Last Step on the Way Down (Article) by Abidan Shah, Ph.D
(Published in the newspaper Daily Dispatch, Henderson on February 1st, 2025)
Proverbs 14:34 “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.”
Righteousness is the cornerstone of a nation’s prosperity and longevity, but sin is the cause of its reproach and downfall. Although unrighteousness may come in many forms (lying, cheating, violence, murder, greed), sexual immorality is of the worst kind. Paul warns in 1 Corinthians 6:18 “Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.” Failure to follow this command has devastating consequences for both the individual and the society.
In 1934, an Oxford anthropologist named J.D. Unwin published a book titled “Sex and Culture” in which he studied and analyzed the sexual behaviors of 86 cultures through 5,000 years of history. Unwin was not a Christian, which he admitted, saying, “I offer no opinion about rightness or wrongness.” But this is what he found: “In human records there is no instance of a society retaining its energy after a complete new generation has inherited a tradition which does not insist on pre-nuptial and post-nuptial continence.” Meaning: when a society becomes promiscuous instead of a man and woman having sex only in the confines of marriage, it’s a matter of time before that society will shrivel and die. After studying the Romans, Greeks, Sumerians, Moors, Babylonians, Anglo-Saxons, and many others, he wrote, “The evidence is that in the past, a class has risen to a position of political dominance because of its great energy, and that, at the period of its rising, its sexual regulations have always been strict. It has retained its energy and dominated the society so long as its sexual regulations have demanded both pre-nuptial and post-nuptial continence…I know of no exception to these rules.”
Unwin’s warning is especially applicable today as sexual immorality is being celebrated by some and even justified by so called pastors. God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for such sins. Lest some say that, per Ezekiel 16:49, this was simply “pride, fullness of food, and abundance of idleness; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy,” I suggest reading the next verse – Ezekiel 16:50 “And they were haughty and committed abomination before Me; therefore I took them away as I saw fit.” Not only does the Old Testament stands firm on this, but the New Testament affirms this as well. Among many other passages, Jude 7 confirms “as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after unnatural desire, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire” No hermeneutical gymnastics can justify this last step on the way down (Romans 1).
Bottom line: God loves everyone and so should we. But love that condones sexual immorality, especially of the worst kind, is not love at all. Imagine a doctor who refuses to inform a patient of a sickness that could be fatal if untreated. That’s not love. It’s a crime. God not only informed us of our sickness of Sin, but because of his love for us, he also sent his Son as our cure. John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”