Mere Christianity -- Book 3, Chap. 5

Sexual Morality

[In this chapter, Lewis deals with the negative-Christian understanding of sexuality and in chap. 6, "Christian Marriage," he will deal with the positive.]

Chastity is Not Modesty

A Christian understanding of sexuality, or what is sometimes referred to as the virtue of "chastity," must not be confused with our culture's standard of "modesty, or propriety, or decency."

The standard of modesty in society merely:

Lays down how much of the human body should be displayed and what subjects can be referred to, and in what words, according to the customs of a given social circle.

Thus, while the rule of chastity is the same for all Christians at all times, the rule of propriety changes.

What is modest on the beaches in Southern California may be completely different from what is true in Abilene, TX.  Society sets the benchmark.  But regardless of the society's standard of modesty, someone may still be either chaste or unchaste.

If someone offends another according to that society's standard of modesty or decency, it depends upon what the motive is to determine whether or not it violates Christian chastity.  For instance, if someone offends another with a low standard of modesty for the purpose of exciting lustful desires in another, then they offend against chastity.  However, if they do so through ignorance or carelessness, then they are guilt of only bad manners.  So what is the intent?

Therefore, a "very strict or fussy standard of propriety" or decency is not "any proof of chastity or any help to it, and I therefore regard the great relaxation and simplifying of the rule which has taken place in my own lifetime as a good thing."

However, this relaxation of the standard has caused an inconvenience among different generations and different types of people.  Since the standard has changed, most people don't have a clue where we are.

Since the standard is currently "up-in-the-air" at the moment, then those who are "old-fashioned" should be careful not to judge the younger, more progressive generation as being corrupt or improper according to "their" old standard.  Equally, the younger generation should not look upon the older generation as being prudes or puritans because they don't easily follow the new standard.

A real desire to believe all the good you can of others and to make others as comfortable as you can will solve most of the problems.

Chastity -- Unpopular Virtue

Of all the Christian virtues, chastity is the most unpopular.  Why?  Because the Christian standard is simple, clear, and unapologetic:  "either marriage, with complete faithfulness to your partner, or else total abstinence."

Why so unpopular? 

1.  Because it seems impossible and is so contrary to our instincts.  The result of such a restrictive view is that either Christianity is wrong, or our sexual instinct is wrong or has gone wrong.  For Lewis, since he believes Christianity is true then he concludes that our sexual instinct must have gone wrong.

2.  Another reasons why the Christian view of chastity is so unpopular is the "ludicrous and preposterous excess" of the sexual appetite.  Lewis gives an illustration:

The biological purpose of sex is children, just as the biological purpose of eating is to repair the body.  Now if we eat whenever we feel inclined and just as much as we want, it is quite true most of us will eat too much:  but not terrifically too much.  One man my eat enough for two, but he does not eat enough for ten.  The appetite goes a little beyond its biological purpose, but not enormously.  But if a healthy young man indulged his sexual appetite whenever he felt inclined, and if each act produced a baby, then in ten years he might easily populate a small village.  This appetite is in ludicrous and preposterous excess of its function. 

In other words, most of our appetites have their own innate "shut-off" valve, except for our sexual appetite.  It seems to be almost limitless.

Lewis follows with a humorous example.  Imagine how easy it is to get a large audience together to view a strip-tease act, to watch a girl undress on stage.  But suppose you visited a country where you could just as easily fill a whole theater to watch a "strip-tease" act of a plate of food (a mutton chop or a bit of bacon).  Wouldn't you think that in that country something had gone far wrong with the appetite of food?  (Imagine advertisers trying to sell new cars or clothes by putting a slab of ham or beef in their commercials.)  Wouldn't it then be just as strange for someone from another world come to ours and see how we overindulge the sex instinct?

A critic of the Christian view of chastity has said that if he saw another country where "strip-tease" acts with food were so popular that he would conclude that the people were starving (a famine).  He of course meant that the problem isn't in some corrupted sexual instinct but in our present day "puritanical" starvation of the sexual appetite.

But do we see evidence in our culture of sexual "starvation," which would cause the obsession with the strip-tease act?  Is there evidence that there is more "sexual abstinence" in our age than in other ages where having a strip-tease act would have been unknown?  There seems to be no such evidence.

But obsession with food may not simply be the problem of someone who is starving.  Those who are gluttons also seek to indulge their appetite.  We see that, like all appetites, the sexual appetite grows by indulgence.  The more and more you indulge the greater the de-sensitivity (or a lessening of the "pay-off") so that you need more and more (and in fact, greater, higher intensity/escalation) to get the same satisfaction.

3.  A third reason why the Christian view of chastity is so unpopular is that the perversion of the other appetites seems less likely than the sexual appetite.  For instance, you do not find many people who eat things that are not food or do things with food instead of eating it.  But perversions of the sex instinct are legion, difficult to cure, and even frightful.

Why does Lewis seem to go so far with this talk?  Because we have been fed so many lies about our sexual desires, that they are really normal and that what we really need to do is just throw off our old Victorian ideas of chastity and everything will be fine.  But the more and more you see the state we are living in, the more and more you realize that the problem is real and serious.

The critics argue that our "old Victorian" shame of sexuality has caused the problems that we have with sex today.  Their answer is to just throw off all the old taboos and free ourselves to enjoy feeding our insatiable appetites for sex.  But haven't we been doing that over the last 50 years or so?  You would think, according to the critics' view, that "getting it all out in the open" would have fixed the problem, but it hasn't.  Lewis thinks that the whole reason we developed that "old Victorian" shame was because our appetites were already messed up.

When folks say that "sex is nothing to be ashamed of," Lewis says they may be saying two things:  Either

There is nothing to be ashamed of in the fact that the human race reproduces itself in a certain way, nor in the fact that it gives pleasure.

And if that is all they mean, then they are right.  And the Christian view agrees that there is nothing wrong with sex itself nor enjoying it.  In fact, the old Christian teachers taught that if the fall had never taken place, sexual pleasure, far from being less, would have actually been greater. 

While some heretics in the church have taught that the body and sex are bad in themselves:

"Christianity is almost the only one of the great religions which thoroughly approves of the body -- which believes that matter is good, that God Himself once took on a human body, that some kind of body is going to be given to us even in Heaven and is going to be an essential part of our happiness, or beauty and our energy.  Christianity has glorified marriage more than any other religion:  and nearly all the greatest love poetry in the world has been produced by Christians.  If anyone says that sex, in itself, is bad, Christianity contradicts him at once.

But it is clear that that is not what most modern folks mean when they say that " sex is nothing to be ashamed of."  Rather, they mean that the state of our sexual perversion or obsession today is nothing to be ashamed of.

Lewis argues that if that is what they mean then they are wrong.  It is something to be ashamed of.  If a whole country did nothing but look and lust over lamb chops all day (dribbling and smacking their lips) then we would think something was seriously wrong.

Now the problem isn't all found in this generation.  After all our ancestors have passed down to us this warped obsession of sexuality and we are constantly surrounded (bombarded) by propaganda (advertisements) of people who wish to keep our sexual indulgence inflamed to make greater profits.  Everyone knows that a man who has weaknesses in this area has very little defense against sales-pressures. 

God is not going to judge us because we had many difficulties to overcome, but rather whether or not we were sincerely attempting to persevere in the face of those difficulties.

So What Are We To Do? 

The beginning starts with our desire to want to be "cured" of the obsession in the first place.  No one will get very far if he or she does not want to get help with it (or even admit that he or she needs help).  For most people, it all begins here.  Most folks say they want help with it, when they really don't.

Oh, Lord, make me chaste . . . but please don't do it just yet.

This may be true with other virtues as well, but there are three reasons why it is so especially difficult for us to desire total chastity.

1.  The lies about chastity are so innumerable that we often begin to think that there must be something wrong with trying to be chaste.  When the abnormal becomes the norm or standard, then the normal begins to feel "unhealthy" or "abnormal." 

But why are the lies so powerful?  Because they are based upon a smidgen of truth:  that sex in itself is normal and healthy.  But like all evil (parasitic) it takes what is good and true and perverts it to say that "any" sexual act which you then want to perform is equally healthy and normal. 

But what if we applied this kind of thinking to other desires itself?

Surrender to all our desires obviously leads to impotence, disease, jealousies, lies, concealment, and everything that is the reverse of health, good humour, and frankness.  For any happiness, even in this world, quite a lot of restraint is going to be necessary; so the claim made by every desire, when it is strong, to be healthy and reasonable, counts for nothing.

Every man or woman must have some sort of restraint to reject some of his or her desires unless they ruin their whole lives.  There are many different types of personal restraint:  Christianity, hygienic, sociological, punishment, etc.  While the Christian principle is much stricter than the others, "we think you will get help towards obeying them which you will not get towards obeying the others" (principles).

2.  The second reason chastity is so much more difficult is that many people think (before they even give it a shot) that it is impossible.  But whenever we must make a decision to do something the last thing we must think of is whether or not it is possible to do it.  Many times you have done things that seemed impossible.  It is amazing what you are able to do when you have to.  The problem is with motivation to do what is right.

And again, we are not saying that perfect chastity will ever be possible by merely human efforts.  You must ask God to help you.  And you still may fall down.  But when you do, seek forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try at it again.  Many times what God helps us with is not getting rid of the problem at first, but giving us the power to try again.  And it is this process that God is using to train us into the people He wants us to be:

For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still.  It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God.  We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven.  The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.

3.  Finally, the reason chastity is a more difficult virtue to follow than the others is that people often misunderstand what psychology teaches about "repressions."  According to psychology, a "repressed" sexual act does not mean "suppressed" in the sense of denied or resisted.  Rather, a "repressed" desire or thought is one that has been put into our subconscious minds (usually as children) that can now only be surfaced in some disguised or unrecognizable form.  "Repressed" sexuality does not look like sexuality at all to the patient. 

But that is not what happens when a normal person attempts to "resist" a conscious desire.  He is not dealing with repression at all.  Rather, those who seriously attempt chastity become more aware of their sexual desires and how to best resist them.  "Virtue -- even attempted virtue -- brings light; indulgence brings fog."

One Last Thing . . .

While Lewis has spent much time talking about chastity, he wants to be clear that the center of Christian morality is not found here.  Unchastity is not the supreme vice!  We need to be absolutely clear about this.

The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins.  All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual:  the pleasures of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronizing and spoiling sport, and back-biting, the pleasures of power, of hatred.  For there are two things inside me, competing with the human self which I must try to become. 

They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self.  The Diabolical self is the worse of the two.  That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither. 

Focus on what Lewis is saying here.  We so often put the emphasis upon the external acts, which are easier to control due to social pressure.  But the real problems are always under the surface -- the heart of man -- which is always harder to control.  Pride is a far greater and more serious sin (perhaps the source of all sin) than all the external evils of the world.