Query:

I was wondering about your thoughts on whether there should be social consequences for people or women who have been sexually promiscuous.  For example, would it be a reasonable course of action for all socially conservative men and women avoid marrying anyone who has been promiscuous in the past, even if they have changed and repented?  Should such people be shamed and condemned to singlehood?

 

Reply:

I certainly understand your concern.  Sexual sin cheapens personal relationships, disorders marriages, and dreadfully damages the well-being of children, yet we’ve come to consider sexual promiscuity normal, harmless, and adorably cute.  In a movie adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s great work The Scarlet Letter, the adulterers live happily ever after.  For “adaptation,” read “typical Hollywood lie.”

But to discourage sexual promiscuity, does it make sense to shame and shun people for sinful practices they repented and abandoned long ago?  Should the broader community – or at least the community of faith – exclude them and make examples of them?

For three reasons, I think the answer to your question is “No.”  Since my negative could easily be misunderstood, let me first explain it, and then provide cautions and clarifications.

The first reason for the “No”:  God Himself forgives truly repented and absolved sins, and we dare not presume to have higher standards than He does.  Doing so would be not only presumptuous, but also hypocritical, because all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  Moreover, our own former sins are not any less shameful than the former sins of other people, just because ours may be invisible but theirs may be known to everyone.

The second reason for the “No”:  God works through the Church, through the household of faith.  A repentant person needs the help and support of other people in the amendment of his life.  If everyone shuns him, this is impossible.

The third reason for the “No”:  Leaving grace aside and speaking from a purely sociological point of view, social disapproval is a lot like censorship.  Although it may be effective in preserving pure mores, it has little if any power to bring them about where they do not yet exist.  After all, who is to do the disapproving?  It is futile to urge a community of persons whose lives are impure to shun those whose lives are impure.  What is required here is not shunning, but conversion.

Now the cautions and clarifications.  I don’t suggest that repented former sins make no difference, for they do.  How so?

Both common sense and sound moral theology distinguish between the guilt we incur through sin, and the damage we do ourselves and other people by it.  Forgiveness heals the guilt, but it does not sponge away the damage.  That requires the medicine and surgery of penance, and in the case of those we have hurt, it requires reparation.  Suppose I have injured myself or another person by driving recklessly.  I am sorry and confess.  Good.  God forgives me.  Good.  But the injuries are still there. 

In the case of sexual sin, even if no one else has been hurt (which, by the way, is unlikely), a person who is genuinely repentant and forgiven may continue to suffer from bad habits, distorted ways of thinking, and soiled imagination.  Even with the help of grace, the cleansing of these stains may take a long time.  Bearing this fact in mind is not necessarily hypocritical or pharisaical.

Suppose that for years a young man immersed himself in the hookup culture – or, what is much the same thing, suppose that for years he used prostitutes.  Now he has repented.  He is attracted to a young woman.  Knowing his past, however, she is reluctant to consider marrying him, or even dating him, because ultimately, dating is about finding a suitable marriage partner.

Is she wrong to hesitate?  Of course not.  She is merely prudent.  Why?

As Augustine says in his Confessions, “My soul is like a house, small for you to enter, but I pray you to enlarge it.  It is in ruins, but I ask you to remake it.  It contains much that you will not be pleased to see: this I know and do not hide.  But who is to rid it of these things?  There is no one but you.”

All in a moment, I open the door of my house to Christ, bidding Him to come in.  And so He does.  Right away he begins scouring, throwing out trash, and letting in light and fresh air.  I imagine that I have made Him the Lord of the manor, but have I?  Not necessarily.  I may only have given him possession of the entrance hall.  After a while — maybe after a very long while — I permit myself to hear his persistent tap on the door of the living room.  Reluctantly, I relent and open that door too.  He now has possession of both entrance hall and living room.  What a relief to get them cleaned up.  So has He the whole house at last?  No, for even now I am shutting him out of my innermost, secret rooms.  Will I ever allow Him to be truly the Lord of the manor?  If I do, how long will it take?  For many, perhaps most of us, years, and perhaps with great suffering and struggle.  This is normal.  The suffering is part of the healing, like the pain of dental work.

Something like that may be happening with the young man who has repented his sexual impurity.  First he opened the door to the room of his soul where he had been using prostitutes.  Some time later, he opened the door to the room of his soul where he had been hooking up.  Later still, he opened the door to the room of his soul where he had been using pornography.  Still later, he opened another.  Each time he was forgiven.  Is it a test of the young woman’s faith to believe that there are no locked doors left?  No, it is a test of her judgment to consider the matter carefully.  What doors has he yet to unlock?  Does she know?  Is she even in a position to know?

For that matter, how well does he understand himself?  Deep stains and injuries may remain in his imagination and desires, as well as injuries to his natural inclination for the truth.  Such infirmities generate stronger-than-usual temptations to relapse into the sins themselves.  Just as it may take a long time to yield every category of sin to Christ for His forgiveness, so it may take a long time for the Holy Spirit to repair the damage of already-forgiven sin, and to heal those pre-existing weaknesses which make the young man susceptible.

Since we are instruments to each other of the grace of God, the repentant young man needs encouragement in the amendment of his life, not shunning.  But since the interior grace of God is invisible to us, the young woman’s duty is not to believe that he is marriageable, but to weigh the matter.  To be careful even about repented sin is not to mistrust Christ’s work of redemption, but to recognize how redemption actually works.

I can see how at first the exercise of such discernment in the community may seem no different than shaming and shunning.  In fact, it is almost the opposite.

 

NEW STUFF

My conversation about Pandemic of Lunacy with Philip Davies, host of the very interesting British podcast Amazing Academics, is now online, and here it is.  As usual, I’ve also posted it to the Listen to Talks page.