Walking Around With Nuclear Codes

What Nuclear Energy and Eros Have in Common

Dear friend,

Last time I wrote to you about paradigm shifts, about how realizing the earth is billions of years old doesn’t destroy faith, and how abandoning complementarian frameworks actually strengthens our understanding of sexual differentiation. But I know what question comes next, because not only have I asked it myself, it was a driving reason behind why I needed to write my own sex ed curriculum for my teens:

“Okay, fine. I don’t need to perform gender archetypes. But what do I do with my body? If the cosmic polarity stuff is wrong, what is the actual reason for sexual ethics? Why bother?”

It’s a good question-- the right question to ask, really, because if you’re not asking it or wondering about it, you might just be following the rules because that’s what a certain kind of societal pressure tells you to do. And that kind of reasoning doesn’t hold up well to any kind of pressure.

Nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll, 1946. Notice the battleships.

The marvelous thing is that the Christian sexual ethic doesn’t need sociological or moralistic scaffolding. It can be arrived at through a much more elegant path—one that starts with something every human being already knows, whether they’re Christian or not.

Follow me! We’re going in...

Most sexual ethics teaching works through a kind of inductive reasoning, laying out particular rules and expecting you to accept that there’s a general principle.

Don’t have sex before marriage. Don’t look at porn. Don’t masturbate. Don’t commit adultery. Don’t engage in same-sex activity.

Why, though? Because… God says so? Because… something obscure about ritual purity? Because… don’t be damaged goods? That few have reasoned well beyond this is evident in how often people fall back on sociological arguments such as disease prevention or social stability.

Without the connective tissue, these rules feel arbitrary. Worse, they feel aimed at you—like you’re the problem that needs containing, like your sexual self is something monstrous. Young people especially can smell this a mile away: “You’re telling me not to do the thing I want to do, but you can’t tell me why except that I’ll go to hell.”

So they either white-knuckle their way through, performing purity while slowly dying inside, or they chuck the whole system and figure secular culture has a better answer.

But what if we flip the table and use deduction? What if we started with something universal instead? Something that doesn’t require you to already believe in God, biblical authority, or cosmic gender polarity? That might actually be compelling. Let’s try it.

The Church teaches us that every human being has two primary powers of the soul: the desiderative power (eros, wanting, desire, attraction) and the incensive power (thymos, will, assertion, anger). Or if you want to call them by the name of their corruption, lust and rage.

But pause there-- lust and rage are not synonymous with eros and thymos. Our desiderative and incensive powers are not bad or corrupted in and of themselves. They’re neutral, like nuclear energy. Nuclear energy can power a city or annihilate it. The power itself isn’t the problem—it’s what we do with it.

Here is the principle I think we can start with and reason out everything we need:

Human beings, in their immature state, primarily use their powers in ways that hurt other people.

That’s it. That’s the whole foundation.

Not “sex is dirty.” Not “your body is shameful.” Not “women are temptresses” or “men are predators.”

Just this: Immature humans hurt people with their desires and their will.

You already know this is true. You’ve experienced it; I’ve experienced it. Maybe someone used you for their sexual gratification and discarded you. Maybe you’ve done that to someone else. Maybe you’ve watched your anger damage a relationship. Maybe you’ve seen what unchecked rage does to families, communities, nations.

Eros without maturity uses people as objects for pleasure. Thymos without maturity uses people as obstacles to remove or threats to destroy.

This isn’t Christian moralism—it’s just observation of reality. Look around.

So if the problem is immaturity, what’s the solution?

Well, in short, growing up-- but more extensively, theosis. Becoming the kind of person who can steward these massive powers without destroying everything in sight. Becoming the kind of person who, like our Lord, can actively desire and will salvation and goodness for others.

In spiritual terms, we can call this “acquiring virtue”—specifically, the virtues of chastity (ordering desire rightly) and meekness (ordering will rightly).

Chastity isn’t “not having sex.” It’s desire that serves love instead of consuming it.

Meekness isn’t weakness. It’s strength under control—power that protects rather than dominates.

These aren’t about about performance or rule-following; rather, they are cultivated over a lifetime to increasing degrees of fullness. They’re about becoming a different kind of person—the kind who can be trusted with power. Put together, chastity and meekness form the basis of our integrity as real persons. This integrity is the foundation for the practice of the kind of spiritual life that is truly transformative and transfiguring.

Now watch how this principle makes sense: With this foundation, the specific ethics become obvious practical wisdom rather than arbitrary restrictions.

Why no sex before marriage? Because sexual intimacy creates profound vulnerability. Giving that vulnerability to someone who hasn’t made a lifelong covenant with you is like handing nuclear codes to someone who might ghost you next Tuesday. It’s not about being “damaged goods”—it’s about recognizing the weight of what you’re doing.

Why no porn? Because it trains you to use images of people as masturbatory aids—literally practicing consuming others for your own gratification. You’re actively un-training yourself in chastity. You’re teaching your brain that people are objects.

Why no adultery? Because you made a promise. Breaking it doesn’t just violate a rule—it shatters the person who trusted you. You’re using your spouse’s vulnerability against them. That’s not just immature eros; it’s weaponized thymos too.

Why the emphasis on lifelong monogamy? Because learning to love one particular person across decades is the training ground for spiritual maturity. It’s where you discover that desire isn’t just about acquisition—it’s about fidelity, attentiveness, self-gift. You can’t learn that by serial monogamy any more than you can learn patience by quitting every job after six months.

See? Not arbitrary. Not “God will smite you.” Not “you’ll be damaged.”

Just: If you want to become the kind of person who can steward desire and will without destroying yourself and others, here’s how humans learn to do that.

I know you might have specific scenarios running through your head right now, and I have not addressed so many different angles. What about this situation? What about that edge case?

Here’s what I’ll say: Sit with it. Roll it around. Play with it. The general principle holds.

When you think about this principle, though, I want you to avoid the temptation to argue against it with hypotheticals. I want you to hold this principle up to your own life, and the lives of people you know intimately, without trying to make anyone you care about the exception that proves the rule.

In order to live out our first principle well, it helps to have our second principle be the Orthodox concept of economy (or oikonomia). It might surprise you if you’re coming from a more legalistic Christian background, but it’s both very simple and extraordinarily powerful.

Economy is the recognition that particular people in particular circumstances may need pastoral guidance that looks different from the general rule.

Regardless of what a screaming mouth on a social media short might be trying to tell you, this is not moral relativism or “anything goes.” It’s the acknowledgment of reality: Spiritual formation happens through the guidance of wise spiritual fathers and mothers who know you, your struggles, your specific situation—and who can apply the general principles to your particular life in ways that lead to healing rather than destruction.

The point of economy is that you are freed from having to be the judge and jury of everyone else’s spiritual life.

You don’t need to police other people’s bedrooms. You don’t need to anxiously scan your community for who’s following the rules correctly. You don’t need to worry whether your neighbor’s particular situation means they’re “really” Christian or not.

Instead, what you need to do is trust the patterns God has given us through the Church and through spiritual direction, and focus your energy on ordering your own desires and will.

This is such a relief! Without economy, we get obsessed with other people’s sin. We become Pharisees, measuring everyone’s compliance with our understanding of the rules. We create toxic communities where people are afraid to be honest about their struggles because they’ll be judged, shamed, excluded. Or worse—we become so afraid of being judgmental that we abandon any kind of moral framework at all, and then we’re just adrift. Economy gives us a third way, a better way.

The Church holds the general wisdom, leading us to good stewardship of desire and will. Your spiritual father or mother helps you apply that wisdom to your actual life, with all its complications and particularities. And you focus on your own formation, trusting that others are doing the same with their own guides.

It’s the difference between living in a surveillance state and living in a community of fellow travelers who are all working out their salvation with fear and trembling. Together, not in isolation.

The Christian sexual ethic isn’t the arbitrary divine whim of “God said so.” Instead, it is accumulated human wisdom about how to steward the most powerful forces in human life without destroying yourself and everyone around you.

Practically, this all means that sexual ethics is about spiritual formation, not rule compliance. It’s about teaching our young people to have a vision of themselves with integrity, not to just avoiding getting in trouble by avoiding a checklist of sins. We lead by example, by trying to become people of a certain kind—people who can be trusted with desire and will because our own powers of self are generous and loving, even maybe someday kenotic.

We do this through the spiritual practices of prayer and the sacramental life, through proper asceticism and festal joy, and through our own particular relationships, including relationships with mature Christians who are able to serve as spiritual directors. And yes, it includes the practical guidelines about marriage, fidelity, and continence—not as arbitrary rules, but as the training regimen for someone learning to steward nuclear-level power.

I know this might feel insufficient if you were hoping for detailed rules about every possible scenario, but that’s by design. The point isn’t to follow the rules like an automaton, but to become a particular kind of person with truly authentic agency.

Here is the cathedral under the scaffolding: Without exhaustive rules, this approach is more demanding, not less. It’s actually easier to follow rules than to become virtuous. Rules tell you exactly where the line is so you can dance right up to it. Virtue asks you to become the kind of person who doesn’t want to dance near the line anymore.

That’s terrifying and liberating in equal measure.

The ground shifts beneath your feet. Again.

But the Rock holds.

In Christ,
Laura

P.S.— I’m glad this essay is being shared! Thank you so much! While you’re here, be sure to check out this list of related essays thinking about Nuclear Eros:

1. Beyond Divine Masculinity — and the essay that inspired it, The Most Harmful Spiritual Myth: Gendered Energy, by Alex at Left Brained Mystic

2. On Reading Lewis Mythically: Fiction, Theology, and the Lewis Question

3. The Scaffolding and the Cathedral: A Letter on Paradigm Shifts, Young Earth Creationism, and Gender Theology

4. Walking Around With Nuclear Codes: What Nuclear Energy and Eros Have in Common

5. Icons, Not Instruments: Chastity Makes Us Real

6. This is Not a Love Story: Lolita and the Corruption of Everything

7. Beyond Eye Bouncing: How Christians are Missing the Point on Pornography Recovery : A stand-alone piece I wrote a while ago explaining that how many people try to manage sexual temptation is based on flawed premises.

I invite you to poke around! I’ve also written about the internet as fairyland, and have spent some time thinking about an enchanted Americana…

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P.P.S. - If you want to go deeper on virtue and the powers of the soul, Timothy Patitsas’s work is excellent. He ‘stacks, too! And if you’re struggling with how to actually practice this, talk to your priest or spiritual father—this isn’t meant to be a solo journey.