The Seven Deadly Virtues by Jonathan V. Last

Author:Jonathan V. Last
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Templeton Press

Because of its inherent difficulty, chastity, unlike most other virtues, has taken a kick in the shorts even from plenty of literary and theological giants. Aldous Huxley called it “the most unnatural of all sexual perversions.” C. S. Lewis admitted it was “the most unpopular of the Christian virtues.” Saint Augustine confessed in his Confessions that in his youthful days, he prayed, “Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.” Not to be outdone, Madonna (the slutty singer from Detroit, not Jesus’s mom) said, “It is difficult to believe in a religion that places such a high premium on chastity and virginity.”

These days, if you do dare place a premium on chastity—and not even the church or dictionary definitions, but just as a yellow light of caution to say, “Slow down, don’t be so slutty”—you’re liable to get called “puritanical.” Or worse. Though there really isn’t any worse obloquy today, since in our sex-addled society, Puritanism is synonymous with being a joyless, sexless prude. (On campuses, for instance, abstinence advocates are often treated like lepers or College Republicans.) Never mind that this isn’t quite historically fair to the Puritans. It’s not like they were celibate Shakers, electing to nonbreed themselves straight out of existence. The average Puritan household used to be good for around seven children apiece—meaning that ol’ Artemus and Temperance were clearly up to more than just listening to Cotton Mather sermons, conducting witch trials, and singing rounds of “Grace! ’Tis a Charming Sound.”

Not that we need to ride too high in the moralist’s saddle. C. S. Lewis—nobody’s idea of a libertine—argued, “If anyone thinks Christians regard unchastity as the supreme vice, he is quite wrong. The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins.” Much worse, he wrote, were spiritual “pleasures”—backbiting, hatred, the joy of putting others in the wrong. He divided the two classes into sins of the flesh (“the Animal self”) vs. sins of the spirit (“the Diabolical self”), about which he added, “The Diabolical self is the worse of the two. That is why a cold self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither.”

Still, even by the middle of his century, Lewis saw how the backlash against “Puritanism” was overcorrecting the train right off the rails: “They tell you sex is a mess because it was hushed up. But for the last twenty years it has not been hushed up. It has been chattered about all day long. Yet it is still in a mess.” Sexual desire in itself is the most natural of natural things, and in its proper place, even has a biblical seal of amorous approval, as anyone who has read the (Fifty Shades of) Song of Solomon knows: “Your stature is like that of the palm, and your breasts like clusters of fruit. I said, ‘I will climb the palm tree; I will take hold of its fruit.

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