On sexual morality
Chastity is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. There is no getting away from it; the Christian rule is: Either marriage (to one member of the opposite sex) with complete faithfulness, or else total abstinence. Now this is so difficult and so contrary to our instincts, that obviously either Christianity is wrong or our sexual instinct, in its current state, has gone wrong. My argument is based on the latter being true. The biological purpose of sex is children, just as the biological purpose of eating is to repair the body. Now if we ate as much as we wanted and whenever we wanted, most of us will eat too much; but not terribly too much. We may eat enough for two or three, but not enough for twenty. On the other hand, if a healthy young man indulged his sexual appetite whenever he felt inclined, and if each act produced a baby, he could easily populate a small community. This appetite is overly in excess of its function.
Modern people are always saying “sex is nothing to be ashamed of”. If they mean there is nothing wrong with the fact that humans reproduce in a certain way that gives pleasure; then they are right. Christianity says the same thing. It is not the thing nor the pleasure. However, if they mean the state to which our sexual instinct has now gotten into is “nothing to be ashamed of”, they are very wrong. There is nothing to be ashamed off in enjoying your food. There would be something very wrong if half the world made food the main interest of their lives and spent their time looking at pictures of food, dribbling and smacking their lips.
At the individual level we are not totally to blame. Poster after poster, movie after movie, song after song are released in unison with the intended purpose of keeping our sexual instincts in this state. The purpose of course is to make money. After all, someone with an addiction has very little sales resistance. Having inflamed these desires, we are then led to believe that any attempt to resist them is abnormal. Asinine fatuity, is what we should attribute to such a claim. Any reasonable person has a set of principles by which they choose to reject some desires and permit others. Some do this on Christian principles, another, based on another set of principles. The real conflict is not between Christianity and “natural desires”, but between Christianity and the other worldly principles in control of “natural desires”. The mandate from God isn’t meant to cramp our style, it is for our own good. He knows best. “He that formed the eye, shall he not see (Psalms 94:9), “or shall the thing framed say of him that framed it, He had no understanding?” (Isaiah 29:16)
Modern people are always saying “sex is nothing to be ashamed of”. If they mean there is nothing wrong with the fact that humans reproduce in a certain way that gives pleasure; then they are right. Christianity says the same thing. It is not the thing nor the pleasure. However, if they mean the state to which our sexual instinct has now gotten into is “nothing to be ashamed of”, they are very wrong. There is nothing to be ashamed off in enjoying your food. There would be something very wrong if half the world made food the main interest of their lives and spent their time looking at pictures of food, dribbling and smacking their lips.
At the individual level we are not totally to blame. Poster after poster, movie after movie, song after song are released in unison with the intended purpose of keeping our sexual instincts in this state. The purpose of course is to make money. After all, someone with an addiction has very little sales resistance. Having inflamed these desires, we are then led to believe that any attempt to resist them is abnormal. Asinine fatuity, is what we should attribute to such a claim. Any reasonable person has a set of principles by which they choose to reject some desires and permit others. Some do this on Christian principles, another, based on another set of principles. The real conflict is not between Christianity and “natural desires”, but between Christianity and the other worldly principles in control of “natural desires”. The mandate from God isn’t meant to cramp our style, it is for our own good. He knows best. “He that formed the eye, shall he not see (Psalms 94:9), “or shall the thing framed say of him that framed it, He had no understanding?” (Isaiah 29:16)
