Psychology cannot talk about sin, but it can talk about bad choices. Bad choices are those which have harmful or unwanted consequences. There is a reason that we have a government warnings on cigarette packages, it is because smoking can be harmful to your heath. But within the tyranny of political correctness, we have suppressed any such necessary warning about the consequences of the so called new morality. In fact not only do we not have Government warnings about the consequences of bad choices, even the believing Church seems to have lost direction and/or courage to teach and speak out, even to its own people. In one sense it is no wonder, since in this atmosphere of political correctness the first time something (rightly or wrongly) considered offensive is spoken from the pulpit, it is likely to finish up plastered all over national TV. It's all part of the jamming, all part of the deliberate design to ridicule and intimidate any and all opposition into silence. And it is working, but it is producing in us a blindness to the inconvenient truths of our increasingly poor choices, as they continue to escalate out of sight (especially out of sight in the media) and (by the mechanism of denial) out of mind. Some indicators follow:-
No fault, no care, non of our business divorce. Predictably, the liberalization of the divorce laws lead to an increase on the divorce rates. Prior to 1968 in Canada the law granted divorce only on grounds of adultery or cruelty. However the most significant change that “no fault divorce” brought, is that that it essentially licensed unilateral divorce. “No fault” divorce simply makes it easy for just one unhappy partner to leave without explanation or negotiation. This very much reflects the spirit of the age in which accountability and responsibility for one’s actions are at an all-time low. Translate “for better or worse,” as “for better only!”
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all of this, as with so much of the liberalizing of our laws, is that it dramatically reduces the protection of those the original laws were designed to protect. I am of course talking about the children. In particular as the close to unanimous well- researched negative effects of divorce on children show, children of divorce, separation and single parent families are at far grater risk than the general population in a multitude of areas. In particular, the research shows that children of divorce suffer a trauma that is a life long phenomenon with the following being just a small sample of what is happening much more immediately:
Fatherless homes account for
- 71% of all high school dropouts
- 85% of all youths sitting in prisons
- 80% of the adolescents in psychiatric hospitals
- 90% of runaways
- 15.3 times more likely to have behavioural disorders,
- 4.6 times more likely to commit suicide,
- 6.6 times more likely to become teenaged mothers (girls),
- 15.3 times more likely to end up in prison while a teenager.
- 24.3 times more likely to run away
Which best reflects reality, no fault or both fault divorce? It seems to be typical among couples who break up, to lay 100% of the blame on the other party. It's very Biblical actually, it all started with Adam. When God asked him if he had eaten from the tree he was commanded not to eat of, he started his reply with “The woman, You gave ..” In other words, it was the woman's fault, and actually God it was your fault too, You are the one who gave her to me!
Nobody is saying that it is easy for two people to live together, but the vows we make are designed to motive us to work at it. It is my belief that marriage is God's primary tool to make us more like Christ. As iron sharpen iron, so man sharpens man. It is not that long ago that someone I respect told me “I did not realize how selfish I was until I got married.” Since I happen to know the husband exhibits the same humility, I want to say that there is much hope for that marriage! There is no doubt that we need His help to live the life He calls us to, and marital difficulties are a crossroads. Will we continue to live out our lives in our own strength only, having a form of religion but denying the power thereof? Or will we come together to the foot of the cross, allowing Him to settle out disputes, to heal us from our hurts, and to equip us both in the desire and the wherewithal to do what without Him we cannot?
The sexual revolution and safe sex. The first time I asked out the Christian woman I subsequently married, she told me “I don't go to movies.” Without dealing with the legalism that infected much of the Evangelical Church, I want to say that it in many ways it was a wise position to take. There were and are many movies that do less than edify and build you up. And the influence of the media in our lives is subtle, pervasive and a slow death. There's a story about a frog and a kettle. The gist of it is that if you throw a fog into a kettle of boiling water, it will jump out, but if you put the frog in a kettle of cold water and slowly bring it to a boil, the frog won't hop out, it will stay there until it boils to death. It has been used to illustrate all sorts of scenarios, but it illustrates very clearly the erosion of traditional values. And it does work, as advertisers will attest, and it has been used mightily by the militants in the “new morality.”
The weak spot in the “I don't go to movies rule,” was the TV. Movies that shocked seemed tame five years later, and so could safely be watched on the tube. Pictures that graced the front cover of playboy in the 50's now appear on the front covers of magazines that you see in the line up at the supermarket, movies that once would have been declared to be X rated, are now PG 13. In fact as I have said elsewhere we have become a pornographic culture with the vast majority of society either desensitized or intimidated into silence by the ridicule of traditional values as outmoded, archaic and totally unrealistic.
Safe Sex Myth. Nobody disputes the fact that consistent condom use significantly reduces the risk of both pregnancy and of sexually transmitted diseases. What is clear from the research however, is that “safe sex” is not as safe as many would have us believe. Accurate quantitative stats on reduction rates when condoms are used, are hard to come by. However, the World Health Organization has stated that "compared with no condom use, consistent condom use resulted in an overall 87 percent reduction in risk of HIV transmission." Those odds by the way, are little better than the odds in Russian roulette where you have an 83.4 percent chance of firing an empty chamber. But no one encourages participation, even though the odds of getting a bullet are relatively low. But encouragement to participate, is by far the biggest problem I have with the liberal agenda, that is that it promotes experimentation. You hear the argument that young people will have sex anyway (what about the fogies?), but should we actively encourage it? Let me throw out a small sample of some of the stats that are verifiable.
There is an ever increasing strain on our embattled healthcare systems that stems from the need to treat sexually transmitted diseases. The last figure I was able to verify was that the bill in the States is more that $17 billion dollars annually on SSD's alone, and climbing. And this is not even to start to assess the cost in terms of mental, emotional, psychological and spiritual health, and the result of all that on substance abuse and crime etc., etc., etc.
The following facts are taken from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention's website:
- There are approximately 19 million new cases of STDs per year in the US, most of which occur in young people between the ages of 15 and 24.
- In one study it was found that 25% of all girls between the ages of 14 and 19 in the US were infected with at least one of the most common STDs
- At least one in four Americans will contract an STD at some point in their lives.
From http://aids.ezinemark.com/ “It is important to be aware of the damages STDs can do to you.... Chlamydia, being the most common of STDs, can leave you infertile, and often has no symptoms at all.
In light of all this is the encouragement of sexual experimentation the right thing to do? We need to understand that part of the agenda of the left wing militants has been and remains to encourage earlier and earlier sexual experimentation.
Sexual addictions and intimacy. Not all advocates of liberalism take a “I could care less” attitude to what happens to its adherents. Lesbian activist Camille Paglia states “Sexuality is highly fluid, and reversals are theoretically possible”. She admits reversals are difficult “once the sensory pathways have been blazed and deepened by repetition.” She compares this to the phenomenon “obvious in the struggle with obesity, smoking, alcoholism or drug addiction.” She is not quite alone among the activists, but is certainly in a minority when she says that “helping gays to learn to function heterosexually if they wish, is a perfectly worthy aim”.
Paglia is of course speaking of same sex issues but both heterosexual and homosexual promiscuous sexual activity is highly addictive, and first time sexual exposures tend to define one sexually. Even the early studies by Masters and Johnson showed that initial sexual behaviours whatever their stripe, tended to perpetuate themselves. This helps to understand cross dressers and the like! In addition, the addictive nature of promiscuous sexual behaviour is known to weaken the one on one bonding mechanism, that nature intended the initial sexual experiences to cement, and is also know to be detrimental to the stability of long term relationships and of intimacy in the same. All of this moreover contributes to the increasing fatherlessness of our culture and as remarked earlier this is known to lead to increased substance abuse and crime, further promiscuity leading to increases in teen pregnancy, abortion rates etc., etc.
So is the undermining of traditional sexual values harmless wholesome and healthy? You decide! On the other hand abstinence movements both religious and non -religious report the following benefits of adhering to tradition values. According to teenhelp.com Some of the benefits that teens find when they practice abstinence include:
- Avoiding sexually transmitted diseases
- Avoiding unplanned pregnancy
- Not getting a bed reputation
- Avoiding some of the emotional consequences of teen sex, especially if the relationship does not work out, including feeling hurt, used, lonely, angry, or depressed
- Better relationships; couples who wait to have sex have healthier, more trusting relationships, and, if they marry, are less likely to divorce, and generally have better sex lives than those who did not wait
- Teen girls who abstain from sex until they are older, and limit sexual partners later in life, are less likely to develop cervical cancer or become infertile
- Unlike other forms of birth control, abstinence costs nothing and has no side effects.
It is important to note that GLB behaviour is much more commonly acceptable in Holland than in North America, minimizing the “guilt trip” factor in this study. If “lack of acceptance” were a major cause of psychiatric pathologies, you would expect to see a lot less pathology in the Netherlands than in North America, and we do not.
Conclusion. So are all or even any of the behaviours that militant advocates of the new morality promote harmless, wholesome and healthy? You tell me! But is there hope to escape once the “sensory pathways have been blazed and deepened by repetition?” Some will question whether abstention is a realistic solution, and I will want to address that later in more detail. What I want to say here is that I needed help to come out of my promiscuous life style addictions 40 years ago. The help I needed came from Him with conversion. I am not an isolated case as even the scriptures attest when Paul, speaking to the Corinthian church said “and such were some of you.” That is it difficult to change sexual behaviour even the Scriptures know. Jesus said “He who sins is the slave of sin!” The good news though is that “If the Son shall set you free, you will be free indeed!” With God all things are possible!
