On Sex and Death I

Once again, a week has gone by without a post. All I can say is

Anywise, I had a poetry professor in college who told us adamantly that whatever did not acknowledge sex or death was kitsch and therefore not worth his time. What resulted was a slew of either hyper-sexualized or mopey poetry about cats dying. My professor seemed rather pleased with this, but I can't help thinking that his statement was considerably more true than even he seemed to realize. This will be a long post, so I'm going to break it up into installments. Hopefully just two, but I do have an easy tendency toward windbaggery, so we'll see.
First, I know I'll have to argue about what "sex" is. I know this because I am a red-blooded 'Murican who has grown up watching tv and movies and listening to music and being exposed to advertising and reading books and driving on highways and opening magazines and walking down city blocks and being told how to look in order to be "attractive" and having unbridled access to the internet and watching friends try to "be cool" and (when I got old enough) walking into bars and (yes, I admit it) clubs and going to high school and going to college and pumping gas and going through drive thru's and looking both ways before crossing the street and being a runner and telling jokes and etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
The point is that no matter what, no matter what, we are bombarded with Sex, and a particular idea of it.

Did I mention how much I love love love Mary Worth? Well I do. And I'm getting to it, Mary.

Sex has been commodified into an easy equation which, baldly stated, goes like this: sex = fulfillment. This idea is used first and foremost as a manipulative means of selling products. Look at nearly any advertising, whether it be for body spray or a car. The way it works is to tell the viewer that if they purchase this product, achieve this look, smell like this, grow or don't grow their hair in this way, wear these clothes, eat this food, drink this beer, etc, they will be fulfilled. We all want fulfillment. We will spend our lives seeking that fulfillment. The problem with advertising is that it very, very often resorts to the clear lie that (usually casual) sexual intercourse = fulfillment. How do I know this is a lie? Because if it wasn't, it would be the absolute last  thing the advertising industry would want to rely on. Advertising does not want to sell us happiness. It wouldn't work - we'd all buy the product and never have to buy anything else again. Advertising wants to lie to us: "buy this product! It will make you happy!... Oh, you're right, that didn't make you happy, did it? Well, buy this other product!" Or "Buy this product! It will get you sex! Wait, you're not happy yet? Well it can't be us, there must be something wrong with you, so, um, buy this other product!"

Entertainment works the same way. Why are casual sexual encounters so popularly depicted in movies, tv shows, books, etc? Precisely because they are not fulfilling. They bring us, the viewer, back for more. If pornography were fulfilling, how could it so often turn into addiction? This is the lie: fulfillment is to be found in this thing. It is an object. It is something that you can get for yourself, if only you could get just enough of this thing. Imagine any substance other than sex here. To the addict, this sounds perfectly reasonable. To the non-addict, it sounds perfectly insane. Then why is sex any different? We come across all sorts of examples in entertainment where characters think that if they just have sex, they will be happy/better/more fulfilled. 

For instance: I, like most people, was super happy, at least initially, with Fox's show "New Girl" starring Zooey Deschanel and several other fantastically talented actors. 

What was great about this show was the characters. The writing is hilarious and clever, the actors are engaging, and the show at first felt very refreshing. What's the problem? After a few episodes like this, every one of the characters is openly and apparently happily having sex with various and sundry. There was one point in an early episode where one of the characters makes a really lame comment and another character looks at him in dismay and says "You really need to get laid."

So what's going on here? Sex is an activity that people perform in order to achieve other ends, regardless of the person they are performing this activity with. Why have sex? So that you can stop being lame and be a better you. The absurdity here is the exact same with advertising: there is no thing that will fulfill you. As long as sex is conceived as a "thing," it will be disappointing, addictive, and depressing. 

Let's take a step back for a second and talk about sex. 

(I was about to google for an image to use after that sentence, then realized such an action just wouldn't be any good for my immortal soul)

We're told since health class in sixth or fifth or whatever grade (or earlier if our parents were irresponsible enough to let us watch MTV) that "sex" = ...well, I don't need to tell you, we're all adults here, right? RIGHT?! But the modern conception of sex is a shockingly narrowed one.

No, no I haven't. Maybe because they never gave me healthy idea of sexuality. 

Sexual intercourse? I hate to break it to you, but you and I are having sexual intercourse right now. How so? Because we are sexed beings - our sexuality is fundamental to our personhood, to our being created in God's image and likeness. Hopefully I'll talk about that more in a later post; it's already late and I've got much more to say here. But the point is that reducing sex to merely an activity separates our identity from our being. Too philosophical? This reduction and separation means that men can have surgeries to become women and women can have surgeries to become men. Because if sex is an activity that = fulfillment, it has nothing to do with how we have been created. The thought that identity follows being (in other words, that our personal identity is fundamentally related to how we have been created as sexed beings) requires humility and submission, two qualities that our modern minds buck against almost immediately.

Now, I know I've straw-manned this pretty terribly, but it really is that simple. But just because it is simple does not mean that this thought that sex = fulfillment is negligible. Take St. Augustine, for instance. After years of sleeping around, he realized that he wasn't being fulfilled. How did he react to this? Eventually he stopped, but not before praying "Lord, make me chaste, but not yet."

Why did he pray this? Because he wasn't done with the lie. He knew it was a lie, he recognized how unhealthy and harmful it was, but he couldn't help but continue to seek that fulfillment in the lie. What then is the answer? See his other, greater prayer: "Our hearts are restless, Lord, until they rest in you." We can know this, we can desire this, we can even long for this rest, but still the lie will be there to whisper that there is an easier way to be fulfilled than by resting in Christ.

AND HERE IS THE DEATH!!! Apart from actual ceasing of body functions such as breathing and heart pumping cellular regeneration and etc, death permeates our lives, and not at all in a bad way, either. But this is quite long enough for now. Hopefully I'll write Part II tomorrow, but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.