Passions 5

St. Seraphim’s Fellowship
P.O. Box 351656
Jacksonville, Fl. 32235-1656

~ Introduction to the Passions ~

Part 6: The Matter of Sex


Dear Inmate:

I want you to imagine that you are an observer to a private conversation that is taking place between two individuals. One person is a loving Christian father and the other is his teenage son. You have been invited to hear this exchange by Jesus Christ himself. You and The Lord are sitting together on a sofa, and He has His hand on your shoulder. He has invited you to listen because He loves you and knows this particular father very well. He knows that he will give very good and loving advice to his son. The Lord wants you to hear the conversation because He knows you are serious about getting rid of pride and he is concerned that you get real insight to your own sex life from this example. Listen….the conversation has begun…

The father began, suppose someone walked up to you and said, “What’s the big deal about Christians holding back on Sex? Man, it’s beautiful, and it’s wonderful, and don’t you Christians believe in using everything God gave you? Then what’s your hang-up?” Would you have an answer for him, I mean one that doesn’t sound childish and embarrassing? Isn’t it true that we are supposed to use and enjoy everything God has given us? Remember the parable of the talents? The man, who received a talent from God and then just went and buried it, instead of using it, was a loser. God said, “If anyone doesn’t use what I’ve given him, I’ll take it away.”

But using sex is quite an art. There are many psychological ways, as well as many physical ways, to use sex. You know how sometimes you use money best by not using it, by saving it? If you spend it on a lot of little snacks and doodads along the way, you won’t get the skis you want, or the car you want, or the camping trip, or the vacation you want. Using sex is quite a bit like using money, it takes some know how to use sex so that so that it brings you the greatest pleasure it can.

The best way to think about sex is to step back for a minute to the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve had everything that they could possibly want. The story of Eden, by the way, is clothing or analogy or allegory for God’s truth about us. If you see John going down the street, you don’t say. “Look, there goes some men’s clothing, and John seems to be in it.” You say, “There goes John.” The story of Eden is like that. It says only what the truth inside it says, just as John’s clothes move when John moves. So we don’t say, “There is a biblical story; perhaps it has some truth in it.” We say, “There is the truth about us, dressed in a biblical story so we can recognize it.” The story of Eden is the truth about what we basically are and what kind of situation we are in when we are born. There is no psychology, and no philosophy, and nothing that has ever been written about what we are like, that is so entirely true as the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Anyway, God showed Adam around (as a man, I was always happy to know that this was before Eve was created.) and invited him to use and enjoy everything in Eden. Then he gave his first commandment. He said, “Do not eat of the tree that yields knowledge of good and evil” (Gen 2:17) Have you ever noticed that he didn’t say that it was bad? Then why did he say not to eat of it? The truth is that it was because Adam was too young, too newly created, to handle the potent stuff that was in the fruit, the knowledge of good and evil. You don’t just become created, or just become an adult, and right away tackle something like the knowledge of good and evil. That’s like going to the snake farm and trying to take the venom out of a rattlesnake when you haven’t been trained to do it. It’s like going into battle when you have not learned to take commands or shoot a rifle. That’s why God said, “In the day that you eat of that fruit, you shall surely die.” The tree of knowledge was for trial and proof and training.

"This knowledge is a good thing for those who are mature, but an evil thing for the immature, being like solid food to tender babes who are still in need of milk". (Icon of Basil the Great)

"The tree of knowledge was good, and it’s fruit was good. For it was not the tree, but the disobedience, which had death in it. For there was nothing in the fruit but knowledge, and knowledge is good when one uses it discreetly. But Adam, being only an infant in age, was not yet able to receive knowledge worthily". (Icon of Theophilus)

So Adam and Eve became subject to death because they didn’t obey God and wait to mature spiritually and then taste of the tree of knowledge, when God said they were ready for it. And they were cast of Eden. Do you have any idea what Eden means in the Hebrew language? It means “delight,” they lost their delight, their happiness, by not sticking with God and letting Him train them gradually for more mature experiences. That should ring some bells for all of us!

Do you begin to see the connection? Sex is your fruit tree in Eden. What people say about it is true, it’s beautiful, and it’s wonderful, and it’s a gift from God. But eat of it too soon, and you will run into trouble, like Adam and Eve. Sex has not been given to you at a young age just by accident. God could have waited until you were psychologically mature and ready for a family, just as He could have kept the tree of knowledge away from Adam and Eve until they matured a little. Except that there is no way to become mature without undergoing some tests of character, without standing on your own adult feet and choosing God when you are quite free to choose something else if you’d rather.

(Note: I started my letters to you in this introduction to the passions by telling you that you are an adult after you are about twelve years old. Your sexual maturity is the biggest part of that, because it’s your first spiritual challenge. It’s your first opportunity to choose God freely, to protect your own life psychologically, and to increase your own capacity for happiness.)

You see son, Adam and Eve died because they didn’t save their tree of knowledge for later. How do you lose some of your life if you eat of your fruit tree, sex, before God gets you trained for it? There are many ways. The worst, I think, is that you stop growing emotionally if you start using sex almost as soon as it comes to life in you and keep using it freely from then on. Spiritually you are not full-grown. If you were to lace some boots onto your feet when you were not yet physically, full-grown, and never take them off, you would have child size feet when you became an adult, as the Chinese women used to have. That’s what happens when you wrap yourself up in sex before you are full-grown psychologically. You don’t grow much, and your sexual ability does not grow. It is laced into your adolescent idea of what it should be like, and it never gets to be as big an experience as it is meant to be by nature.

There are millions of older people who cannot have mature sexual experiences, because their sex is still reflecting their adolescent personalities. They may have physical satisfaction (though many do not!), but there is not strength, no personality, no beauty, no love, no nothing in it. Their sex is about as exciting and tender as shaking hands with a stuffy politician. Many of these people are frantically trying to get the one thing that will make them worse instead of better, more sex. They think that if they practice more, something that is absolutely unnecessary for a healthy person, and if women get more seductive, and if men make more conquests, they think that then they will be more womanly or manlier. The world has become so insane from the passion of pride, born from ignorance, that it really believes having lots of sex is what makes girls womanly and boys manly. Nothing could be further from the truth. What makes us become mature men and women is not the animal in us (any ordinary dog or cat can have successful sex!) but the God in us. Only God’s spiritual food and God’s careful training will bring us into what we were created to be, into full manhood. How can anyone, unless his brain is half asleep, imagine that he can become a man without doing anything strong, or anything difficult, or anything courageous? Only somebody really wild can think that having as much sex as he feels like will magically turn him into a mature man. Sex has never yet made a man or a woman out of a single person, and it never will. Used wrongly, it does just the opposite, makes people perpetually weak and childish. But a truly mature man and woman can make a stirring and ecstatic thing out of sex.

Blessed is the man who endures temptations; for when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. (James 1:12)

Maturing is something you can’t do unless you develop the ability to say no when it’s really hard to say. Most of us have an inclination to say no at times, but it’s not easy to actually do it. People will accuse us of being afraid or weak or stupid, which is strange, because having the power to say no is usually a sign of courage and strength and wisdom. Or people will ask what our reasons are. That’s strange too. If you say yes when they want you to do something, they never ask what your reasons are. It’s only when you say no. So when they ask for reasons, it must mean they don’t like your answer and are trying to force you to change your mind; they aren’t honestly curious about your reasons. Then why give them any? Why not just stick to your answer and immediately change the subject?

God backs up all of our desires to say no when we should by matching his commandments with our deepest and best natural instincts, so that we can take hold of one of his commandments to support ourselves when someone is trying to lead us into a mess. Once a young man was persistently trying to talk a teen-aged girl into sex. They were walking past a public library. Tired of arguing, she said, “Do you see that library? It has all kinds of Bibles and books written by the saints. If you can go in there and find even one of them who agrees with you, then I’ll say OK.” It was so easy. They were friends for a long time after that, but sex was never a problem again. When you take a stand backed up by God’s commandments, then everything starts getting simpler. (This is much easier after a person has received a proper Baptism and Chrismation in God’s Holy Church, for then he also has the strong assistance of the Holy Spirit received in that sacrament.)

"A man who wishes to act rightly receives from God the power to act, no matter where he is". (Icon of Simeon the New Theologian)

Greater is He that is in you Than he who is in the world. (1 John:4:4)

Son, when people reach your age they have had so many do’s and don’ts thrown at them for so many years that they are awfully tired of commandments. But look how you love it when your coach gives you orders that finally land you in the game, really playing. When commandments are going to lead you into new abilities and new experiences, you love them even if they mean a lot of hard work and self-discipline. God’s commandments lead you to an opened-up life within yourself that you can hardly dream of until you’ve experienced it. He is your supreme coach and your devoted instructor, training you for the kind of full life and deep personality that your own heart is made for and really wants.

You’ll be surprised to learn what the misuse of sex, which always stops your growth as a man, comes from. It comes from having in us too much pride. (This is what has been emphasized in all my previous letters.) The passion of pride is called the “unclean passion.” All the passions are unclean of course, but pride is especially called unclean, because to all holy people, there is something so completely filthy and repulsive about mere men confusing themselves with the pure God, imagining that the kingdom and the holy power and the infinite glory of the Lord are things that could come out of us. As the fathers say, uncleanness obviously doesn’t start with sex or anything physical, because the devil does not have sex or any other physical needs but is still the most unclean of all creatures. It is because of his pride that he is called unclean. And when sex is used before spiritual and emotional maturity, that means that it is sex resulting from pride, so the uncleanness of pride is in it and pollutes it, in the same way that foul waste pollutes a river.

Everyone who exalts his heart is unclean before God. (Proverbs 16:5)

The people became proud in their imaginations, and their foolish
heart was darkened, so God gave them up to uncleanness, to dishonor their own bodies among themselves. (Romans 1:21,24)

Unclean sex is a counterfeit of real love. It makes people look warm-hearted when they aren’t. It makes them appear affectionate when there is no real affection in them. You will discover more and more in your own life, that only self control produces love and affection, because love and affection take real strength, something self-indulgent people never have. Certain people, called “stoics” (People who are loaded with a desire to look virtuous and be admired for it) can have terrific self-control on the outside even though they’re thoroughly mixed up and immature and sort of dirty on the inside. But you don’t get self control over your body without first getting control over your mind. And you don’t ever get control over your mind until you are freed from the passion of pride. Self-control and self-discipline produce the most significant human performances we ever see in life, all the top medal winners in the Olympics and all the top medal winners in the contest of everyday living.

Self-indulgence is the opposite of self-control. It makes you forget about the other person. No matter how politely you pretend to be interested in him, you are really thinking only about what he will give to you or do for you. Self-indulgence produces emotional weakness, hardness of heart, and very, very cold feelings. It tries to cover itself up with warm, lustful expressions, so that you won’t see how cold it is on the inside. Self-indulgent people don’t care about anything that happens to you, or about how you feel or what you think: they care only about getting everything they want out of you, and they try to do it by being very charming and flattering toward you. When self-indulgent people say they love you, it’s the same as when they drool over a beefsteak and tell you how much they love it. To them, sex is just a better tasting beefsteak. So if you are ever about to melt away under their charm, ask yourself this question; “do I really want to be anyone’s sloppy old beefsteak?” The more unclean sex such people indulge in, the more hard hearted and cold and emotionally barren they become, no matter how good or loving they appear on the outside. When people are filled with this coldness, this pride and self-indulgence, their sex is unclean even if they are married.

Indulging in unclean sex gives a person such inner coldness and selfishness that he is completely unable to have good emotional responses to sexual experience later on. Very often, also, because he is so greedy and self-centered and mentally immature, someone who really knows him can’t stand him physically. His mate will find constant excuses not to have sex with him, and that makes him feel like no man at all, which to tell the truth, he isn’t. You’d be surprised to know how many of the people who try to push sex on you, both commercially and personally, are people whose own sex lives are unsuccessful. Most people who are suffering will try to pull you in with them. And one reason so many people are pushing so hard to get young people into premature sex is that there is such a tremendous sexual failure in this whole country today. They’re so frustrated they just want to haul you in the quicksand with them, so that at least you won’t be any better than they are. There are people for whom sex has become a drug. They crave it and wouldn’t be without it. They’re convinced it builds up their self-confidence, makes them feel they’re really living. They are in the worst state of all. Sex completely controls them after awhile, so they will hurt any other person and go into any situation, however dangerous, even crime and danger of disease, to get sex. Son, there are even some people who have been so filled with unclean pride that they have raped and murdered to satisfy their own lusts. They do things that if they were normal, they just wouldn’t do. These unfortunate people always seem to prey upon those who cannot defend themselves. Many of these people are also hung up on other addictions, like alcohol and drugs. They’re people who fiercely hate themselves and their lives, because pride has thrust them into so many painful failures and disappointments. They are pathetically babyish and self-centered. Half the time they are almost unable to be aware of another person, let alone care about him. They are possessed by many passions, and that pressure gives them an agony inside themselves that is completely indescribable. Some of them hate themselves most, and some of them hate others most. Every one of them is silently screaming and committing suicide in his own way.

Falling into unclean sex, which is a very easy thing for a person to see, is always they result of first having been immersed in the unclean passion of pride, which is not so easy to see. Do you realize how important it is, then, to get rid of that passion of pride? As long as it is in us, we are almost bound to get tangled up with unclean sex and other unclean physical things as well, like alcohol and dope. When unclean sex becomes a temptation or a problem, they most important thing to pray for is deliverance from pride. Along with prayer. To be delivered from pride, you need to avoid getting too close to an opportunity to have sex, especially when someone you know might want to get you into it. Because after a certain point, particularly for men, sex is awfully hard to control. The fathers say that putting sex together with too much temptation is like putting fire close to gunpowder.

"So, my brother, flee this fire, for you are gunpowder, and never dare to think in your conceit that you are damp gunpowder, moistened with the water of good and firm will. Never rely on the firmness of your resolve, because frequent occasions of being alone in private will gradually dry up the moisture of your good intentions. (Quote from Unseen Warfare an Classic Orthodox Book)

If you try to stay out of sexual involvement just because you are intimidated be me, your father, or your mother, or some other authority, first of all you probably won’t succeed. And if you do, you probably won’t be a whole lot better off psychologically than the people who weaken themselves with promiscuity. You will not have used sex by controlling it and putting it in the bank. You will have avoided it by throwing it into the ditch. The same is true of trying to stay out of sexual involvement for sentimental reasons, like thinking sex is a glowing treasure which you must save for the one and only. Sex is the most common thing in the world. Sex is no treasure, you are! It’s not a matter of saving up your sex for someone. It’s a matter of developing your real self for someone, so that when the sex is there, your whole unique, grown-up personality will be there with it.

There is no sense in kidding yourself on this point. You will not benefit by refraining from sex just because somebody tells you to, and you will not benefit by having sex just because somebody tells you to. With sex, you will win only by taking a strong position that is all your own. And you will only take a healthy position if you sincerely want to become a mature person. Why does Christianity say that sex belongs only in marriage? There are a number of beautiful reasons. But the one I want to mention is that there’s no way on earth to mature without responsibilities and difficulties and adjustments, all of which are necessary in marriage, but are not necessary when you’re just living with someone and can leave anytime the going gets rough. You can’t believe how basically infantile and self-centered people are who keep having sex without any responsibilities to go with it. The reason our society is so infantile, from a Christian point of view, is that it’s constantly reaching for everything it wants and constantly running to every conceivable escape hatch to avoid responsibility. That is profoundly sick! And besides, were running very low on escape hatches these days.

Infantilism, which comes from endless self-indulgence and utterly destroys human character, is a pagan thing. But maturity, which comes from accepting the challenges and responsibilities that are natural to us, is the mark of Christianity. That’s one reason Christianity is so great, every law in it works to bring us into mature experiences. When it says not to have sex outside of marriage, it does it so we will become courageous people, capable of loving and respecting and even sacrificing for one another, and capable of running our lives the way we want to, instead of getting bogged down in a childish existence that keeps us inwardly ashamed of ourselves for being so wishy-washy and never satisfies us or wins the respect of anyone living with us as we grow older.

By now son, you can see that a person who fails to meet this first challenge of adulthood, who will not say no to his fruit tree in his Garden of Eden, is going to lose all his natural powers to some extent, depending upon how long he continues to give in to self-indulgence. That’s because if you can’t say no to your fruit tree, it’s a sure sign you won’t be able to say it to anything else that’s important either. You won’t be able to control your work, your bank account, your various appetites, or your family. Most men obviously aren’t controlling their wives or their children, or much else in the world of human relationships, very well today. The reason is that they are not mature men with God’s authority in them; they are middle aged adolescents.

Man is the person to whom God gave His law and all His instructions, and man is supposed to have control of his wife and children so that he can keep them safely in God’s hand. There is a profound psychological reason for this, which I will have to talk to you about later, when you are more mature. You cannot protect anyone you cannot control. You have to have enough control of a horse to stop it from hurting itself when it becomes startled and wants to take off, or enough control of your dog to call it back from the main highway when it goes out for a run. The only reason for a man to have control over his own household is to protect it. But the desire to protect, and therefore the ability to control, comes only from love. I mean really mature love that has strength and endurance and courage and humility in it. Man has lost his control because he has smothered so much of his capacity to love. This has happened because, through pride, he has lost sight of God. Consequently, he is not experiencing God’s love and protection himself, so he can’t pass it on to anyone else.

When you lose the experience of love and protection at the top, you lose it all the way down the line, from men to women to children to animals to nature itself. The whole picture goes out of control, except for the individuals who work hard to reconnect themselves with God. So Men who have not matured and experienced God’s loving protection themselves can’t love and protect their families. They haven’t the power to take loving and protective control of their wives and children. The women rise up and nag at them, and spend too much money, and keep rubbing it in that these men are emotional failures. And their children insult them, disobey them, and show no respect or consideration of any kind for them. Our fiery prophet, Isaiah, describes this terrible predicament better than anyone else can, when he foretells some of the things that are happening in our world today.

And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbor, the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honorable. Isaiah 3:5

As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths. Isaiah 3:12

To survive what the world has become, to avoid losing your natural ability to love, and avoid losing control of yourself and your whole family, follow the advice of the wisest and most loving people on earth, God’s Holy Saints. Get control of yourself, by your own self, at every opportunity God gives you to do it. Do it with prayer, with confession, with communion, with religious talks and meditations. When you have even fairly reasonable control of yourself, you already have something like a million dollars in your spiritual bank, plenty to start a home and a family with. You won’t be living the way most of the world is living, and I’m sure you realize that will make things difficult sometimes. But once we have our God and His loving purpose for us in our hearts, we can stand up and face a whole world of immaturity and not be moved by it.

"We recognize the nature of this present time from the Teachings shown us by
the scriptures; and having Formed our opinion according to God, we live our
lives In Him". (Icon of Basil the Great)

Be not conformed to this world, but Be transformed by the renewing of your Mind, so you can accomplish the good And perfect will of God. (Romans 12:12)

At this time, the father and son end their conversation and their image fades out from your view....

You are still on the sofa with Christ Himself. He still has His hand on your shoulder. He looks into your eyes with the Love that only Father God could have and he smiles at you with understanding. This is what He says: “OK, let us reason together, I have known, since before the foundation of the earth, that you would be right there in that cell. I know why your there. I know everything about you from the very second you were conceived in your mother’s womb. I know every thought you have ever had. I know every bad break you have been confronted with. I know every sin and every evil thing you have ever done, or that has been done to you. I know how you feel at this very moment in time. Listen, I let you listen to this conversation, between a good father and his son, for one reason only. It wasn’t because I wanted you to compare your life with theirs and feel worse about yourself. It was because this is always what I wanted for you.

Ok, I know what’s happened! I know how you have missed it. I know how you have been hurt. But I want you to know one thing! It’s not too late. You still have life, you still have breath. Your mind still works. Your soul can still be cleansed, I can help you. I Love you! You don’t have much time! Repent.

Jesus is always telling everyone to repent, not just you, but everyone, because we all have the same sin in us that causes us to die. He doesn’t want to see us die physically, before we have a chance to die to the sin that is in us. Die to that sin right now, he says, and I will give you life. You’ll be resurrected into the love of Christ, who gave up his own life just so this could happen to you. The whole point of being a Christian is dying to your old sinful life, by repentance and baptism, and being resurrected into your true and eternal self, with God and all those who are with Him, treasuring and caring for you., healing your heart, making you a new person, and loving you forever. This wonderful life is open to anyone who repents, no matter what his sins may have been…because, as the saints say;

"there is no unforgivable sin except that sin that is not repented" (Icon of Isaac of Syria).

So come to life, by repenting. Have you found God? Ask the saints. Then you have found Life.

1 John 5:12
He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.


In Christ’s Mercy,

Brother Seraphim