NAS: Sex

Our culture is obsessed with sex. With anyone! At anytime! If you want to, just do it! But, the Church teaches that sex was created for the context of marriage. Why do you choose to abstain? Why aren't you going around having sex with just anyone? How would you encourage others to do the same? How do you remain strong when everything in our culture is encouraging you to abandon your convictions?

What a topic this week!  Could be controversial, but how can we not discuss the elephant in the room?  I'm going to quickly answer all of the questions and then dwell a little longer on the last one.  So here we go:

Why do you choose to abstain?  Because I believe the Church knows what will create the best marriage for me.

Why aren't you going around just having sex with anyone?  Because that sounds the least amount of fun ever ... why ... because I know how I become attached to men I am interested in and the random hook-ups sound like a recipe for heartache.

How do you encourage others to do the same?  This I think will be answered in the last question.

How do you remain strong when everything in our culture is encouraging you to abandon your convictions?  Remaining strong - how? It's difficult because we see everyone doing everyone else on television and even in the real lives of people in Hollywood.  Sex has both taken over our culture as almost commonplace and become the most difficult thing to talk about.  How did that happen?

As a culture we want completely different things.  We learned with the HHS Mandate that we want the government and our employers to pay for contraceptives that we use in the bedroom.  We learned with the Hobby Lobby case that we want our employers out of our bedroom.  We learned with the release Humane Vitae that we want the Pope out of our bedrooms.  We have learned in the American Church that old celibate men don't know anything about sex.  We learn on television that sex is just an 'activity' that doesn't mean anything, unless we say it does.  We learn through Cosmo that there seem to be a million things we don't yet know about how to have sex.  I also saw someone write a while ago about how they have made the 'three-date rule' obsolete.  Oh, and if you aren't familiar - the old rule was that you had to wait until the third date to have sex.  That's not the case anymore.  You should feel no shame, no question, no nothing to strip down on the first date.  How can you really know a person after dinner (maybe), a drink, and a movie that you are willing to strip down - let alone be intimate with them?

I stay strong in my conviction because I think that is absurd!  How this came to be a good idea, I will never understand.  When did sex become less intimate than sharing your last name, your birthday, and meeting your family?

We get to know people through conversation, meeting their friends, seeing them more than ONE time - not by getting naked together.

I know that didn't really answer the question - but I remain strong because the other option seems so incredibly difficult emotionally.  The hook-up culture (particularly on the first date) is easy to stay away from because, well - it's so ridiculous ... if you say you are interested in love, true love, there's no way to embrace love and hooking-up.

Speaking about co-habitation seems like a different concept - but it all comes down to true love, refusing to use people for what they can do for me, and sacrificing our own carnal desires for the greater good.  What is the greater good?  What is the best good?  It is salvation, eternal life - no good pleasure in this world is worth sacrificing our stake in salvation.  

At the end of my life, I am more likely to regret abandoning the Love of God than the fact that I didn't go home with that cute guy at the bar that one night.  Even if that means that I'm single my entire life (which would be incredibly difficult).   

So those are my random thoughts on the subject ... maybe not too much Church teaching involved.  Check out the other ladies this week who I'm sure wrote a little more coherently than I did.  Jen's hosting, Morgan's supporting, and we'll be back next week!