Word Weld

I was perusing online today and sometimes I look at what’s trending. Usually, it’s yet another preview for a sneak peak for a featurette with about 1.25 seconds of extra footage from the new Marvel Avenger’s movie, or it’s that some minor celebrity tripped and burned herself, or more controversy surrounding Hillary Clinton. But today something popped up on there that made me mad. There was a bit about a man walking a pet turtle in Japan. That didn’t make me mad. It was actually kind of cool.

No, it was a story about how a woman who is some kind of well-educated progressive went to her son’s high school sex education class, where she was subjected to archaic, rage inducing doctrines about sex. Can you believe anyone teaches abstinence anymore??? I mean, I don’t think even the Catholic Church can talk about abstinence anymore. What in the world is going on when a public school is teaching such ideas, such… what did they call it on the internet? Ah yes, “puritanical.” Puritanical ideas. Awful people, those Puritans, what with pretty much founding this country so many moons ago. Of course, they aren’t the only group of people in history to practice abstinence. In fact, they didn’t even come up with it. But never mind that. That’s yesteryears’s news.

I don’t know exactly what this class was teaching, but according to the school, they teach abstinence as a part of their sex-education curriculum. Well, that’s nice. Of course, I don’t believe sex should be a part of public education, because in my puritanical, backward thinking sex isn’t just another function of the body like stuffing a burger in your mouth or sitting on the toilet. It’s a pleasurable, wonderful gift which one reserves and gives only to one’s mate, because physical joining is permanent and holy. (Did I just use the word “holy” casually in a sentence?)

But never mind the fact that the school shouldn’t have been teaching these children about sex, and never mind that it is a child’s parents’ job to do that, and never mind that if this progressive woman had been doing her job she wouldn’t have had anything to complain about because she would have taught the boy herself whatever idiotic societal drivel she wanted to. Keep in mind, the school was teaching abstinence as a part of its curriculum on sex, and that this woman decided to come on a day that they just happened to be teaching abstinence. Was it really a coincidence? I think not. I think it was probably planned by her, especially since she decided to tweet a bunch of angry retorts about the class online, complete with profanities. Sounds like a way to get attention, kind of like how my toddler likes to pitch a fit for all the world to see whenever she feels the world doesn’t revolve around her sufficiently at the moment.

So, among the many things the school was teaching her son about sex, they also taught abstinence. I don’t know all that they taught, but from what I read it would seem they taught that abstinence was the best way not to get pregnant, and that all other ways of preventing getting pregnant have a chance to fail, which leads to “consequences.” Judging by who was raising the boy, it’s likely that this word had little to no effect on him. He probably had to Google it after class. Uh, yes. I don’t have statistics in front of me, but I can say without doubt that the school was correct, because it makes sense. And I’ll say it a little louder because it’s pretty obvious: Not having sex is the best way not to get pregnant. There, I said it. Now we can argue about guilt and shame and all that stuff that comes after the word “abstinence” hits the table. Wait, why are we talking about guilt and shame? Guilt and shame are not inherently evil concepts. They are results of having done certain actions. For instance, I might feel guilt and/or shame if I speed and get a ticket, but it’s getting the ticket that was bad, not the shame that came after. The shame, believe it or not, was a good thing, because the next time I want to speed, I’ll remember how bad it felt to get a ticket and how much the ticket cost and those two things working in concert will arrest my desire to, you know, just pretty much do whatever I want to. See, children need shame, not that we need to heap it upon them Scarlet Letter style, but they’re going to feel it just like we do, and we don’t need to try to protect them from it. Guilt and shame are there to help us, even if they aren’t pleasant. Just like pain is not a good thing, but if we didn’t have it, we’d never know when something was wrong with us. This should not be controversial.

But let’s get back to my earlier statement, about how abstinence is the best way not to get pregnant. It’s very, very self-explanatory, but in case there are some who are confused it is also very easy to illustrate. If one has a fear of dying in a tragic sky-diving accident, the easiest way to avoid said accident, no matter how likely or unlikely that accident is, would be to not get on a plane taking people sky-diving. I have an irrational fear of jellyfish, as my wife will attest. However, I don’t worry about jellyfish killing me, because I will never go in the ocean. Problem solved. How is this hard to understand with sex? If you don’t get into bed with someone, having a baby is not possible. With “protection,” or “contraception,” or “family planning” (as the Walmart isle section refers to it), there is always a chance that such protection will fail, and you will have a baby on your hands, which leads to all kinds of awful things, like responsibility, and maybe even a little shame *gasp.* Of course you can always just slaughter the child with no consequence (as long as it’s still inside you, big difference there for some reason), so no worries, but it’s still a hassle, especially since abortion can also cause medical problems, and in the majority of cases leads to pretty strong guilt, depression, and shame (can’t seem to get away from shame, it’s so annoying!). If you don’t think that’s true, do your own research. You can Google as well as I can.

The fact of the matter is that we have been trying for years to ram-rod the idea down the public gullet that sex, children, marriage, family, etc. are all intrinsically meaningless, dull, and ordinary. There is nothing special about marriage: it’s just a contract, one you can have with a man, woman, tree, a monument, or even oneself. I mean, how special is an institution where you can pretty much have it with whatever? And sex? How special is that? I mean, it’s as dull as dirt nowadays. You can have it with anyone, anytime, anyplace. Sex has about as much to do with marriage as skill has to do with wages in our society. We are so desperate for sex to be be utterly meaningless, because anything that holds value beyond its physical results (pleasure, procreation, etc) is something not entirely material. It is spiritual. That’s a strange word for a puritanical monogamy-preaching conservative to use out of pocket, but I mean that in its true sense. Marriage, sex, family… these are concepts that go beyond contracts, physical contact, or social proximity. The fact is, marriage is meaningful. It is something we still feel needs ceremony and in which we feel the need to make vows and invoke God (whoever that is, right?). Sex, too, is meaningful, because it is a joining of two people’s physical being, the abandonment of our own protections and insecurities, and delivering our whole physical self to the pleasure of our spouse. And family is meaningful too, because it draws out the deepest bonds of loyalty and love, even if we fail to exercise them as we ought. We know that family deserve more, we know that our spouse deserves more, and that sex is only for them. We lie to ourselves constantly and sometimes we believe it, but ultimately we know that sex isn’t ordinary or purely material.

And that’s what makes abstinence such a critical concept. Sex is partly for pleasure, and partly for procreation. It is equally both. But here’s the secret: the pleasure part doesn’t come from ourselves. It comes from our spouse. And her pleasure doesn’t come from herself, it comes from us. The pleasure of sex is supposed to be selfless. It is intended that we will be so caught up in one another that we will be one, that there will be so much giving of pleasure that the receiving of that pleasure will be come secondary, almost forgotten, and your mind and your body are consumed with thoughts of each other. And that’s why abstinence is important. This is not something you can have with everyone, and when you go around trying to use sex like you use your Xbox or Netflix, to get some momentary pleasure, you become slowly incapable of experiencing its full potential. It becomes corrupted, self-centered, loathsome, and yes, boring. There is a kind of sex in our world today which is so commonplace, so selfish, so corrupted, that it is almost not the same thing at all. But there is too, among those who practice abstinence, the purest, most pleasurable kind of sex, one that God Himself designed. And God is not the enemy of pleasure. Indeed, he is the author of it.

Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.
Psalm 16:11

So, I got a little peeved today, because some woman decided to get some undeserved attention and point out that the school she doesn’t pay to have her child attend wasn’t teaching the kind of casual sex she would like them to. To her I say, Sorry, next time educate your own child in the birds and the bees, like I plan to do with my girls, and stop complaining about the free daycar… I mean free education that you enjoy so that you can go about being so busy coming up with lectures on how everything that we thought had meaning is apparently meaningless. Sorry you got banned from doing this in the future, but honestly anybody with a brain would have banned you after you decided to unleash your vile tongue in front of all those kids (and the world). And you can’t really blame the school, either, because who wants people coming in and giving them bad publicity on the “trending” section of Facebook?

Make no mistake, marriage, sex, and family were all created by God for a reason, and they are far more than what they appear. Don’t let the rhetoric of worldly people get to you too much. You know, like I do.

They’re only doing it for attention.