Examined Christian Faith 'Sex' 3.4 What is Christainity

Morality in general is a hard enough topic, but now it is time to address specifics, and we might as well start with sexual morality.  Chastity is the single most unpopular of all the Christian virtues. The Christian believes in one rule “Either marriage with compete faithfulness to your spouse or else total abstinence.”   I will be the first to admit that it is so difficult and so contrary to our instincts that obviously either Christianity is wrong or our sexual instinct has gone wrong.  It can only be one or the other, The Christian believes that it is the instinct that has gone horribly wrong. 

    

All human instincts have a biological purpose, the biological purpose of sex is children, just as the biological purpose of eating is to repair and refuel the body.  Using that as an example, if I we to eat whenever I want and as much as I want, it is true that I will probably eat too much, but not terrifically too much.  Maybe enough for two, but hardly enough for 10, 15 or even 20.  The human appetite goes a little beyond it’s biological purpose to ensure survival, but not grossly over.  However if a man were to indulge his sexual appetite whenever he felt inclined, and if each act produced a baby, then he would within a matter of years populated an entire town.  This appetite is preposterous to its function.   Yet everyone knows that if I were in fact to be a glutton either with food, with sex or anything, then my appetite grows by that indulgence. None of which are healthy or natural.

We have been told, until one is sick of hearing it, that sexual desire is the same as any of our other natural desire, and if we only stop trying to not talk about it, then everything will be restored, and perfectly natural, everything will be perfect in the garden of Eden again. That sounds nice, but it is the biggest bunch of crap being peddled.  If you look at the facts, and beyond the hype and propaganda you will see it for what it is;  a lie.

We are told that sex has become such a mess because it was hushed up. But get serious, all you have to do is open any magazine, listen to any song, or watch any television show, movie or commercial to realize that for the past 40 to 50 years, all anyone ever talks about is sex.  Yet it still remains a mess.  Maybe, just maybe, humans originally hushed it up, because it had become such a mess. 

Those of the current age are always saying “sex is nothing to be ashamed of.” They mean either one of two things, 1^st that there is nothing to be ashamed of that sex is the way the human race reproduces itself, and that it gives pleasure in the process.  If they mean that then they are right, and Christianity say the same thing.  It is not the thing, nor the pleasure that is the problem.  The problem is in the 2^nd way that they may mean it.  If when people say “Sex is nothing to be ashamed of.” They mean ‘the state into which our sexual instincts has fallen into is nothing to be ashamed of.’ Then they are wrong, there is every reason to being ashamed of it, if half the world made food the main interest in their lives and spent their time looking at pictures of food dribbling and smacking their lips at all times; gorging themselves at the expense of others, no one looks at a glutton and thinks there is not something seriously wrong with him or her. 

With all the advertisements, all the propaganda for lust (sex sells) to make us feel that our desires that we are resisting are natural and healthy and so reasonable that it is perverse and abnormal to resist them.  Movie after movie, book after book, picture after picture, commercial after commercial  all associate the idea of sexual indulgence with health, youth, and normality.  All of it a lie, based on a grain of truth (that sex is normal and healthy).  The lie is the suggestion that any sexual act that you are tempted at any given moment is normal and healthy.  However surrendering to all of desires always leads to disease, lies, concealment, jealousies and everything that is the reverse of health, happiness, and truthfulness.  For any happiness in the world always involves a lot of restraint.  Every sane, logical, rational, moral person must have some set of principles by which he or she chooses to reject some desires and to permit others.  No one who claims to be rational and moral gives into all their desires, proving that a desire, even when strong counts for nothing.  

I am not so naive to assume that every Christian is perfect in keeping their chastity.  God knows our situation, what matters is our sincerity and perseverance of our will to overcome them.  Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself, but just this power of always trying again.  For However important chastity (or courage, truthfulness, loyalty, faithfulness, forgiveness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still.  Our illusion about ourselves are cured and we learn to depend on God, we learn on one hand that we can not trust ourselves even in our finest moments, and, on the other hand that we need not despair even in our worst.  The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.

Before I close, I want to make it clear that the center of Christian morality is not here.  While the sins of the flesh are bad, they are the least bad of all sins.  Those sins that are far worst are purely spiritual; the pleasure of harming another, of putting self before others, for slandering, lying, betraying others, the pursuit of power, greed, hatred, and selfishness.  Jesus comforted the prostitute, and offered forgiveness if she would repent, yet he left no doubt that the cold self-righteous ‘follower’ who saw nothing to repent of, was nearer to hell then the prostitute. Needless to say, it goes without saying that it is better to be neither.  

Previous Post in This series: "Cardinal Virtues"

Next Post in this series: " Marriage"

Examined Christian Faith 'Cardinal Virtues' 3.3 What is Christainity

Historically writers have categorized the seven ‘virtues’ into two different types, the first four of them are called “Cardinal” virtues and the remaining three are referred to as ‘Theological’ virtues.  The ‘Cardinal’ ones are those that all people recognize; the ‘Theological’ virtues of FAITH, HOPE, and CHARITY are those that usually only a Christian acknowledges.  I will get to the ‘Theological’ ones, but before I do we must begin with the four ‘Cardinal’ virtues.   The first thing one should know about ‘Cardinal’ virtues is that the word ‘cardinal’ comes from the Latin word meaning “the hinge of the door”,  they are called ‘Cardinal’ virtues because they are hinges upon which the door of the moral life swings..   They are PRUDENCE, TEMPERANCE, JUSTICE and FORTITUDE. 

Prudence simply means practical common sense, or taking the time to think out what you are doing and the likely outcome of it.  Today rarely do people think of Prudence as a ‘virtue’.  But in fact Christ told us to be prudent, when he instructed His disciples to be “as harmless as doves” but also “as wise as serpents.”  God is no more pleased with those who choose to slack off intellectually, then any other slacker.  True Christianity is something that takes all of you, brains and all.  Fortunately, anyone who is honestly trying to be a Christian will discover that his intelligence is being sharpened, no special education is required, Christianity is an education in itself. 

Temperance is one of those words that has had its meaning changed.  What we think of when we think of temperance is someone who does not drink.  However, originally ‘Temperance’ mean nothing of the sort, ‘Temperance’ referred not specifically to drinking, but to all pleasures; and it meant practicing self-control, abstention, and moderation.

One of the great missteps of Christians is to restrict their thinking of ‘Temperance’ to the question of drinking.  By doing so, it helps people to forget that you can be just as ‘intemperate’ about a lot of things.  A man who makes golf, or his motorcycle the center of his life, or the woman who devotes all her thoughts to shopping, her dog, or traveling is being just as ‘intemperate’ as the person who gets drunk every night.  

Justice means much more than what we see on our televisions as we watch police and lawyer television shows, or even the actual thing.  It is the proper moderation between self-interest and the rights and needs of others, it is the old name for everything that we call “fairness”; it includes honesty, truthfulness, keeping promises, giving as well as receiving and all of that side of our life.  

Justice is that virtue that we demand and expect from others as it applies towards actions directed at us. However the modern Christian seems to want to pretend that ‘Justice’ is a quaint old fashioned virtue when it applies to their choices, and their actions.   Doing so at their own peril, the modern Christian expects ‘Justice’ before forgiveness for the sins of others, but forgiveness without ‘Justice’ for  their sins.  As I mentioned before, there will be a great many surprises when we get to Heaven. 

Lastly, there is Fortitude, which includes both kinds of courage – the kind that faces danger as well as the kind that “sticks to it” under pain.  We would describe someone with ‘Fortitude’ as someone with “guts”.  Fortitude could well describe the thousands of Christian martyr’s each year, as well as the wife who will not divorce her husband, even as he betrays her, because of her sworn marriage vow to her husband and God.  You can not practice any of the other virtues for very long without bringing this one into play.   

There is one last point about virtues that needs to be noticed.  There is a difference between doing some just or temperate action and being a just or temperate person.  Someone who is not a good golfer, may every now and then make a good shot, but a good golfer ahs trained his eyes, muscles and nerves so that good shots may be relied on.  In the same way a person who preserves in doing just actions gets in the end a certain quality of character.  It is that quality, rather than the particular actions that virtue applies to.  

This difference is important, for we might think that if you did the right thing, it did not matter how or why you did it – weather you did it willingly or unwillingly, through fear of public opinion or for its own sake.  The truth is that doing the right thing for the wrong reason does not build the internal quality of character called a ‘Virtue’, and it is the character that really matters. 

While it is probably true that there will not be any occasion for just or courageous acts in the next world, there will be every occasion for being the type of person that we can become only as a result of our actions here.  The point that I am making, is not that God will not allow you into Heaven, if you lack certain qualities of character; my point is, that if you did not get at least the beginnings of those qualities inside you, then there are no possible external conditions that could make you happy with the deep, strong, unshakable kind of happiness that God intends for us in what we call Heaven.  

Examined Christian Faith 'Christianity vs Psychoanalysis' 3.2 - What is Christianity

Since I have now taken us into the area of morality, and since Christian morality claims to be a technique for putting the human right again, I think we should compare how it is related to another technique that makes similar claims – namely psychoanalysis.

When a person makes a moral choice two things are involved.  The first is the act of choosing, the second is the various feelings, impulses which his psychological makeup presents him with, and which are the raw material of his choice.  That material can either be one that we would call normal, in other words a feeling or emotion that are common to most people; or it is a feeling that is unnatural due to things that have gone wrong in his subconscious.   The fear of things that are really dangerous would be an example of the first, while an irrational fear of cats would be an example of the second.  Heterosexual feelings would be the first type, while homosexual feelings would be of the second; and so forth.  

Where psychoanalysis is designed to remove the abnormal feelings (to give the person better raw material for his acts of choice); morality is concerned with the acts of choice themselves.   Regardless of how much you improve the person’s raw material, you are left with something else: the free choice of the person, on the material presented to him or her, either to put his own self interest first or to put it last.  It is this free choice that morality is concerned with. 

What is important to realize is that human beings judge one another by their external actions; God judges them by their moral choices.  When a person who has been abused and perverted from his youth and taught that acts of violence is acceptable, does some tiny little act of kindness, or refrains from some violent retaliation against another, and thereby risks being insulted and ridiculed by his peers, he may, in God’s eyes, be doing more than I would do if I gave up my life for my daughter.

Put another way, some of us who seem to be very nice people may, in fact have done so little with a good upbringing and a godly heritage that we are really worst in God’s eyes, then those whom we regard as beneath us.   How certain are you of how you would behave if you had been saddled with  a horrible childhood, and thus  psychological scars, and then one day found yourself with the power of Stalin?  That is why Christians are instructed not to judge.

We see only the results that a person makes out of his raw material.  However God does not judge him on the raw material at all, only on what he has done with it.  When the body dies, and all that is left is that central core, that part of us that chose, that made the best or the worst of our material will be left standing before God, and we see everyone for who they really were.  There will be surprises.

Christian morality is not a kind of bargain in which God says, “If you keep a lot of the rules, I will reward you, and if you fail to, then I will punish you.”  Instead, it is more a matter of every time you make a choice you are turning that part of you that chooses into something a little different from what it was before.  If you take your life as a whole, with all your uncountable choices, all your life you are slowly turning into either a heavenly creature, or a hellish one; either into a creature that is in harmony with God or one that is in a state of war with Him.  Each of us at each moment of our lives is progressing in one direction or the other.

This then makes sense, when Christians talk about the importance of all sins, what Christians mean is that it is the action that leaves a mark on the tiny central self which none of us will see in this life, but each of us will have to endure forever.  One person may so misplace his anger that he kills another, while another misplaces his anger in such a manner that he only gets laughed at and scorned.  But the little mark on the soul may be nearly identical to both.  Each has done something to himself, which left unrepented will make it harder for him the next time, and so the cycle goes on forever.  Both of them if they turn to God and with Godly sorrow repent, can have that twist made straight, each of them is doomed if they will not.  The size of the thing as seen from the outside is not what really matters. 

That leaves me with one last point, the right direction leads not only to peace, but to knowledge.  When a person is getting better he understands more and sees more clearly the evil that is still in him.  When a person is getting worst, he understands his own wickedness less and less, a modernly bad man knows he is not very good, a truly wicked person thinks they are all right.  You see this played out in America  all the time,  the person who commits one act of adultery and repents from it knows they are wrong, the person who lives in a continuous state of adultery thinks there is nothing wrong with themselves.    

You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk.  Good people know about both good and evil; Immoral people do not know about either.