SEX IN AMERICA

We are so immature; we're all a bunch of puritans who are upset by sex, obsessed with sex, and in fear of sex. By making it so taboo, we've made it too exciting.  Other countries are comfortable with topless beaches, but in America we've made icons out of the breast and the genitals. I am raising sons and am so embarrassed that they are growing up in this era where every TV commercial is about drugs for dirty old men who can't get it up!  What do our kids think of us? 

Our culture's fascination with porn, nudity, youth, and sleaze is creating an entire generation who have only one thing on their mind: graphic, faceless, mechanical, and sometimes violent forms of sex. Not romantic, loving, monogamous sex. We don't even seem to enjoy the excitement of mystery. It seems to be all about flesh, body parts, and the objectification of youth. 

Our children crave and deserve innocence. They deserve to have their childhoods back — a world in which imagination is more important than knowledge. I am mentoring teen girls in our neighborhood and I've never seen such rampant abuse and pedophilia of the mind. 

I am hearing things you cannot believe on a daily basis that are going on in our middle school. The herd will always flock to porn, gossip, horror films, trash and conflict. 

If it bleeds it leads. The more horrifying, the better the ratings. 

I've been thinking about the root of hatred lately — and it's obvious that "evil" is always the same regressive, self-centered fear-based bigotry that the Great Peacemaker fought against and that has been here since the beginning of civilization: the ancient dark force of fundamentalism (the pharisees whom Christ thought of as hypocrites. Narrow-minded provincialism; small minded "us versus them" thinking. The same mentality that burned women as witches at the stake in Salem. Fear is the fuel of evil. 

I do not believe in evil as a force of its own. It has no objective reality. There is, of course, no power in hatred. 

The law of love, the spirit not the flesh, how we treat our each other, how we treat our enemies. "Turn the other cheek. Love your enemies." There is no substance in matter. Christ was offended by the Pharisees with their rules, gold, robes and rituals. So much focus on ritual and "material" rules and complex food laws that bogged down the spirit. Remember he said "It's the spirit of the law and not the letter" meaning "It's how you LOVE ONE ANOTHER that matters to God."  


Again, it's the dark force of primitive fundamentalism that puts more faith in fear than in God; that condemns sinners instead of bringing the light of love and forgiveness, as Christ taught; that controls others with lengthy rituals and icons of idolatry.  This very same force is responsible for the current economic crisis. Style over substance.  Fundamentalism, materialism (greed) and consumerism.   


 It's all LOVE. 

God is love.