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Notes and references for Sunday School 11/21/99 and 11/28/1999 From our Bible Lesson of 11/21 we read about the attempted seduction of Joseph by Potiphar’s wife: Gen 39:11-15 Joseph refused out of an ethical responsibility to his boss. The story doesn’t comment on what Joseph’s behavior would have been had the same thing happened between him and a single girl. What do you think would have been appropriate in that case? Would there have been a moral reason for refusing the woman even if she were single? Well, let’s look at that situation. Mrs. Eddy was not unfamiliar with the subject physical temptation, lust, etc and dealt with them bluntly. She asks in Mis 250:3, “By what strange perversity is the best become the most abused,--either as a quality or as an entity? Mortals misrepresent and miscall affection; they make it what it is not, and doubt what it is. The so-called affection pursuing its victim is a butcher fattening the lamb to slay it. What the lower propensities express, should be repressed by the sentiments. No word is more misconstrued; no sentiment less understood. The divine significance of Love is distorted into human qualities, which in their human abandon become jealousy and hate.” At one point in her writings she also defended British barmaids (prostitutes, one presumes). Mis 296:25-28 When we lower our concept of womanhood to the object of physical pleasure and sex appeal we attack the very basis of man’s spiritual identity and individuality. In doing so we weaken our own ability to express spiritual dominion. Now this flies right in the face of what we are being told by television sitcoms, movies, and magazines. In our media today we are told that premarital sex is acceptable, fun, normal and abstinence, purity and high moral standards are passe, belonging to some other generation. These are the 90’s after all. One needs only to watch Ally McBeal and Friends or read the articles in Vogue to find that there is nothing wrong with living together out of marriage, to have casual sex or worse, be totally indiscriminate. The question I pose to each of you is, “Are you willing to hold yourself and your relationships to a higher standard then what the material world holds before you?” The purpose of Sunday School is not to discuss sex per se but to learn of our spiritual identities and how to have dominion in our human experience. Isn’t that what we all want? Dominion over matter and not matter’s dominion over us? Mrs. Eddy writes on page 260 of Science and Health: “If we look to the body for pleasure, we find pain;...Now reverse this action. Look away from the body into Truth and Love, the Principle of all happiness, harmony and immortality.” There is no such thing as selfless sex. It is not a good deed you are doing for someone else. Sex is always selfish. It is the seeking of physical pleasure from another and sometimes at the expense of another. Prior to marriage it represents a larger part of the relationship. Marriage involves selflessness. It requires a real investment into the good of the home, the family and your partner. Sexual activity after marriage is still fulfilling a physical need but it is balanced in the relationship with a great deal more selfless giving not getting. Look at how Mrs. Eddy links the words sensuality and selfishness in the following sentences from the textbook: Mis 293:27 S&H 22:4-6 Vibrating like a pendulum between sin and the hope of forgiveness,--selfishness and sensuality causing constant retrogression,--our moral progress will be slow. S&H 260:24 Notice in the last sentence how selfishness and sensualism are at the expense of spiritual growth. Why are you in Sunday School if not to learn how to grow spiritually? Whether or not you choose to be sexually active out of wedlock is your business and no one else’s. Just remember that your ability to have dominion in your life is a function of the quality (the purity) of your thought. Your healing effectiveness depends on your moral courage and holding yourself to that higher standard I mentioned earlier. Do you have the courage to take a stand against the compromises being rationalized by the world’s opinion? Sexual activity can be put into five categories. On the one extreme there is promiscuity and pornography. On the other extreme there is abstinence. See Mrs. Eddy’s absolute condition required for total spiritual unity: What about the middle ground? Casual sex, sex in a committed relationship and sex in a marriage are varying levels of activity that fall between promiscuity and abstinence. The first three levels of sexual activity (all before or outside of marriage) are filled with problems. You will start a series of dominoes that make things very complicated and weaken your ability to heal. Why? Because is changes your priorities toward finding pleasure in matter and building relationships on what you can get from a another person. You must then deal with birth-control, unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, insecurity, lying, and on and on… Just one example: How does a girl depend on spiritual healing in Christian Science while at the same time she depends on a drug (the pill) to keep form getting pregnant? Marriage is a legal provision for the protection of the woman. The woman should never give up those rights. The man may offer “I love you” to get sex and the woman, more times than not, will give sex to hear those words. It’s a minefield. Don’t buy into such nonsense. Be man enough to respect the rights of women and be woman enough to defend your rights. The higher example of manhood and womanhood you exhibit the better the partner you ill attract into your life. So follow Mrs. Eddy’s advice from S&H 393:10-13: “Take possession of your body, and govern its feeling and action. Rise in the strength of Spirit to resist all that is unlike good.” |
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