Is Pleasure the Measure?
The Church & God’s Generational Measure

By Eunice Ray, Founder of RSVP America

These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, Genesis 2:4.

Introduction

For 50 years, the dominant teaching on “human sexuality” has been grounded in the work of the late Alfred Kinsey. Although Kinsey’s research has been shown to be deliberately flawed and thus fraudulent, this has not kept Christian individuals or institutions from being deeply influenced by his work, as many Christians and many Christian organizations today teach a seriously flawed “anything goes” Kinseyan view of human sexuality.

God has a very different focus than Kinsey: Without the encumbrances of morality and social mores, Kinsey focused on the “sex act” where pleasure is the measure. God’s focus is on the generative life process where each generation is measured by their obedience to His law standard. The Church must return to the more comprehensive generational perspective for only then will the Church and then the nation find relief from the harmful non-scriptural notions about “sex.”

The Kinsey View is Not New

Pre-Kinsey, “sex” was a biological or botanical term for dividing male and female, as in “male and female He created them.” It was not a term for physical intimacy inside or outside of marriage. Inside the marriage there was the “marital act” which was not discussed in public any more than in the Scriptures. Kinsey achieved his aim to make “sex” a common conversational topic. Pre-Kinsey physical intimacies outside of marriage, fornication, rape, sodomy, abortion, etc., were crimes. Again the Church’s understanding of human sexuality must expand from mere “sexual” acts.

Unfortunately, too often the Church can be found parroting the world’s (Kinseyan/Sex Education and Information Council of the United States (SEICUS)/Planned Parenthood) accusation that parents don’t or can’t teach their own children about “sex.” The Church bears the scriptural responsibility for pointing out to parents their right and duty to teach their own children about God’s generational life process, based upon the healthful pillars of purity and chastity.

Many in the Church support “Abstinence,” in hopes of reclaiming God’s order for life and its beginning. However, while Abstinence may be a political solution to the welfare drain of too many underage female “heads of household,” it is not a solution for the Church. Today, in the roiling public debate over whether to teach Abstinence vs. Sex Ed in the schools, the Church engages a dialectic tar baby. Whether Abstinence Educators or Sex Educators win the lion’s share of public funds, the Church loses, because there is no scriptural authority for the Church or school to teach other people’s children about “sex.”

Some Abstinence curricula are Kinseyan focusing largely on bodily parts, mechanics or the "act," and whether to do “it” or not, for any number of reasons (whether one is practicing “safe sex” or not). Because it is Kinseyan, Sex Education curricula generally and some abstinence curricula exchange Godly modesty for graphic terms and explicit “biological” or “medical” photographs and/or illustrations, which eroticize children. This was totally illegal in most states prior to Kinsey. For example, in Missouri until 1979, it was illegal to mention “sexual intercourse” to a “child under 21 years of age.”

Children are part of a generation: For he established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children: That the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children. Psalm 78:4-6.

The contrast between the teaching on human sexuality in pre-and post Kinsey America, is evident in Mrs. Woodallen Chapman’s direction in 1912 to parents in her influential book, How shall I tell my child? As God never uses explicit terminology or biological illustrations, Chapman’s teaching is delicate and effective in preserving modesty and purity. She writes:

…you see darling, father and mother are just two parts of a whole. A home isn’t really complete is it, unless there are both a father and mother in it? You have to have a father to be strong and brave and true; …and then you have a mother to be tender and careful and loving…

To the question asked of the author, “should I tell my daughter of fourteen everything?” Mrs. Chapman responded:

To tell her everything in detail as this mother suggests, might be to put her in a place of great danger. We must remember that, just at this period of her life, the creative forces of her being are receiving a new impulse. Not only are new powers awakening in her body, but in her mind as well. Especially is her imagination increasing greatly in its activity, and is prone to follow any suggestion made to it along the line of this new process of development. And therein lies the danger of the plan this mother proposes.

This pre-Kinsey protective counsel stands in stark contrast to the coarseness of today’s approach, even among some Christians. We see such an approach, for example in the Lutheran Church’s (Missouri Synod) widely distributed “Learning About Sex Series” (Concordia Publishing House, 1998), where we read:

When a husband and wife are feeling close and loving, they find a private place to be together … they kiss and caress each other … the husband’s erect penis is put into the wife’s vagina.

This series also promotes Kinsey’s position that children are sexual beings from birth. Concordia Sex Education Series Book # 6 (1998), under the heading Children are Sexual Beings Too, says:

It may be surprising to realize that our children are sexual beings from birth. For instance, a parent changing a male infant’s diaper may accidentally stimulate the child and be shocked to realize the child is having an erection. Similarly, researchers tell us that baby girls have vaginal lubrication regularly. In fact, a little girl being bounced on her parent’s knee may feel pleasant sensations and begin to make natural pelvic thrust movements.ⁱ

Every mother knows that a little boy will react this way with a need to urinate and not with sexual stimuli and a little girl naturally lubricates, as do boys, from all orifices (opening to the body) such as the nostrils, mouth, ears, etc. Lubrication is not an indication in little pre-pubescent girls of sexual stimuli.

The Church & God’s Generational Measure

God’s Perspective on Life and Physical Intimacy

Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children,

and their children another generation. Joel 1:3

The Church is the Bride of Christ, and the Bride’s mission is to once again restore God’s generational perspective of the life process and instill in children, not sex knowledge, but rather God’s law and the principles of duty, self-government and responsibility to bring about healing, renewal and restoration. Three Biblical elements are crucial in understanding God’s generational perspective:

• First, God is the God that “liveth” and alone gives life via generative human acts in the context of “generations.”

• This shall be written for the generation to come: and the people which shall be created shall praise the LORD. Psalm 102:18

  Second, God’s "Life Process" doesn’t focus on a mechanical physical acts. God created pleasure, it is however not His “measure,” as with Kinsey. God measures our obedience and faithfulness and that of each generation to Him. To focus solely on a the physical aspects of the life process degrades God’s perfect plan for His creatures.

• Third, parents (not sex or abstinence educators) have the responsibility for instructing their children, the next generation, in God’s life process, by instilling self-government and control while establishing the child’s larger appreciation for God’s order and economy for life and the procreative process. The discussion should never deviate from this basic theme or structure no matter what the child's age.

“One flesh” is the joining of the bodies and souls of two. The soul contains a person’s self-awareness, the "will, intellect, and emotion," and the body gives one an awareness of the world through the five senses. The "one flesh" talk in the church seems to focus too much on the pleasure capacity and not enough on the hard work of joining of two wills, intellects and emotional lives, so important to a Godly marriage and raising children. John Wesley’s colleague Adam Clarke's comment on “one flesh” in his 1810 Commenatary on the Bible says of "one flesh:" (1) "these two shall be considered as one body, having no separate or independent rights, privileges, cares, concerns, etc., each being equally interested in all things that concern the marriage state. (2) These two shall be for the production of "one flesh"; from their union a posterity shall spring as exactly resembling themselves as they do each other." Not a mention of “sex” or physical union between the couple only their “posterity.”

Before a new life becomes flesh, God knows a person before He formed them in their mother's womb (Jeremiah 1:5). That is the generational beginning of “life” for Christians. When a child asks where did he or she come from? The answer begins with a parent telling the child that it all began when God created a boy and a girl, who later formed the basis of a marriage. Then children were sent by God to this mother and father to form another generation. Today this may seem like a round about way to answer the question, but the generational life process cannot be reduced to, nor the required duty, responsibility or love measured by, a “sex” act, as Kinsey stunningly claimed in 1948.

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. Ecclesiastes 1:4

God speaks in terms of “generations” (genesis, generations, generative, genitalia, etc., are all from the same Greek root to beget, or to be born). Webster defines generation as; “the act of begetting, a single succession in natural descent, as the children of the same parents; hence an age, a family, a race.”

God created a perfect (useful for its intended purpose) mate for mom (gena) and dad (genaga). Fundamentally, God begins and joins life, not man and/or woman. It is up to a self-governing individual to eschew lust, greed, envy or carelessness in regard to the life process. According to God’s plan, as individuals grow from youth to maturity, God prepares the hearts of prospective mates to undertake the responsibilities of caring for each other and for any new life He might send through them into the world.

When they meet later in their lives, God knits their hearts together. During their courting, they commit themselves to God’s commands not to give in to fleshly expressions of their budding love, but rather to be chaste and pure and not to put themselves into circumstances that would give even the appearance of evil. They each seek God’s and their parents’ blessing for their life commitment to each other.

For the present generation: Now also when I am old and greyheaded, O God, forsake me not; until I have showed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come.

Psalm 71:18

They commit before God (and man) in the marriage covenant. The generation’s faithfulness to God is measured by its obedience and self-government, the first government necessary for establishing a household. A child is taught self-government from youth and trained in its discipline. In marriage, a family government is established, and only then, with these two governments established and well running, is it possible for individuals to enter the wider ranging duty and responsibility of church government, state government, or both. In life, the duty to one’s God, civil government and family must all be tended or “kept” as Adam was charged to “keep” the Garden, because without Godly civil government, there is no protection for the family.

At the head of the Christian household is the husband, a calling that requires him to protect and provide for his wife and family. He needs to be prepared from youth to occupy and fulfill the office and duties of husband and father. The scripture teaches the primary responsibility for premarital purity is with this man who would someday head a household. Contrary to the world’s message girls do not have the primary duty to keep the purity standard. The world’s absolution of “Boys will be boys,” does not excuse the passionate indiscretions of men or boys outside of marriage and the scriptural penalties are severe for this general lack of self-government as demonstrated in this specific lack of self control. Ecclesiastes 7:26 tells of a woman who seduces a sinner before marriage. God tell us that the man is always responsible to be in Godly authority no matter how great the seduction leveled at his self control.

If the man is in Godly authority over his passions, he is qualified to freely lead his household. The man provides a house, and the mother makes it a home and an economic center (Proverbs 31). She and her husband together are responsible for any children God sends to their union, the next generation. Over the years together, they grow in their love one for the other to the degree they follow the Lord and as they love and honor each other as He directs in Ephesians 5:22 and following and many other Scriptures.

God expects chastity to be a life-long state. Not just for our youth, but also for those married or living alone. One achieves a chaste state as a result of being chastened, “for whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth” (Hebrews 12:6) and there are immeasurable blessings for the chaste for “blessed is the man whom thou chasteneth” (Psalm 94:12). That the marriage bed is to be chaste and “undefiled (Hebrews 13:4) was not news to Americans pre-Kinsey and Playboy, because outside the “marital act” - heterosexual coitus in marriage - all other acts constituted either “offenses against persons” or “crimes against morality” and were illegal and/or criminal in most states. For example, in the law sodomy was considered an “unnatural” act and in many state codes included oral, anal and bestiality. Sodomy was a crime whether between those of the same sex or opposite sex, married or unmarried. Sodomy was “unnatural” because it was not a “natural use” of the woman to use the alimentary canal as a genital (Romans 1). Life-long chastity precludes acts within marriage like sodomy, because to “defile” the marriage bed meant, “to corrupt chastity ; to debauch ; to violate ; to tarnish the purity of character by lewdness” (Noah Webster 1828).

Holding to a moral generational perspective positively influences a nation’s strength: “In God We Trust” at the head; His law order at the basis of the nation’s law order setting the overarching direction for the country; self-governing men responsible to God are required to lead the nation and their families. Then, like the Church, as the Bride of Christ, women traditionally set the country’s moral tone knowing God’s life process and that generational order and discipline are built upon two indispensable supports, chastity and purity. As Alexis de Toqueville wrote in 1831:

If I were asked … to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of that [American] people ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply: To the superiority of their women. No free communities ever existed without morals, and morals are the work of a woman, consequently whatever affects the condition of women, their habits and their opinions has great political importance in my eyes.

And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation. Luke 1:50

In Conclusion, the Church’s focus on the sexual "act" must be placed within the context of God’s generational perspective on life and questions of physical intimacy, or Christians may find themselves offering at best only a gentler, kinder and more prudent form of Kinseyan. Kinsey’s focus on the "act" alone is a mere formality in God’s life process, because God is the life-giver! Revival, restoration of civility and the protections for America’s most vulnerable citizens, women and children, will only be possible, when a generation of Americans return to prayer and obedience to God. The entire world sings and makes images about the "act," but it has not life. Only God sends life and its renewal from generation to generation.