Gutsy Guilt

Don’t let shame over sexual sin destroy you

John Piper

Christianity Today  (October 2007)

“It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks,” is what Jesus told Saul on the Damascus road according to the KJV.  That is the perfect summary of how John Piper deals with the problem of sexual sin in this article.  He has grand ambitions, but he does not ground them in everyday realities.  He proclaims God’s word, but does not connect it to life as it is really lived.  What he is offering in fact is largely contrary to reason and evidence.  It is way too hard to face the facts.

Piper is concerned that too many young Christians are failing to pursue their spiritual ambitions because of sexual guilt.  His burden is that they should not end up wasting their lives because of guilt.  He is not so much concerned that they completely overcome their sexual problems.  As long as they are resisting temptation even though they give in again and again, then he is satisfied.

Although this article gets somewhat convoluted at times, the essential ethical argument is as follows:

# 1  Piper places masturbation, fornication, and pornography all in the same category, which he refers to as sinful.  By this grouping and his few examples he seems to be referring primarily to single young adults. He says,

The great tragedy is not masturbation or fornication or pornography. The tragedy is that Satan uses guilt from these failures to strip you of every radical dream you ever had or might have. In their place, he gives you a happy, safe, secure, American life of superficial pleasures, until you die in your lakeside rocking chair.  [emphasis added]

# 2  God’s holiness will be revealed by his wrath against sin in judgment, but in Christ’s death God completely forgave all our sins.  This means if we place our faith in Christ we are already forgiven.  As one paraphrase (not used by Piper) puts it…

You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins. He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. Colossians 2:13-14 (New Living Translation)

# 3  Those who have true faith in Christ can live lives of bold confidence in their forgiveness even though they may still sin from time to time.  The sign that they have true faith is that they are fighting sin: they are resisting temptation.  Piper says…

The distinguishing mark of saving faith is not perfection. It is not that I never sin sexually. The mark of faith is that I fight. I fight not with fists or knives or guns or bombs, but with the truth of Christ. I fight anything that diminishes the fullness of the lordship of Jesus in my life….  So if all you can see in the Cross of Jesus is a license to go on sinning, then you don’t have saving faith.

I think any thinking person can readily determine how they will evaluate this argument.

For myself, I think the basic structure is sound; but lumping all three topics (masturbation, fornication, and pornography) in the first category leads to wrong conclusions.  The argument is based on the assumption that all three of these activities are sinful; but I think that masturbation is not necessarily sinful.  Piper seems to assume otherwise.  In so doing, I think he is denying the physical dimension of human experience the space it needs for one to develop and affirm either the gift for marriage or singleness, depending on God’s will.  He is not acknowledging that sexual energies emerging in the maturing person demand an outlet.  Rather than channeling them toward accepting the gifts God has offered, he is suggesting that people should resist those energies as if they are sinful rather than natural.  

By suggesting that young people should try to fight against their sexual feelings rather than learn how God may be directing them through those urges, John Piper has lost sight of the goodness of God’s creation and has not quite helped young people to fully reorient their minds to God’s new creation in Christ.

Yes, we need gutsy guilt.  But let’s feel guilt about the right things.