About sex and certainty

[u/HuckleberryGlum6426]

Hi everyone, I hope you're all doing okay.

I am almost 22, and when I was 14 I was diagnosed with severe OCD. I honestly had some rough teenage years. I had to drop out of high school and then out of college because my obsessions were pretty bad. It got to the point where I was spending 24/7 obsessively researching things about the Bible and theology, and I almost went fully psychotic. Thankfully, I am in a much better place now, and I'm even just a few months away from finishing college.

Lately, I’ve been thinking extensively about the topic of sex in Christianity. Because of my past obsessive research, I have a cognitive leaning towards progressive theology and a view of the Bible as non-inerrant. Because of that, I feel like I lean towards a more sex-positive viewpoint.

At the same time, I deeply respect tradition, and I am terrified of committing a sin. I understand that marriage is holy, and I know that sex is a powerful, vulnerable bond between two people. But I’m also a young guy who wants to experience sex and connection (I have had sex in the past).

My struggle is this: because of my OCD, I know that I will never have an absolute, 100% certain answer that satisfies my brain. There will always be a "what if tradition is right and I'm sinning?" fear in the back of my head.

This brings me to Romans 14:23: "But whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin."

How should someone navigate such a difficult question when certainty is practically impossible for them? Does this verse mean we must have 100% certainty and zero doubts before we make a move? Or is there room in the Christian walk for "figuring it out along the way" and trusting God's grace in the gray areas, rather than waiting until we are completely sure we are doing the right thing?

I honestly have no one to talk about these type of things. I feel like everyone will give me different answers depending on their denomination and even political leaning and I feel honestly lost and confused.

[u/KXLY]

Ah man I feel you 100%!

I too am an obsessive worrier!

I'll share my thoughts in no particular order.

The first is that perhaps the only thing you should be certain of is God's goodness and his mercy.

The second is to do a gut check and ask yourself some gut-level questions such as "Why am I a Christian? Do I think God is good in a real way? What is the anchor point of my faith? Does God's law serve purposes or is it 'just because'? (i.e. do you believe in divine command theory or do you believe goodness is legible to humans?)"

I'll say a few more things.

One is that someone who just wanted to fuck off and do whatever they wanted... wouldn't be tying themselves in knots about it. They'd reach for the easiest rationalization and then just do it.

Another thing is to consider separating out your different feelings and their sources. In my case, when I was (and still am!) wrestling with my sexuality I identified a three different voices: the Accuser/Prosecutor, the Skeptic, and my Heart.

The Accuser is never satisfied, and is always questioning my motives and demanding I prove my submission to God by leaving my husband, and saying that my unwillingness to do so is proof of my faithlessness. The Accuser, crucially, is never satisfied. If I sacrificed my marriage, what would be next? I mentioned this to my priest and he said "Well, a Prosecutor's job is to prosecute, not to find the truth. Take that into consideration." Abasing yourself isn't the same thing as being faithful.

The Skeptic, meanwhile, is from my prior life as an Atheist. It insists that sacrifices should serve some purpose and not "just because". It insists that reason has a seat at the table.

The Heart, lastly, is what my actual conscience says when I strip away reason and accusation. And my heart said that leaving my husband would be wrong --that'd I'd be hurting him to prove my piety.

However theatrical it sounds, I found that this characterization exercise actually helped me think, and I decided to... stop taking counsel from the voice telling me to destroy good things by leaving my partner of 14 years (the man who takes care of me when I am sick, on whose shoulder I have cried, who has believed in me even when I thought I was worthless, and the only person with whom I have ever laid...).

So, without telling you what to believe, I'll offer these thoughts and experiences and hope they help you in your thinking and searching.

[u/EddieRyanDC]

Romans 14:23: "But whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin."

My dear friend, you are torturing yourself needlessly. You are pulling that verse out of Paul's letter, and turning it into a bumper sticker - as if it was a complete thought on its own. This has nothing to do with having or not having certainty. It is really addressing the opposite of that.

The chapter is Paul's advice on how to deal with Christians who may believe that something is sinful, but you believe it is OK. Read it inside the whole chapter. It is telling the church how to live with a diversity of opinion.

Paul is saying that if someone is more observant than you are, respect their faith. Do not flaunt your freedom in front of them or put them down. If they think that something is a sin, do not encourage them to do that thing.

Paul is specifically talking about eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols. This was controversial. Paul's personal view was that the idols weren't real, so who cares if the animals were sacrificed to them. But he respected that other people found this something they could not do in good conscience. (This is the person who "has doubts".) Let them follow their conscience, because to go against that, for them, would be sin.

Beware of pulling a verse from here and a verse from there. You will not come to any kind of understanding of what the original author was trying to get across.

You might like the book The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More than Our "Correct" Beliefs by Dr Peter Enns. Peter Enns is a respected Bible scholar, and also a host of the podcast The Bible for Normal People. But this book combines his study of the Bible, with some of his own personal story and the many years he spent trying to nail down the "right" views.

[u/Potential_Heart3163]

Muchacho , me siento muy identificado contigo . Bienvenido al mundo de lis obsesivos. Soy maduro pero recuerdo a tu edad actual, estar sufriendo las mismas dudas tuyas, como creyente y al sentir también atracción al mismo sexo. He vivido muchos años en la tierra gris…
No hay ni blancos ni negros absolutos en muchos temas. Guíate por tu conciencia. ¿ hay alguna mala intención en una relación concreta que vayas a tener ? De hacerle daño, aprovecharte de la debilidad del otro etc…Si es así, no solo sería “ pecado” ( en términos cristianos ) sino también inmoral, e inhumano.
Si hay mucho consentimiento, y no de hace ningún mal a nadie más…adelante!!! La vida es hermosa y está para experimentarla y gozar de ella. No vivas o desperdicies tu vida atrapado en un mundo de dudas o condenación constante. Guíate por tu conciencia y la palabra de Dios ( ya que eres creyente evangélico, supongo ) Cuidado con descontextualizar versículos ( como te aconsejaba una persona en su comentario aquí arriba ) Esa es una tentación “ evangélica “, je. No dudes en escribirme si lo necesitas. Me duele que digas que no encuentras personas con quien hablar o contrastar tus dudas o convicciones. Un abrazo . Luis .

[u/DisgruntledScience]

Christ, Himself, had this to say about tradition to the religious teachers of His time, the Pharisees, in Mark 7:8-13:

"You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.”

And he continued, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and, ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is Corban (that is, devoted to God)— then you no longer let them do anything for their father or mother. Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.”

First century Judaism would be virtually unrecognizable to anyone who knows (or thinks they know) about modern Judaism. In this context, the Pharisees had established rabbinical teaching and the "tradition of the elders" as a means not just to understand their religious texts but also in an attempt to appease God and get out from under Roman rule. They were effectively trying to use their Scriptures as a magical summoning ritual to get God to appear and do their bidding. In time, these traditions began to emphasize matters that gave the religious leaders a pass while coming down harshly on everyday people.

Their traditions also dealt with which texts were actually to be considered Scripture. The Sadducees, for instance, only accepted Torah as Scripture, and this really was the only set part of Scripture. The Pharisees in addition variably accepted as Scripture any number of what would be regarded as the Prophets (Nevi'im) or the Writings (Ketuvim) and wouldn't formally recognize the modern set of books in the Tanakh until (at least) a century after Christ. Among several of their lists were also books that are now treated as Apocrypha, Deuterocanonical, or even entirely non-canonical. They didn't even have the concept of the 613 Mitzvot until another century later (based on mysticism and numerology) and wouldn't have these listed out until a millennium later during the High Middle Ages.

We also have to look a bit at the context of the early church. The early church represented a crossroads when it came to whether to continue to follow rabbinical teaching or to view it as a relic of the past. The early church represented a mass conversion of Greeks to Judaism. Then, the Edict of Claudius around 50 AD segregated the church by removing Jews who had lived in Rome, so both the Jewish and Greek camps of the church began developing as separate groups. Then with Claudius's death in 54 AD, the edict was no longer in effect. Rome reintegrated. The early church, though, was now divided between the Judaizers and Hellenizers. Paul addressed this schism around 57-58 AD when he wrote the book of Romans.

Romans 14 specifically deals with this tension surrounding food, specifically meat. In the first century, Jewish people really had very few options for getting meat. They had commands, which were emphasized by the Pharisees, against eating meat that either (a) wasn't from a ritually clean animal or (b) was offered to a deity besides Yahweh. The kicker is that in the ancient world, butchering and cooking meat were effectively religious positions, with rites to dedicate (sacrifice) the animal to a patron deity before eating. So if you were Jewish, the only option you were given was taking an animal to the temple in Jerusalem, and for most this was a rare occurrence. Fish, interestingly enough, were neither considered meat nor subject to rules of sacrifice. The members of the church living in the city of Rome not only had never done this but couldn't do this. They were around 1400 miles away with a minimum of a month's journey, one way. Plus, in Rome, pork was the single most common meat that was eaten. The Jewish members of the early church, especially this far from Jerusalem, were primarily vegetarians or pescatarians. The Greek members of the early church were more traditionally omnivores. So when the Jewish population of Rome returned, the Judaizers that came with them began trying to force the Greek converts to follow all of the same dietary practices prescribed by the Pharisees. No eating pork. No eating meat sacrificed outside of Jerusalem.

To understand verse 23, you have to read the rest of the chapter in context. Paul addressed the issue of the judgmental Judaizers through the lens of a weak faith. That is, their faith required human adherence to arbitrary commands, passed down and tainted through tradition, and immediately fell apart. It weakened the power of God's grace. It became a personal work to try to earn God's favor. The reason is found in verse 14: "I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself." But he continues and also addresses the Hellenizers in verse 15 by reminding them that "[i]f your brother or sister is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love." So, this is dealing with eating in some sort of communal setting rather than in one's own home. It's also a reminder that grace doesn't give us permission to just blame others from being offended if we're actively trying to offend them. Verses 22-23 are the conclusion to this matter. First, whether one eats or abstains from eating [by context, pork], that's between the person and God, not a matter for the community to bicker about. Verse 22 in particular adds that "[b]lessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves." That is, whatever a person approves for themself should be done (1) without condemning others, through which the person is condemned by their own judgement, and (2) without doing so for the sake of provoking others, through which the person is condemned for intentionally refusing to act out of love. The word in verse 23 often translated as "has doubts" is διακρινόμενος. While the word can sometimes mean 'to doubt' it can also mean 'to oppose,' 'to discriminate,' 'to separate,' or even 'to judge' depending on context. I would argue that many English translation have actually lost the original intent behind how the word's used here. Based on the context of the passage, a more proper reading of the verse would probably be "[whoever casts judgement is condemned in however they eat… / whoever casts judgement on how his brother or sister eats is condemned…] because their eating is not through faith." The last part of verse 23 ("and everything that does not come from faith is sin") is really used to go back to how he contrasted faith and work back in Romans 11 (esp. v. 6).

The whole point of the chapter was that trying to Judaize the Greeks and trying to Hellenize the Jews was spitting on the very fabric of God's grace since they couldn't even display the same grace to one another. Each camp had differing traditions that could, in different ways, honor God. Salvation wasn't about making one camp like the other but rather about reconciliation. The idea that this requires certainty is outright rejected by the rest of the text. Plus, in the end, history shows that this was a transitional period that would cause the old ways to pass away.

How the modern church handles sex has many parallels with the issue of eating meat in the first century (and likewise has been influenced more than tradition than by Scripture and certainly than by faith). At some point, we have to stop worrying about the debates and live in the faith that God has already reconciled us to Himself. We also, frankly, need to be aware of how long we've been in the transition and refuse to move backwards to another form of judgmentalism (and, like Paul, refuse to allow judgmental members to target others).

[u/Skill-Useful]

"and I am terrified of committing a sin" is this what being a christian is about when you read the NT and about jesus?

""what if tradition is right and I'm sinning?"" what a sad religion would christianity be. luckily theyre wrong

"Does this verse mean" is paul jesus? no? solved then :)

"depending on their denomination and even political leaning" sure, because some of them are right and some of them are politically right ;)

[u/Peteat6]

Firstly, that verse says if you think it’s a sin, don’t do it. If you don’t think it’s a sin, help yourself.

Secondly, lose the terror. Our faith is not one of fear. Trust God. We all sin. We are sinning in ways we don’t even recognise. It’s easier to spot that in other people than in yourself, but that’s a clue that we’re all as bad as each other. God forgives. God loves us even as sinners. Trust him. And let go the fear.

[u/GCNGA]

When you think about it, there's uncertainty around a lot of Christian doctrines. I don't want to trigger you, but consider communion. It definitely happened in the early church, and Jesus instituted it at the Passover meal with the disciples the night before he was killed. Does that mean it should be an annual thing linked to the Passover, or more frequent? 1 Cor 11:17-34 suggests it's more frequent, but is it every time the church meets? Today, some churches do that. Other churches have communion once per month or so. Some are less frequent. Is there a right answer? Or does it not matter?

This is just an example, but Rom 14:22-23 is your answer. Proceed by faith--and yes, that does mean figuring things out as you go sometimes. My Christian walk has certainly been that way. Think of courtroom standards of proof--the truth is often not known, so something is established by the preponderance of the evidence, or beyond a reasonable doubt, depending on the matter before the court.

What this means in a practical sense is that in an area of uncertainty, just do the best you can at the time. If you think you should avoid something or start something, then act accordingly (but grace is still at work if you fail to fully follow through on what you think you're led to do or not do).

[u/alextoughtakes_]

Romans 14 isn't asking for certainty. Paul was writing to people arguing over food sacrificed to idols, and his point was not to act against your own conscience. He wasn't saying you need zero doubt first. If he were, nobody could ever act, because nobody has zero doubt about anything. With OCD, the "what if" will always be there. That's the illness talking, not the Holy Spirit. A good therapist who knows scrupulosity, the religious form of OCD, can help you tell those two voices apart.

What I'd lean on is a clear line you can actually live with. Sex belongs inside commitment. That doesn't mean hooking up and hoping grace covers it. It means finding a man you love, building something faithful, and treating the relationship like a covenant. That line is traditional enough to respect the faith and doesn't require you to be straight. It also gives your brain something solid to hold onto in place of endless gray.

And grace is real. Ephesians 2:8 says you're saved by grace through faith, not by getting every call right. God isn't waiting to catch you on a technicality.

I wrote about what the Bible actually says about gay relationships, and why the fear you've been carrying doesn't match it, here: https://alextoughtakes.substack.com/p/what-christians-get-wrong-about-being

And on why sex inside commitment beats the hookup route, here: https://alextoughtakes.substack.com/p/hookup-culture-was-never-the-same