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*sighs softly* I've done it. I've seemingly managed to convince a few of you that I'm some kind of frigid prude, what with my emphasis on the biological functions of sexual activity and belief in traditional marriage. Let's explore the subject a little more--the subject of sexual morality--to see if I can dispel some of these misconstrued notions.
As someone very dear to me has reminded me in recent times, there exists seven Christian virtues: chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility. Of these virtues, we'll be examining chastity. Essentially, chastity posits that one should get married and entirely commit themselves to their partner before engaging in sexual activity. Short of that, one should never engage in sex. For most people this is
extremely difficult, as the desire for sex is far too strong of a biological imperative. So strong is the imperative that many seem to think that the Christian idea of chastity itself is wrong, since it is so contradictory to our sexual instincts. I don't think this is the case; in actuality,
I think it is how we, as modern people, regard our sexual instincts that is flawed. That is what's wrong. Here are a few reasons why:
------- Not All Instincts Are Created Equal... -------
There appears to be a false equivalency among all of the different biological instincts. Somehow, sexual desire is seen as equivalent and just as necessary as say, the desire to eat and drink food. It is my contention that this is definitively not the case. Consider the purpose of eating/drinking: it is to sustain the body. The purpose of the sexual instinct? To produce offspring. Now consider what would happen if one were to indulge in excess of each one. In the case of eating/drinking, one could only eat so much before they become terribly full, the limit occurring when they elicit vomiting. Could the same be said of indulging in sex? Assuming a normal young man, (women excluded here, since the sexual instinct is MUCH stronger in men) there is not really a mechanism built-in to prevent him from creating a small army of children. The severity of the consequences of expressing each biological instinct towards their excesses are magnitudes apart, therefore to say that the appetite for sex is just the same as the appetite for food is incorrect.
------- ...And Some Are More Damaging Than Others -------
It should also be noted that, there is a substantial difference in the severity and frequency of abnormalities within each of the biological instincts. To once again borrow from the difference between the eating/drinking instinct and the sexual instinct, I think it is fairly uncontroversial to say that there aren't very many people that want to do different things with food and drink besides consume it. Sure, there are anomalies that exist between people's relationship with food. Pica, anorexia and bulimia readily come to mind; hell, Instagram foodies could be loosely construed as food fetishists themselves. The relative frequency and types of these occurrences pale in comparison to the myriads of anomalies in the sexual domain. Among the extensive list of paraphilias that exist, there are also the more nefarious ones, such as pedophilia and incest which can cause real harm. Some people are of the mind that these anomalies are due to repression of sexuality; that the control of the biological sexual instinct led these desires to go underground, pathologizing them. If people were more expressive and embracing of sexuality, perhaps they'd occur with less frequency or severity. This, however, has not been the case. No freer, more accepting, and more libertine are we as a society towards sex than ever before; and yet these kinds of issues only appear to be multiplying, not diminishing.
------- Anesthesia -------
I can't help but think there is a general sense of 'numbness' to how mistaken we are towards our sexual instinct. To illustrate, I'd like to draw your attention to one existing institution of our times: the strip club. It a place where patrons go to spend money to see employees in various states of undress. These businesses exist for both sexes, male and female.
"Alright Toobs, where are you going with this? You're only clumsily stating a plain fact.". Apologies, my curiosity got the best of me, and leads me to wonder how does this fact not concern most? There is a specialized place that exists within our societies where people congregate en masse to spend resources to indulge in a biological instinct, without actually satisfying the purpose of that biological instinct. If there existed a place where people would pay money to be seductively shown plates of food, to have the aromas of the kitchen enticingly wafted over them, without actually being able to eat said plates of food, wouldn't it be cause for concern? You might begin to think that if a society with such an institution existed, there was something wrong with how that society regarded their biological instinct to eat/drink. You might even go so far as to say that they're sick in some aspects. Yet when it comes to the sexual instinct, we seem to be under a sort of moralistic anesthesia and no one bats an eye.
------- Sex Is Shameful, Pleasure Is Bad -------
Most of the time when I engage people in conversation about sexual morality, the sentiment that
"Sex is nothing to be ashamed of." comes up; I interpret this notion in one of two ways. Either they mean that mankind engages in a certain reproductive process and it happens to be very pleasurable and it is nothing to be ashamed of, or the attitude that we take with regards to the sexual instinct is not wrong and nothing to be ashamed of. If they mean the former, I'd wholeheartedly agree with them. Christianity is probably the most sex and body-positive of the religions. In
Genesis 1, when God created man and woman in His image, he blessed them and said
"Be fruitful and increase in number"; a direct imperative to engage in sex. Towards the pleasure involved in the act, I invite any reader of this blog to look into
Song of Solomon 7:6-12 and read it without blushing just a tiny bit. It is not shameful to indulge in the pleasures of sex, perish those silly, Puritanical thoughts.
However, I find that it is the second interpretation of the statement is what most mean by
"Sex is nothing to be ashamed of." This, I cannot agree with. At all. I think that the way most regard sex is, to put it plainly, disgusting. Borrowing yet again from our instinct to eat/drink in order to illustrate, there is nothing shameful about enjoying a nice meal. One should be thankful that they're afforded the opportunity. However, salivating over the thought of enjoying a meal every fifteen minutes, making it one of the main interests of their lives, losing productive hours to indulging in images and video of other people enjoying their meals, and coveting other people's meals while potentially possessing one of their own is outright shameful. Worsening the matter is the multitude of propaganda in our culture that tells us these things are normative, acceptable forms of behavior.
------- What Is To Be Done? -------
To put all of this sexual immorality at the foot of the individual is an erroneous act; as stated before, it is a deep-seated part of modern culture to treat the sexual instinct with such levity. However, instead of asking the individual to change the culture (a Goliath-class task in and of itself), it should be incumbent on the individual to change his or her own attitudes; a comparatively easier, far more manageable affair. With sincere, concentrated, and dogged effort one can certainly achieve the revision. I think the first obstacle in eliciting this change, however, is first accepting that one's own sexual instinct, one's own desires, are not normal. For far too long it has been inculcated into us by our contemporaries that every one of these lustful desires are 'natural, healthy, and reasonable'. Like all potent lies, this one is fueled in part by truth, from the fact that sex as an act in itself is natural, healthy, and reasonable. To make matters worse, it is seen as abnormal to try and resist the sexual instinct. I certainly witnessed this firsthand myself, what with the blow back I received from my previous essay. So often times there is trouble in even recognizing the personal fault to begin with.
To someone that still maintains that expression of the sexual instinct is natural, healthy, and reasonable, I ask you to consider the consequences of expressing every lustful desire. You'd quickly find yourself either in jail, in a medical office with STDs, impotent, lying to your partner, or concealing some secret affair. Which of these outcomes seems natural, healthy, and reasonable? So it is patently evident that self-restraint is rather the very thing that is healthy and reasonable, even
necessary.
I think what also bars people from changing their attitudes is the perceived impossibility of the task. One particular girl, voice filled with concern, once asked me
"Why is it that you set these lofty, impossible ideals for yourself?". I offered what came to mind at the moment, but the question lingered for some weeks after. So I shall share the rest. While it is true, that these Christian virtues are idealizations, therefore making them impossible to achieve, that should not deter one from pursuing them. The objective should not be attainment of the ideal, but the pursuit of the ideal to one's
sincerest and
best capability. In that very pursuit, you're expected to fail; you will fail. One shouldn't expect themselves to be perfectly chaste, perfectly kind--perfectly virtuous. Nor should they ask that God make them so. No, rather one should accept the failure as it inevitably comes and to
pick themselves up and try again as needed. The appropriate thing to ask of God is to grant you the courage and strength to continue in the pursuit.
Spirituality aside, the consequences of pursuing a virtuous ideal also only serves to better your own life and those around you. Trying and failing 90% of the time is an improvement over not trying, which will always result in a 100% failure rate. And it is often the case that practiced things improve over time. Perhaps that initial 10% success rate will increase to 12%, then to 15%, then 20%. Before you know it, what might've seemed insurmountable before is something mastered on a semi-regular basis. The worst thing one can do for themselves and their loved ones is to sit around and do nothing, content with anything less than perfection. The price of inaction isn't mere zero; it isn't as if doing nothing results in nothing. Doing nothing results in harm: as one grows older, one must contend with more reality, and reality is characterized by terrible suffering. The less capable you are, the more you and the people closest to you will suffer. Generally, it is a good idea to be prepared, if not at least practiced. Therefore it is in your best interests to pursue a virtuous ideal, even if the ideal itself is, by definition, unobtainable.
All of this being said, it's often the case that people mistake those that adhere to a Christian notion of sexual morality as snobbish prudes that look down on others for their sexual indiscretions. Allow me to remind you that these types of sins aren't the most egregious from a Christian standpoint; sins of the flesh are an example of man contending with his animal self. This is man practicing mastery over his lesser nature. Personally, I have much more compassion and patience for transgressions of this type, since I am also subject to my own lesser nature; to look down upon anyone for struggling against things I myself must struggle with would be an exercise in hypocrisy. However, less deserving of patience and understanding are more severe sins--sins of the spirit--perpetrated by man's diabolical self: that is, sins that are motivated by wrath, by pride, and by hatred.
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