After I wrote yesterday’s post, I have to admit it, I was thinking about sex…a lot. So cue the Barry White, I have a few more thoughts.
If that is an intriguing (or perhaps disturbing) opening, don’t worry…this post is not at all like what that opening implies. (It’s 8:00 am and I haven’t had my coffee yet—odd things come out before the coffee takes effect). What I want to talk about today is in regards to a few things that have been in the news and pop culture. Let’s look at a few things in pop culture these days.
Sex in Our Society
- Josh Duggar, on the heels of the news he felt up a number of girls (including his sisters) when he was a teenager, admitted that he had been on the Ashley Madison site, and had cheated on his wife. Yes, it’s easy to jump all over this guy, but remember, there were millions of other people on that site—millions.
- On the Yahoo! News feed today: here is a picture of Kendall Jenner’s “rockin’ bod”!—she’s 19. And here’s one of Kylie Jenner looking sexy!—she’s 18. Their father thinks he’s a woman.
- Jared Fogle, of Subway fame, is going to jail—why? Because he had sex with 16 year old girls. In college he was known as “the porn king;” as the spokesman for Subway he used his charity to get pictures of under-aged kids.
- I read an article that talked about how the #1 comment on porn sites was… “love.” What are people really looking for?
- Miley Cyrus is a pansexual! Translation? Anyone, anytime…whatever! Sexual anarchy.
- What are some of the lyrics to Nikki Minaj’s hit song “Anaconda”?
Yeah, he love this fat a**
Yeah! This one is for my b*****s with a fat a** in the f****g club
I said, “Where my fat a** big b*****s in the club?”
F*** the skinny b*****s,
F*** the skinny b*****s in the club
I wanna see all the big fat a** b*****s in the motherf*****g club,
f*** you if you skinny b****s. What? Yeah!
Yes, those are only part of the lyrics to that song; yes, that song was up for awards; yes, Nikki Minaj is really popular. What is going on in our society?
Well, I’m not going to jump on the “our society is going down the toilet because we took prayer out of public schools” bandwagon. Here’s what I’ll say: (1) on one hand, it’s always been this way; (2) the only reason it is so blatant now is because of mass media and social media.
Don’t be fooled into thinking this sort of stuff is new. In the ancient world, they had pagan temples on every corner, and most of them had brothels. People have cheated on their spouses forever; men have lusted after women and teenage girls forever. There has always been bawdy humor and sexual lyrics in stories and songs—although at least the sexual lyrics were written in a creative way, so that you could interpret them differently. Think of “Oh What a Night: December 1963 by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.” It’s about a guy’s “first time,” but growing up, I had no clue that’s what it was about—I thought it was just about finding the right girl and falling in love.
What is different now is that everything is “out there” and voyeurism is easily accessible. That kind of “easy access” does, I think, contribute to the warping and perversion of our society. To use a Genesis 3 allusion, in the past you’d find a serpent here and there, tempting you to “partake of the fruit.” These days, though, the serpent is in the Hardee’s commercials, Victoria Secret posters at the mall, the Yahoo! News feed, the VMA’s, and just about everywhere else.
What are We to Make of It?: The Purity Culture
Like I mentioned briefly in yesterday’s post, I think the situation with Josh Duggar illustrates the well-intentioned, but ultimately wrong-headed, tactics of the “purity culture” within some circles of conservative Evangelical Christianity: purity rings, “dating Jesus,” etc. Now, I think one should wait until marriage, but I don’t think telling kids that as long as they wait until they’re married, that somehow that makes them “pure.” That’s a lie—Jesus himself essentially said that when he said that just because you haven’t committed adultery, if you’ve lusted after someone in your heart, you have committed adultery in your heart.
Unfortunately, some legalistic, pharisaic Christians have taken that verse to add yet another sin to put on the board to avoid. And then men like Ken Ham have the gall to tell girls that if boys lust after them, it’s the girls’ fault because of what they’re wearing. The point of what Jesus said wasn’t so that legalists could try to prove how good they are by becoming thought police. The point is simple: you’re not pure. Nobody is. You can’t ‘not lust.’ You’re fooling yourself if you think, “If I wait until marriage, I’ll prove I’m pure!” (Implied in that mentality is another idea of “If I can wait until marriage, I’ll be able to prove to God I’m good, and then he’ll love me. But if I can’t, or if I go to that porn site, or if I read that erotic novel, or if I lust in my heart…O what a wretched sinner I’ll be! And maybe God will send me to hell!”)
Throw all that away. Let’s take off that pharisaic garb and get real. I’m willing to bet that there’s not a man under 50 who has not looked at porn or some type of sexual content…voluntarily. I can’t help but notice that the largest section at my local bookstore is the women’s “erotic novels” section (you know, the harmless stuff like Fifty Shades of Grey). I’m willing to bet just about everyone out there, even those who have waited until marriage, have at one time or another “gone a little further” than they thought they would, and would be embarrassed if people ever found out. And speaking of the truth coming to light, remember, the Ashley Madison site—over 30 million people on it.
It’s about time we all just admit it—none of us are pure. No one will ever be, and that’s okay—God knows that already. But we have to be honest: why do people—no, why do we—go to those sites, engage in those behaviors, read those erotic novels? I think the answer is this: despair. As I mentioned earlier, the #1 word used on porn sites is “love.” I think people want love, acceptance, and intimacy, but they despair—they think they’ll never get it; they think they’ll never be good enough to earn that kind of love. Even when they find someone and get married, they realize it takes a lot of work, and nothing is easy—so they despair. “If I can’t find my Prince Charming, I’ll take what I can get, and settle for reading the seamy, erotic exploits of Christian Grey.” If I can’t find my perfect, loving, woman, I’ll take what I can get can call a phone sex line—at least I’ll feel like I’m worth something for 10 minutes.”
That’s what lies at the heart of all of this: loneliness and despair. We as a society just “glam it all up” in order to deceive ourselves that we really want that stuff. In reality, we’re settling, because we don’t think we’re lovable. And yes, this stuff is potentially harmful and outright dangerous. A quick glance something is certainly not as dangerous or foolish as pulling a Jared Fogle and actually cheating on your wife with underage girls, but to paraphrase Jesus, if you’ve picked up GQ because Kendell Jenner was on the cover…in your heart you’re not really different than Jared.
Do I say this so we can all feel defeated and guilty? Of course not. Am I saying, “Oh we all do it, so what’s the big deal?” Of course not. What I’m saying (and I think CS Lewis would agree) is this: our sexual instinct is a natural, biological thing, and our challenge is to learn to control it. From the time those hormones start going, whether you were 12 or 13, learning to control those sexual impulses is going to be a challenge for the rest of your life.
Hopefully, as you mature, you will learn to do it better, to where it isn’t that hard the older you get; but I guarantee you (and you already know this), you’re going to screw up in some way or another. Hopefully when you do, it won’t be the kind of mistake that will destroy your life…but for the most part, those types of “life-destroying mistakes” only happen after a person has made lots and lots of those “smaller mistakes” that eventually take the person down a pretty dark road.
What are We to Make of It?: Our Secular Culture
Growing up and learning to control your sexual impulses is hard enough as it is. Having a mass media culture that has an “anything goes” attitude in order to sell junk makes it even harder—you can’t get away from it. On that point, our current culture does bear some responsibility for the further corruption of people. But that is kind of a cop-out really, because we are the culture. The Kardashians, Miley Cyrus, Nikki Minaj, the porn sites, “Shades of Grey,” Ashley Madison—none of that would be part of culture if we as a people hadn’t given them our attention…and our money.
So let’s face it, our current over-sexualized culture is our own doing. We are now born into that culture, we get corrupted from that culture, and we in turn make the occasional bad choice that hurts us as well as others. It is inevitable—but the challenge is still the same: we need grow up, mature, learn from our mistakes, and learn to control our impulses and desires, because contrary to the propaganda put out there, “doing whatever comes naturally” is not a good thing to do. Whatever is natural needs to be controlled, cultivated, and (to use another Genesis allusion), and offered up to God as a sacrifice and communion with God.
Image and Likeness
We as human beings are created in God’s image. We are His icons, and therefore are to reflect His character in His creation. We are to rule His creation as servant-kings and priestly-custodians. What that means is to take the natural world, our own “natural impulses” included, and offer them up in communion with God, and by doing so, those things in nature become more fully ours.
In Eastern Orthodoxy, the distinction is made between being in God’s “likeness” and being in God’s “image.” We are created in God’s image from the get go, but in order to grow into His likeness, we must, through our own free will, make choices and achieve God’s likeness by degrees. This really isn’t that odd of a concept when you think about it: being God’s image-bearing priestly-king-custodian-servants, we perform our priestly/care-taking duties by offering everything in creation up to God. In doing so, we take part in God’s re-creation and transformation of nature; in doing so, nature (including our natural impulses) become more fully ours because they are brought into the living communion of the Trinity. They become more ours and under our control because they become God’s, and we are in God’s image. As we grow in Christ, walk in faith, we achieve maturity in Christ and the full likeness of God.
And this is supposed to be a “sex talk” post? What is this? Let me clarify.
Evolution, Sex, and God’s Image
Secularists will say, “Sex is just natural, so therefore, whatever you feel the urge to do, do it.” What was that song a few years back by the Bloodhound Gang? “You and me, baby, are just nothing but mammals, so let’s do it like they do it on the Discovery Channel.” Not surprisingly, evolution is used as justification for promiscuous, casual sex. And let me say, when Ken Ham rails against how evolution opens the door to the promiscuity we see today, to a point I agree: evolution has been used to justify really bad behavior. Sexual impulses are natural—true. But when secularists use evolution as the reason we should all just “be mammals” and “do it like they do on the Discovery Channel,” Christians, instead of attacking the valid biological theory of evolution, should challenge the philosophical assumptions that secularists are injecting into the theory of evolution.
And the thing is, if you take time to think it through, it’s not that hard to do. Here goes:
- Yes, biologically, we are related in some way to other mammals.
- Yes, biologically, our sexual impulses are completely natural, just like they are in other mammals.
- But things in their “natural” state are not the “end product” of what God intends. Nature, in its “natural state” is always bordering on chaos. The Jews, when talking about human beings, say that right from the start there is an “evil inclination” in us that we must deal with . That is, so to speak, part of our “natural” selves.
- God’s purpose for human beings who are made in His image is to take “the natural” (both creation around us and the impulses inside us), offer them up to him in a priestly fashion, and then gain dominion over and cultivate the “natural” in order to bring all creation into fuller communion with God. We are called to use our image-bearing selves and work toward being truly like God, truly the fullness of Christ…and all of creation is in Christ, so that God can be all in all.
- So that which is in nature, our sexual impulses include, is there so we can cultivate, control it, and thereby “super-naturalize” it, or if you will, “super-biologize” it, as we grow in Christ and bring all creation under his rule.
That is our vocation. We should not just accept the “natural way” as it currently is, and use it as an excuse to let our impulses run wild (i.e. the secularist view); yet we should not deny what we find in the natural world and cling to some pharisaic concept of “purity” (i.e. the Ken Ham/Ultra-fundamentalist view). We are to get to work in the natural world, both “out there” and within ourselves. We will make mistakes, we will do things we’re ashamed of—but that shouldn’t be cause for despair. Keep working, you’ll heal. Keep working, be honest about your failing—admitting them will actually bring further healing.
Keep working, you’ll grow up, you’ll gradually gain dominion of the nature inside of you. But that’s part of your vocation, so get to work. Like anything, it may be harder to do the less you even try, but then it’s easier the more you work at it.
Work out your salvation…it’s going to take fear and trembling. This applies, of course to all areas of our life, but it also applies to sex.
