And Other Sickness In The City
CONGRATULATIONS to DAWN EDEN, the famous author of the book
The Thrill of the Chaste
for holding her own on the Today Show yesterday and everywhere she goes in defense of Virtue. May her words never be in vain- in many countries. [She is soon to be in print in Polish, Chinese and is already in Spanish and English, http://www.thethrillofthechaste.com/
] You can find her on her blog at http://www.dawneden.com/-- where there is also a link to her book site.
The raging socio-cultural ideological battle between those who subscribe to the "My Body is the Temple of the Holy Spirit" view and those who subscribe to the view that "My Body Is A Used Car that must be test-driven before a contract is signed" found a forum on the Today Show.
Without the typical O'Reilly culture-warrior style rancor of label -slapping the debate took on a serious inquitive tone with someone at the end declaring themselves an "expert" who wrote another book (does a book make one an expert?) stating both opinions were correct. She of course was wrong but the debate informative nonetheless.
The interviewer tried to get out that old maxim "If you can drink the milk without buying the cow why would you buy the cow." My mother used to say that too- Dawn objected to the bovine illustration but I think possibly missed the point- Marriage is a sacrifice. It costs something. It costs a degree of autonomy. You have to share with someone so it costs in what would otherwise be appropriated to you alone selfishly. It costs in the form of freedom restrictions that must be tempered thereafter with a concern for the other that equals the concern for yourself. There is a price to Marriage. The metaphor just means it less likely that someone would pay the cost if they got the benefits anyway without commitment, like Sex. Of course, it is an imperfect metaphor because the benefits of marriage are far greater than just Sex (happily married people actually live longer), but the point was made by mothers across the land to instill a sense of some value in their girls' thinking. Don't just give yourself away-you have far greater value.
It is a struggle for young women in today's age to maintain purity and chastity. I worry almost daily about my little stunningly georgeous niece (if you are reading Elizabeth I worry about you sweet thing) because the pressures placed by the culture, society and boys raging with hormonal drive can be overwhelming. So can the manipulations of emotions that tell women that the way to love and happiness is through sex. We know that is just a lie. Some of us had to find out the hard way and we don't want our loved ones to have to suffer the mistakes we made.
Abortion in this country, make no mistake is an industry. It is an industry founded on disinformation. Where-ever there are commercial gains to be made by a practice, there will be those with vested interests in perpetuating and magnifying it's profitability. The Abortion industry is in part to blame for the insanely over-sexualized culture which feeds off it.
The other expert on the Today show panel made an interesting point- she noted that one can have their heart broken without ever touching the heart- breaker. That is quite true. You haven't lived until it's happened to you. But it is a total non-Sequitor to jump from there to the view that sex is the answer or way to mend a broken heart. In fact the woman actually made Dawn's point for her in saying that because one's heart cannot be broken unless they were truly in Love, and thus the person was in Love without
being touched. Love exists quite apart from and distinct from sexual experience.
Real love exists on a spiritual-emotional dimension that can exist with or without sex. People can be happily married decades after their parts don't work. I love seeing 90 year old couples who have been married longer than the existence of light bulbs for that reason.
Of course obsessing on having sex or not having sex can itself become an idol if it distracts from the point of creating and being a person living Love. If God is Love and your Body the Temple of the Holy Spirit, then God is active and alive within you- and he has far better things to do than worry if he is bumping bodies or not.
Sexual expression is a powerful communication vehicle when it comes from a true pure heart and soul. In love, in marriage it is heaven. Outside love or commitment it is junk.
When it is misused in the wrong context it can even be death.
The devil has a way of taking good things that God created and perverting or distorting their use and benefits all the time. If you like candies and eat a few, they are good, if you eat pounds of candy four times a day and become diabetic it will eventually spell your demise. If you drink a glass of red wine a day it can help your heart. If you drink a case of wine a day you will end up face down in your own vomit in the gutter. If you have sex casually, or with people to whom you are not in committed serious contractual relationships that we call marriage, it can spell your demise (not always but it's a pretty good bet.) If you take a boat made for the ocean and you try to drive on I-95 chances are you won't get very far. Conversely if you take a regular car and try to drive from Manhattan to Staten Island over water, chances are you will meet the fishes.
The bible, which is the owner's manual for optimal performance of your life, is pretty specific and clear about how you are to use the Temple of the Holy Spirit. If you put orange juice in your tank your engine will burn. Just not a good idea. And these teachings are all for your good, for a better future and for more maximal joy.
Have you seen a Quaker wedding? I haven't I just heard a description in a movie and then was propelled to research it a bit. In a Quaker wedding two people stare at each other in a Quaker meeting, in a soul-melt-merging for some time while on lookers comment as the spirit moves them or not- after a period of this intense staring, where the eyes, the windows to the soul travel into each other's hearts there in the meeting, the marriage is proclaimed. Marriage is just a public affirmation statement of what already should exist on a spiritual-emotional level in the form of a soul-merging. A Oneness. Full Oneness on the deepest existential level cannot occur in the mere physical material dimension, because the most essential part of Humans is Spirit. We are not just bodies- we are bodies and soul, spirit and mind. That part of us which connects to our Source, God is the eternal everlasting part of us.
We even have two different words for the act of sex in it's proper context and outside it's proper context. Sex in the proper God given joy-filling context is "making love." Sex outside it's proper context is a four letter profane word, in the verb form "Fu&*%)(*g. The four letter word term comes from Fornicating in Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. Why is it "unlawful"- it isn't against the law in most states- it is Unlawful in that it is outside God's Laws- which are his template for maximal health on all dimensions (spiritual, emotional, etc...) Carnal Knowledge of someone should only be available to someone who has real Love of that person because otherwise that knowlege can be so exploitable as to destroy that person. STDs, Abortion, etc. all can destoy a person emotionally, physically and/or spiritually. Someone who has no real love of such a person can destroy them if they misuse the knowledge.
There are few more greater damaging deceptions that occur to one's psyche and emotions than when one thinks that the sexual experience is making love and the other party thinks it is the fornicating kind. Women thirst for love and self delude themselves all the time that the man is on the same spiritual wave length. That is why the protection of a spoken word in the form of a spoken commitment bound in legal official declarations of marriage is huge protection for women meant to keep women healthy and happy. If women on a larger social scale are not healthy or happy it will on a macroeconomic scale be very difficult to have healty progeny and healthy societies as a whole. Marriage protects not only Family, it fundamentally protects the perpetuation of healthy society at large.
Somehow we have lost the distinction culturally between making love and unlawful fornication. I am saddened and sickened when I hear young women say that they want to F&** someone. It is such an intrinsically self-destructive vulgar statement. Yet you see that everywhere now propelled by the Brittany, MTV, Paris Hilton pantiless culture.
Society would be much healthier on the whole if the government funded the sort of spiritual research that Dawn Eden and folk like her are doing rather than funding Planned Non-Parenthood. At least, she should be given the Equal Billing and Equal Funding so that the campaign of sexual disinformation has a voice of Truth and Reason with the same standing as
the blood money profiteers. It trivializes the significance of the statement to just call this "abstinence funding" because Dawn and folk like her are after something much more profound - something that can really transform society.
Perhaps with her book proceeds she will start a charitable 501(c)(3) herself so that she can spread the message wide and far.
Say a prayer for Dawn Eden- and that she finds that husband she is looking for. He's out there. [She's georgeous guys]
Keep the Faith. Well Done.
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