The sexual revolution has become - more-and-more over the past fifty years, and continuing to build - the primary socio-political litmus test.
The sexual revolution - which I take to be first the tolerance, then positive advocacy, now legal coercion - of an ethical system and social organisation of sex out-with the context of an ideal of permanent marriage and family; and subverted sexualities treated as the focus of personal identity and Life.
With each new wave, from easy no fault divorce to constructed sexualities; the move has always been from supposedly neutral tolerance, to positive propaganda, to aggressive imposition.
The sexual revolution is therefore not an epiphenomenon of our cultural malaise - it is core: the single most effective and enduring agent of permanent Leftist revolution. Class War, Feminism, Antiracism - these have come and gone, have operated differentially by culture... only the sexual revolution has been incrementally cumulative and universal.
Hence we are, very nearly all of us, heavily implicated in one aspect or another; therefore it is too late for prevention and repentance is the only large-scale realistic possibility. Since repentance (made effective by the infinite power of Christ's work) is unique to Christianity, this alone implies that a spiritual revival would need to be Christ-centred (whether or not conventionally 'Christian').
So far as I know, none of the supposedly 'right wing' or 'populist' movements in the West have yet made clear their collective (as well as personal) repentance of the sexual revolution; and until they do, they will simply remain what they currently are - which is merely a different species of Leftism (just as National Socialism was merely a different species of Socialism).
Of course, as I say, we are almost-all implicated in the sexual revolution by past or present behaviour - that is just a fact; but we should not be intimidated by the Leftist charges of 'hypocrisy' from doing what is right and - more importantly - publicly arguing for what is right.
(After all Leftist 'hypocristy' amounts merely to the inevitable mortal-life failing to live up to our highest ideals. That is simply a consequence of having ideals. The Leftist 'solution' to hypocrisy is to invert ideals - then try to live-down to them. I know this from experience - since I was a Leftist for a long time. The popularity of alcohol and other drugs is closely related to their helpfulness in overcoming our innate natural morality, in pursuit of strategic self-degradation.)
Therefore, in a context where the sexual revolution is at the very core of the problem of secular Leftism - repentance of the sexual revolution must be upfront, clear and explicit.
Lacking this, we are merely seeing more-of-the-same; awakening has not happened; and there will be no change of direction for The West.
Sometimes I make a tick by a paragraph in a book that particularly strikes me as true. I'd have ticked every paragraph here.
ReplyDeleteI think what needs to be explained to people is why the sexual revolution is so spiritually damaging and to do it without sounding puritanical or tight lipped disapproving. Instinctively one knows that it is so but to say why is harder. My feeling is that in some way sexual and spiritual energy, or the energy and attention that go into these, are part of the same overall thing, and to direct that energy in a self-seeking way on a physical level prevents it being expressed on a spiritual one.
The creative energy is sacred and to use it merely for the pursuit of pleasure is sacrilegious. Love must be pure. if it is not then it is tarnished and degraded and you tarnish and degrade yourself. This needs to be shouted from the rooftops.
@William - I was addressing here the people who *already* realise the true (malign) nature of the sexual revolution, and where it is going - but have become distracted into assuming that we can leave the SR intact and 'reform' other things first; or who want to keep their own little corner of it (e.g. feminism for the girls, men allowed/ praised for sex outside marriage... whatever).
ReplyDeleteYou recently wrote something about why the SR is so very spiritually damaging, which seemed valid. But the people who 'need convincing' don't accept the spiritual priority - or else they regard spirituality as open-endedly malleable.
WHat I find most convincing is the way that spirituality which is sexually revolutionary always fails - this seems obvious to me. On the other hand, many New Agers (especially the leaders) almost *equate* enlightenment with sexual adventuring (e.g. as they become enlightened, they leave their marriage and embark on a series of liasons); the marriage/ sexual record of most New Age gurus is pretty appalling - very few of them have had a single, stable marriage.
And this is linked to their utter ineffectualness, spiritually - the absorption of 'spiritual awakening' into mere Lifestyle, consumerism, bureaucracy and the mass media.
The Age of Aquarious was dissipated into multiple sordid and exploitative affairs.
Well, what's done is done - the need *now* is for repentance. Yet, how seldom we have seen it!
You're absolutely right that this pattern of New Age teachers seeking to fit sexual adventuring into the context of their 'enlightenment' is one that is constantly repeated. I see this as confirmation that they are not really spiritual in the first place, that is that their spirituality is really self-centred and not rooted in a love of God. What's worse, an honest materialist or a dishonest spiritual person? I know what I think.
ReplyDeleteExcellent post! (One quibble, though. Repentance is not unique to Christianity. It's obviously heavily emphasized in the Old Testament and the Koran, and the Buddhists I know also practice repentance.)
ReplyDeleteGeneralizing from my own experience, I would say that just about everyone instinctively feels and "knows" that the sexual revolution is pure evil, but they get sucked into complicity anyway because of their inability to articulate why it is evil.
So some Christians try their best to "make a case" for sexual morality, which (again, generalizing from my own experience) is ineffective. The essential thing to realize is that no such case is needed. Moral intuition is primary, and deductions from those intuitions are secondary. If you know directly that something is evil, that's stronger, not weaker, than being able to deduce its evil from other moral premises.
Of course, condemning other people's sexual practices without being able to "prove" one's position from publicly accepted premises opens one up to accusations of "bigotry" and "intolerance" -- accusations of which most moderns are mortally afraid. So one simply has to stop being afraid, or stop heeding the fear. It's that simple -- and that hard.
@WmJas - Thanks.
ReplyDeleteThe way I am using repentance is not only regret and repudiation, but being linked to divine forgiveness - and a 're-set', absolute cleansing. So life is not *primarily* about what we do, but about our attitude to what we do - our understanding of what we do... or our understanding of and joining-with the basic situation of life.
(It is is this sense that Christianity is 'exclusive' - but I believe that the acknowledgment, understanding, is most importanty post-mortal - when we are given a clarity about the situation, and choose either to endorse or to reject it; to join-in or go-it-alone.
*That* (I believe) is the thing unique to Christianity - and, even among Christian, difficult to comprehend and hold-onto...
I think that modern 'evangelicals' - eg Billy Graham, to give a well known example - are often very valuably clear about this, in practice as well as in theory (although I don't accept their explanation for how it 'works').
"condemning other people's sexual practices without being able to "prove" one's position from publicly accepted premises opens one up to accusations of "bigotry" and "intolerance" -- accusations of which most moderns are mortally afraid. So one simply has to stop being afraid, or stop heeding the fear. It's that simple -- and that hard."
Indeed. The difficulty is that people are both inattentive and dishonest in defense of their pleasures and sins - and avoidance of repentance is a deep and powerful motivation. The Orson Scott Card furore was agood example - his positions was simly lied about and converted into one of active hatred and persecution - "Orson Scott Card said... believes..." all kinds of ridiculous lies - and yet (in the age of the internet, the lies could have been checked and refuted in, what?, 30 seconds...
So, proof isn't even a possibility in these matters - it is about a very developed and multilayered system of unrepented evils driven top-down by powerul and influential demonic strategies - which are regarded as invisible/ utterly denied/ ridiculous/ intrinsically-themselves evil - by all discourse in public life.