Sex and Christian Responsibility; 3; Providing Guidance to Individuals

if we have seen that the take a long time to reach the practical questions which may have brought many of you it has been in the interest of reminding him that sex cannot be brought on as a separate compartment of human life that the sex education must comprise more the knowledge of the reproductive organs and how they function or other techniques for sex intercourse or the answers to the questions of three or extra marital sex in one way are having a course like this tends to look tends to make us look at sex as a separate aspect of life and it's the effort to make clear that much of the sec's behavior which we may deplore is a symptom a basic out that basic problems of alienation and meaninglessness today for reasons of time and clarity in discussing the

place of standards and values in our education i'm going to deal not with the questions young people may ask or their problems with downs but focus on the values of the adult as a parent or a counselor and see where he is attitude or standards may need to be examined before he made the uphill i shall use the word and doubts or adopts for parents counselors teachers all due to the un should look for a hat it is important that we think of standards and values not as prohibitions to lose or limitations on our freedom but as the conditions under which manmade become free because because man is finite his discovery of those conditions can never be taken as

final or absolute but he must seek to discover as far as his experience makes possible what makes for him for life and what forget one aspect of its experience of what leads to live and what leads to it's denial these become the commandments it sets out to teach its there's these become the commandments of five sets out to teach its children in order that they make a profit by what their fathers have learned this heritage may be formulated as general criteria or standing or into specific demands or prohibitions the time shouts and that thou shalt not of our lives your heritage used to be relevant to the questions of the present

time or is the lead to new insights these commandments must be re examined at times we find in this is not to disregard past ten days but the test that and to be willing to revise them unnecessary and i quote dr bennet unless there is a frank exploration of the grounds for moral choice in the area of sex that are more than this guy's pressures on behalf of the blues many will be left without any relevant guidance in the early life of our standards can be put in the rules which can be enforced in homes or an institution in correcting the evils of authoritarianism we have failed to see the place obedience place in the childs development the child making

the interpret permissiveness and the lack of parental love and recognize because as an expression of parental concern the removal of allow shout and that that sharp knocks in so many areas of life may well be the cause of mutts i'll our sense of meaninglessness if one may do anything he may well as like a kindergartner do i have to do what i want i hadn't ever parental rules must function as standard rather than as prohibitions or requests far from adolescence on the major decisions which the individual makes must be his own rather than the result of compulsion our

obedience parents should not the cybersex behavior of their teen age children any more than they should just fine young person's marriage partner or vocation but if a young person is to make a sound decision he meets away alternatives alternative to pressure on his fears to have standards and values in the line up which to make the decision the absence of parental standards which are communicated to the young lee's bandwidth out there which they may accept or against which they may remote to be a rebel in the backyard and start personal chaos rather than tart identity or freedom so our first concern if we're to

help him help is in relation to the parents are counselors standards and downs the characteristic distinguishing man from the rest of living beings is his freedom to choose that freedom and they both seemed to direct the many forces in himself and his environment however without structure or limitations with which he must act life becomes meaningless the first an obvious statement of affecting about roland is that no one can be of help if he professes one standard and these are really something else chance to easily detected and resisted young people are to be able to sense a lack of honest or to put it another way one speaks with authority only about that which is his own experience i've got this he can say i know

he needs to believe in coats or standards he would he need stability in the codes are standards he would communicate to the un this is not to say that he can prove his values the sound but that he is not unwilling to examine them and that he can say on the basis of my experience these are for me the best approximations to wait to what is right and president adults must have better reasons for what they hold to be right than were used in the paris to begin to the degree that contraceptives are made a hundred percent foolproof which is not yet we get no longer base our case against map pre marital relationships on the danger and hence the fear of pregnancy our former counsel the boys play around

with many years the preferred bigger of americans prefer to marry the girl who is a virgin does not hold it's an alto voice required to marry that girl who has had sex experience i am not convinced that this proto station even the navy is true of the boys real attitude but whether it is or not it puts a crimp in that former counsel and i don't our difficulty communicating with the young may actually be not a collision course on which we start them but whether we can hold standards that put us in collisions with those we live with in business or as friends the risk of re examining one's own standard is that one may find he has been someone they're so the ambulance which is not rocking

europe which which has brought india which he cannot the most to me as a however intellectually free he may come to be our guilt in the areas in which we have been emotionally condition makes it extremely difficult to act on fair to that condition or to understand the lack of it in those who are different conditions and recognize that our attitudes toward like in other areas that we separated from our attitudes towards sex expression if parents have been permitted and the whole has not have established rules for behavior if there had not been clearly recognize limits of freedom in the home one cannot successfully begin to make them at adolescence in the realm of

sex the hague if cheating is known are considered socially useful in financial are other areas one cannot easily challenge it in the area of sexual relationship with and adults need to recognize how deeply and how dangerously their own need to be liked by the young may keep them from having are communicating their own standards dr law box illustration in his sermon last sunday pointed out the situation of apparent unwilling to face the disapproval of a bar in regard to staying at home and the daughter entertained her friends i'm willing to say whoa to the adult who security rests on the approval of a young to the giant metal about any

act in terms of its being per se right or wrong makes it difficult to help an individual find the true nature of a difficult in fact the words right and wrong maybe misused in the same sense that we was misused the term say where in the past one was asked that issue as they are now the yeah the answer yes or no was no answer at least for any length of time the question should have been follow what are you saying you and what are you say the difference between the old testament or legal ethic and the christian is the emphasis on the positive as over against the negative online on what one should do instead of one or one should note that and an

experience should've thomas the emphasis on the negative has always tended to increased desire for it and you know about it rather than to decrease either not only failed to subject what we've called our christian standards and values to the same kind of examination we have me to do in other realms the new testament gives us no sex code in our answers to the specific questions we're asking to accept the statements of st paul regarding either women or marriage without recognizing the context of the roman world in which he wrote would be misguided rather than not the expectation of the early coming of christ and the need to focus all of one's energy used at that event

made americans necessarily as second best shots i would be ashamed to quote the attitudes of many of the early church fathers in regard to the nature of women suffice it to quote your own statement he who to articulate loves his own wife isn't about her and that present time protestants would not call the roman catholic denial of birth control by mechanical means a christian attitude dr layman of human union seminary in his book ethics in a christian context has been a sense christian ethics has been conspicuously unconvincing in dealing with the sexual field of human decision he holds that it is not married which fulfills the social the sexual act

but the sexual act that fulfills marriage because they're a christian sexual epic used to exhibit the intimate relationship of sexuality in all of its forms to freedom and integrity of human wholeness in its most concrete human encounter along such an epic can offer no sexual wagner's die has according to a blueprint designed to apply to all sexual behavior in the same way and he says this is opposed both to conformity in fear and delight think his nonconformity the sexual act is no more and no less this freedom in a beating as to what god is doing in the world and if any other human action but the christian church and consequently the christian ethical ideal has lack of faith the imagination and the boneless to

include the sexual acts among the risks of free obedience the end of the quote they say this is not the whole that there are no principles which can help to guide wants choices principles that may be as fix as of that starts with god to save his navigation principles that become clear through the testing of our human experience and if we are honest and not afraid of the experience that we're testing we may discover the sound rather than the amazon reasons are holding our convictions and do the right thing for the right reasons and stared into the wrong way and i think we may be on the point of discovering some of these

better reasons what other principles which is gaining wider and wider as st and significance is the denial of exploitation in human relationships are the personnel the international rail it is expressed in that amount of colonialism and in the decrease in prostitution the double standard of the past providing for the safety of nice girls by the exploitation of those who were not nice relationship between consenting appears is why the results of this change but the problem of dealing with the more subtle forms of exploitation is deal with is whether principle another principle and babies the use of another person to satisfy once own hands are needs this would rule out

promiscuity on one hand there to draw any code that denies all pre marital relationships is to fail to take into account the infinite variety and uniqueness of human personality and the varieties of meaning any act may have four different individuals it would be failure to distinguish between the experience of a couple who are against and those for whom the experience is a substitute for any other means of communication on the other hand to say that all relationships are permissible is to encourage pre mature expressions of sex and align least resistance which may have serious consequences the cleric who has defined as emotional

sincerity we know what we mean by intellectual sincerity telling the truth is a virtue to which we are sensitive we hate the lyre lying is an expression is expressing what you do not think are tending to believe what you do not really by emotional insincerity i mean expressing a feeling we do not feel negative and truthfulness is expressing what to do not think that positive untruthfulness is not expressing what we do think are really to refrain from expressing what to do things which could lead to another's advantage is positive with honesty we may excuse mental insincerity under certain circumstances but we would never appraise it as a virtue yet we constantly incorporate emotional insincerity

as a virtue and praise people for concealing their real feelings are pretending to have feelings which they do not possess emotional pretense leads to emotional in sensibility if you express systematically there anyone in words or actions love you do not feel you will undoubtedly come to you will undoubtedly come to believe that you love me but do it without knowing you can the individual integrity is the condition but marra goes on to say of personal relationship moral relations are dependent on the absolute value of the human being as a peak as a free human spirit when you begin to la lee have to please people think was married and you destroy promotional sincerity unusual sex attraction

is no proper base for a human relationship between a man and a woman is an organic thing not personalized love is a proper basis between any two persons it may or may not include sexual attraction it may express itself in sexual desire that sexual desire is not love desire is quite compatible with personal hatred or contempt or indifference because it treats its object not as a person but as a means to its own satisfaction mutual desire does not make things any better it only means that each of the two persons who's treating the other as a means of self satisfaction a man or woman may want one another patiently without either loving the other is it it is the desire to obtain possession of the other person for the satisfaction of

one's needs to assert that claim over another person you are mine is and chased an immoral know human being and have rights in another and no human being can grant writes in himself or herself real person a love is the basis in the absence of which specifically sexual relations are and chased an immoral this whole scenario is just as much an outsider a marriage cannot make chased back which is in itself and chains i would hazard a guess without much fear that i was wrong that there is as much sexual mr ali inside mary an outside location

however due to make emotional sincerity the criterion once and that does not mean that whatever one does from what it feels to be there and it gives more guidance is better it shows better but what is insincere is not so nor do our christian values of a person centred relationship of our responsibility to our fellows umass the specific answers for which we are seeking these as christians we were out in society in which we live at st augustine translated the great commandment love the lord on your heart mind soul and strength into the statement love god and do if you please but

and the last one is sure of the quality of his love the car lacking maybe question possible at least pragmatically most of us would say love the lord and do as you please but if in doubt don't all of this that means that we have nothing to say which we ought to be able to get there is ignorance to be cleared up their lessons of fact to be answered there are ways we may help rather than hinder them in their attempts to find lie if you have not destroy your last sunday times magazine read the article by your finger a polite encounter between the generations

a report all the united states national student association convention which iran after our last question and which made me ask whether they're young might be more aware of the nature all there are real problems that are their elders and it is to those specific problems of early on that we turn our attention next sunday