Week 19 Sunday
Week 19 Sunday
A Disciplined Self Is a Self of Power
Deuteronomy 28:1-6; 30:11-14; Romans 12:1
Last week we were concentrating our attention on the three steps to disciplined power: (1) Attention, (2) Meekness, (3) Power. We gain this third step only as we master the first two; there is no gaining of power by tricks, by mental legerdemain. Power comes by discipline, and by discipline alone.
An aviator told me that every moment he is in the air he has to obey the laws of aviation. One moment’s disobedience or carelessness and the machine would be wrecked. There can be no “moral holidays” while in the air; the obedience must be complete, or the mastery will not be complete. Only by attention, by meekness, does he gain power.
Begin to be hard with yourself. Paul says, “The [soft] shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:9 KJV); the word effeminate in the text is literally “soft.” Jesus stressed the same thought when he said, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for [literally, cannot fit into] the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62). Those who are undisciplined, soft, looking back toward things given up, cannot fit into the kingdom of God, which is a kingdom of the disciplined.
Severe with self,
Gentle with others,
Honest with all.
If all this discipline seems like a diminution of life instead of an augmentation of life, let me say that the control discipline exerts on the self is the same kind of thwarting applied when a dam is thrown across a river; the even flow of the river is interrupted and restrained, but only in order that a powerhouse might be installed to create power and light. The disciplined you is not free to do as others do, but free to do what others cannot do—to be a contributive soul, full of light and power. Some will say, “I am free to do as I like,” but you will say, “I am free to do as I ought.” You are dammed up on one level, but only in order to raise the level of life, so that you can function on a higher level.
My Lord and my God, I am putting my head into your yoke—putting myself in bondage to you. But your yoke is easy, for I am made for it. Your yoke is my yearning, for your laws are my life. I take your weights upon my shoulders only to find they are wings. Amen.
Week 19 Monday
A Disciplined Sex Life
Galatians 5:24; 1 Timothy 5:6; 2 Timothy 2:22; 1 Peter 2:11
We have talked about disciplining the first of the three driving urges: the self. We come to the second: sex.
Life seems very heavily loaded on the side of sex. Some would think there is far too much sex for purposes of procreation. The human race, they think, could have procreated itself without the sex urge being so strong and imperious. It is quite probable that in normal human nature the sex urge is not so strong or continuous as it is in abnormal modern life; but it is occasional as in animals and birds, active during mating seasons, dormant the rest of the time. This may have been true among primitive peoples. But modern life has become strongly sexed. Everywhere the sex appeal meets one. Advertisements carry it to attract attention. A cartoon shows a man hitting a golf ball, and a picture of a woman is drawn near the ball to make sure that he will “keep his eye on the ball.” Can we not keep our eye on the ball of human living without sex being used to focus our attention? Life has been tending more and more in the direction of sex. Sex has been occupying the center of the stage, the center of literature, the center of dress, the center of our thinking. Freud explains this modern absorption in sex by saying that all life must be interpreted in terms of sex.
With all this emphasis upon sex, one would have expected this age to have found itself sexually. On the contrary, no age seems to have become more sexually dissatisfied and thwarted than this. The fact of one divorce in every six marriages* tells the story of breakdown within marriage relationships.
A young man committed suicide and left a note saying, “Died of old age at 21.” This tells the tragic story of breakdown in sex outside marriage relationships. He had run through his sex experiences at twenty-one, and they had turned to ashes in his hands. Evidently in the matter of sex, humanity is up against something that cannot be set down to taboos and restraints. Can it be that the nature of reality is working against modern sex attitudes and causing them to break down?
O my Creator God, you will have to take me by the hand lest I be lost in the jungle of sex desire. For if I get off the track here, I find myself in a jungle that grows more tangled every moment. Help me to see things clearly and to see them whole. Amen.
*Now one in two marriages, according to http://www.apa.org/topics/divorce/, accessed May 7, 2014.
Week 19 Tuesday
The Law of Decreasing Returns in Sex
Romans 8:4-9; Ephesians 2:1-3; Jude 16, 18-21
The mental institution called Bedlam was originally named Bethlehem; the place of the birth of Christ changed to the name of a place of confusion and struggle. Is this not what has happened sexually in our day? Bethlehem, symbol of the birth of a Child—the epitome of sex in its most beautiful and tender phase—now degenerates into a veritable bedlam of sex frustration and defeat. Why?
The nature of reality is working against our sex attitudes. We are working under “the law of decreasing returns”; we have to put in more to get out a corresponding result. No age ever emphasized sex more than this age has done or enjoyed sex less. Restraints are gone; Puritanism has been banished. But now that the age is free to do as it likes, it finds it doesn’t like what it does. We have gone in for thrills, only to find that ills are in thrills. We grow sick of our sexual liberties. Why? The nature of reality, which is Christian, is working against our unchristian sex attitudes.
Sex in itself is neither moral nor immoral; it is amoral. The way it is used makes sex moral or immoral. Sex is like fire; you can use it wisely and be blessed by it, or you can use it unwisely and be burned by it. A great historian said, “There is one fact that history sounds: the moral law is written in everything.” And that moral law is written in sex. This thing that, in itself, is amoral has a moral law written within it; there is an immoral way to use sex, and there is a moral way. And that way of moral use is written into the constitution of sex.
People thought that, if they could only get rid of puritanical taboos and moral codes written in the Scriptures, they could be free to do as they liked with sex. But they now find that the moral law is written in sex itself. Keep that moral law, and there is heaven; break it, and there is hell—here and now.
O God, as I come to you, I would find the moral way written into the essence of things, for I would offer my sex powers to you that you may use them for their best and highest purpose. I shall need wisdom, and I shall need power, for sex is very clamorous and often drowns out your still, small voice. Help me. Amen.
Week 19 Wednesday
Steps to Sex Victory
1 Corinthians 6:12, 15-20; 7:9; 1 Timothy 5:14
If we are to use the powers of sex correctly, then we should take the following steps: (1) We should recognize sex for what it is—a God-given power, neither moral nor immoral in itself, but moral or immoral according to its use.
This should take the shame out of our consideration of sex itself and put it where it belongs, on our use of sex. There is no shame in sex; there is shame in the wrong use of sex. If people would be ashamed of what they do with sex and not of sex itself, then there would be more normal, healthy attitudes toward it. Sex has brought more heaven and more hell into life than has any other thing. And we make the heaven or the hell according to what we do with sex.
Every normal person has sex desire. To act as if we have no sex desire is to produce hypocrisy and probably complexes. Bring the fact of sex up into the open in your thinking; look at it, but not too long, and then decide what you are going to do with it. Note: what you are going to do with it, and not what it is going to do with you. For sex is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master. It can serve all the interests of life, or it can ruin all the interests of life. The battle of life as a whole will probably not rise above the sex battle. Lose the sex battle and defeat spreads into every portion of your being; win the sex battle and all life is uplifted by that victory.
(2) The place of sex is not the first place, and sex is not an end in itself. If you put sex first, it will corrupt your whole life. Those who most ardently give sex the first place and make it an end in itself get the least out of it, little except kickbacks in the form of disgust and self-loathing. The law of sex life is this: Those who save their sex life—make it first, an end in itself—lose it. And the law works with mathematical precision; there are no exceptions and no exemptions.
Seek first the kingdom of God. Make sex serve the kingdom, and every legitimate joy connected with sex will be added.
O God, I see, if sex takes your place and rules me, that I shall be the servant of a desire. And that desire will ride me to the hell of self-loathing. I would therefore bring my sex life to the altar of your love and there ask you to make it the servant of my love to you. May these lesser loves fit into my love to you. Amen.
Week 19 Thursday
The Primary End of Sex
Psalm 68:6; Matthew 19:3-15
If the place of sex is not the first place, and if sex is not an end in itself, then what is the place of sex? The next step toward using sex correctly is to embrace the fact that (3) the primary end of sex is the procreation of children and their nurture in an atmosphere of love. Sex is primarily intended for the creation of persons, not of pleasures. There is a pleasure principle surrounding the procreation of children, but if this pleasure principle is detached and becomes an end in itself, it will cease to become pleasure and will become the very opposite. The pleasure must be the by-product of the will to create, or it will cease to be. The sex urge is first of all a creative urge, and not a pleasure principle.
But another use of the sex urge is to produce an atmosphere of love surrounding the young life that has been created. If the occasional use of sex ministers to this love life, fosters it in the parents, lifts the whole tone of married life, then this use is justified apart from the procreative intention. But if it lowers the tone of married life, becomes a point of conflict in the individuals or between them; if it leaves life weakened mentally, morally, spiritually, or physically, then this use is not justified. It should be renounced entirely. As a sacrament of love: yes. As a sordid sexuality: no.
(4) The sex urge tones up not only the corporate life of the parents but also the individual life. It gives it sparkle, life, fire. It bathes every cell in the body with new energy, new radiancy. But only as sex has found its place. Those who have an adjusted sex life, within or without the marriage relationship, sparkle. Those who have not are dull and lusterless; sex becomes not food, but poison. When I say sex tones up the individual, I mean not only in its proper use but also in its proper restraints. A restrained sex life turns back and bathes the entire person with health.
Alexis Carrel: “In order to reach its full power, intelligence seems to require both the presence of well-developed sexual glands and the temporary repression of the sexual appetite.”*
O God, our Lord, I thank you for this fire of sex within me. Let it burn within me as a sacred fire upon your altar, lighting up my entire being. For if it is not this, it will be a fire to consume my mind, my tissues, my bones, my possibilities, me. Then help me this day to dedicate this sacred fire to you. Amen.
* Man the Unknown (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1935), 143.
Week 19 Friday
Sex Can Be Sublimated
1 Corinthians 6:18; Galatians 4:19; 5:16, 22-25
(5) Both within marriage and outside it the sex urge can be sublimated. This leaves an open door to those who are denied the ordinary outlets of sex expression. The sex urge is the creative urge. But physical creation is not its only creative area. It can function as creation on other levels of life. It can become creative in the realm of the mind: creating new thoughts, new systems of thought, new mental attitudes both in ourselves and others. It can be creative in the realm of the social: it can give birth to new movements for social justice, for social betterment. It can be creative in the realm of the moral and spiritual: it can create newborn lives, new hopes, new moral and spiritual movements.
Some of the greatest work in the world is done by those who, when denied, voluntarily or otherwise, the normal outlets for sex, turn the tides of this strange power into creative activity in other ways. Their sex life is not suppressed but expressed in other channels. Abstinence then can be health, provided the abstinence of sex on one level is practiced in order to loose it on another level. If sex is just dammed up with no outlet on any level, then it may prove a source of conflict and frustration. The way is always open in some direction for sex expression; so conflict is not necessary.
(6) But beware of suggested short-circuiting of this power. There are only two ways of legitimately and helpfully using sex power: within the marriage relationship as creation or outside the marriage relationship as sublimation. All other roads are dead ends. Beware therefore of the advice of friends or doctors or psychiatrists, who advise promiscuity or self-abuse as a way of release from tense passions. This way out is the way to self-loathing, to a deeper conflict in the moral nature, to an inner hell. If anyone is fool enough to advise it, don’t you be fool enough to take it.
The right thing is always the healthy thing.
God, my Lord, here I come to offer you the turbulence of my urges. Still them with your quiet, direct them by your will, make them fruitful by your creative love, and lift them by your redemption. We must work this problem out together. For apart from you, I can do nothing. Amen.
Week 19 Saturday
Further Steps in Sex Victory
Proverbs 23:7; 1 Corinthians 7:1-2; 2 Corinthians 5:14; James 1:14-15
In order not to be tempted to follow promiscuity or self-indulgence—these enticing shortcuts to sex victory—(7) make up your mind that no shortcuts will work, except to work ruin. When the suggestion is made, “Now is your opportunity,” reply, as I often do, “Yes, I know it is my opportunity—to go to hell, and I don’t intend to go.” And then turn to the tempter and say, “If I did this, I would be as big a fool as you are, and I don’t intend to be.”
(8) Watch the place of your thinking. As Ralph Waldo Emerson says, “The ancestor of every action is a thought.” Then stop the action at the place of the thought. Don’t dally with the thought, saying, “I’ll keep the thought, but I’ll stop this side of the act.” You won’t, “for in any battle between the imagination and the will, the imagination always wins,” so says psychology.* Mind adultery issues in body adultery.
(9) If you are to keep the mind away from sex thinking, then keep the body away from sex proximity. For the bodily desires are aroused almost mechanically by proximity. If “proximity is the soul of love,” it is also the soul of lust. Don’t put yourself close to the fire and then wonder why you are burned. This makes all necking and petting dangerous preludes.
(10) These suggested barriers are only the fences along the sides of an open road; the open road is love of Christ. You can expel one desire only by a higher desire. Let the love of Christ be the fire that eats up these lesser loves. All the prohibitions against the wrong use of the sex urge will not save you unless the love of Christ is at the center; then tke sex urge becomes marginal and correct. There are 32 million statutes on the books in North America to make people good. The Christian has only one: “You shall love.” And love becomes the fulfilling of the law. For when you love Christ, you are free. Love Christ and do what you like. For you will like the right.
O Christ, I would so fall in love with you and your ways that all lesser loves may become a part of that central controlling love. They shall lose themselves in you and find themselves in right expression. For you are the key to life—all life. I thank you. Amen.
* See the work of Émile Coué, for example.