I haven’t written any posts for the past few days: this is why. The next chapter in Mere Christianity is “Sexual Morality.” For some reason, I just haven’t wanted to write about this. Maybe it’s because I’m now divorced; maybe it’s because I’m 45 and am too busy raising my 4-year old son to even want to bother with “that whole thing.” Maybe it is because the more I look around at our current modern culture, the more put off I am with all of it, and I just have little desire to even give it the time of day—whatever it is, I find myself understanding the wisdom of monks.
Yet C.S. Lewis addresses sexual morality in his book, and I am committed to going through the whole book…so I guess I have to just have to dive right in.
Modesty and Decency
The first thing Lewis addresses in the chapter is not sexuality morality itself, but rather that weird dynamic that different cultures and different generations have different understandings of common decency. Rules of modesty are different for women in the Pacific islands as they are here in America. The same goes for people of different generations. What was considered immodest in my parents’ generation is considered fashionable and modest in today’s generation.
Now that I’m getting older, I see this more clearly. Some of what passes for “fashion” for women today would have been considered what prostitutes wear 20 years ago. That’s not a knock on women, but just an admission that standards of modesty change from generation to generation. Lewis states that the older generation shouldn’t automatically assume that the younger generation is wallowing in debauchery simply because they are uncomfortable with the new fashion trends; and likewise, the younger generation shouldn’t call the older generation prudish.
If a young woman dresses in a way that she thinks is just cute or pretty, and she unintentionally causes a guy to lust after her, that’s all on the guy. For that matter, guys—especially ones in their late teens and twenties—are pretty much going to lust after anything that moves. I know there are some supposed Christian leaders who make it a habit of essentially telling girls it’s “their fault” if they dress in a way that causes men to lust—but that kind of rhetoric does more to harm the self-esteem of girls than anything. It tells them they should be ashamed of their own bodies, and that’s not the message young women should be hearing, especially from the Church.
That being said, it all comes to motivation. If young woman purposely dresses in an overtly sexual manner to try to draw men’s attention, then I would say, yes, that’s a problem. It is just as offensive and distracting as if a guy chose to dress in a tight shirt and neon pink thong, and then walk around in public. You know every eye is going to be looking at one, and only one area!
Simply put, I think the general rule of thumb young women should follow is this: are you trying to look legitimately beautiful, or are you trying to look overtly sexualized? If you want a guy to look at you and say, “Wow! She’s beautiful!” that’s great. If you want a guy to look at you and start salivating, then maybe you’re motivation is wrong.
Our Society’s Obsession with Sex
So how should we as a society regard sex? Lewis’ analysis of how our current society regards sex is pretty simple: we are screwed up and obsessed with it.
Let’s start with the obvious: the biological purpose of sex is to have children. Yes, even though Lewis does not comment in this at this point, I would add that another purpose of sex is to foster and strengthen love an intimacy between two people. Given those two purposes, I think it is safe to admit that our society’s take on sex is completely screwed up. To illustrate this, Lewis gives an example of a society so obsessed with food that people would pack a theater to watch essentially a strip-tease act for food. If there was such a society, we would rightly assume that that society’s normal and natural instinct for food had gone tremendously wrong.
Having said that, just look at our society today. Playboy used to be considered edgy, now it’s losing money because it’s tame compared to what is out there now. No one can say that our society is “sexually starved.” No, it is sexually gorged. We sexualize everything just to sell worthless junk. There’s no need for me to list examples—just watch TV for one night on prime time; just get on the internet. It’s everywhere. What we are witnessing in our society is something Lewis correctly diagnosed 60 years ago: “Everyone knows that the sexual appetite, like our other appetites, grows by indulgence.” Yet, whereas “perversions of the food appetite are rare…perversions of the sex instinct are numerous, hard to cure, and frightful.”
The Culture War
This is where part of the “cultural war” comes into play. On one edge of the spectrum, you have the ultra-fundamentalists in our country that want to keep even the talk of sex as far out of the public eye as possible. Not only that, these kind of people want to keep any talk of sex away from their children as well. The only time it is mentioned is in “the talk” that sometimes happens in church youth group or health class in Christian schools, usually aimed at junior high kids. The only thing really shown are close up pictures of herpes and syphilis, and the only thing that’s really said, is, “You see? That’s what you’re going to get if you have sex before marriage!” Oh, they say something else: “…but when you have sex with the one you love and are committed to in marriage, it is the most amazing thing in the world!”
So kids who grow up in that kind of subculture are conflicted…and I mean conflicted. When you are a horomonally-charged Christian teenager, and all you hear from Christian adults around you is, “Sex is great in marriage! Amazing! Loving! DON’T DO IT! DO IT BEFORE MARRIAGE AND YOU’LL GET AIDS! …but it is soooo amazing in marriage!” The consequence is that you are like Stimpy from the show “Ren and Stimpy”—you want to touch the red button!
It should come as no surprise, therefore, that studies show that the states who watch the more internet porn are often the states in the “Bible Belt.” We shouldn’t be really surprised when we find people like Josh Duggar have engaged in some pretty shameful sexual behavior. When well-meaning (but totally wrong-headed) Christian youth pastors and teachers give kids the oxymoronic message that sex is “mind-blowing” and “utterly sinful and shameful” at the same time, you’re just setting them up for failure. I have a friend who told me that his mother actually referring to having sex with his father as “doing sin.”
Lewis says such a view of sex is not the Christian view. God created sex, bodily pleasure is good; Christianity has glorified marriage more than any other religion in history. Because God created sex, sex is nothing to be ashamed of.
On the other side of the spectrum, though, you have our current societal attitude toward sex…and as Lewis states, that is everything to be ashamed of. To that point, none of us are guilty of the way society currently is. We’ve all been born into a society that has, for the past 70 years or so, because of the invention of things like TV, movies, and the internet, simply been saturated with sexual images. And why? As Lewis rightly says, “we grow up surrounded by propaganda in favor of unchastity. There are people who want to keep our sex instinct inflamed in order to make money out of us.”
Our current secular society loves to everything it can to keep our sexual instinct inflamed in order to make a quick buck off of us; and then in order to justify that practice, society tells us that our sex instinct is “only natural” and it is okay to indulge in it as much as possible, as long as it doesn’t hurt other people. It would be unhealthy no to do that! Lewis calls such propaganda for what it is: a lie. Deep down we all know it.
Take any pleasure as an example. It’s good to eat food, especially food that tastes good. What would happen if you indulged every time you had a desire for a Big Mac, French fries, and an extra-large Coke? I’d tell you what would happen: you’d become obese, get diabetes, and die of heart failure by the time you were 40. The pleasures of eating, as with the pleasures of sex, have to be controlled in order to be truly enjoyed. That guy who binges on MacDonald’s three times a day—not only is he fat, diabetic, and gasping for breath…he’s also probably really depressed, unhappy, and unable to really enjoy the occasional cheeseburger. By the same token, that porn star that everyone lusts after—she’s also very empty, depressed, addicted, and unable to enjoy the gift of sex she has abused.
Lewis’ take is simple: (1) sex is a good thing, but it’s not everything; (2) it’s wrong to hush up sex completely or treat it as a bad thing; (3) it’s also wrong to spread the lie that since sex is natural, it’s healthy to inflame and indulge every second of the day.
At the end of the chapter, Lewis gives what I think might be the best quote of the book. He points out that sexual sin, as unhealthy and potentially harmful as it is, is not the worst of sins. He says the “sins of the flesh” are bad, but the “spiritual sins” are far worse. He says:
“There are two things inside me, competing with the human self which I must try to become. They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self. The Diabolical self is the worse of the two. That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither.”
Yes indeed…very true.
Good article. I always liked the explanation that Lewis gives in this section of his book. Comparing the obsession with food puts it into perspective…and in terms everyone can understand.
I totally agree Rebecca…whenever I taught this chapter in class, I always did a little bit of a “food strip tease” and it got tons of laughs. It becomes so obvious how perverted our society is with that example.