The power of suggestion is strong. We see it daily in the youth culture and general fads in America. Illustrations seem endless – such as the soldier’s plastic water bottle, in Desert Storm, in 1991, a bottle that made everyone thirsty. In adaptation to hot desert conditions, the American military ordered bottled water for soldiers. For the first time since frontier days and World War I, when the canteen was necessary accompaniment for pressured cowboys and soldiers, the plastic bottle, so convenient and easily transported, was made a necessity even for the general population. As this is being written the bottle of water in one’s possession seems about as common as a lady’s purse. It goes everywhere. Currently we have seen it in church where men and women, some pastors too, cannot delay for an hour to get a sip of water.
Studies have been made of PMS (post menstrual syndrome). Because American research is so pervasive, it commonly expands to other nations and cultures. It was found that most native cultures had no perception of the syndrome, and had to be taught about what it was that was supposed to be happening to them. When hurt factors were communicated, the women crowded clinics to be treated for problems they did not know they had before they were persuaded. It was found that the natural problems the native women managed as being human and tolerable, therefore largely accepted, were difficult, therefore to be treated as illness and intolerable. The helpers added one more problem to the burdens of poor women. My mother lived through the years of her menstrual cycles without the benefits of sanitary napkins. She did not feel herself to have been denied. It was human, and to be borne with normal spirit and limited remedy.
The story might well be expanded, from nearly every part of human life. After many years of counseling troubled persons that included tensions about their sexual problems, I am convinced that much of the preoccupation with sex, from fantasy to homosexuality, relates to suggestion. We are told that the Playboy philosophy changed the sexual mores of the western world. Sex, treated as a private, even sacred privilege, crowned with the birth of children, was turned into a major public recreational preoccupation. The human approach is to expand a thing, into a belief there is something more to be learned, something more to be engaged. The result is to have turned sexual activity into games for adult children, with toys, odd practices – anything goes in fantasy games. Much came from suggestion, and is justified by flimsy arguments betraying self-control. Safe sex has become the boundary line. Anything may be done within faked boundaries. Studies show that sex experiences have become permissive and sought. They are accepted in safety, so follow protective practices, like condom use. Abstention is old fashioned. We are informed that even the adulterer is repulsed by the unchanged sheets on the bed of adultery. Adequately jaded, one can provide argument to accept anything, even used sheets. The Christian overcomes the power of suggestion for personal, moral and intellectual life by relying heavily on the clear and frank guidance of Scripture that accents meaning, morality and self-control. Little wonder that the Bible presents mankind in weak condition unless guided and aided, sensitive to the power of suggestion, but also provides instruction for healthy life – for living, thinking and moralizing. When sex regains its dignity and privacy it may recover its reputation as a gift from God. God presses firmly for righteous life context not for alleged sexual liberation. In fact it is binding to growing moral maturity – becoming to self-disciplined men and women. It regards our morality, right meaning for God’s creation. Populations try to amend that meaning. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020