Photo by Priyanka Singh on Unsplash
Human Sexuality Is Biologically Natural
Pedophiles are people who have a persistent pattern of sexual attraction to children. When people begin the natural process of puberty, their bodies mature and begin to develop the full range of sexual and romantic functionality. This all happens automatically and spontaneously. It is self-evident that an adolescent child doesn’t choose to start experiencing desires for intimate, sexual relationships; they simply experience it, and decide how they’ll respond.
What should we think when we find ourselves sexually and romantically interested in the wrong people? Often times, this is the initial experience of pedophiles, at some point during adolescence or shortly thereafter. In recent years, society has come to believe that almost anything that comes naturally is an acceptable expression of sexuality. The rallying cry of “I was born this way!” echoed far and wide. And why not? Ask most people, and they’ll say it’s intuitively true.
Clearly, infants and very young children don’t experience sexual desires at all. They totally lack the psychological and neurological capacity for that, or most of the other perceptions and desires in the range of human experience. So what is “I was born this way” even supposed to mean? Most people mean something like “These sexual attractions occurred spontaneously, from a relatively early age.” In the past, no one would bat an eye when boys and girls had crushes on each other. People widely understood that feelings of romantic interest and being especially drawn to certain people involved much more than just sexual arousal. But more recently, people have come to see sexual desire as the defining lens of interpersonal relationships. This shift in perspective does not reflect reality, and it has had disastrous results. (That history is not what I’m addressing here, but the books Strange New World, by Carl Trueman, and Openness Unhindered, by Rosaria Butterfield are good resources to learn about it).
Give it even a little thought, and being “born this way” is not a reliable way to determine right and wrong. This world is obviously broken, and people harm each other in all kinds of ways. Even toddlers are selfish, hit their parents, and lie to them. Only a lunatic or a devil would seriously conclude that people ought to follow any passions and whims that may come innately. And yet that is how people have come to think about the themselves, in regard to the sex (or in our case, perhaps age) of the people they tend to find sexually desirable. This is even to the extent that they frequently believe their basic human rights have been violated if some other way of determining what is right or wrong is suggested. The idea that sexual desires are a special case of “my desires tell me who and what I am” is distinctly modern, and society has not grappled with the implications of it for pedophilia.
Well, that’s the boat we’re in.
A Body and Spirit Together
Research is increasingly showing that pedophilia likely stems from pre-existing biological causes, at least in some cases. Notably, researchers have found statistically significant higher rates of non-righthandedness among people who experience pedophilia. This is meaningful because non-righthandedness is both less common than right-handedness, and is usually attributable to biological variations in prenatal and perinatal development. To be clear, this does not constitute proof; it merely points us in a reasonably likely direction. It is entirely possible that future research will find stronger evidence that biology actually plays a smaller role than current research indicates. But what about Christians today? What should we do with this? How can we believe that God is perfectly good and all-powerful, when our best evidence suggests that some people are born with a biological predisposition to be sexually attracted to children?
This actually doesn’t pose the problem that some people might easily assume. Ever since Adam and Eve first sinned in the Garden of Eden, there has been brokenness, disease, and death in this world. We are physical; we are a unity of body and spirit together. Yet sometimes, people can lose sight of how interconnected our spiritual and physical brokenness are. This can lead to focusing too much on one, and losing sight of the other. But we need to understand both to make sense of our lives, and the moral framework God has revealed to us through the Bible and through the designs in nature.
God has created all of reality with intrinsic purpose and meaning. The study of this is called Teleology. Likewise, human sexuality has purpose and meaning outside of our subjective experience of it. That purpose includes things like procreation, mutual sacrificial love, emotional bonding, and symbolizing God’s relationship with his people. God’s intention for human sexual behavior never changes. Rather, it is our bodies and minds that can be broken and dysfunctional. All sexual sin violates this innate purpose in some way, even when the desire for that sin comes through biologically innate causes. In this sense, no one is “A Pedophile”, because sexual activity with a child is contrary to God’s purpose for human sexual relationships within marriage. It is simply not something God has equipped or intended children for, hence why sexual activity between adults and children is rightly called “abuse”.
Malfunctions In the Brain
“The things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.”
Jesus, Matthew 15:18-19
Jesus taught that our sinful thoughts and desires begin in the heart; that is, in the core of our passions. Things like adultery, slander, and coveting. Again, we are both body and spirit. The various organs of the body each have their purpose, and the brain is no different. Our brains facilitate our thoughts, emotions, desires, and – notably – our biological drives. And if there is a malfunction in the brain, that too can impact our thoughts and perceptions. Scripture gives us no reason to think this would not include how we experience our inherent sinfulness, including sexual sinfulness.
It’s easy to find examples of this. Various forms of dementia can profoundly change one’s personality. As the disease progresses, symptoms may fluctuate from day to day. On bad days, a person can become confused, and lash out in anger and frustration at the very people caring for them. Sadly, my own grandmother has been going through this process as I write this. The gentle, cheerful soul I remember sometimes says some deeply mean-spirited things. This is by no means her normal behavior, even now, but her increasing confusion sometimes gets the better of her. It has been an exhausting experience for my whole family. Yet we don’t blame her, for we know it is only her body that is failing. She did not cause her own dementia, yet she is still morally culpable before God for her behavior, including her thoughts and affections. (Sin does not cease to be sin, merely because one does not recognize it as sin.) Nor is she regressing in her spiritual sanctification. No, God is still faithful in her life. His abundant grace will cover her even when she loses her self-control, and sins in ways she otherwise would not. He has allowed this disease to attack her brain, and he is using it as part of his sovereign plan for her good, and ours. Soon she will be with her Savior, free from the clouded judgment and misunderstanding that this illness inflicts. Free from original sin, and its ongoing physical and spiritual effects.
At the other end of life, babies can be born with a variety of neurological disabilities that impact their behavior and intellect. While disabilities certainly don’t indicate any greater inherent sinfulness, they can impact how someone experiences sinful desires. A person born incurably blind probably won’t experience strong temptations of lust in the same way many other people do. An adolescent with a learning disability might have more difficulty than his peers understanding why it is wrong to indulge in the intense sexual desires brought on by puberty. Sometimes we can identify the cause of these disorders, as with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, but oftentimes we just don’t know. Crucially, God never tells us that we need to know.
The simple fact is, sexual attraction to children and adolescents often occurs spontaneously. It can develop over time as a person who experiences it grows into an adolescent, and then into adulthood. In more ways than most people would like to admit, it can mirror the development of healthy, typical attraction to teen peers/adults of the opposite sex. In these spontaneously occurring cases, the core pedophilic impulse is not something people have any natural ability to simply choose not to have. No one has found a medical cure, and no amount of wishing will change things. Perhaps the most frustrating part for myself and others I know is that unlike actions we have voluntary control over, repentance today does not mean no temptation tomorrow.
Response-Able
So what should we do, you and me? Well, for the most part, we simply follow God like everyone else. However, I do want to make a few important points:
- Regardless of whether pedophilia is nature, nurture, or (most likely) a complex mix of the two, God’s moral standard always applies. Any form of sexual activity involving a child is wrong, and even fantasizing about it is wrong. We cannot just permanently stop experiencing these internal temptations by our own will. But we can surrender them to God every day, and trust that he will be faithful to walk with us and uphold us. We are always morally responsible before God and man for what we do, even as we may not be causally responsible for these desires.
- We have put our faith in Jesus Christ, and we have his promise of new life. We can still have a joyful, fulfilling life, with deep relationships and meaning. As rap artist Lecrae said, “See, your money, your singleness, marriage, talents, your time – they were loaned to you to show the world that Christ is divine.” Note that I included marriage in that quote. I know this may never work out for some who live with pedophilia, but it is not taboo or forbidden for us, either.
- Obviously, many people who are sexually attracted to children choose to indulge those desires. Even so, know that you are NOT responsible for the sins and crimes of others. Each person is an individual moral agent, and it is wrong for other people to judge your behavior or moral character by the sins of others.
- And finally, if you are reading this, and you can point to some event or activities in your life that you believe had a negative impact on your sexual attractions, I don’t intend to minimize that. A Christian counselor I am friends with has helped many clients who can point to childhood sexual abuse, neglect, pornography use, or unhealthy emotional attachment to children as things that have shaped their sexual and romantic desires.
To learn more about what we are supposed to do with our sexuality, check out God’s Plan for Sex: What’s a Pedophile to Do?
To learn more about dealing with strong temptation, check out A Pedophile’s Darkest Hour – Pitfalls & Strategies
To hear Trent’s thoughts on sexuality change, check out Is Change Possible? – A Closer Look at Regeneration