Technology has done many wonderful things for human existence. The power of our infrastructure has made survival likely (though none of us are getting out of this world alive till Jesus comes); it has added years to our days; it has allowed us the luxury of leisure, self-expression, and time to think. (Though I can’t say that many of us take advantage of the opportunity, choosing rather, to fill their every minute with other technological wonders… like ipad Yatzee.)
Many of the things that once demanded so much time and energy happen almost automatically. In fact the ratio of product to labor has never seemed so low, whether it’s that meal, that load of clean laundry, or that trip to see Aunt Ruth with a beard. All this easy attainment has got to be good for us, right?
And what about sex? Why, back in the day, sex came with all kinds of entanglements… like relationship. There were consequences. Now, don’t get me wrong there still are… more than we recognize,[1] but compared to olden times… Wow! Such freedom!
Back in the day we didn’t have The Pill to trick a woman’s body into thinking it was already pregnant so she won’t ovulate (how can that be bad?). We didn’t have condoms to prevent insemination and to protect against diseases… Oh the diseases we could catch if we didn’t behave ourselves… and medicine! Now, we can do such a great job with the diseases when we do catch them, right? We have spermicide (oooo that sounds safe), diaphragms, sponges and day after pills. We can tie tubes and get vasectomies.[2]
Bolstered by the firm conviction that in order for our daughters to pursue their dreams (which, in our modern happnin’ world, does NOT include the miracle of birth and the beauty of motherhood) we fight like wildcats to protect that all important backup plan—abortion. Why if our technology fails us, we can just poison the little party poopers, rend their bodies with suction tubes, scrape them out like cleaning the leftovers off our plates. If we just can’t make up our minds, we can always find those doctors willing to do us a solid with a pair of scissors or a scalpel before the little life ruiner can take his or her first breath… or after… that’s nobody’s business but the woman’s and her Doctor’s. Truly it is a grand age of freedom and enlightenment.
Can we work so hard to supplant mothering instincts with murderous convictions of the sassy free life without astronomical consequences for the soul of our society, for our own souls? Can we convince our men that sex is nothing but a source for their own personal amusement and walk away unscathed? Can we ultimately prosper as a nation when we strive with such vigor to turn all our daughters into self-absorbed…
…Wow! I am reaching for words to describe what we are trying to make our daughters that don’t include the old standbys—whores, sluts, or sleazes—because these have become the gender equivalent of racial slurs… good job word police, rob us of the vocabulary for sexual immorality and maybe the whole idea will just vanish in the warm glow of tolerance… that’ll be a brave new world.
Virgin is an insult. Promiscuity demonstrates a healthy interest in sex. A man’s worth is measured by the number of his partners.
We’ve lost the best part of ourselves before we even have the sense to know the worth of self-control and “saving one’s self” and the joy of THE ONE. Having thrown these away as worthless trinkets, we armor ourselves against the accusation by denouncing their worth in others as well.
Frankly, I find it all a bit confusing. We preach true love… (Yes, Princess Buttercup it does exist) but insist that the path to true love is through wanton sexual experimentation… that glorious state when two drift-abouts find each other and suddenly transform. Most continue to hold out the hope for family bond and marital fidelity and yet imagine that these are accidental, something we stumble upon after years of unrestrained self-gratification. Hollywood has taught us to follow our hearts and shown us that a whoremonger can spend decades bedding whomever he wants and then, in the throes of passion for that one special girl, become a self-controlled and loyal husband, as if the real difficulty in holding marriages together is that we just don’t feel strongly enough for each other upfront. Maybe we think there is magic in that ring.
There is a direct correspondence between consequence and choice in the minds of most people. I know that living, for the first time in human history, in an age when most of the immediate historic consequences for human sexual behavior have been eradicated, has placed us in a precarious place. The media largely controls what we deem to be the real consequences of unbridled sexuality in regard to our heart’s desires, writing the scripts to arrive at whatever place our fantasies wish our actions would take us. Provoked by our own undisciplined wants, however, we are being driven like rats through a maze constructed in the minds of those who cannot possibly understand the world they are actually shaping… because we’ve never been down this road before… not on this scale. And truthfully, I am afraid.
[1] I recommend Pam Stenzel’s Sex Has a Price Tag: Discussions About Sexuality, Spirituality and Self Respect.
[2] Please do not mistake me for an anti-birth-control person. I am not claiming that all birth control is bad, though in a day in which health is such a major concern, I’d think much of it would make us recoil in horror. We seem, however, in the flush of unearned trust in the pharmaceutical companies and the doctors in their pockets that we generally just throw ourselves on their lab tables and say, “Please, feel free to tinker.”
[3] media pic from sxc.hu
