Sexual Morality

I saw an article the other day by a well-known Christian philosopher in which he said that such things as pre-marital sex, adultery, the practice of homosexuality and abortion, in other words all those things given the green light by the sexual revolution of the 1960s, were wrong because God said so through Holy Scripture or the church. I disagree. It may well be the case that these things are wrong but it just isn't enough to put it like that nowadays. We are no longer children. Now we must ask that if God says so, why does he say so? If he said the opposite (obviously impossible in reality but theoretically possible), would we just change our ways on that basis?  God doesn't want us to obey him as though he were a tyrant and we his subjects, not the Christian God anyway though some other versions of the divine personage might fall into that category. Above all, he wants us to join him in understanding why right is right and wrong is wrong. And it’s not just because he has ordained it so. Or rather it is, but there is a reason.

It isn't good enough any longer to give a rule without giving the reason for that rule, and if we are told to give up a seeming good we are entitled to ask if this is because of a greater good. In this instance that is precisely the reason. Our Creator is not a spoilsport or puritanical misery. He wants nothing but our good and our happiness, but he knows that our real good lies in spiritual things and this means that we must learn to identify our true nature with the soul, our spiritual being, not personal desires of mind and body. These are not illegitimate because, of course, the mind and body are part of what we are. However they need to be seen in their correct place and very often, in our marred post-lapsarian world, their expression, you might say, their unnatural expression, conflicts with the requirements of the soul and prevents a proper understanding of it.  This is quite apart from any societal breakdown an unrestricted sexual morality might bring in its wake.

Sex is the most powerful force known to us and that is not surprising since it is the source and means of creativity.  It is the result of splitting original unity into two, a necessary split if the unmanifest was to become manifest and creation enabled to take place. However, without being controlled in some way, it can destroy a civilisation. It can certainly derail it from any spiritual achievement, and it seems all cultures have recognised this especially in the periods of their building up. In the period of their decadence and decline it's quite another story, and the examples of past history should be a warning to us.

The more you allow yourself to be dominated by your worldly mind and physical body, the more you will be identified with these aspects of your being and the less you will be able to respond to the soul which is the spiritual component of your being.  The more you act in a way that contradicts truth, the more you will separate yourself from truth until there will come a point at which you will cease to even recognise it and deny its very existence.

As sex is the strongest force there is it needs to be controlled and managed, and the best way to do this is through fidelity to one partner in marriage in which the physical aspect of sex is viewed through a spiritual prism as a reflection of a higher truth. And this is the point. Physical sex is the reflection of a higher truth and if the physical aspect is over-emphasised then its higher aspects will not be able to make their appearance in the individual’s mind. The mind will be too taken up with the lower (lower because relating purely to the physical body) aspects. This is not some kind of Gnostic denial of the body but a recognition of the hierarchical nature of man’s being. Man has many levels to his being and focusing too much on lower levels will block access to higher ones. This is why sex unconstrained by love will dull perception and cloud spiritual vision, and why an over-concern with physical pleasure will deaden receptivity to the inner soul and its intuitive faculties.

At the same time, it is true that sometimes when a person begins to open himself up to higher levels of being through the creative imagination the downpour of energy will over-stimulate to the point that the sexual nature is also stirred up excessively. We can often see this in the lives of poets, artists and the like. However, this is a preliminary phase and a more developed understanding and response will bring about stability. There will still be an increased sensitivity to beauty and a yearning towards union but it will be spiritual rather than physical union that now takes precedence.

This gives us a clue as to why the current sexual over-emphasis and stimulation must be viewed in a negative light. It is quite simply that the sexual and spiritual forces in man are one and the same which is why energy, if directed into the lower channel, cannot go into the higher. Celibacy is not necessarily required. That could cause more trouble than it’s worth if it leads to an inner frustration in which the mind gravitates to thoughts about sex more than it would in the context of a healthy expression. But discipline and control and recognition that the sexual impulse belongs to man’s animal nature not his angelic side are. And, of course, in an naturally ordered world even the physical expression of sex would diminish once an individual goes past the point of having children, something that our current attitude, which encourages even elderly people long past child bearing age to carry on having sex, would completely reject. But these people are at an age when they should be thinking more and more about their spiritual growth, and it is a poisoned society that encourages them to neglect this and attempt to prolong their youth.

So the philosopher was right in the moral position he took but I think that the reasons he gave for it were insufficient. It is surely better to understand why we should behave in a certain way than just to be told that we should with no explanation given.