Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - Sept/63

Contributor - R. Kooistra

Title - A remedy ....worse than the disease

Topic - Sex

Pierre Berton, on the page assigned to him by Maclean's, offers a cure for a much discussed malady of our times. The disease might well be described in some diagnostical terms suggested by the man himself who offers the cure. According to Berton our teenage kids live in a society which equates sexiness with popularity", which advocates by almost every means of publication in endless repetition that "sex is the thing to do" and which is moth r to a culture of 'fun morality,, which causes "a good many girls to consider pregnancy a status symbol.

One might think this to be sufficient for the description of the disease. This, however, is not the case. Berton adds one more finding. That "sexual feelings of adolescents are encouraged by the stress on sex in our culture but the official morality of this country is based on the postponement.,, Here, according to him, we reach the real root of the trouble. It is not primarily the existing society or the prevailing culture, but it is the "Great Twentieth-Century Hoax, whereby every adolescent is taught that sex is the key to everything-but he can't enjoy it for another ten, fifteen or twenty years"-which has aroused the indignation and anger of Pierre Berton.

He understands that this drives our children crazy. On the one li hand our teenagers are led to believe that sex is the whole purpose of life, but, on the other hand, they are told to wait with the final act.

Now the cure. Rather than telling society and culture that it is time to stop propagating their false standards, Berton advises "it's time we stopped hoaxing the kids about sex."

He believes that "teenage sex is here to stay" and that "we must make less fuss about virginity and continence." For these reasons he proposes simply to give in. He finds support for his remedy with some church leaders, who ponder the point whether "premarital intercourse is necessarily a bad preparation for marriage" and "whether to have a variety of sexual partners does in fact weaken intimate relations." But the most frightening part is the end of this article in "Canada's National Magazine." in which Berton as father of his children solemnly declares that he is planning to use his own prescription for his own offspring. He will tell his sons and daughters that if they want the sexual experience before marriage, they may have it.

He does not believe it will do any harm to their psyche or their future marriages. As for the girls, they don't have to be afraid to be "banished into the snowstorm with their little bundle" nor to be "condemned to the hell of an incompatible shotgun marriage" and he expects that his sons "will know from experience, something about life by the age of seventeen

As I said already it is this cure which frightens me and made me to say that the remedy is worse than the disease.

Let me state some reasons for verdict.

First, Berton's cure is pedagogical nonsense. Do we educate children by giving in to their "natural desires?" Why do we tell children who ask all the time for candies, cokes or ice-cream that it is bad for their teeth, their stomach and their health? Berton would say: Well, if they want bad teeth, let them have them. If you have a boy who wants to make a time bomb, do you simply say as father: John, go ahead, act it out!? The boy has a good chance not to survive the experience. If you have a son who wants to be a surgeon, do you buy him a blade to enable him to get some experience for later, to find out what it will be like being a successful surgeon? Or do you tell him that he must study a long time before he will be allowed to perform even a minor operation?

Secondly, Berton is also wrong from the psychological point of view. Does it help to take away stress by giving in to desire. Or does it produce weaklings? We are nowadays sorely afraid of the weaklings. But who are the sissies; the boys and girls who live in sexual promiscuity, or the ones who still have the will and the intention to wait till they are ready for their one great love? If we take away continence in the sexual education, why should we not do the same in all other fields of education, e.g. by telling our youngsters that if they don't like Shakespeare, they don't have to read it; if they don't feel like going to school, they may as well stay home and that, if they feel that the amount of their allowance puts them under the strain of spending their money wisely, they might as well claim for more.

No adolescent and no adult can live without stress and strain. We cannot live without problems, we need education for to learn how to live with our problems.

Thirdly, Berton's theories are, from a moral point of view, per verse. If society propagates it and -the child wants it, if culture dictates it and the child (the young adolescent) badgers for permission and keeps dinning about experiments and experience-do we just give in? Today it's premarital sexual promiscuity, but what next? Next is more satisfaction, new sexual excitement. Next. is homosexuality, sexual orgies sexual perversities. Next is a long list of old sins.

It is little wonder, therefore, that Berton's cure does not work. Dr. Blaine, Psychiatrist to the Harvard University Health Service told the students of Queen's University in Kingston, according to a report in The Globe and Mail that promiscuity with female students causes feelings of distress. No wonder that they feel bad about it and that they feel bad because of it, for it is like being prostitutes. There really is not much difference. Dr. Blaine was right when he concluded: "It is not sex they need, but love." As for the boys at the university, it is not much better. Some seek refuge in homosexuality, others suffer from impotence "which results mainly from the pressure of college mores that push these young men toward experiences for which they are not ready."

This is what happens to boys and girls who are taught that since they are students and since shame dates only from the Victorian age. Sex is the thing to do, even if they don't want it. Premarital promiscuity has become a status symbol of the sophisticated, though it does not demand for much refinement.

Why do I write about Pierre Berton's page? Am I one of these Victorian-style puritan clergymen who do not even know that Professor Carstairs has discovered that charity is more important than chastity (I always thought both were not without importance)?

Well I think I am level-headed enough (or should I say I know enough about the sinful nature of the human being) to know that in all ages there has been premarital sexual promiscuity to a certain extent, but what strikes me, is that Pierre Berton is given the opportunity in Canada's National Magazine to advocate such conduct as a panacea against the maladies of our young people.

Berton assumes that "teenage sex is here to stay," but he fails to explain why; he thinks there is "no likelihood that this state Of affairs will change," but again: no reasons are stated for his conviction.

What strikes me most of all, however, is that Pierre Berton does not refer to the Scriptures, to the Word of God. He writes about a lot of people, but does not tell us what God says about the problem of premarital sexual promiscuity' I am convinced that it is here where the cure begins. We become sexually wise, not by experiments and experiences (which in many cases have led to foolishness, mental disturbances and even crimes,) but by obeying the Word of God. To give a positive contribution and to offer a better prescription against the discussed disease, I shall now quote from the book of Proverbs:

Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well. Let them be only thine own, and not strangers with thee. Let thy fountain be blessed and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be as a loving hind and pleasant roe, let her breasts satisfy thee at all times and be thou ravished always with her love. And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with strange women and embrace the bosom of a stranger? His own iniquities shall take the wicked itself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins. He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray. (Ch. 5:15-23)

The Bible is not written in Victorian style.

Sexual experience and experiments are not condemned. Sex is not frowned upon. The role of the woman is not only the one of the mother, she is lover too.

Yet, promiscuity is condemned. Premarital sex is considered to be "cords of sin." You may escape from these cords, but it will not be easy. Marriage is not the prison of sex, but it is much sooner the home of love, also of such love which finds a never ending, even new sexual satisfaction. Marriage is more than anything else the home for that One Great love with the only one on earth who is that close to you, who is your husband, Your wife, and - as such - it is a symbol of the mystic union of Christ and His Church, of God and His People. It is worth it to wait for marriage.

Please click the "Back" button of your browser to return to previous page.