Posted on 08/02/2014 4:45:29 AM PDT by Kaslin
Back in the 1950s, C.S. Lewis saw chastity as under attack with "all the contemporary propaganda for lust that makes people "feel that the desires we are resisting are so 'natural,' so 'healthy,' and so reasonable, that it is almost perverse and abnormal to resist them."
You can now safely delete the word "almost."
Today virginity isn't a virtue but a burden. Chastity is a freak show and anyone who chooses to keep it is a carnival barker. In today's entertainment world, weirdos -- especially sexual weirdos -- drive a juicy plot, so virgins are in vogue, as a target or merely as an anthropological curiosity.
MTV has a new reality show called "Virgin Territory" where four young participants explain their "very tumultuous journey" in the "tricky world of virginity." MTV sells it as pathos: "Whether they're trying to lose their V-cards or keep them safely tucked in their pockets for as long as possible, being pure is really starting to grate on them."
MTV's Executive Vice President of Series Development Lauren Dolgen tried to make this sound like a public service. Because of a partnership with The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, she claimed, "MTV will continue this tradition by elevating the discussion of responsible sexual health to include the topic of virginity in a way that our audience might find surprising."
Translation: MTV's challenge is to find "a way" to introduce the virtue of virginity without projecting its virtue.
As TV critic Willa Paskin at Slate.com explained, the show "tries to get into psychological explanations for all of this unwanted virginity, because like the participants' friends, MTV thinks it's weird." Variety TV critic Brian Lowry nailed it on the head. "Some networks will pimp kids out -- under cover of sex education -- to score ratings."
Then there's the new film "Very Good Girls" in which two college-bound Brooklyn, New York, girls resolve to lose their virginity over the summer, but both target the same boy who vends ice cream at the beach. It's not a teen sex comedy; it's meant to be more profound. "When we lose our innocence, we have to find ourselves," announced the trailer.
Susan Wloszczyna at RogerEbert.com wasn't impressed. "(They) decide to relieve themselves of the burden that is their virginity," she wrote. To celebrate their decision, they strip down and run stark naked on a crowded public beach before leaping into the water." She called the film "a very bad excuse" to see the former child actress Dakota Fanning "flash her bare fanny, fondle herself provocatively and cavort in her underwear for no dramatic purpose." Director Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal described these two characters revolting against their virginity as "serious, interesting, committed girls about how they become women." She said this movie is rare, because women "don't often see themselves with any reality on screen."
There it is again. "Reality" is defined by Hollywood's sexual-liberation ethos. Women who decide to retain their virginity are somehow not "real" women and certainly can't expect to see their "reality on screen." The "contemporary propaganda for lust" just never stops coming.
Also, a careful reading of Genesis 3:16 indicates that Eve MIGHT have already experienced childbirth (to "multiply" the pain suggests that she might have had unpainful or less painful childbirth). However, most believe that Cain and Abel were the first children and they certainly seem to have been born after the Fall.
Yeah, there’s a lot of misconceptions about the account of the fall, and there is absolutely nothing that indicates how much time elapsed between Adam’s creation and Eve’s and Eve’s creation and the Fall.
I always figured that God’s was simply commenting that the pain in childbirth would be greatly increased, only notifying them of that fact. It implies that there would have been some pain in childbirth anyway, just not as much.
When the mechanics of it are considered, it’s inconceivable that childbirth would have been pain free completely.
I would say that Cain and Abel were born after the fall as they had a sin nature otherwise, they would not have been offering sacrifices nor would Cain have murdered Abel.
I agree with you there, metmom, although it depends on which woman, which man, and what their experiences have been.
If a woman and man have each other exclusively as erotic interests from the git-go, they will be biologically patterned on each other. (You could say "habituated" but that's probably not strong enough.) They develop actual physiological triggers set off by the Only Other one's literally unique body chemistry. Or so Ive read.
This process --- as I kinda understand it --- is intricate, and can be significantly undermined by premarital sex with anther partner, by promiscuity or (maybe even moreso) by porn. Porn can ruin men's ability to respond to/ bond with their wives. It destroys all those tendrils to unique attachment.
The same may be true of women's indulgence in romance novels, movies, videos, whether its "The Bridges of Madison County" or "50 Shades of Black-and-Blue --- oops, I meant Grey.
It's not just modern pop culture that intoxicates this way. A friend of mine was reading Flaubert's Madame Bovary and was struck that reading novels—--French stories of chivalry and Sir Walter Scott—---is what destroyed Emma Bovary. She could have been a contented wife bonded to her commonplace but kindhearted husband; instead, craving passion and dash and danger, elegance and ecstasy, she ends up pursuing other men and ruining all that could have been good in her life and others'.
I agree, plus there is not mention of their expulsion.
The only possible timeline is that Adam was 130 when Seth was born and that was certainly after Abel was killed.
“The Bridges of Madison County” was horrible.
The jews and others fought hard to domesticate people and create civilization and marriage was the bedrock of that.
Yeah. Yahoo for sensitive, wistful adultery. :o(
I was shocked when I realized what it was actually about.
A preacher I heard once who was preaching on marriage touched on that multiple partners issue.
Basically, it’s that if you have had pre-marital sex, it has created a soul tie with each person you had sex with, and that when a man held his wife in his arms, that he was also holding all those other women.
His advice was that those in a marriage relationship committed to God, ask forgiveness for the previous sin and repent of it and ask God to break that soul tie, that there is now nothing that can be done about. You can’t go divorcing your current wife/husband and go back to the first one. That is condemned in Scripture anyway.
He said it was part of healing a marriage.
I can give you the link to the message if you’d like.
There is some doubt about the amount of time in the garden and whether time as we count it, began at the fall or not.
It’s really irrelevant, however. The speculation is pretty pointless, IMO.
What we have to deal with is the consequences of it and that’s enough to keep one plenty busy.
Sure, metmom, I’d appreciate a link. Thank you.
They re did their website and I need to search for it.
I’ll get back to you on it.
Here are the links.
It’s part 6 that is the one I was referring to. It’s at the end of the series.
It’s a kind of question and answer and discussing it by the pastor and his wife.
His and Hers
Part 1 http://vimeo.com/42494634
Part 2 http://vimeo.com/42932090
Part 3 http://vimeo.com/43831476
Part 4 http://vimeo.com/43920162
Part 5 http://vimeo.com/44460745
Part 6 http://vimeo.com/44612013
Thanks very much, metmom. God bless you.
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