. . . Avoid impurity to the utmost of
your power before marriage, but if you indulge your passion, let it be done
lawfully.
But do not be offensive or censorious
to those who indulge it, and do not always be bringing up your own chastity.
If some one tells you that so and so
speaks ill of you, do not defend yourself against what he says, but answer, 'He
did not know my other faults, or he would not have mentioned these alone.'. . .
—Epictetus,
The Handbook, Chapter 33 (tr
Matheson)
My own
concerns about the sexual mores of our time do not come from a frustrated
hatred of the flesh, or from the reactionary belief that sexuality exists only as
an unfortunate but necessary means to produce a few more copies of myself on
the face of this Earth.
My
concern has long been that we have turned our liberation into selfishness. We
separate our desires from the commitment of love, and in the process reduce
others to a means for our gratification. Once it becomes all about the taking,
and abandons all the giving, we treat others as objects, and not as persons.
In my
younger years, I would hear both men and women talk about “getting a piece of
that”, and I would cringe. The phrases may change, but the attitude isn’t all
that different. We can make it all appear right and proper, of course, but when
sex is just about seeking pleasure, which so easily transforms into the
exercise of control and power, we abuse others just as we abuse ourselves.
We
cannot help but somehow recognize that so deep a personal intimacy
brings with it so deep a personal consequence. I need only look around me to
see the intense damage done by lazy affections.
In my
early teaching years, I knew a young lady who spoke proudly of her
“no-strings-attached” affair, and all the benefits she thought it brought her.
A year later she was sobbing uncontrollably, and asking why she had let herself
love the fellow in question. I did my best to help her through it, though I
regret that it was hardly enough.
She
learned it the hard way, as so many of us do, and as I had to learn myself, that
hearts are to be cherished, and not to be played with.
Epictetus
also understands that it is the mark of a frustrated and miserable person to be
too quick to accuse and condemn others. I should worry far more about
maintaining my own chastity than I should about policing the chastity of
others, because I should readily understand all the temptations and pitfalls
that come our way.
It helps
little if I tell you that you are broken, without offering my friendship to
help you heal those wounds.
If love is
about a commitment to others, I will hardly be practicing that love, either if
I abuse others by sleeping with them carelessly, or if I abuse others by
damning them carelessly. I need not be promiscuous or a prude. I just need to
show compassion and concern.
I was
once a bit enamored of a woman I saw regularly at daily Mass. She always sat
quietly in the back, right where I always did, and always in the company of a
lovely three or four year old boy. I asked a friend who she might be.
“You
want nothing to do with her! She had a child out of wedlock!”
“Well,
all right then, but I think I’d like to get to know her. When did you start
throwing stones?”
“You’d
be a fool if you ever thought you could love a woman like that.”
“Perhaps
she might like to share her life and her son’s life with someone, or at least
find a friend to make it easier?”
“Women
like that are never any good, and you should know that already.”
“What,
you mean the ones like Mary Magdalene?”
He had
no answer for that, beyond a sigh and a roll of the eyes.
I was pathetically
too shy to ever speak to her, but I always deeply admired her commitment to
raising her son. The only good that ever came from it was that I found some better
friends.
If the
best criticism you can come up with is a rumor that someone has been
intemperate, you are sadly missing the forest for the trees.
We can’t
complain that we have separated love from sex, and then also separate love from
all of our other judgments and actions.
Written in 6/2009
Image: Jacques de L'Ange, Allegory of Lust (mid 17th c.)
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