“Lovers must not, like usurers, live for themselves alone. They must finally turn from their gaze at one another back toward the community.” — Wendell Berry

Meet Casey, my hypothetical friend, and her boyfriend John. Casey can’t really see herself marrying John, but feeling young and fun-loving, she decides to fool around with John and not think about the consequences. Her best friend warns her about keeping safe boundaries with John, but she replies with “I can do what I want with my body.” She knows her parents want her to stay pure until marriage, but she feels abstinence is outdated, traditional and unrealistic in light of young people’s natural urges. If sex education and the media have taught her anything, it is that as long as she protects herself by practicing “safe sex,” she’ll be fine. She sees ads for birth control pills every time she turns on the TV. Casey feels she is ready to have sex with John. So Casey and John enjoy the blissful, euphoric experience of the greatest intimacy they have ever known.

Is Casey’s decision to become sexuality active solely up to her? She is the only one affected, right? After they break up, John continues to be sexually promiscuous with other girls – is that too not his own choice? Can we utter “sexuality” and “autonomy of self” in the same breath?

We seem to have forgotten that sex requires two people. And two people encompass two bodies, two souls and two lives. So choices about sexuality are not personal decisions, because one person’s sexual choices will always affect another human being.

If sex is shared, then how can we say, “what I do with my body is up to me?” When Casey chooses to have sex with John, the memory of their shared intimacy is seared into the rest of his life. Casey has no idea of the effects that will linger with John after they close the door on their relationship. Those thoughts of sexual love with his ex-girlfriend, no matter how many years ago, will no doubt seep into his marriage. The sexual choice that John and Casey make deeply affects not only each other, but also their families and future families.

Look at the language we use in sex education for another example of the “iSexuality” phenomenon: “If you’re going to have sex, protect yourself.” This reduces sex to a mechanical act between biological beings, robbing sex of its spiritual and sacred meaning. How often do we talk about protecting the other person? I mean more than from Sexually Transmitted Infections (formerly known as STDs) and pregnancy, but protecting the other person’s integrity and wholeness? I mean honouring the other person as a child of God. When we protect another’s wholeness, we are protecting the wholeness of the community. Perhaps the degradation of community has something to do with the degradation of sexuality, then of marriages, then of families, then of sexuality again.

Among young adult Christians, the question “how far is too far?” is a perfect example of a selfish, individualistic view of sexuality. What we are really asking is “how much pleasure can I get out of this dating relationship before compromising my purity?” What about the other person’s purity? Shouldn’t we instead be asking, “how can I honour and protect the wholeness of my boyfriend or
girlfriend?”

The moment we are sexually intimate in any way, we share a part of someone’s body and soul. Sex is not an individual act, it is a shared one. Maybe we need to think of a practice of sexuality that honours the other above ourselves, committing to love that person for the rest of their lives. In marriage, to quote Berry again, we turn our gaze “back toward the community.”