Parenting Teenagers
LOVE, SEX AND MIRAGES.
Part 2
Why does secular society behave sexually the way it does today? It is not accidental, nor is it normal.
All modern secular sexual values have sprung from a root of rebellion against the will of God. This is especially true concerning the ideas of chastity before marriage and of faithfulness within marriage. Four ideas are promoted to make this rebellion sound intelligent and advanced. It'll help us in guiding our children if we know a little bit about them.
God messes you up
In the late Nineteen Fifties and early Sixties the ideas of the psychologist Sigmund Freud became very popular.
He taught that the root cause of much of the stress in our lives is due to an unhealthy restraint on our latent sexual desires. This is caused by a repressive conscience called the 'superego', which was created by the taboos imposed on us as children by our parents, society and the church. This superego is in direct conflict with our libido, or primeval sex drive. The result is inner tension that expresses itself in neurotic behaviour.
The average reader may be forgiven for concluding from this that too much self-restraint is supposed to send you batty!
Freud had a point, of course. A society in which people are not allowed to express their emotions or to talk about their deep feelings will produce some very uptight individuals. But it is quite another thing to imply that chastity, self-control and fidelity are a sign of being sexually neurotic. The virtues have become overnight the vices and vice versa!
The proposed remedy for all this was to throw off the restraints of the superego and thus give vent to all our basic animal desires. Hence, it is now healthy to masturbate, to sleep together out of wedlock, and to lust after your neighbour's partner. Purity is sick, and so are those who teach it!
We once had in our church a woman who attempted suicide. Fortunately, we were able to save her life, but the hospital put her under a psychiatrist. He counselled her thus: 'The reason you attempted suicide, the cause of all your problems, is your church and your religion. What you need to do is stop attending these church meetings, go down the pub, pick up a bloke or two, get laid a few times and you'll feel much better.' Pure popular Freudianism! Thankfully the girl in question refused the counsel and sought God instead.
Monkey business.
There was a time when, if we wanted to understand mankind, we looked to the best we had produced. We studied the lives of saints and heroes, of great thinkers and leaders. It was their characters that challenged and inspired us to attain our full humanity. But that's all changed. Nowadays, we go instead to the zoo and watch the behaviour of the chimpanzees at their tea party.
Once we believed we were made in the image of God; now we are merely monkeys who have evolved out of their fur. Instead of looking up for inspiration we look down for explanation. The body language of apes, especially their rituals of courtship and copulation, debunks all the mystery and magic of human love. Morality is a myth, religion a rip-off. Primates of the world, unite Ä you have nothing to lose but your souls!
It's not true, of course. Fortunately, God keeps enough artists, poets and saints in the world to remind us otherwise. But the pervasive myth flourishes to justify the morals of alley cats among those first created in the image of God.
Apparently, we can do as we please. Since animals cannot be held morally responsible, any form of sexual behaviour is permissible. In this human zoo men are supposed always to be randy and women permanently on heat. Like animals, they may play the courtship ritual and copulate all they like, when and with whom they like.
The resultant anguish is appalling: guilt, pain, confusion, shame, use and abuse, mistrust and hatred. 'Why, O why do I feel like this if I'm only a naked ape?' We've had a society that's tried to live like animals and then found they got hurt like humans.
Rock on, baby!
Popular Romanticism is a philosophy which is at once exciting and adventurous but seeks the thrills of life in the forbidden, the perverse and the rebellious.
Lady Chatterley's Lover opened the avenue for exploring these realms in popular literature. Rock music has played a significant part in directing juvenile eroticism along the same paths rather than those of sexual fulfilment in marriage. Rock music isn't wrong, nor for that matter is eroticism. It's the end to which they are presently directed that causes all the problems.
Because music is so much a part of our teenage culture, the sexual message is easily received. Until Christians gain a greater influence in the rock industry, romanticism will hold sway, immorality will continue to be glorified in passionate song, and multitudes of young people will keep up the pretence that it's great. Make no mistake, romanticism's false fires of love and sacrifice thinly conceal the ashes of lust and death.
Love is all you need
The fourth factor is a semi-religious one. Remember the Beatles song 'All you need is love'? That song popularised a theology that went something like this: in the past we had rigid laws dictating our conduct. Today we have the option of total licence Ä do as you please. But that is obviously fraught with difficulties. Is there another way, some middle ground, something we can cling to in the absence of any absolute standards?
The answer was apparently to be found in the Bible – 'Love is the fulfilment of the law' (Romans 13:10). All you need is love. Provided what you do is loving, then you don't have to worry about any absolute laws. Love preserves you from going down the path of total licence and at the same time gives you the flexibility to meet any situation without recourse to rigid rules.
It sounds very fine at first sight. But if we set love over against absolute standards, we finish up making God's commands the enemies of true love. Instead of love being the correct heart attitude with which to fulfil the law it fast becomes the alternative to law – a lawless love, no less!
When the noble, sacrificial love of God is reduced to the pleasure principle, anything goes. In the French pornographic novel, L'Histoire d'O, the central character is abused in every manner conceivable and accepts it all willingly because l'amour, 'love', is absolute. Even sexual violence becomes defensible with the plaintive cry, 'But I love you!'
When these four ideas first came on the scene, people believed that sex was the greatest thing on earth. It was love. Today's young people are still taught this, but cynicism is setting in. They aren't finding the permissive path all it's cracked up to be. In fact, it's proving to be full of pitfalls and potholes. Since the advent of AIDS you can even die from sex!
The sex act has become for many a charade, a pretence at enjoyment, something that everyone is expected to do during their teens. Gone is even the thrill of rebellion.
One of the sad effects of all this is that it is now estimated that some 30% of young people who get married stop having sexual relationships within six to nine months of marriage. Thinking they've found love through sex, they enter marriage on that basis, only to find that this isn't the way life works. Boredom, disappointment and disillusionment set in – people give up on the greatest pleasure that God has granted the human race.
That, of course, creates tremendous tensions and pressures in the marriage. The disappointed are always tempted to see if the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Abstinence is fertile soil for adultery.
It has to be said that some kind of rebellion in the realm of sex was justified. The world of the Nineteen Forties and Fifties was repressed and legalistic in many ways. Typical of the attitudes was a Christian book which did the rounds in our teenage years and which warned of the sins of young men wearing bathing trunks on the beach and exposing their bared chests. The veto was enforced – it has to be said dishonestly (though there is some small risk) – with dire warnings of skin cancer to those who insisted on persisting with this flagrant display of flesh. Goodness knows what the author would have made of today's topless fashions!
More seriously, many people suffered needless anguish and heartache because of the prevailing hush-hush attitudes. Those who needed help couldn't get it. Frustration was rife, ignorance commonplace. But what was needed was not a rebellion against morality but a revolution into God's true freedom. The latter has been a long time coming. We’ll look at that in Part 3.
