1984 January/February issue Part 3

From Passion and Purity

How shall I speak of a few careless kisses as sin to a generation nurtured on the assumption that nearly everybody goes to bed with nearly everybody? Of those who flounder in the sea of permissiveness and self-indulgence, are there any who still search the sky for a beacon of purity? If I did not believe there were, I would not bother to write.

Purity, I fear, has gotten mixed up in people’s minds with the caricature of Puritanism, which, in the popular imagination, is a dour, brittle revolt against all the pleasures of the flesh. Puritans were in fact very earthy people, robust in their affirmation of life, not by any means “Victorian” (another word grossly misunderstood today in being made a synonym for all that is negative). Neither the concept of purity nor the doctrines of Puritans deny life. Rather they defer back to the very Giver of Life Himself. Purity means freedom from contamination, from anything that would spoil the taste or pleasure, reduce the power, or in any way  adulterate what the thing was meant to be. It means cleanness, clearness- no additives, nothing artificial- in other words, “all natural,” in the sense in which the Original Designer designed it to be.

Can I say categorically that a kiss is s sin? I can say that it might be. I can say that it might take the edge off, spoil the taste and the pleasure later on. It might reduce power. It might distract the heart.

It is a powerful lie that, because sexual desire is natural, healthy, and God-given, anything I do because of that desire is natural, healthy, and God-given. “How can anything that feels so good be so bad?” “Intimacy is an act of worship,” “Denying yourself the expression of that desire is dangerous- it’s repression, it’ll lead to perversion, etc.” “Nobody can control all that fire when he’s young.” Lies, all of them.

Christians who are buying such rubbish today are without honor. They have lost the notions of fidelity, renunciation, and sacrifice- because nothing seems worth all that.

A sampler of chapters from Passion and Purity.

• What women do to men
• Me, Lord? Single?
• Passion is a battleground
• How much can a kiss tell you?
• Oozing ache
• What to do with loneliness
• Honor above passion