was still left confused. As Jack R. Lundborn notes:

“According to the Old Testament, adultery was committed when a man — married or single — had sexual relations with another man’s wife. It was the marital status of the woman — and only the woman — that made it adultery.”

If adultery involves only married women, then to avoid it, a man could focus his interest on single women—like Abraham with his sex slaves, David and Solomon in their harems, or Samson and a prostitute (Jg 16:1).

But is that right? I read, and read and read.

Because “adultery” is real complicated.

First of all, the restriction could only refer to wives of Israelite men. As in Deuteronomy 21:10–14, any non-Israelite woman could be captured in war and forced to re-marry even if she’d been married to another man.

As Israel Zvi Gilat observes: “capturing a woman in war enables any Jewish male soldier to marry the beautiful captive woman even if she has a non-Jewish husband.”

Second, adultery must be witnessed to be prosecuted. No capital crime in Old Testament law can be enforced unless there are “two or three witnesses” (Deut 17:6; cf. 19:15; Num 35:30).

How often are sex acts by ‘cheating’ wives witnessed by a crowd? Not as often as you’d think. The “adultery” law, if about sex, is unenforceable.

But “adultery” is a term often used in prophetic books for idolatry.

From the Old Testament to Revelation, worshipping other gods seems to be called “adultery.” The logic to calling such worship “adultery” might be that, in the Bible, deities are seen as husbands.

To go worshipping a deity you’re not “married” to—is adultery.

Being married to God is important in the Bible. Israel was the “wife” of God (cf. Hos 2:16, etc.). Their sex life took place in “bed”—which is what the Temple in Jerusalem was called (Ez 23:17).

Then Israel committed adultery, and she and God “divorced” (Jer 3:8).

Jesus comes along as a new ‘bridegroom’ (Jn 3:29, etc.).

But Jesus seems uninterested in human marriage.

He never “performs” them. He prompts his disciples to leave their families—even when, like his disciple Peter, they’re married.

But, a Christian might reply, Jesus talks about sex and marriage, and says divorce is bad! Jesus says he hates “lust”!

Is that what he says?

“But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:27–28)

What is this ‘adultery’ of the heart? Is it punished with execution?

And what is “lust”? The word epithumeó is the basic Greek word for ‘desire’. Jesus “lusts” in Luke 22:15 — to eat Passover. The word is also translated as “covet,” as in the Ten Commandments.

It’s never a sex word, and doesn’t point to an inner erotic yearning.

Actual Bible scholarship, instead of clerical circle jerks, came to life after World War II.

The realization spread: Christians had misread everything. What ‘biblical spirituality is might be unclear, actually. But it’s not a system that is about getting married and having kids.

Marriage is discouraged (1 Cor 7:7). As Ben Witherington III writes:

“Paul calls us to have a very different perspective on work, rest, play, eating, worship, relating, marrying, studying, mourning, and so on. He characterizes that perspective as one of detachment — we should live ‘as if not.’ He even says this about Christian marriage!”

Some kind of perceptual shift — the “mind of Christ” — is the focus. Not monitoring sex as some theologically distinct mode of human activity.

There’s sexual references along the way.

Take Hebrews 13:4. Surely this is a clear statement that God is monitoring your sex life:

“Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.”

But if Jesus is a ‘bridegroom’, why is his marriage not assumed to be in view? And if a temple can be a ‘bed’, why would one think human sex was the subject?

The scholar Margaret Barker notes that ‘bed’ and ‘temple’ — mishkab and mishkan — are interwoven in the Old Testament. I wrote her, asking if the Hebrews 13:4 “bed” might be a temple reference. She replied!

“You could well be correct about the meaning of Heb.13.4. I suspect we shall never know for certain!”

And that’s where it’s at. The Bible has puzzling references, with no one to explain them. Including Christians.

What’s the Bible’s message on sex?

Jesus said “Love one another” in John 13:34—so maybe that’s a guide?

Maybe sex and feeling, sharing and caring—are great. Maybe God loves it.

But Christians wanted to attack people for not following the “rules”—the ones they made up themselves. 🔶