One is impressed in the society of my lifetime, indeed for all of known written history about the subject, that sexual preoccupation and distortion has held so great attention for mankind. It is subject to both very high regard and ugly abuse, and poorly addressed. The world seems bent to substitute sexual drive to replace sexual morality. Anything as spiritually originated as sex will be fodder for depravity conduct. Some women have chosen suicide rather than suffer the sexual abuse of victorious armies in their communities. I recently reviewed the reminiscences of men and women, who can’t erase the memories of the screams of women in their neighborhoods when Russians soldiers, conquering Berlin in World War II raped women in some neighborhoods. The violations are well known in nearly every invasion of a nation including rape of women by slave traders and owners, or the capture of children for carnal slavery. The stories make us wonder about human claims to civilization. Sex can be made ugly either by the ferocity of males or by the uses of its appeals by women to gain attention or to prostitute for other meaning to their lives. In these contexts the matter is made brutal (severe) and subtle (evasive) in the performance of the human race. Both contexts are found in nature in the animal world, but none as extreme as mankind has made the factor, with its accompaniments, even in the lives of those considered at the top of the creative ladder. Persons caught in addiction to sex become brothers and sisters to those addicted to alcohol, narcotics, greed, or any other preoccupation that violates normal (appropriate) life. Such preoccupations often lead to shortening life. Even with our knowledge of the negatives related to such addictions the practices continue, even to gain enlargement as time passes. Self-inflicted tragedies are beyond statistics and understanding. When he was challenged about his addiction to sex, then President John F. Kennedy simply passed it off to his concerned friend: I just can’t help myself. The Christian answer should be, Oh, yes you can.
Christian counselors know how pervasive poor sexual context is for human beings either in accent or denial, in distortion, in the mix of normal life in nature, perhaps even in the spiritual lives of persons of faith. The understanding of sex is ignored in the drive to gain its satisfactions, or conjured satisfactions. There are answers, but the mass of the population seems unwilling to address the issues, and those knowing proper directions for solutions are not influential enough to gain the needed attention to the matter. Some believe that addictions can’t be managed. Addiction is both spiritual sin and human illness.
Scripture makes sex an important sub-theme of marriage. Outside of marriage it is a matter of self-control through abstinence or private adjustment of the development of the human body to the point where human beings can do, through sex, what God did. He created. Husband and wife procreate. This makes the concept of sex a spiritual matter. Understood in that context there is sacredness to it. To violate that sacredness is likened to the offense of swearing in God’s name. To use anything in a meaning other than that formed by God is to cast his work in negative vein. If that is true for me, then I ought to seek experience proper to meaning and reject the destructive. Sexual expression is ongoing in marriage. It appears for human beings as private (public revelry of sex is violation). It is first to accomplish reproduction (so to verify the relationship of husband and wife, and the creative purpose of God), and followed as a physical intimacy that gives evidence of the twain being one flesh – with satisfaction. What is accomplished between two persons in this context of love, meaning and with special award from God, belongs to the couple and God. It is best with a sense of gift between legitimately intimate persons. Rightly understood there is learning about all this appearing in love. Distortions are wrong in any context. Virtue has its hypocrites. Even the distortions become what is sometimes called negative evidence about what ought to be right and appropriate. The reader feels revulsion from the serial stories in The Romanovs, by Simon Montifeore, citing the depravity of Russian rulers in sexual dalliance through generations. It is interesting that advanced societies may be most guilty in using freedom’s privileges to justify wrong (sin) behavior. It is cause enough for some peoples to resist the American culture, and others like it. It remains for us to understand God judges all this as violation of his creative meaning. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020