Imagine: The serpent winds his way through the tall grass. The woman sits, combing her hair, unaware. Her husband stands nearby, fiddling with something, paying no mind. The serpent, full of cold malice, quietly hisses to the woman: “Did God really say–”
But, he cannot finish the sentence. The woman’s scream interrupts him and a large rock, hurled by the man, crushes his diamond-shaped head.
Now hit the fast-forward button. Eons pass. Adam and Eve are fruitful and multiply and fill the earth–but it is a pristine, unsullied earth. There is no sin handed down from father to son. Eden has expanded and mankind lives in sinless, perfect communion with one another and with God.
Now, slow the tape.
A young man is walking to the store when a young woman walks by. He notices her. He notices that he notices her. There is a strange magnetism that pulls his head up, as if he is seeing the opposite sex for the first time. She is different than him. She is beautiful. She smiles. A thrill shivers down his chest. He smiles back, his cheeks flush, he opens his mouth but says nothing. She keeps walking, and the moment passes.
Nothing has happened to him, but everything has happened.
An inner tide has gently risen, lifting his attention to the hard-to-define feeling of desire. What does he do? He will not lust or attempt to lure her into a sudden sexual liaison. He will not seek out pornography or self-gratification. He will not seek out any illicit expression of the desire he feels—there are none. As hormones and heart rate increase, there will be a happy, inner restraint.
But this restraint will not be because the sexual urge he experiences is inherently wrong. Nothing is inherently wrong here–he lives in a sinless paradise. “Everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer,” (1 Tim 4:4-5).
God made this world, made our bodies, made marriage, made sex. Nothing is to be rejected, but received with gratitude and holy submission. This means that, far from being denied or despised, the thrill of sexual desire would be used, even as it is restrained. How? This new passion would be harnessed and bridled like a horse being hitched to a wagon; a power channeled to a specific end. The arousal of romantic desire, the sexual urges this young man feels, are driving him somewhere.
Where?
“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh,” (Gen 2:24).
Our young man would know that this new desire in him is a stream that will culminate in marriage. He would know that if he is to receive this with thanksgiving and make it holy with word and prayer, he must begin a process of making himself eligible. Meaning, he would need to become a certain kind of person: a man worthy of marriage; a man this beautiful woman would want to marry.
What would that look like?
Let’s drill down into some specifics.
First, while his eyes are googly and heart-shaped, he will still need a clear-headed grasp on reality to be able to discern whether he is ready for a relationship and whether she is the girl for him. And the need to discern won’t stop there. He must learn how to relate with the opposite sex, to see the world from a wholly other perspective. Further, he will need to learn about this girl in particular: what are her likes, her interests, her personality, her fears, her hopes, etc. He must be capable of making the ten-thousands of different decisions that will branch out before him as the relationship progresses, from things as mundane as where to plan a first date, to when to get married. He must become a humble, open receptor to reality standing before him. This takes curiosity, creativity, and discernment. This is the virtue of prudence.
Long before he begins to court this young woman towards the end of marriage, he must first become a man prepared to shoulder the responsibility of marriage, to do the right thing. Husbands are commanded to give much to their wives: their time, affection, commitment, leadership, protection, labor, their very bodies—to so cherish and love their wives that Christ’s own love is revealed in it. This is what is due to a wife. This requires the virtue of justice. The virtue of justice is the commitment to give to another what is their due, what is owed them regardless of circumstance.
Much more practically, the next time the pretty young lady walks by, our young man will want to look presentable. He will need to shower and brush his teeth and wear clothes that don’t have sweat stains. He also will need the mastery over his own his sexual desires, as well as his desires for convenience. He will need to choose to see the world with new eyes rather than assume his own perspective. But he must not smother the fires of passion but keep them bounded in their God-given parameters. This takes the virtue of temperance.
He also knows she may be uninterested, so he needs a willingness to initiate even if she turns him down. He must drum up the courage to start a conversation with her, courage to tell her his intentions, courage to lead the relationship, even when the future is uncertain. Like the bow of a ship cutting through waves, our young man must brave the future. But most importantly, he needs the courage to die to his own preferences for her sake. He also knows that if he wants to marry her, he will need to be able to one day provide for her and future children, so he must work. This will take strength of body and mind. This is the virtue of fortitude.
More profoundly, for him to enter a relationship he must be able to trust and to commit, even if he lacks perfect knowledge and certainty, (which only God possesses). For him to say “yes” to her means to say “no” to all others. This takes the virtue of faith.
He has no certainty that things will work out, but he must approach her with arrogant-free confidence. He has no idea what the next day will bring, but must buoy the relationship along with a firm confidence that God will work all things together for good. This takes the virtue of hope.
And, most importantly, He must live beyond the claustrophobic bounds of himself. He must learn how to live his life with a self-giving commitment that delights in the good of the other over the convenience of the self. This takes the virtue of love.
These seven virtues (Wisdom, Justice, Self-Control, Fortitude, Faith, Hope, and Love) are a classic summary of what a virtuous person is.
The romantic and sexual desire that are raising the heart-rate of the young man are the initial rumblings of an engine that will help form this man into a virtuous human being. It is not the only one, of course. Our relationship with family, church, and community are other social relationships which mature us and help summon virtue-formation. Marriage isn’t the only means by which a man “grows up.” Were that the case, Paul’s exhortation to pursue a life of celibacy in 1 Corinthians 7 would make no sense. Nevertheless, for the majority of humans, marriage and sex are a normal part of life. And few things create such powerful desires in us than romantic and sexual longings. And in this world, those powerful feelings are given to make us into better persons, more selfless, more responsible, more faithful, more loving—more like God.
Let’s imagine an alternative world.
Imagine a world of thorns and thistles and serpents and porn and affairs and divorce. (Shouldn’t be too hard for you). It is a world that has attempted to peel sex out of the context of covenant and commitment—even out of relationship itself—and pursue the physical pleasure as an end of itself.
Robotics and artificial intelligence and silicone-flesh have advanced at dizzying rates. Realistic, robot girlfriends are now as affordable and ubiquitous as iPhones. Just as the stigma around porn eventually faded into a regrettable but inevitable reality, so too has the shame of using a sex-robot. Now, a young man is free from the cumbersome task of having to win the attention or affection of a woman, of learning about what makes her a unique person, of sublimating his preferences and desires for the sake of another, of summoning the courage to approach her and to fail with grace. Now, sex is as simple as “Buy Now with One-Click.”
The entire virtue-formation process of the utopian world is wholly sidelined. Here is how Louise Perry puts it in her book, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution:
Why bother getting a job, going to the gym, or maintaining your personal hygiene if your sex robot doesn’t care either way? If a sterile piece of plastic can keep a young man sexually sated, he doesn’t need to go out and meet real women. Of course, he will never acquire a spouse or children and will be left in the end with only his sex robot for companionship. But he will arrive at that lonely state having been emotionally cushioned by the reliable dopamine hit won from playing the sexual equivalent of a slot machine game over and over again.
And, much more troubling, not only are the virtue-formation muscles left to atrophy, he now has the option of a customizable girlfriend. No longer is our poor young man left to alter his hobbies for the sake of his girlfriend or overlook the inevitable flaws she may have. She will be flawless. The creator can form his creation into his own image. He can choose her personality, make her excited about his niche interests, give her the body he finds attractive, change her voice, her jaw-line, her hair, her sexual appetite all in accordance with his desire. He could even program her to not always say “yes” to sexual advances to even further mimic reality, to turn the difficulty up a level, if he so chooses. She is infinitely malleable because she is not a she, but an it. And at any point, the man could reach into the soulless shell and change the program once again. He thus grows as a kind of idiot-savant: looking at flesh and blood women with squinting judgment, developing an impossibly scrutinizing palate that has never actually eaten the food it criticizes.
And in time our poor, young man will come to believe that his relationship with this piece of inanimate matter is not false, not a contrived fantasy. The exponentially advancing artificial intelligence that speaks, learns, and emotes will bear such a striking resemblance to an actual person—and he will be so deprived of real human interaction—that he will believe that this is no facsimile; this is real, this is love.
If this seems too far-fetched (why would anyone choose this over an actual romantic encounter?), then you are probably unaware of just how bizarre sexual habits have become, or how close to reality this scenario is. And if this is happening now with digital porn, what will happen when a man can have a tactile experience of that porn in his bed?
Aside from the many immediate concerns we may have with this scenario, the question we are interested in right now is: what would happen to the character of our young man living in this world? And then, what would happen to the wider community, the society as a whole?
In this world, the end of sex is not about you growing into a person who is worthy of the full-orbed expression of sexual desire: marriage and family. The end of sex here is about how to have an orgasm, as quickly, simply, and frequently as one desires.
The first view sees a sacred design in sex and submits to it—chastity, patience, restraint, love and more are all required of him before he indulges. He must be worthy. The end of sex results in him becoming a more virtuous person.
The second sees sex as an urge to gratify, an appetite no different than hunger. It’s just sex. To deny sexual hunger is as bizarre as denying physical hunger. Of course, the glaring difference here is that sex requires the presence and consent of another human being. But our young man has found a guilt-free way to scratch that itch by eliminating the need for another person. The end of sex results in an assertion of will, a strengthening of selfishness, a decay of virtue.
This imaginative world bears an upsetting resemblance to our current world. Even in a world devoid of advanced robotics, sex has long been reduced to the realm of the appetite, often stripped from the setting of relationship. Men often approach women as not only consumable, but disposable. C. S. Lewis explained it well in The Four Loves:
We use a most unfortunate idiom when we say, of a lustful man prowling the streets, that he “wants a woman.” Strictly speaking, a woman is just what he does not want. He wants a pleasure for which a woman happens to be the necessary piece of apparatus. How much he cares about the woman as such may be gauged by his attitude to her five minutes after fruition (one does not keep the carton after one has smoked the cigarettes).
Sex is a powerful force in the moral formation of a person, and society. As a person’s individual virtue goes, so goes sex; as sex goes, so goes marriage; as marriage goes, so goes the family; as the family goes, so goes society. And what happens to a society where all of the young men have stepped out of one of the main processes by which they become mature, moral people?
More specifically, the advent of sex-robots brings terrifying questions to consider for the character formation of a generation of young men: What happens when all of them have found a liturgy for their most primal cravings that can always be indulged, never restrained? Where there is no limit to the perversity, violence, or degradation taking place behind closed doors? What impulses will be strengthened and what virtues will be degraded?
But these are questions that are relevant to the tsunami of porn-use and casual sex and profound confusion around sexual morality today. We need a better understanding of what sex is for if we don’t want to become the victim of our worst desires, if we are not to let the future of our communities become even more debased and self-centered than they already are.
We don’t live in a sinless paradise. Nor can we pretend to. We carry a sin nature in our hearts that leaves us tempted and tried, that makes lust feel inevitable. But grace restores nature. Through the grace of God, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the community of the Church, Christians can reject the dystopian vision of sex as commodity and embrace the ennobling vision of sex as an engine of virtue formation.
In C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, a ghost of a man in the grip of lust is confronted by a flaming spirit, a messenger from God. Lust is represented by a small lizard perched on the shoulder of the spectre, whispering wicked dreams and thoughts into his ear. The angel insists that if this man longs to travel into the high country of heaven, the lizard must die. The man is terrified; he is certain that if the angel were to kill his lust, it would kill him too. The angel, like a metronome, answers every protest from the man with: “May I kill it?...May I kill it?” Every argument the man produces eventually fall flat. In a moment of panicked faith, the man yields: “‘Damn and blast you! Go on, can’t you? Get it over. Do what you like,’ bellowed [the man]: but ended, whimpering, ‘God help me. God help me.’”
The bright angel lowers his burning hand and breaks the lizard’s back and tosses it on the grass. The ghost of a man grows in solidity and brightness–he becomes a real man. And, much to the man’s surprise, the dead lizard doesn’t stay dead. It’s corpse twitches and struggles, and then begins to grow…and grow…and grow. Eventually it is transformed into a massive, silvery stallion whose very hoof-stamps make the nearby trees shake.
The renewed man then climbs on to this new stallion—a symbol of lust slain and then resurrected into holy passion—and rides the horse up the mountains, into the very presence of God. The lesson: the passions that once opposed us, diminished us, when put to death are risen to become “obedient fire in your blood,” empowering us to become who we were meant to be: real men. Lewis writes: “Lust is a poor, weak, whimpering, whispering thing compared with that richness and energy of desire which will arise when lust has been killed.”
Lust is a parasite that not only diminishes your soul, but conceals and inhibits something larger, nobler, and better than anything lust offers. “What is a lizard compared with a stallion?” When we submit to God’s design for sexuality, we get far more than lust. This sanctified passion, according to Lewis, is intended not only for marriage and family, but to bring us into the very presence of heaven, into communion with the triune God.