I think the day the canary died in the coal mine was in 1994 when Dr. Jocelyn Elders announced to the world that masturbation was a medical good, even necessary, telling one of the greatest lies in history. Every man in the listening world was nodding along, because if science said the old morality was dead, men were more than ready to agree. I was probably eating a Little Debbie Nutty Buddy when I heard it, or drinking a 32-ounce Big Buddy from the local mini-mart.
Now, Dr. Elders lost her job for that after a big kerfuffle, but the word was out: chastity was a sin, not a virtue. The last, old fuddy-duddy rule that Christianity had lifted up regarding lust was being pulled down and paved into a parking lot. This commandment came from the tower of Washington D.C., from the anointed Surgeon General, who knocked down one of the last fences of morality. What Woodstock had not already opened the gate to, we had finally taken down the last blocker. (For anyone familiar with Chesterton’s fence, you can see that this relates directly. And if you are familiar with Chesterton’s fence and how we foolishly have removed all the fences because of our assumption of knowledge, then you may also see how the story of Chesterton’s wall relates as well.)
The fatal flaw of science when it turns into a source of spiritual direction is the same flaw with every other ideology: it doesn’t believe in God. I mean, of course it cannot, because pure science is a study of the natural world. Science is beautiful and good at finding the truth when it sticks to experimentation and data. But once the crossover is made into morality, it becomes dangerous, because to misunderstand that souls exist means missing half the person. The ideology of “scientism” happens whenever you hear morality lessons starting with the words “Studies show...” The devil attacks the body, and places thoughts in our heads, because that’s all that he can affect. Without our defenses of prayer and fasting, we are sitting ducks. Science doesn’t believe in God, and therefore doesn’t understand the devil. But the devil understands science just like he can quote scripture. We all know the devil can quote scripture, so it follows that he can twist organic chemistry and molecular biology as well to his purposes.
What we all forget is this: the devil is smarter than us. All of us.
Angels and demons are pure intellect, and for us to think we “know better” is exactly what he wants. (Watch the movie Nefarious for an accurate portrayal of demonology.) He plants thoughts in our heads in order to deceive, distract, divide, and drive us to despair. And the best thought he can plant in our heads is that he does not exist, and neither does God, and neither does your eternal soul. This is like the reverse of the parable of the mustard seed. Instead of a seed being planted and growing into a great shrub that houses many birds, the devil just brings us the bird droppings. There is no growth, just death.
Now, the devil is going to devil, since that’s his job. God allows this, to give us temptations and trials, to make us choose. People don’t like this idea, because why would a good God allow this? The only problem with a purely material world is that you have no explanation for evil, and so we pretend that wealth and education and sexual freedom will solve the problem, but as I’ve just gone on at length here about, the abundance of food and sex do not solve the problem of sin at all. And eventually, no matter how much you eat, whether it’s sugar or protein, and no matter how much sex you have, the Big Empty God-shaped hole in your heart still needs filling.
Free-will is the manner in which we choose grace or sin, and when you have a Surgeon General come out like Moses’ on Capitol Hill to announce that sexual sin no longer exists, the people get the keg, the condoms, the Hustler mag, and the Golden Calf out of storage immediately. Once the gate is removed, the sheep wander, and wander we have. Jonah’s jaunt to Nineveh could be done to any average midwestern American town at this point, but unlike the king of Nineveh, no one would respond by wearing sackcloth and sitting in ashes.
So food can’t save us, and nor can sex. But like food, sex can be used for good purposes or bad ones, and the modern idea of sex as freedom has destroyed millions of marriages and families.
Ask anyone who has had many partners if its true that sex has brought fulfillment. Has lots of sex brought them peace? The answer is no. We all know these people. They are everywhere. The constant pursuit of the next partner makes for a life of lying and surface relationships. Sex by itself is basically as deep and meaningful as what the paint shaker at Home Depot experiences in its gyrations. I don’t know many people that would watch a video of the paint shaker at Home Depot, but that is essentially what pornography is. The same goes for one night stands and quickies with strangers. In other words, sex is removed from its actual purpose of making children. It’s really wild that this declaration, so obvious, is wrongthink today, but the purpose of sex is obviously reproduction, and it is pleasurable in order that we reproduce.
Try as you might to explain it away, the purpose of sex is reproduction. Pleasure is not the primary purpose. This is hard to accept today, but realize that you would not ever be reading this if pleasure was the only purpose. Immense amounts of money go toward papering over this fact, but every day, babies are born, popping out and wailing to prove the purpose of the act. “It’s me,” they cry. “I’m the reason you’re horny. Surprise!” The intention is to unite a husband and a wife, and to make babies. It’s funny that penguins understand this but people with smart phones do not.
In fact, anyone who continues this charade of trying to trade sex for meaning like it was a stock market finds themselves more lost than drug addicts in the end. The wreckages that follows a life of random sex is as bad as that of alcohol, and so often they go together. Surely we all know porn addicts and incurable strip joint patrons. Watching their efforts to find another partner is like Dexter, the serial killer, searching for his next victim. But the constant pursuit of sex makes for a pathetic chase scene, not that different from scenes in The Walking Dead where zombies pursue Michonne or Maggie. It’s just all so shallow that watching it makes you sad. It makes you sad for the both the pursued and the the pursuer when you know that the lies used in the wooing will all fall flat in the end.
How many country songs cover this state? Loneliness, it’s really something. There’s such different kinds of sadness. I mean, Old Yeller is sad, but not nearly as sad as loneliness that leads to sin. Requiem for a Dream is a drug movie that follows this arc of desperation for euphoria, but unlike Old Yeller, where you are sad about the wholesome doggy whose goodness felt nearly transcendent, you feel shattered and destroyed in the sadness of a life drugs and sex that walk the characters into a living hell, and ends with Jennifer Connelly reduced to a stage dog dancing for more drugs.
Sex becomes a closet pursuit for the addicted, really, worse than many drugs. It may excite the flesh for a bit, but sooner or later, like any fix, you need more, and the more you need, the more vicious the cycle gets, until it becomes a circular hell (which I’m certain is why Dante made the rings of hell circles, because we all choose the vicious circle that we occupy). After a while, the pursuit gets weird and strange as what formerly satisfied no longer delivers the punch that the lust requires to get off again. This obsession is the secret addiction of millions of American men, who should all proceed en masse to join an Exodus 90 group or a Strive 21 program to break these poisonous soul ties. Oh, and start saying Deliverance Prayers (for yourself and your immediate family - just don’t start dabbling in delivering others…bad idea).
Oh, you say you don’t believe in the devil? That is all childish nonsense. Well, that’s because he’s already got you. If you don’t believe in the devil, he’s already bought your soul. His first tactic, number one, is to convince you that he doesn’t exist. And while you do his bidding, he won’t bother you. It’s only once you start to fight it that you will begin to know that he is real, and so is God.
This idea of freedom by way of sex is the shiny apple we’re told to eat, with the promise that it will give us knowledge, make us like God. The reality is that we all find out that what we lost can never be restored, and sex is like a new car on the dealership lot, shined up and waxed. (It’s interesting how shiny things always seem to fit so well with sin.) Within weeks, a new car is covered in salt and dirt from the highways. Before long it’s like every other car on the street and we’re still the same body and soul riding around in it, often eating fast food while we listen to songs about sex.
So many are desperate to prove that sex can fulfill them, but like a man who buys a new pickup to turn heads, in a few years he will become disillusioned with that machine and need a newer, younger truck. Or if he can’t afford the newer vehicle, he’ll start adding aftermarket bolt-ons until it starts looking cartoonish. Or worse: from the start, the new car was a lemon, and it was never what he thought it would be, but now the debt is hanging around for years.
This is why virginity in the ancient world was highly prized. They knew what we have forgotten. Sex sells, yes, but it’s way oversold. There is more to life, and just as Plato and Socrates and Confucius and Marcus Aurelius and Jesus all told us, the higher pursuit of virtue far exceeds the desires of the flesh. Even the Epicureans taught that much.
The shiny apple is always an illusion. Good things come from self-denial more often than they do from indulgence. But because of media and a bad notion of freedom, chastity has been given a bad name. What may shock you is to learn that people pursuing chastity have greater friendships than people who see themselves as raging balls of desire in constant need of sex. Virtuous friendship, in fact, requires it. Once lust is removed entirely, virtuous friendship can soar. But how can you remove lust?
Let’s go to the replay. In Genesis, once Joseph goes to Egypt, and after he gets out of prison for his sweet dream interpretation, he has a job. But the boss’s wife wants him. In a predicament, she advances on him, and what does he do to thwart the advances of his boss’s wife?
He flees.
Now for most sin, you pray and fight, as the Spiritual Combat demands us to do. But for lust? No, you flee. You turn away.
Joseph illustrates the successful method of handling lust. In the Navarre Catholic Study Bible, there is a great comment about this story, from St. Caesarius of Arles, that is applicable today:
"Joseph flees in order to escape...Learn, therefore, to flee if you want to win out against the attack made by lust. Do not be ashamed to flee if you want to attain chastity....Among all the fights a Christian has to engage in, the most difficult are those of chastity; here the struggle is a daily one, and victory is difficult. In this a Christian cannot but have daily acts of martyrdom." (Sermones 41, 1-3)
Also, a note is shared on this same story from St. Josemaria Escriva, who is very much to the point: "Don't show the cowardice of being 'brave'; take to your heels!" (The Way, p. 132)
Joseph didn't have a smart phone or a laptop, but the same tactic can apply and work for lust today. Turn off the device. Block the site or the person. Flee from it.
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Do you want to know a secret? People in monogamous relationships and single people practicing chastity have a secret. It’s really simple. No, it’s not that they are not tempted. Surely, they are tempted as much as anyone, or used to be. But the big secret is that they avert their eyes when lust arises, and this becomes a daily practice until it’s not even a challenge. Hit your knees and pray. When temptation comes, pray. Always. It’s the same for quitting drinking. Prayer works. Along with that, you can use St. Ignatius’ 14 Rules of Discernment. They are the Swiss Army knife of learning and putting this spiritual fight into practice.
When chastity is pursued, you stop sizing up everyone for sex. “Oh, look at her,” becomes, “Look to Christ.” Seriously, observe your horny friends. Do a little people watching. They are not at peace. The fruit of chastity appears un-shiny to the untrained eye. But once you put down the hash pipe of modern culture, with its sex obsession, and see people as made in the image and likeness of God, who deserve love and respect, the world looks different. Chastity, that old-fashioned idea, will free you in ways you never knew, because what you think you need is only something you want. The Buddhists understand what Lainey Wilson was saying in her country song, "Things a Man Oughta Know”:
“If I can’t have it, I can go without.”
Exactly, Lainey. That’s something George Costanza oughta know, and me as well. That is a thing we all oughta know.
Learning to live this way in all things is true freedom, because you leave your personal Egypt, no longer a slave to the passions. If you can sit in a room and not “want” something you are beginning to understand what the pursuit of holiness is all about. The substitutes we use in place of God are never what we really want. They can be good things, but not if they are the highest thing, the highest desire for our life.
The only thing you need is God. This is how you surrender to win. Sex? If it happens, great. If not, great. Job knows how this works:The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away: Bless the name of the Lord. As some recovering alcoholics like to say, “It’ll work out or…it’ll work out.”
In other words, you’ll be fine either way. Recall Job as often as possible, as he summed up the proper humble mindset of a believer in the living God.
Obviously, most of us learn this after eating the fruit. Much later, after eating from the tree of knowledge, we say, “Oh, I get it now. Yes, I should have listened to my mother or father or that old person who told me this earlier when I just wanted to ignore them.”
The problem today is that the elders have gone off the rails. Most of the Baby Boomer and the following generations grew up in a time of unparalleled affluence, which is like the express line to hell. Money and comfort lead to these ideas. If you are seeking religious truth from the Bible, follow the money. Follow the power. Follow the comfort. The Israelites get rusty real fast as soon as they are exposed to these oxygen rich environments of wealth, power, and comfort.
The indoctrination from schools and media assure us, even compel us, to believe that sex is the key to happiness, so that we act like the Bergens in the movie Trolls, who must eat a troll to be happy. The whole movie is about the Bergen prince unlearning the cultural lies he’s been indoctrinated into.
This is why we are at the point where the next St. Agnes will rock the world, because once teenage girls realize that the culture is lying, watch out. One Agnes can turn into a billion real fast.
This, I believe, is God’s plan with social media, because the mimetic desire of human instinct kicks in fast. Once kids realize that sex and identity politics is an empty cup, and after they spend another decade observing the results of their parents’ moral failures in pursuing their false “freedom,” the pursuit of holiness will become radically appealing.
But here’s the thing that the Catholic Church teaches that no one wants to admit: the Church teaches that sex is good. In fact, it teaches that all of creation is good, but that we misuse it. The world, and matter, is not evil. Not at all. One of the most mangled ideas of ex-Catholics is this equation that sex = bad. That has never been the position of the Church. Ever. What an eye-opener it would be if men and women would turn off YouTube and Hulu for a moment to read Theology of the Body, but I won’t hold my breath. It’s far easier to believe that the Catholic church hates women and sex. But if you want to understand the Church’s actual sexual teaching, and stop taking in the lies that people speak about the Church, it requires actual reading the sources rather than just assuming the lies. If I want to learn about a product, the last thing I would do is take the word of the competitor’s salesman, but that is exactly what we choose to do. FUD is a an acronym for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, and it is a tactic of sales to grease the customer with these three things in order to squeeze a purchase order out of them. Nowhere is FUD used more than in portrayals of Church teaching on marriage, sex, and the body. I would challenge anyone to give an honest reading of Theology of the Body and then say (without lying) that the Church hates sex or is anti-sex. The Church opposes sin. It does not oppose sex.
When we use our bodies in right relation to God, we find the good and the beautiful. This core concept of Christianity has been discarded in favor of our desire for the apple, a sugary snack that satisfies the body but not the soul. We’ve traded short-term arousal for drinking from the vine that gives life. The best advice I received was not to trust my emotions, but to follow the movements of my heart. The shelf-life of an emotion is brief, often just a few days. The movements of my heart, however, take me either away from or toward God, and that is where the discernment must happen. The longest trip we ever take is from our head to our heart, which seems to me another way of understanding that we must move away from the tree of knowledge and toward the tree of life.
Luckily, we get another chance. Jesus doesn’t shoot the wounded; no, he heals them, restores them, resuscitates them.
We can eat from the tree of life if we unlock that door and let Jesus in, as he is the Bread of Life and the bringer of the Living Water. That’s the buffet you want. Forget the Vegas spread. Throw out your beer bong. You really want to binge and chug? Jesus is the never-ending spring break in Cancun you always wanted, but without the hangover and the regret and the awkward walk home.
In the end of the episode of Seinfeld, George gets greedy, and he says, “I flew too close to the sun on the wings of pastrami,” comparing himself to Icarus in the myth. What did he do that caused his pleasure wings to melt? He tried to add a third love into his sex life. Food and sex just wasn’t quite enough anymore, so he brought a portable television under the sheets to have with his sandwich and girlfriend. He added technology and entertainment. In 1997, the internet was hardly used by most Americans, but we were well on our way to flying too close to the sun, with food, sex, and even though we had technology already, we were just getting our feet wet. We were on the verge of bringing the screen into every aspect of our lives, into every waking (and even sleeping) moment. George Costanza, it turns out, was a prophet of the 21st century. As anyone knows who has looked for happiness in those things, the reason George could never be happy was because he was treating people like things and things like people. His character is seeking joy, hope, and rest, but he’s looking in all the wrong places.
