Someone said to me once, “John, you’re lucky because you got to sow your wild oats.” I said, “You don’t know how lucky you are that you didn’t.” I have this constant struggle with memories form the past. All the things I did come back and try to tempt me. Those memories of impure actions are impure thoughts and I have to constantly keep my guard up to keep these thoughts and feelings and emotions from flooding my mind.
So you’re very lucky if you’ve never done these things. I was sinning like crazy, and it has consequences in my life today. You don’t want to “sow your wild oats” and you want to keep your children from doing so.
Amen to that. Like Mr. Martignoni, I stepped out of the Church and into a life of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and I can confirm that those three nouns are not used together by accident. I played in nightclub bands starting when I was 17. While I certainly wasn't innocent at that time, the music scene exposed me to a whole new level of hedonism. I still pay the price of those early, dark years.
Sexual immorality is probably one of the best examples I can think of sin that has such clear spiritual and temporal consequences. When people in the Church these days argue for a less stringent morality, for a "more realistic" view of sex, I come to two conculsions about these people:
- These people have a completely materialist view of sexual intercourse. They see the act as purely physical and only endowed with those emotional aspects one chooses to give it. However, no one is more vulnerable to another person as they are during the sexual act. Such vulnerability brings with it an emotional attachment or an emotional wound, one or the other.
- These people have no idea of the damage pre- or extra-marital sex can do to someone's future relationships and emotional health. When someone has sexual intercourse with another person, they develop a bond. With no commitment, the bonding process is frustrated. Over time, repeated acts thwart a person's ability to bond. If that person ever marries, they begin that relationship with a huge impediment.
Here's another way to look at it. We try to protect our children from physical harm by setting rules and guidelines. No one in their right mind would tell us that we should allow our children to risk life or limb to really understand the need for caution. Yet, when it comes to sexual activity, this is the wisdom of the day. Your son or daughter won't really understand the value of commitment until they've been used emotionally and physically and tossed away. What kind of wisdom is that?
Some people like to say, "Well, at least he got it all out of his system." Nothing could be further from the truth. Engaging in that lifestyle is what puts the filth into your system. We need to God to get it back out of us.
HT to Jeff Miller.
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5 comments:
That reminds me of what Hugo said about oats: http://hugoboy.typepad.com/hugo_schwyzer/2006/09/i_was_talking_w.html
Thanks for the link, Elliot. Although I disagree on his comment about faithful, single Christians and chastity, I agree with the central point of the post.
Depends on the individual. I screwed around major-league in my teens and twenties -- and would have done more if I could have wheedled more girls onto their backs.
OTOH, I then met my wife and have been contentedly monogamous -- in fact, blissfully happy -- ever since.
I still appreciate looking at pretty women but have never felt the slightest inclination to stray, or the slightest regret for the end of my 'wild and wanderin' days.
It's not so much the inclination to stray as the images that return from those days past. St. Augustine mentions the same struggle in Confessions, and I recall hearing a story of St. Francis jumping into a thorn bush to distract himself of such memories.
I meant to write more about this topic. I didn't want to jump to any conclusions about your beliefs, SM, but since you've outed yourself on Dale's blog...
The difference in our perpectives is tied to our different world views, which are informed by our belief systems. I would assume, as an atheist, that you're also a materialist. From a materialist perspective, you can't really go beyond the immediate act to some greater reality. Your sex life has meaning (if it has meaning) because it's tied to something in the here-and-now that you value—in your current case, your marriage; in previous cases, sexual satisfaction. In your married life, it can have the additional impact of continuing your family line. However, that's still a purely temporal concern.
That's not how it works in Catholic thought (with an eye toward natural law). Sex is tied to marriage because sex is tied to procreation. (I'm sure I haven't surprised you there.) From a biological perspective, you cannot say that the pleasure is tied to sex for its own sake. It's clearly a means of motivation, just as appetite is a means to motivate us to eat. However, just as misusing the appetite of hunger can cause emotional and physical harm, so can the misuse of the sexual appetite.
However, procreation and its motivating factors are only part of the picture. We believe that marriage is necessary to provide a stable environment in which to raise children. Part of that stability comes from the bonding that takes place during the sexual act—a bonding that acts on a spiritual level, as well as a chemical, neurological level (see oxytocin and vasopressin). On a spiritual level, a permanent bonding takes place in the sacrament of marriage, and it is reinforced during the sexual act. Marriage is described in Genesis 2 as a cleaving of man to woman. (I'm sure, as a writer, you can appreciate the duality of that word "cleave" given that Eve was first taken from Adam). This scripture is one on which the sacramentality and indissolubility of marriage in the Cathoic church is based. A marriage isn't created solely by the whims of two individuals. It's created by God. As Christ said, "What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder" (Mt 19:6).
So sex is a spiritual act, and in the Catholic mind, having enaged in sexual behavior outside of marriage means a misuse of a spiritual act, the misuse of a sacred gift. It offends God because it uses a natural thing unnaturally. It also wounds the other spiritually, whether he or she recognizes the wound. When someone returns to the Catholic faith sincerely, they (meaning "I") look back on these acts not as meaningless activities but as betrayals of trust, as sins against our neighbors, and as wounds to our own spirituality.
Hope that frames the Catholic perspective a bit better.
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