Sex

This one concerns sex and what I view as an unhealthy attitute toward sex in society today. The text I quote will come from C.S. Lewis and his book, Mere Christianity.

Chastity is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues.

And how.

There is no getting away from it: the Christian rule is, "Either marriage, with complete faithfulness to your partner, or else total abstinence." Now this is so difficult and contrary to our instincts, that obviously either Christianity is wrong or our sexual instinct, as it now is, has gone wrong.

Lewis--and I--feel our sexual instinct has gone wrong.

You can get a large audience together for a strip-tease act, that is, to watch a girl undress on the stage. Now suppose you came to a country where you could fill a theater by bringing a covered plate onto the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let everyone see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food?

Of course, but I'm sure some would feel that this is an unfair comparison. A social revolution was won by those who wanted to "make love, not war". The question is, has the sexual revolution really freed us from anything, save moral living?

One doesn't need to take the Catholic position on sex to realize something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. I laughed the first time I read this because Mr. Lewis had to define strip-tease. I don't think you could find a twelve year old in America who doesn't know what that is today. And I don't think that's a good thing.

I understand that it's ineffective and foolish to say that sex is evil. This has nothing to do with the morality involved in pre-marital sex, and everything to do with the fact that when something is taboo, it immediately becomes interesting. Sex is, in and of itself, quite interesting already. You do the math.

So then, what must be done? The relgious right would glady outlaw abortion. I would have no problems with that, but there is something better we can do. If we are to do away with rampant promiscuity, which leads to abortion, it would be best to try to demonstrate that abstinence is a good thing. This is easier said than done.

For instance, I could say that abstinence is working just fine for me. That is true, but it is certainly a difficult thing to do and our society has had just enough of difficult things thank you. I have no idea how we go about righting this Titanic.

It certainly is a problem of titanic proportions. It should be self-evident: from low birth rates to higher instances of rape and sexual abuse, to the gradual mainstreaming of pornography and the escalating instances of divorce, from children having children to the explosion in single parent families, something needs to be done.

It is impossibe to tell me that our sexual appetite is not a problem, and a big one at that. Man is a sexual being, but he is more than that. Until we realize that, we're going to continue to have problems.