by J. Budziszewski
Is sex bad? A case could be made for that view.
- Midnight. John is trying to explain his way out of calling his wife by another woman's name during their embraces.
- One o'clock. Shelly, 16, is in her bedroom, secretly cutting herself with a razor because of what her boyfriend made her do.
- Two o'clock. His wife asleep, Steven is busy downloading shameful images from Internet bulletin boards.
- Three o'clock. Marjorie, who used to spend each Friday night in bed with a different man, has been bingeing and purging for four hours.
- Four o'clock. Pablo stares through the darkness at his ceiling, wondering how he is going to convince his girlfriend to have an abortion.
- Five o'clock. After partying all night, Michael takes another man home, not mentioning that he tests positive for HIV.
- Six o'clock. Lisa is in the bathroom, crying.
Not quite what my generation expected when it invented the sexual revolution.
Although still not quite willing to give up that enslaving
liberation, feminist writers like Naomi Wolf and Katie Roiphe exhibit
signs of fatigue and confusion. A few secular people toy with the idea
of abstinence—an abstinence not so much of purity as of boredom, fear,
and disgust. In Hollywood, of all places, it has even become
fashionable to talk up Buddhism, a weary doctrine that finds the cure
of suffering in the cessation of desire, and the cure of desire in the
cessation of existence.
What's more, some Christian writers give the impression they hold
the same dismal view. Overwhelmed by the sheer number of things to warn
about, they have forgotten how to do anything but scold.
Maybe the sexual revolution was an even grimmer joke than we
thought. Maybe there is nothing good about sex. Maybe sex is just plain
bad.
A Gift of God
What's wrong with this picture? Although there is plenty of bad in
the contemporary sexual scene, it's clear that we're forgetting
something. The only way to get something bad is to take something good
and spoil it. Whenever you find a bad thing, look for a good thing
somewhere in the ruins.
The idea that sex is inherently bad doesn't come from the Bible. It
comes from ancient gnosticism, which taught that the Creator wasn't
God, but a lesser being who made a botch of things. Gnostics thought
spirits good, bodies bad, and sex just a matter of bodies.
But the Bible calls God the Creator. He invented sex; it was His
idea. And let's not forget that after He finished His work, He called
the whole creation "good." Dazzled by His handiwork, Christianity
espouses a higher view of sex than any other religion. That's why it
also has the strictest rules about it. Anything so important has to be
handled carefully.
So what's good about sex? Sex serves not just one great good but three. However, they need marriage to come into their own.
First among the goods of conjugal sex is procreation. God told Adam
and Eve to "be fruitful and multiply." This was part of their dominion
of the earth.
Second is union. When Adam was lonely, God didn't give him a man, an
animal, or a crowd of people, but a woman—different than he, yet made
with him in God's image. When Adam first gazed upon his new companion,
he was so astonished that he cried, "This at last is bone of my bone
and flesh of my flesh."
The third good of conjugal sex becomes real only when the spouses
are united to Christ, for that is when they become a living emblem of
His sacrificial love for the Church and the Church's adoring response.
Paul is so awed that he calls matrimony one of God's secrets. "This
mystery is a profound one," he says, "and I am saying that it refers to
Christ and the Church."
These three goods are the point of sex. They are what sex is for.
What about pleasure? I hear you ask. Has Christianity got something
against that? No, pleasure is great. God is for it. But by His design,
pleasure is a byproduct—an outgrowth of other things that are more
important.
If you pursue pleasure for its own sake, two things happen. First,
it disappears. Philosophers call this the "hedonistic paradox." Second,
it steers you wrong, because pleasure can result from doing wrong as
well as doing right.
Three Great Goods
Let's talk about each of the three great goods of conjugal sex in turn.
Procreation. In procreation we cooperate with God, offering
our bodies, marriages, and homes as the occasions for His creation of
new life. This is an incredible privilege. It is even more
mind-boggling to consider that the birth of a child is the birth of an
image of God who will live forever, who will one day be older than the
sun and stars are now.
Procreation isn't just about your kids. Once grown, the kids will
have kids, remember? How we parent will affect the parenting values of
our offspring.
Union. Love isn't just romantic feelings. Love is a
commitment of the will to the true good of the other person. Otherwise,
how could a bride and groom promise to love each other? You can't
promise to have a feeling.
If love is a commitment of the will, then what has sex got to do
with it? Consider procreation again. Do you see how different—how
special—it is? In every other biological function, such as eating,
digesting and growing, the man and woman are separate organisms. For
procreation, they join to become a single unit, functioning in
covenantal harmony. Conjugal union is a true merging. They become a
one-flesh unity—and I'm not just talking about their bodies.
When I say that I'm not just talking about their bodies, I mean that
at every level, male and female were designed to complete each other.
In sexual self-giving, the hearts and minds and spirits of the husband
and wife cooperate with their bodies. They are united not just in their
bodily dimension, but in every dimension.
This unity also helps prepare them to be parents, and the hope of
children joins them in solidarity with every past and future generation.
Casual sex can't achieve that. It endlessly joins and severs, joins
and severs. Imagine what it would be like to repeatedly tear off and
reattach your arm. There would come a day when no earthly surgery would
suffice; the reparative power of your body would be lost. It is the
same when you repeatedly tear off and reattach your various sexual
partners. Eventually they will all seem like strangers; you just won't
feel anything. You will have destroyed your capacity for intimacy.
Mystery. Think again of Paul's words regarding the union of
husband and wife: "This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that
it refers to Christ and the Church." What was he talking about? So far
in salvation history, we have only hints; we won't know the whole until
it happens.
Think of the Song of Songs, of the Old Testament love poem that
begins, "Kiss me with kisses of your mouth." Many readers are mystified
as to how it got into the sacred Scriptures, but the ancient rabbis had
an explanation. They said it not only portrayed the love between
husband and the wife, but symbolized the love between God and His
people. Shocking! Yet the New Testament speaks in the same way. The
Revelation of John foretells the coming "marriage of the Lamb"—a future
union between Christ and His Church, more intimate than anything we
have known, not to be consummated until He comes again.
In some way that passes our present understanding, and for all its
present flaws, conjugal intimacy is a symbol of that piercing heavenly
intimacy. The little humilities and the mutual sacrifices of the
husband and wife are a training for heavenly union; the awe of their
wedding night and the ecstasy of their embraces, a glimpse of it.
So is there any good in sex? In marriage, yes! God the Giver has
made conjugal union the vaulted arch into two great goods, and the
mysterious emblem of an even greater good—a good in this life we cannot
comprehend. That's why we dare not uproot sex from marriage, the garden
where God has planted it. Too much good is at stake to treat it
lightly; too much power and danger to waste it on selfish games.
From the best gifts come the worst miseries, if we are too foolish to follow the Giver's directions.
a lot of what you talked about in your examples has NOTHING to do with sex. sex might have happened or been going on during the time period, but it is not sex that created the issues some people have. binging and purging has nothing to do with SEX and all to do with a menatl illness, same with CUTTING, RAPE is not SEX, I could go on but you have likely made up your prudish mind about things. but honestly, you are drawing the wrong comparisons on some of this.
- sati769leigh
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