50 Shades would seem completely unobjectional in circles in which sexuality and novelty are celebrated as inherently good for their own sake, because pleasure for its own sake is viewed either as a positive or even as a means of personal growth.
But these things are no more true of our sexuality than they are about any other good thing. Every gift from God has a proper place for which is was intended and for which it thrives, and outside of that place becomes like a cancer.
The thing that concerns me is not that society embraces 50 Shades; we should expect nothing else. In fact, I get frustrated with Christians who expect nonbelievers to live by the standards to which God calls us. It isn't that there is anything wrong with pointing out the inherent shortcomings in the secular attitude, but we must do so without a sense of moral superiority, as if we are better than nonbelievers because we have accepted a gift we don't deserve.
So my first concern about 50 Shades is a reflection of a much larger one: that so many within the church think that it's acceptable to remove a beautiful gift of God from its proper place and boundaries and simply revel in it for its own sake. We have grown up immersed in a society that snubs its nose at quaint ideas of propriety and purity, of the preposterous idea that any good thing should be reserved for God and the purposes for which he designed it, let alone that we ourselves might exist only to glorify him so that all might enter into his boundless love. There are many believers who see nothing wrong with the world's point of view, especially versus the perceived alternative of puritanical restriction on something the world sees as too long withheld from us. These believers have accepted the lie that we have further evolved and become more enlightened than our primitive forebears of centuries past. Any time spent reading their profound thoughts ought to disabuse us of the notion that we are superior to them merely by virtue of our technological advances.
But the temptation to consider our sexuality as outside of God's purview, as something that we should decide for ourselves the best use of, is the same as for wealth, possessions, power, happiness, leisure, etc. These are each good in proper context but become harmful when taken out of it, or when taken to extremes or made a goal into themselves. And when the church joins secular society in misusing God's gifts rather than proclaiming the higher truth, we are not doing our job.
All of that, though, does not mean that my concerns about 50 Shades are limited to its effect on church members. Quite the opposite. As someone whose adolescence and subsequent life were marred by the abuse of the concept of mutual consent, I believe that I am well qualified to observe that yes, for some people - perhaps many people, who will certainly almost never realize it at the top - this slope is very slippery. The more we mainstream sexual permissiveness, the more people will get caught up in their weaknesses. Also, the more people will attempt to manipulate others into actions that they would not choose for themselves.
Finally, these books and film themselves bear testimony to the existence of a slippery slope; fifty years ago they would have found only a niche acceptance rather than the widespread acclaim they have today. Simply stated, though, these glorify sexual revelry outside of the marriage covenant by promoting forms of it which are novel and therefore exciting, when that is not God's plan for any of us.
But we know better, right?
