Ok, before you get either (a) upset or (b) overexcited, this is a continuation of my reading of Mere Christianity. Not a confession or admission about anything related to my own sexual appetite. :)

I'm sure anyone with eyes has noticed that sex is everywhere. As we all know, sex sells and it's used to sell things constantly. At a dinner the other night, I overheard some people discussing the Axe commercials in which nubile young women launch themselves at and appear unable to keep themselves away from young guys wearing the stuff. Commercials that I really don't want my little girl to oversee!

What is interesting to me is that if today's obsession with sex appears extreme, and it does to me, then we can only assume that there has been a period of the opposite extreme - aha! And we've all heard of the Victorian period and the stigmas associated with that - prim, prudish, sex is bad...

So I was very surprised to see an entire chapter in Mere Christianity devoted to sexual morality. Mr. Lewis was quick to point out that while certain religious groups have devoted themselves to and/or built their religion upon the belief that sex is entirely bad, it isn't and can't be since God created it. What has gone bad is our appetite for it. Or our instinct. Just as we are born with an instinct to eat, we are born with an instinct to procreate. However, the human appetite for sex is "in ludicrous and preposterous excess of its function." He says, ok, you can get a large audience together for a strip-tease act. But what would you think if you filled a room with people who eagerly watched someone slowly lift the lid off of a covered dish of food. Seriously, you'd be inclined to think the second scenario was taking place in Ethiopa, or some other country in the middle of a famine. To be so in a tizzy about food is just crazy. So, one could assume that in a society with such out of control sexual appetites, there must be a sort of sexual starvation. But there is no evidence for that in our society. On the other hand, Lewis points out that sexual appetites, like our other appetites, grow by indulgence. "Starving men may think much about food, but so do gluttons; the gorged, as well as the famished, like titillations."

He talks about how people say sex has become such a mess because it was hushed up for so long. But it hasn't been hushed up for YEARS, and maybe the whole reason the Victorian line of thinking ever got started is because sex had gotten so out of control to begin with. The pendulum always swings to extremes.

Lewis says when people say, 'Sex is nothing to be ashamed of', they may mean 'the state into which the sexual instinct has now got is nothing to be ashamed of' and if so, they are dead wrong. There is nothing wrong with enjoying your food, but if you spend all your time looking at pictures of food and drooling over it, there's a problem. An appetite out of whack. Which, if you think about it, may also be true in our society. Have there ever been more tv shows dedicated to the production of food? Does every other society have that craze or just America? We're certainly the fattest society around! Hm...I may be on to something.

But what I really love is how CS Lewis concludes his chapter. He says, the centre of Christian morality does not lie in sexual morality. If you think it's the supreme vice, sorry! Sins of the flesh are bad, but not the worst. The worst pleasures are purely spiritual and mostly related to pride! "For there are two things inside me, competing with the human self which I must try to become. They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self. The Diabolical self is the worse of the two. That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes to church regularly may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither."