BreakPoint Blog
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When sex is god It's not hard to tell when sex has become a society's god. You'll see things like adultery and fornication recast as therapy. And you'll see virginity referred to as all but unacceptable. (H/T Anna Broadway) |
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Being a heresiarch who is such primarily because he was continuing the teaching of a long line of previous heresiarchs may be accounted a sin when the role is called up yonder but from my point of view it only makes him a rival. Being someone who claims heteropraxy to be orthopraxy is rather different. The fact of Ghandi being a Hindu does not particularly annoy me so much as the fact of him being a de facto adulterer who publicly humiliated his wife and had the nerve to call it asceticism. Many public figures were adulterers. Not many made a theatrical display of it and not many were that phariseeical about their vice.
Naw, I think I'm defining "better" differently than you do. If a change of any kind is not aligned with God's purposes, how can it possibly be good? Now, we with our minds (which are clouded by sin) may **think** an action is "better", but thinking does not make it so. I do believe that God can use unbelievers to accomplish good things (such as Artaxerxes helping Nehemiah in the rebuilding of Jerusalem), but it is due to God, not due to the intentions, vision, etc., etc. of the unbeliever.
"And Gandhi's greatest legacy was spreading those principles in India."
I'd like to leave the YOD at rest, not out of a personal concern but rather because I believe it weighs heavily on its bearer, and I don't want to do anything that might (even in a small way) be a contributing factor to editor burnout - like, say, going off-topic. That said, I find it fascinating that you brought up Gandhi literally just a few hours before I read a book chapter that claims his government actually contributed to India's ongoing poverty; his concern for the poor actually kept them poor. That controversial claim aside (I can't fact-check it since Wikipedia is dark ;-) ), the chapter's statement that Gandhi is far more revered outside of India than within it is a statement that agrees with my conversations with Indians.
"I'd suppose it depends on how you define 'own'".
Ah - shades of "It depends on what the meaning of 'is' is." :-)
"The discussion isn't chastity vs unchastity, but more healthy and less healthy versions of unchastity."
I thought it was a discussion of what a society will tolerate, versus what it won't. For instance, if I google "Penn State", one of the first suggestions is "scandal". The issue that Gina raised is one of why some behavior is tolerated and even lauded, while other behavior is condemned. (Her answer is that our society as a whole is aligned with a false religion.) And it would not be difficult to build a case that a therapist is in a position of power over a patient that is not dissimilar to the power of a football coach with respect to young boys. (To further Gina's analogy, we could say that the therapist is being treated like a high priestess, while the coach is a blasphemer.)
"If, say, you were a doctor, and an adulterous couple came to you and asked about the benefits of using condoms, how would you answer their questions?"
Certainly that would depend a lot on the nature of the doctor/patient relationship. I'd hope I could give them a thorough answer that they would actually hear. FYI, some friends of mine are MDs, and have treated AIDS patients; those doctors really wish their patients had not made sex into a god.
"This passage is speaking to believers, and I'm not sure it really "works" for nonbelievers. Are their bodies sacred in the same way?"
Let's say they are not sacred in the same way, then become so if the nonbelievers get saved. Does that mean that Jesus died for some kind of generic formulation of their sins, and that particular sins they committed didn't really count, somehow? It sounds, Ben, like you're saying "Let the unbelievers sin!", which I have a hard time reconciling with your earlier hagiography of Gandhi. Or is it that you see sexual sin in a different, lesser category than the types of actions Gandhi wanted stopped?
And I'd bring up the coach again, but I think that might be mean of me, so I won't. You're too good a friend for me to do something as low as that, even when we so strongly disagree.
"Is it your observation that nonbelievers who fornicate in a relationship end up "more lonely than ever"?"
A most resounding "yes"; those who saved themselves for marriage have deeper, stronger bonds. Those who did not wait are able to find abundant grace, and God is able to give them an excellent relationship, but it is not as strong as it could have been. And the passage of years gives time for reflection; without the strength of Christ, pondering can lead to deep regret and thereby loneliness - even while someone is married. It's hard to "un-sacrifice" what you've long ago left on a false altar.
"Let's say not just "some" insurance company, but *your* insurance company. Oh, and BTW, your premiums just went up quite a bit. Still sanguine?"
Probably not. But then, I'm un-sanguine about many of the things my insurance company does. And other people are probably similarly upset about their insurance policies paying for the Pill. In an ideal world, we'd be able to switch insurance companies (or policies, at least) if this happened.. but that's another discussion.
"And if they have the mind of Christ, then what they do will indeed make the world better. If they don't (as Gandhi didn't), then they may change it, but by definition they cannot make it better."
*blink blink*. Making the world better *requires* the mind of Christ? Perhaps you're defining "mind of Christ" different than I would, maybe as not requiring salvation.
I'd say that unsaved people can certainly work successfully work towards the betterment of the world. Would you agree?
I think, if you argue (as many conservatives do) that the US was founded upon Christian principles such as property rights, personal liberty, human rights, etc.. than you'd have to say that generally, to spread those principles is to better the world. And Gandhi's greatest legacy was spreading those principles in India.
Likewise, if you'll agree that a rash of suicide bombings would be a Bad Thing, then isn't the imam who convinces Muslim youth to settle their disputes peacefully, doing good?
"Would you say, Ben, that God in fact does *not* own our bodies until/unless we become believers?"
Hmm.. An interesting question. I'd suppose it depends on how you define "own".
But the question, I think, is moot. With the odd exception of the fellow with muscular dystrophy, we're talking about people who are already unchaste. The discussion isn't chastity vs unchastity, but more healthy and less healthy versions of unchastity.
If, say, you were a doctor, and an adulterous couple came to you and asked about the benefits of using condoms, how would you answer their questions? *Could* you answer their questions, directly and honestly, knowing that they'll use the information to mitigate the consequences of their adultery?
About the 1 Cor. passage..
- This passage is speaking to believers, and I'm not sure it really "works" for nonbelievers. Are their bodies sacred in the same way? They're already separated from God. Is sex outside of marriage going to make them *more* separated?
- Is it your observation that nonbelievers who fornicate in a relationship end up "more lonely than ever"? From here, it looks like "no". The ones who are already lonely, and try to to fill that hole with casual sex, fare quite badly, as with all the stories about girls sleeping around in high school and college and feeling awful about themselves. But the ones who are already well-adjusted and happy with their lives seem to fare okay with their unchastity (or well, even), particularly when the sex is in the context of a relationship.
You said,
"It's one thing to have someone in their 20s or 30s say that unchastity did them no harm; it's another thing entirely (and as best I can discern from talking with those in my generation and older, the "free love" generation, an exceedingly rare thing) to find someone in their 50s or older who will claim it did them no harm."
Why do you think that is?
As best as I can see, the nonbelievers I'm talking to aren't practicing "free love" or engaging in casual sex.
Hmm. Likewise, seeing as I don't know many non-Christians in their 50s or older, I can't check your comment, myself. I'm guessing you've sought out the opinions of non-Christians in this?
No. I am angry that he is idolized and think it is a laziness of thought that makes him seized upon as the epitome of good just as Hitler is the epitome of evil. It is effectively a reverse Godwin's Law.
Ghandi's life and beliefs are not above criticism and neither was his cause. I have overdone my criticism of him in the past, but it was in reaction to the unthinking veneration of him.
Let's say not just "some" insurance company, but *your* insurance company. Oh, and BTW, your premiums just went up quite a bit. Still sanguine?
I wrote: "the patient feels betted in the short term" but it should have been "better". Still getting accustomed to the Android keyboard; sorry.
You wrote "how do you know that this forms an emotional bond for life?"
Because the two become one flesh - at least, temporarily. And because I've known enough fictional characters and enough real people that I can discern the difference between those who saved themselves for marriage, and those who did not. In fact, it's an interesting study to look at the euphemisms (if I can actually call them that) which are used to describe chastity prior to marriage. It's one thing to have someone in their 20s or 30s say that unchastity did them no harm; it's another thing entirely (and as best I can discern from talking with those in my generation and older, the "free love" generation, an exceedingly rare thing) to find someone in their 50s or older who will claim it did them no harm.
So will you get back to me in 30 years or so, and let me know if your less chaste friends have changed their minds? ;-)
I pity the patients who feel that something truly special transpired between them and their sex therapist, only to discover that for the therapist it was a job. Such knowledge could be truly devastating.
"The truth is, nearly everyone is doing what they can to make their life better - and quite often, the lives of those around them, too."
And if they have the mind of Christ, then what they do will indeed make the world better. If they don't (as Gandhi didn't), then they may change it, but by definition they cannot make it better.
And so it is with these sex therapists, Ben. We can't know whether or not their therapy is good or bad unless we have a perspective that is higher than our own opinions and perceptions. We can, as you did, feel sympathy for the distress of the patients, but we can't know if it helped or hurt unless we can become transcendent. Or, we consult the record of a transcendent authority. Check out how The Message renders 1 Cor. 6:16-20 :
"There's more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as much spiritual mystery as physical fact. As written in Scripture, "The two become one." Since we want to become spiritually one with the Master, we must not pursue the kind of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy, leaving us more lonely than ever — the kind of sex that can never "become one." There is a sense in which sexual sins are different from all others. In sexual sin we violate the sacredness of our own bodies, these bodies that were made for God-given and God-modeled love, for "becoming one" with another. Or didn't you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don't you see that you can't live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body."
Would you say, Ben, that God in fact does *not* own our bodies until/unless we become believers? I.e., do people have property rights over their flesh until they explicitly give it over to God (versus agreeing with God that He has had the rights to all of them from the beginning, whether or not they behaved like it)?
So to answer my own much earlier question, I'd say that those who are chaste until marriage and monogamous after marriage are able to "let people see God in and through your body". Seems to me that would be an advantage far greater than any disadvantage I could name. This "sex therapy" removes that advantage, and therefore the therapy is ultimately harmful. So it's as Gina said: sex becomes a "god" to which people make sacrifices of great value while getting little to nothing in return, so it's a net loss for them. The True and Living God made the greatest sacrifice for us, and gives us everything, to our great gain, and in comparison to which any suffering on our part (particularly suffering that would appear to benefit from therapy) is hardly worth mentioning, except as it permits us to remind ourselves of who we are and to allow us to encourage each other.
As for you not thinking fornication acceptable, the article seems to make clear that in some cases the "surrogates" do in fact have sex with the patients which you seem to be defending.
That is like saying hunting is about male bonding and enjoying the great outdoors, not about killing cute furry animals. That may be so but you do not need a hunting license for permission to have male bonding and to enjoy the great outdoors. You need a hunting license to kill cute furry animals. And in a county where there are no game laws or no one bothers to keep them one might wonder why people bother to get a hunting license. And one might equally wonder why someone who has no problem with poaching bothered to get a hunting license himself.
I don't think that "fornication is acceptable" is a fair reading of my words, any more than a fair reading of the original article leads us to believe that using the phrase "sex surrogacy" is an attempt by therapists to redefine English words, or that sex surrogacy could be reasonably construed as the sexual predation of therapists upon cripples. Stretching someone's words so far from what they intended is.. not completely honest. You're reading things into these words that aren't true, which makes discussion with you difficult for me.
That said, I'll answer the question as *if* I considered fornication acceptable.. because, the truth is, my answer would be almost completely the same.
No, fornication being acceptable would not render marriage superfluous. Marriage is not about sex, but about a public commitment to a lifelong relationship, and about providing a healthy environment for having and raising children (for us, at least. Not every couple wants kids).
Sure, sex is great, but if that's why you're getting married, you're in for a world of pain. I do NOT recommend it. I've seen far too many couples crash and burn after they got married for sex (or after marrying because their parents were worried about them having sex). It doesn't work, or at least not very well.
Just.. out of curiosity, I'm going to follow your line of thought a little further. I apologize in advance if I ask what seem like basic questions. You said,
"The advantage of this kind of therapy is that the patient feels betted in the short term. The disadvantage is that they now have an emotional bond with someone, for life, but that emotional bond cannot deepen."
Well, shucks. If the therapy just serves to make someone feel bedded, then that's not therapy. That's just sex. It's doubtful that "just sex" would actually work towards addressing any of the issues for which someone would go to sex therapy.
On the disadvantages - how do you know that this forms an emotional bond for life? (importantly, a bond that's different from a bond of friendship). And - why is this bad? Are bonds only worth forming if they will always have room to grow?
Thinking about this from my own experiences - I have many friends with whom I have an emotional bond for life. I could go back to my hometown, call one up for dinner, and we'd sit around drinking tea and talking until 4 AM, like nothing had ever changed and I hadn't been away for years. In fact, the part of my relationship that I value the most with my wife is our friendship and conversation, and without the friendship, the relationship would seem pretty empty. We were best friends long before we romantically involved (and we did wait until marriage).
Intimacy comes and goes in a marriage. Life gets in the way, you have rough patches in your marriage, etc. When the intimacy is gone, I don't *feel* like I have an emotional bond with my wife that's any different from a friend (if that). You only have your friendship, and you have your commitment to the relationship. By extrapolation, if I had slept with someone else before my wife, I don't think I'd feel any different bond with them than with any other friend / girlfriend. Sure, you may pine after them, long for them, and miss them.. but I've done that in perfectly chaste relationships (oh, have I ever). This is also in agreement with discussions with some of my less chaste friends: sex doesn't necessarily create some deep lifelong bond.
But - my perspective might not be normal. I'm a bit more extroverted and open and affectionate than most, and I came from a very physically affectionate family and church (hugs all around!). I am extremely far from your typical quiet, reserved-about-his-feelings male. So - it's possible that I'm used to getting emotionally close to friends easily, whereas for other people, they only feel so close to their spouse, or to other people with whom they've had sex. Maybe, for many people, sex *does* create a permanent and unusually close bond?
Ok.. putting that pondering aside, I'll return to your questions: Should we mitigate the consequences of sin or sexual activity?
Answer: Mostly irrelevant. *We're* not the ones doing the mitigating; which is the whole point; this kind of therapy is something that a few nonbelievers do.
The truth is, nearly everyone is doing what they can to make their life better - and quite often, the lives of those around them, too. You and I don't get to choose how they try to do this. Would you be angry with Gandhi, since he spread Hinduism, but at the same time used its teachings to help improve the lives of millions? (You can't tell me that preaching a contrary gospel isn't a sin). You can't blame them for using the tools they have available, and it may indeed help the world become a better place.
Jason, I think I may just bow out of the conversation with you - no offense - because I'm having too much trouble following your points. I don't see how seduction and sexual predation are analogous to sex therapy/surrogacy.
The advantage of this kind of therapy is that the patient feels betted in the short term. The disadvantage is that they now have an emotional bond with someone, for life, but that emotional bond cannot deepen.
And, mathematically ;-) , how often can one give away (or in this case, discard) one's virginity? It's not a decision to be made while in a state of emotional distress.
But the bigger issue is your pattern of saying "they are X, so we should mitigate Y", where X is "sexually active" and Y is "the consequences", or X is "unbelievers" and Y is "their sin". The underlying assumption is that X is immutable. And I claim that no, unbelief is correctible, and that in fact, it is more important to address unbelief than psychological distress. I gather that you disagree, and I wonder why you would.
Kevin: I'd think that open conversation and vulnerability are powerful tools for any kind of therapy. But I can't say if they would be enough, even with the addition of chaste affection, to deal with the kinds of problems that a sex surrogate may address.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_surrogate#Typical_problems
LQ: By all means, bring up the slippery slope argument. How does it apply here?
And I'm curious - what do *you* see as the advantages and disadvantages of this sex therapy? Particularly, if you're dealing with people who are already unchaste or nonmonogamous? In addition - how would you help a victim of sexual abuse, or someone with relational+sexual anxiety, if you couldn't use Christianity?
Pretty much my whole point on this thread is: There are worse things than unchastity, and unchastity may sometimes be useful for fixing those things, particularly for nonbelievers.
Ellen: "Sexual contact" is indeed a bit vague. Sorry about that. Take it as just "kissing and caressing", then.
I was wondering if such behavior would be wrong, if between two single people.. and what that might mean about using such things in therapy. But this has always been such a gray area ("How far can we go before it's 'sex'?"), so I think that line of inquiry will be unhelpful.
Jason: We often use different words for similar, but related, concepts. This vocabulatory variety allows us to convey more (or different) information. If someone is a "sex surrogate", it tells you that they are likely trained in mental/emotional therapy, that, of the various areas of therapy, they focus on sex therapy, and that they sometimes engage in sexual activity as a part of that therapy. This is not really the same thing as "courtesan", even if courtesans have provided some of the same services at times.
You shouldn't take this as an affront to the English language or as a re-definition of words; rather, it's just what therapists call sex therapists who take their work to unusual extremes.
How should that figure into this kind of calculus which we're exploring?
And is it conceivable that a legitimate form of affection could be merely stroking of the head, or a hand on the shoulder, rather than a kiss on the chest? This would seemingly allow for that giving and receiving of affection yet preserve chastity and monogamy.
The fact that this entire area is so fraught with significance, weight, attraction, risk, etc., does seem to argue for Kim's point, that this is why there is a commandment about it, and indeed why so many of the OT prophets used this realm of language both in describing God's relationship with His people, and the violations of that relationship.
So rather than go down a slope, perhaps we could go up one. Light a candle instead of curse the darkness, etc. With that in mind, everyone, what are the advantages, psychologically, of chastity and monogamy over and above the supposed value of sex therapy, for those people who so move Ben emotionally by their circumstances?
Which is in fact not my concern; that line of work is not going away and anyway we all know the old cliche about many harlots being less damnable then many of those they condemn. What is my concern is that it is doublespeak, an attempt to institutionalize a lie. It is a fornication of the mind even more then it is a fornication of the body.
The fact that she has a psychology degree does not change her being a courtesan. Historically members of that profession always tended to have that as one of their skills. Nor does doing less eccentric forms of therapy. Nor does being affectionate. That just makes her a courtesan who also has another job and who has an amiable personality which is useful both aspects of her job. Which would be all very well and not my business. But her Companions Guild is trying to change the English language for the sake of advertising and I have objections to that.
Define "kissing and caressing without sexual contact." Kissing and caressing a child for most people is not sexual, but for some such an act is sexual and in that context is morally wrong. Kissing and caressing between a man and a woman is very rarely not sexual. Even an asexually intended kiss on one cheek with a stroke of the hand on the other can lead to unintended arousal. It would be an exceptionally rare context for my husband to be comfortable with me kissing and caressing some other man.
The question you asked Jason is "Does it work?" But it's dangerous to think that it's all about that question. One also has to ask, "Is it good?" If something is not good, then asking whether it works is rather beside the point.