THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PROBLEM OF SEX

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume 25, Issue 2, 1 February 1935, Page 5

THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PROBLEM OF SEX

The problem for us to-day is how life should be lived under modern conditions after the Great War. The old. sanctions of conduct are everywhere questioned, and new reasons are being sought for right behaviour apart from religion. But the result so often is a lowering of the moral standard of life. St. John says ofi Jesus Christ: "In Him was life and the life was the light of men." This means that the life of Jesus Christ is the ideal, and throws its light on the lives of men, so that m Him we <:an see how life ought to be lived. The Master's own words are still true, "I am the Light of the World. He that followeth Me shall not walk m darkness, but shall have the Light ofi Life." If we take His life as our standard we see how far other easier standards fall short of His. This is clearly seen m the matter of purity. There is a strong tendency to-day to regard love as an emotion connected merely with physical attraction. A beautiful face, a glance of the eye, or a touch of the hand, is the secret of love, we are told. The same teaching idealises selS-expres-sion as finding its natural outlet m the freedom of the sexes. Whatever hinders "this is regarded as something psychologically wrong, producing some bad effect upon the physical life. Religious restraints are regarded as unnatural and out of date. It is good to face these modern ideas with the teaching of Jesus Christ. He does not stand for the development of the bodily life at the expense of the spirit, but sternly asserts that the body must be controlled by the spirit. "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee. If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from; thee, for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into Hell." This is really the new teaching. To make love the expression merely of a physical desire is no new thing, but only takes us back to the relations of

m,en and women before Jesus Christ came to live upon the earth. His is the new and higher teaching, which makes love into something spiritual, of which the physical relationship is only the outward and visible expression. God is Love, and the Christian view of love is that it must be something which leads us all towards God Who is a Spirit, and not away from Him into our animal nature. The Christian view of marriage rests upon the true meaning of love. Love is the giving of oneself to someone else, not only the body, but also the mind and the spirit. This can be no temporary passing relationship. It must be for life, and those who know what this love means are joined together by God, and no man can put them asunder. It is easy to lower the standard of our home life, and to make light of the conventions and restrictions which have hedged round the purity of our girls and boys, but it is upon the purity of the Christian home that the virility ofl our race and the status of womanhood have rested for many generations of Christianity. Anything that tends to lower that high standard of purity is something which toeatens all that is best and highest m the relations between the sexes. If we are really seeking for light on the problems of life to-day we know where to find it. "I am the Light of the World. He that followeth Me shall not walk m darkness, but shall have the Light of Life." "If the light that is m thee be darkness, how great is that darkness." F. W. MELBOURNE. (C. of E. Messenger.)