Obscenity - The New “Freedom”

The sex revolution is in full bloom. We have leaped from the age of Victorian morality to the age of sexual freedom and license! What used to be called obscenity is now quite often legal. What will be the effects of the new “freedom”?

Sex in the Western world has passed from an age of darkness and ignorance, to an age of nearly unlimited freedom. The hush-hush, shame faced approach toward sex which characterized the old Victorian morality is gone.

Granted, the “old morality” of the Victorian era, with its prudish view of sex, led to a world full of marital woes, frustration and misery as a direct result of sexual ignorance!

But has the “freedom” and permissiveness of the “new morality” brought us the solutions to the problems created by the old morality? Or are we facing a whole new era of sexual problems?

Notice the facts! Concurrent with the sexual revolution, a parallel explosion of venereal disease, marital frustrations, skyrocking divorce, broken homes, unwanted pregnancies and abortions has occurred.

In 1969, throughout the United States there were over 300,000 illegitimate babies. In 2016 it was 72.3% non-Hispanics blacks; 66.2% American Indians/Alaska natives; 53.3% were Hispanics; 29.1% non-Hispanic whites and 17.2% Asians -overall 40.7% babies were illegitimate, and that spells disaster.

But that is only part of the new morality picture. In 2017 there were 1.7 million cases of Chlamydia, 555.608 cases of Gonorrhea and 30,644 cases of Syphilis reported in the United States. In 2016 39,782 people had HIV in the United States.

These facts indicate that the explosive knowledge about sex provided our young people, today has not really educated them! Certainly, it has not prevented divorce, illegitimate children, or sky rocking venereal disease.

Can’t we see what is happening? The pendulum has swung from the strait-laced, long-sleeved, ankle-length morals of Victorian prudery to the opposite extreme, to the anything goes, free-sex, open nudity of the current “new” morality.

Seeing the problems and “hang-ups” of the old morality, today’s eager generation has galloped off to the very opposite extreme, and has become “hung-up” on the problems, frustrations, and kickbacks of the new morality. Plainly, society has traded in one tyranny for another.

Let’s face the facts. It is true that widespread Victorian prudery resulted in widespread sexual ignorance and abuse of sex. It is also true that in years gone by it was virtually impossible for young people to be properly educated about sexual matters. Even textbooks refused to deal with sexual matters in an explicit, needed way.

Why? It was an age of hush-hush, largely fostered by stern religious teachings. The “old morality” resulted from religious beliefs that sex was sinful and the flesh was evil and nasty. But where did this idea come from?

Have you ever stopped to consider the source of the old morality? You might be surprised!

Many have assumed the Bible was the source of the inspiration for the old morality. Yet, advocates of the old morality considered the Bible vulgar because it speaks out plainly on sex matters.

Those advocating the new morality with its sexual freedom have rejected both the Victorian morality because it was wrong, and the Bible because men assumed it advocated Victorian prudery! Plainly, the world is in utter confusion! And unless there is a standard that decides what is and is not is not moral, mankind is left in total confusion, everyone with his or her own personal opinion.

There ought to be a logical answer – and it logically belongs in the realm of religion. Yet the Bible, supposedly the Christian standard, has been rejected on the assumption that it teaches Victorian morality.

How foolish!

Shouldn’t we go back and see what the Bible really does say on the subject? It is really fair to dismiss it without an examination of the facts? Here is a book, purporting to be the revelation of God, which gives a standard of morality. It claims to reveal what type of sexual knowledge and education is right, and what types of “knowledge” and sexual experiences are detrimental, harmful, and dangerous.

Here is a book – the Bible – which claims to give moral guidelines and principles. This Book is not prudish, as anyone knows who has read its love stories, its direct warnings about sexual perversion, and its historical accounts of sex sins, and their grievous consequences.

In fact, a candid study of Scripture indicates that the Bible is not really the source of prudish Victorian morality, after all. Nowhere in the Bible will you read that sex is sinful, evil, or something to be ashamed of. Rather, you will read that God Himself created human beings with sex, and commanded them to “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth” (Gen. 1:28). The first command mentioned in the Bible, then, was actually a command to use sex in a proper manner.

Nor does the idea that parts of the human body are shameful and degrading come from the Bible. Rather, according to the Bible, everything that God created was “very good” (Gen. 1:31). This would include sex!

The Bible also upholds the sanctity of marriage – and expressly forbids adultery, fornication and illicit sex relationships. It advocates obedience to moral codes which, if obeyed, promise rich rewards. There would be no more rampaging venereal disease. Young people would be taught the proper use of sex. Marriages would be happy.

We have seen that the Bible doesn’t teach that the human body is evil or that sex is sinful and degrading. Where did this common religious idea come from? But where, then, did the Victorian morality with all its taboos come from? The answer will surprise you!

The roots of the old morality, with its prudish attitude toward sex and the human body, lie in ancient Greek dualism – the ancient pagan idea that the soul is imprisoned in a body, and that the soul is pure but the body is filthy and dirty. Dualism taught that the body is a tomb from which the immortal soul must be released. “The goal of life,” according to this view, “is to soar above the sordid demands of the body, to achieve the liberation of the spirit through contemplation of the eternal verities. And such a goal can be realized only by walking the harsh and narrow path of asceticism” (Cole, Sex in Christianity and Psychoanalysis, p. 4).

Says Dr. Cole: “It is one of the myths of modernity that the strands of dualism were first woven into the fabric of western civilization by Christianity.

But even as early as the 5th century, the Pythagoreans sounded their hymn of soma sema, the body is a tomb, and they clearly impressed Plato,” says this respected authority (ibid., p. 6).

During the reign of Alexander the Great, and in his wake, “The dualism of Egypt and Mesopotamia and India flowed at full tide into Greece” (ibib., p. 6). The dualistic teaching was part and parcel of the ancient Babylonian mysteries which blended with Greek Hellenism. This teaching came to be the basis of Greek philosophical thinking. Stoic and Epicurean alike conceived of salvation as the immortality of the spirit and regarded sex as low and degrading.

Thus, it is clear that this philosophy was not and is not Biblical or Christian in its origin! Rather, it stems from Godless paganism.

Although the Biblical moral code clearly does not support the Victorian morality, it also condemns the so-called new morality. Notice!

In the Bible there is an ancient historical narrative reaching back 2000 years before Christ. It involves an ancient city famed the world over for its sexual freedom, its total devotion to sexuality, sensuality, and debauched living. This was Sodom, which has given its name to unmentionable sexual practices.

Sodom, the historical narrative of Genesis relates, was a bustling metropolis – prosperous, wealthy, enjoying the “good life.” It was also filled with advocates of the then-new morality.

According to the narrative, this ancient city was suddenly overthrown, destroyed in a catastrophic upheaval – a terrible paroxysm! Nothing remained of it, or its sister city. Gomorrah’s account in Genesis attributes this sudden destruction to the wrath and fury of an indignant God.

Our modern nations ought not to discard the historical record of the Genesis account of what happened to ancient Sodom and Gomorrah.

Considering the vast importance of this fact, and its obvious significance to our present world – fast plunging pell-mell into the same sensuality, licentiousness, and immorality which characterized ancient Sodom – our nations had better take heed and stop their plunge into gross sensuality, and “consider the end.”

Unless our modern orgiastic world suddenly wakes up, and comes to its senses; unless there is a sudden and drastic moral change, for the better; unless our modern Western nations overcome their obsession with sex, and come to a right balance, we have had it!

What happens to a nation or group of nations when their people become sensual, hedonistic, obsessed with sex, pleasure-oriented?

The record of history is not reassuring. The decline of ancient Rome, coincided with a breakdown in sexual morality. The people of Rome had become sex-oriented, they had discarded their historical sexual idea, and then the Empire collapsed.

Oxford and Cambridge scholar J.D. Unwin conducted a massive investigation of the sex regulations characterizing 80 “uncivilized” societies and a number of historically advanced societies, such as the Sumerians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, and others. He concluded that virtually all the ancient civilized societies started their careers to greatness in a state of absolute monogamy. When this idea was discarded, when infidelity and promiscuity reigned supreme, when moral standards slackened and dropped, the ancient nations were conquered by others which had not degenerated.

Concluded Unwin: “Any human society is free to choose either to display great energy or to enjoy sexual freedom; the evidence is that it cannot do both for more than one generation” (J.D. Unwin, Sex and Culture, p. 412).

Unless our modern nations wake up, see that is happening, and change their ways, we, too, will follow the course of history. Our nations, too, will fall!

Perhaps this revelation is frightening – shocking! But it is the simple truth. Its time we wake up to the lessons of history!

“Sexual freedoms” – immorality, pornography, and obscenity - are not the solution to the sex “hang-ups” of the Victorian era. The only solution is right morality, based on tried and tested principles. The only obvious right standard of morality is that which has no “kickbacks,” no eventual penalties – a standard which does not boomerang on you, or your children.

 
The Church of God, New World Ministries P.O. Box 5536 Sevierville, TN 37864