“It’s Just Sex?”: The Perversion of “Progressive” “Christians”

In Previous Episodes

In a recent article, “’Left,’ ‘Right,’ and the Source of Political Conflict” I discussed what I believe to be the real divide between those labeled conservatives and those labeled left-leaning in Christian circles.

The conservatives among us tend to begin with the need for bringing order to the wayward hearts of mankind and to fight for that order in the societies that flawed humanity builds in their selfishness. Though not without feeling for struggling people, they do not allow pity to sabotage the need to constrain the citizenry to the rules of Society and the preservation of systems long in their development that have proven advantageous for peace and stability wherever they are maintained and honored. Changes must be slow and incremental and tested to determine their viability for preserving proven human thriving.

The left-leaning among us, like their secular counterparts amid the Useful Idiots of Socialism and Critical Marxism,[1] tend to begin their assessments of life with human pity for the hurt feelings of those they deem victims of established systems… whether economic, political, or moral. Unequal outcomes for them are signs of oppression, and the poor choices of those suffering under this supposed oppression are regarded as symptoms of their oppression, not moral failings in and of themselves, or causes of their negative outcomes.

I couched this entire thing in terms of comments made to me by one particular left-leaning minister who imagines themselves biblical, and imagines me…  because of my conservative convictions about the necessity of law and order… as “driving people away from the Kingdom of God”. Indeed, I could fill a book just unpacking the specific conversations we’ve had over issues ranging from charity to “colonialism,” to morality.

Another Foolish Thought

Today, I’d like to consider how this feelings-oriented approach that seems core to left-leaning “Useful Idiots”[2] responds to sex… teen sex in the case in point, but with similar impacts on issues of divorce, infidelity, and homosexuality.  

This preacher of the gospel said (A paraphrase but not too loose of one) “Christians get too worked up about teenagers having sex; they make too big a deal out of it.” If pressed, this minister will claim to defend biblical morality. But this claim is always curtailed with a “Yes… but…”

Why Think Ye So?

Why does this minister feel that teens having sex are mishandled by Christian standards of morality? Other than a possible desire to defend the minister’s own immoral past or present, I think this is because the left-leaning begin not with divine order, but with human feeling.

The sex drive is strong in most. Desire without action is temptation. Temptation is pain… and they pity people who suffer pain. This pity usually involves a light hand in regard to restraint and accountability. Because people accused of wrongdoing often feel really bad about others thinking bad things about them, these left-leaning Christians feel pressured to lower standards to protect the sensibilities of those who violate standards.

Temptation as Pain

I was a virgin until my wedding night. So was my wife. You know who knows the full pain of sexual denial? We do. No one knows the full weight of temptation until they overcome it.

One comedian joked, “I deal with temptation the old fashioned way… I yield to it.”

Yeilders have proven, as the Song of Solomon 8:8-9 speaks, to be doors that should have been boarded up to save them from themselves, rather than as walls that should be adorned with silver and celebrated. But since left-leaning people also tend to despise reward and celebration for those who succeed because it makes failures feel bad, I doubt this text would motivate them to rethink their orientation.

The “Joy” of Yeilding

When one yields to a temptation there is usually a flood of relief… temptation pain is gone… hallelujah! But then consequences begin… some come soon… (pregnancy out of the secure bond of marriage and family, diseases that devastate the body).[3] Some come late and unrecognized… like the rising likelihood of divorce, increased marital infidelity, pushing society as a whole down the slippery slope that J. D. Unwin’s work in Sex and Culture clearly traces. As goes premarital chastity in society, so goes marital fidelity, so goes the family, so goes the nation toward moral then actual collapse.

Connect the Dots

Those centered on human feeling rarely connect the dots. “There was pain. There was relief. So don’t compound the pain with moral judgments, and structured consequences, that cause further harm to their feelings.”

When you begin with law & order, with divine order, one doesn’t say, “It’s just sex, why get all worked up about it.” With a consequences orientation, neither good feeling nor bad feeling is allowed to determine action. One doesn’t slough off concern saying, “I see no harm in it.” Rather one thinks long and hard and seeks out as much information as possible from those places where such information resides and seeks to master it. Historical outcomes properly traced are a vital part of this seeking… as we find in Unwin… as we find in the ages that produced Proverbs.

The Word “Fool” is Offensive to Fools

A 16 year old knows little beyond wanting, but those who take their guardianship seriously wage war against wanting for the sake of the life-long wholeness of those over whom God has given us charge.

Only a fool of a parent would say, “but my five year old only wants to eat candy… eating candy makes him happy… being denied candy makes him angry and sullen and disappointed… I just can’t bear hurting his feelings that way… so candy it is… breakfast, lunch and dinner and whenever the mood strikes in between.”

Only a fool of a principle would say, “Students get angry and feel bad when held accountable to the rules of the school…. Dressing appropriately, restraining their hand when upset, being held back from taking other people’s property, being made to feel lesser than the teacher when expected to speak and act respectfully. So, no more rules around here. I just want everyone to feel good.”

There are consequences short and far for wanton behavior for all these things… including wanton sexual acts.

How Dare You?!

Sex is the mechanism of the creation of life. Sex produces eternal souls that will stand before holy God to give an account of themselves. How dare you engage in that activity for temporary amusement, or because you refuse to exercise the discipline to restrain yourself?

Sex produces people that need constant care and instruction and discipline to keep them from growing up to be destructive influences on their environment or drains on the resources of those fated to share space with them… self-sufficient adults in family and community. How dare you perform the deed when you have no ability or intention to carry the weight of that responsibility?

Sex is the “glue” to marital union and the creation of a bonded covenanted family. How dare you do anything prior to or during that union that weakens that bond? How dare you allow yourself to become the kind of person whose appetites are allowed to erode its foundations, destroy that marriage, harm those children? How dare you?!

Sex is the “glue” to marital union and the creation of bonded family and the entire health of a society depends on the strength of those unions. We may summarize much of Unwin’s work in this regard thus, No society has ever risen high without valuing premarital chastity and marital fidelity. And no nation, no matter how high they have climbed, sustains themselves much more than a century once premarital chastity is almost wholly abandoned as a value.

Left-leaning people don’t concern themselves with things that take generations to unfold, because it is too hard to maintain the emotional concern that is central to their measure of things for that long. They scarcely worry about consequences that delay more than a few weeks or months.

Seriously?!

“Christians get too worked up about teenagers having sex”?! They make too big a deal out of it”?! Seriously?!!!

We Americans don’t get worked up enough.

We don’t make a big enough deal about it.

Hurt feelings and being held accountable for our actions must be rooted in long-term consequences and not faulter before the unholy altar of hurt feelings.

~Andrew D. Sargent

[1] This says nothing about the real basis for action among serious Marxists, Socialists, and Communists, who act with utter disregard for the suffering they inflict on the populations they seek to exert totalitarian rule over. Human sympathy is, to these, nothing but a ruse to gain power.

[2] Socialists’ term for them not just mine.

[3] For a rather thorough consideration of these see the works of Pam Stenzel, particularly her work, Sex Has a Price Tag: Discussions About Sexuality, Spirituality, and Self-respect, (Ventura: Regal Books, 2000).