Where America’s Sex Ethic Is Headed
00:00:00.000 | Dr. Russell Moore is the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
00:00:09.000 | He joins us again today filling in for John Piper.
00:00:11.280 | Dr. Moore, as you know, the landscape of sexual ethics in America is changing rapidly, maybe
00:00:16.400 | faster than anyone could have expected.
00:00:19.240 | You carefully studied the trends of our culture.
00:00:21.960 | In your opinion, what do you expect in the near future?
00:00:25.360 | Where is the American sex ethic headed?
00:00:28.160 | And what will be the fallout?
00:00:30.040 | I was with my grandmother one time, years and years ago, we ran into a woman in the
00:00:36.040 | community where I grew up who had divorced her husband and she had moved in with a man
00:00:40.880 | that she wasn't married to.
00:00:42.640 | My grandmother was very kind to her.
00:00:43.960 | She was asking her, "How are you doing?
00:00:47.120 | What's going on in your life?"
00:00:48.600 | And my grandmother said, "And how's your lover?"
00:00:51.840 | And I remember being taken aback.
00:00:54.920 | And when the woman left, I said to my grandmother, "What did you just say?"
00:00:58.840 | And she said, "Well, isn't that what you call it, a lover?"
00:01:01.480 | And I said, "You know what?
00:01:04.560 | Don't ever say lover again."
00:01:08.640 | And it was this moment of skin crawling in my own life.
00:01:11.960 | But I realized the reason that my grandmother was so awkwardly handling this is because
00:01:16.320 | she had never met anybody, I don't think, in real life who was in that situation.
00:01:22.480 | She was living with somebody who wasn't her husband.
00:01:25.600 | Well, we're moving into a time when that is going to become...there are going to be
00:01:32.160 | fewer and fewer things that are going to be shocking to people.
00:01:36.320 | The problem is that we're moving into a time now where I think technology is going to change
00:01:43.880 | to some degree the nature of sexual temptation.
00:01:47.480 | It's not going to change sexual temptation itself.
00:01:50.800 | There's nothing new, as the Bible says, under the sun.
00:01:54.320 | Sin is what it is.
00:01:56.600 | Temptation is what it is.
00:01:58.480 | But technology can change how that temptation comes to people.
00:02:03.640 | And so I expect, for instance, the nature of pornography to change.
00:02:11.680 | And that has real implications for teaching within the church.
00:02:15.540 | Think about, for instance, what was going on a generation ago when people thought about
00:02:21.220 | porn, they were thinking about pressuring those outlets in their communities from providing
00:02:29.500 | this.
00:02:30.500 | And so your local 7-Eleven, your local convenience store had pornographic magazines behind the
00:02:37.740 | counter or that local video store had the area behind the curtain back there in the
00:02:43.020 | back of the room.
00:02:45.120 | And there was a lot of effort given to pressure those businesses not to traffic in pornography
00:02:52.100 | or hotels from having pornographic movies and so forth.
00:02:56.540 | And that was commendable and that was admirable.
00:02:59.140 | But what no one saw at the time was that there was a digital revolution coming that would
00:03:04.740 | make pornography near ubiquitous, virtually ubiquitous, and also that it would bring with
00:03:11.680 | it this illusion of anonymity so that somebody doesn't have to think of himself or think
00:03:18.220 | of herself as the sort of person who would go and rent that videotape or go and purchase
00:03:25.380 | that magazine.
00:03:27.060 | I think we need to be asking, how is technology moving and how is that going to change the
00:03:32.500 | nature of temptation?
00:03:33.600 | I think it is quite possible that what we're going to be seeing is a kind of four-dimensional
00:03:41.660 | sort of reality for porn where there is a virtual reality created that can be indistinguishable
00:03:50.260 | from an actual sexual encounter.
00:03:53.620 | There are already people talking about what's going to happen when there is, for instance,
00:04:00.380 | the use of lifelike robots, for instance, for sexual immorality and so forth.
00:04:07.780 | I think we need to be ready for that and to expect that.
00:04:10.780 | I also think we need to expect the transgender issue to become more and more at the forefront
00:04:17.420 | as more and more people start to, especially children and young people, start to become
00:04:23.220 | confused about gender identity.
00:04:25.660 | I just had to deal with, just last night, my own children, we were watching the news
00:04:30.860 | and there was a news program that came on about a young boy who was, I don't know, four
00:04:37.060 | or five years old and thought of himself as a girl and was going through the transition
00:04:43.180 | to be a girl.
00:04:44.180 | My kid said, "I didn't even know that could happen, that a boy could turn into a girl."
00:04:49.420 | Well, parents are going to have to know how to answer that question because those sorts
00:04:52.680 | of things are going to happen more and more and more.
00:04:56.220 | I think we can also expect marriage rates to continue to go down as marriage continues
00:05:02.280 | to become redefined and become so elastic.
00:05:06.580 | I think the very meaning of marriage starts to change and marriage rates go down.
00:05:13.260 | Who are those who suffer?
00:05:14.900 | Women, children, the poor, the most vulnerable are those who suffer right away.
00:05:21.420 | And then I also think we need to recognize that while we're making a good deal of progress
00:05:27.580 | on the life issue as it relates to abortion, I worry about the way that the abortion issue
00:05:35.540 | is becoming less clinical and more chemical.
00:05:39.220 | And so I worry about what's going to happen when, like pornography, abortion brings with
00:05:45.180 | it that illusion of anonymity where someone simply has to go and get a prescription from
00:05:53.340 | a local pharmacy in order to destroy this life within them.
00:05:59.260 | I think that is something we're going to have to be watching and ready to address within
00:06:04.360 | our churches as well.
00:06:06.540 | Short term, I think the sexual revolution is going to continue to ravage churches, communities,
00:06:14.100 | neighborhoods.
00:06:15.100 | But long term, I think the sexual revolution is going to leave a lot of people wanting.
00:06:22.140 | It's not going to be able to carry through on its promises.
00:06:27.100 | And so we need to be ready for those, like the woman at the well in Samaria, to be able
00:06:33.660 | to speak about not only what it is that they're doing wrong with a call to repentance, but
00:06:40.180 | also to say, "We have water that you know not of.
00:06:43.500 | We have living water that actually satisfies," to be able to articulate better why we believe
00:06:51.460 | the things that we believe about marriage and sexuality, not only because they are moral,
00:06:56.980 | but because they're based and they're rooted in the gospel.
00:07:02.140 | This picture of one man giving himself to one woman and one woman giving herself to
00:07:07.480 | one man in a one-flesh union for life, this is picturing the union of Christ and the church.
00:07:15.700 | And it's presenting an invitation to that wedding feast at the end of the gospel story.
00:07:21.460 | We need to be able to articulate that, and then we need to be able to picture it in healthy
00:07:27.180 | marriage cultures in our own churches.
00:07:30.780 | And to expect a lot of people who've never seen that sort of thing at all to say, "Why
00:07:37.180 | do you do that?
00:07:38.380 | Why do you live that way?
00:07:39.740 | Why do you value these things?"
00:07:42.680 | Not only so that we can talk about marriage, not only so that we can talk about a biblical
00:07:46.380 | view of sexuality, but so that we can talk about the gospel itself.
00:07:51.140 | I think we're going to have more and more opportunities to do that in the generation
00:07:54.260 | to come.
00:07:55.260 | Amen.
00:07:56.260 | Some crazy challenges ahead, but a gloriously satisfying Savior to proclaim as well.
00:08:01.420 | Thank you, Dr. Moore.
00:08:02.420 | Dr. Moore serves as the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern
00:08:06.260 | Baptist Convention, and he will be joining us one more time as we close out the week.
00:08:09.900 | I'll ask him, as the church feels more and more out of place in culture, what are some
00:08:13.420 | wrong ways for the church to respond?
00:08:16.180 | I'll ask him that tomorrow as we finish out the week.
00:08:18.300 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:08:19.300 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John Podcast.
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