You don’t have to travel far either in the real world or the internet realm to hear a modern man or woman assert that they are OK with an adult choosing to do with their body whatever they want to do. Thus if an adult man wants to sleep with another adult man, that’s OK. If he wants to have his genitalia removed, take hormones and have bits added to him, that’s fine too. If he wants to be involved in polygamy, that’s not a problem. The individual reigns supreme, as long as he doesn’t hurt anyone else. Unfortunately, comments like these can even be heard from Christians – which shows how thoroughly secular pluralism has infected our thinking.
A Christian response should be, “What do the Scriptures teach?” They teach that we are not just free-floating individuals. We are social beings. Yes the individual matters, but we are all interconnected. This is seen in the truth that we are literally all connected. We are all descendants of Noah and through him of Adam. We are further connected by the design of the world. God has so made the world, that we cannot live without each other. I cannot build, or do electrical work, or conduct surgery. I need others. This pattern is also seen in the moral design of the world.
So what ethical implications does this connectedness have? It means that all sin is social. Sin is never just individual. No matter how small, it has ramifications for society through the web of relationships that it impacts. The classic case of course is in our representative head Adam, whose sin caused all of his descendants to be caught up in its effects. Another case in Scripture is the story of Achan whose disobedience to God caused his own death, the death of his family, and the deaths of 36 other Israelite men. David’s sin with Bathsheba led to the slow trainwreck of his family. Solomon’s sin of marrying foreign women and going after their gods had geopolitical implications that caused suffering and misery for centuries to come.
Sin is social. This truth is denied in the statement, “He can do what he wants as long as he doesn’t hurt anyone.” Sin always hurts society. Fatherless homes have an impact. Homosexual unions have an impact. This is why Mosaic law dealt with things in a way that seems more than harsh to us. Adultery was punishable by death. Why? Because the impact on society of this sin is horrific. It doesn’t just hurt the rejected spouse and their children. The effects of sin ripple out through our social connections. So as moderns, we think we are over the barbarity of such responses to adultery. Yet our ‘mercy’ is truly cruel. In our ‘kindness’ we allow and promote behaviour that leads to more crime, more teenage promiscuity, a mental health epidemic among teens, and a high rate of suicide. We all have to live with the effects of that kind of society.