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More American lives have been shipwrecked because of the Sexual Revolution
than perhaps all other tragedies in our history. |
The sexual revolution has set us free. We are free like a ship with no rudder caught
in a storm.
When
a revolution begins it promises a better future, the end of some real or
perceived injustice and a coming day where the revolution will benefit everyone
in the society if not the world. By and
large revolutions don’t work, they frequently fail to deliver what was promised
and with a frightening degree of regularity eat their own. Life in Czarist Russia was bad, but nothing
compared to the horrors of Stalinist Soviet rule. Inspired by the success of the American Revolution
(one of the few that succeeded) the French revolutionaries took their monarch
to the guillotine and then they took each other. Rebellions have a way of getting out of
hand and going to places and having a cost that cannot be calculated. The Taiping Rebellion in China cost the lives
of 20 to 30 million people, with some estimates as high as 100 million. The American Civil War, which would better be
described as the Second American Revolution, is still sending painful shock
waves through our nation.
The
shock waves of another revolution are hammering our nation today. The historic and traditional Christian view
of sexual expression is one man married to one woman for one lifetime. Sexual expression outside of that context is,
in the context of orthodox Christian faith, wrong. But the sexual revolution has challenged that
view and the results are scattered around us like mangled bodies on a
battlefield. The first two phases of the
sexual revolution failed to take root.
They are little more than skirmishes before the real war began. The first was the rise of Burlesque in the late 1860s. It was like other traveling shows of the time
but with a distinctly sexual nature. It
has been glamorized as a fixture of cowboy movies. But this phase never took hold. The transient nature of the shows and the
Christian worldview of the nation at the time kept them on the outskirts of
town and society. The second skirmish of
the revolution was the roaring 20s. The
end of “The War to End All Wars”, the booming economy and the hopefulness of
man ever onward ever upward fueled the ideal that maybe sex could be
rethought. Marx thought so, as did many
communists: “You must be aware of the famous theory that in communist
society the satisfaction of sexual desire, of love, will be as simple and
unimportant as drinking a glass of water.” That sentiment was not
restricted to Russian socialists. But
the second skirmish also failed. The
rise of liberalism in American Christianity may have lowered resistance to traditional
morality but the consequences of promiscuity were as real as ever. Out of wedlock pregnancy was still a stigma
and venereal diseases could still be fatal.
Besides, a world economic collapse and a world war would, for the moment
at least, distract attention from a reshaping of sexual mores.
But in the 1960s came the massive offensive of the
sexual revolution. While that generation
was not less moral than prior generations it had new weapons that made the
revolution more effective. The first of
these was the pill, which effectively disconnected the idea of childbearing and
sex. Later, and in the event of
pregnancy, an abortion could deal with unwanted pregnancy. It is no fluke that one of the first voices
for abortion on demand came from Playboy magazine. The revolution was also aided by the
pharmaceuticals that could, for the moment, effectively deal with V.D. The consequences of sex outside of marriage
were apparently mitigated so the revolution took off. It appeared that the Revolution’s promise of a
better future with sex that was free of any and all negatives was about to arrive. For those who wanted a traditional life were
welcome to enjoy that life. But for those
who wanted a more wild sexual life their day had come. This revolution would benefit everyone in the
society if not the world.
Sixty years into the revolution how are we
doing? Now that anything goes has the
promised world of universal sexual fulfillment arrived? Do we now live lives of universal orgasmic bliss? Hardly, in fact, if things could be worse it
is hard to imagine how! If life before the revolution was the life of a
restrained, suburban, middle class family in a 1950’s past, life in the
revolution is a death camp where everyone waits their turn in an oven. By every measure we are worse off
relationally and emotionally after the revolution.
The number of abortions since Roe makes the Nazi
final solution seem mild by comparison.
To date for every person murderd in the Nazi death camps there have been
10 abortions in the US since Roe v. Wade.
We need to remember that every woman who has had an abortion has
suffered massively.
One half of children will grow up without their
biological father in their home. That
carries multitudes of destructive implications too numerous to list here.
Before the revolution sexually transmitted diseases
were fairly uncommon and there were two primary illnesses, Gonorrhea and
Syphilis. Today, it is estimated that
100,000,000 Americans have an STD.
Ironically, infection rates seem to be highest in the Bible Belt. Perhaps our churches should spend a little
less time offering cheap grace and a cool Jesus and place greater emphasis on
personal holiness. The STDs of today are
more dangerous than those of the past in terrorizing ways.
The list could be endless but there is no single
category of emotional, relational or spiritual health that has been improved by
the sexual revolution. As a society we
are depraved to the point that, if you want, you can go to public demonstrations
of the most vile forms of sexual perversion. Such a society will not last for long. Even if God does not directly intervene it
will collapse from its own rot.
So who won?
Has
the sexual revolution ended? Yes! The
revolution has ended and has spiraled down into sexual chaos, we simply no long
know nor can we know what is right or
wrong. In this revolution there were no
winners only losers. The losers
are the powerless and the weak, women and children specifically have suffered
the most. Ask any single woman who is a
woman of holiness and wants to marry a Godly man, what she is finding. Ask the
child whose dad left mom and kids for the pursuit of another woman or man. Society as a whole is a loser; everyone it
touched. The only ones who come close to
being a winner are the powerful, who can exploit others for their own
gratification, and they loose more than they
know.
Let me state that
Christian morality did not lose.
It is
like a rock that the wave of the sexual revolution throws itself against.
Psalm 2 seems to be a most appropriate
passage in addressing the revolution.
While
Christian morality doesn’t guarantee a life of sexual bliss and perpetual
happiness, it does protect the innocent, the weak, and those without power. It offers the real possibility of joy,
happiness and fulfillment the revolution could never imagine. It safeguards those without power so that
they may have a chance at a life of love, joy and fulfillment.
The
more this seems an impossibility we need to remember that when we live a life
of vice we do not believe a life of virtue is possible. Doubt about a Biblical view of sexuality
reflects not the failure of Biblical ethics but our own corruption.
