Beautiful Union: How God’s Vision for Sex Points Us to the Good, Unlocks the True, and (Sort of) Explains Everything

Pastor Butler (The Skeletons in God’s Closet) offers a Christian view of sexual ethics in this flawed entry. Arguing that sex is never merely physical, Butler outlines an understanding of intimacy as a metaphor for Christian values. The author begins by detailing a highly symbolic framework in which the union of bodies represents the “giving and receiving at the heart of salvation,” and birth recalls Jesus’s resurrection. Fundamentally, he writes, sex honors the fact that “our Creator has designed us, majestically and intentionally, with the ability to come together as one.” Butler outlines issues that arise from this vision, critiquing divorce as a “victory of sin,” and infidelity as a “betrayal of the divine character embedded in the icon of marriage.” He argues that nonheterosexual intercourse goes against God’s will, as “two cannot become one flesh” when God-created biological distinctions are ignored: “Gay sex is unable to be an icon of creation,” he writes. Butler stretches his thesis too far, leading to inexact metaphors (“A woman’s need for foreplay... is a sign of our affections being warmed as the bride of Christ by his amorous advances”), overblown language (“We bought the devil’s deception, took the tempter’s temptation, and in doing so unleashed destruction”), and faulty reasoning. Believers can skip this one. (Apr.)