Men, Women, and God / A Discussion of Sex Questions from the Christian Point of View

by A. Herbert Gray

What thousands of people are demanding of the universe is that there should be some way of solving life's problems without religion. And life in every century has gone on demonstrating that there is no way of solving them except through religion. I am using religion in the largest sense, which is also the truest sense. I am not here concerned with the dogmas of any particular church, nor with the question of the ways in which religion shall express itself. The truth I am emphasizing is that without some conscious relation to his God man remains a stranger in the world and an exile from his spiritual peace; and that such men cannot be happy or satisfying husbands. And of course all that I have written as if thinking only of husbands is equally true for wives.

I have been the perplexed and sympathetic confidant of a number of people who with dismay and sorrow were finding out that marriage was failing them. In almost all these cases religion had been simply passed by as a thing hardly relevant to real life, and it has been plain beyond all question that the trouble in the sphere of marriage could not be mended till something had happened to the persons concerned—in other words, till they had learnt to seek and use the help of God. And often they know it for themselves. "I think what I really need is God," said one very troubled wife to me a few years ago. But she had begun with a long and moving story about her marriage. She indeed went on to ask how God can be found, and it may be that some of my readers will at once want to ask that question, I cannot attempt to deal with it here and now. The first great step towards finding Him is to realize that we need Him, and so to begin to seek Him. And for the rest I can only add that thousands upon thousands have proved in life the truth of what Jesus claimed when He announced "I am the Way." I have written this book largely because I have with reason and out of experience so great a faith in the possibilities of the love that is consummated in marriage that I would fain testify to others concerning it. But I would none the less like to warn any man or any woman lest he or she should imagine that by human love alone life's problem can be solved. Without God we fail in life, and the bitterest part of the failure for many is that even that beautiful and delicate thing marriage fails with the rest. "We are restless till we rest in Thee," and two restless hearts cannot be happy hearts even though they be joined together in the bonds of love.

CHAPTER XII

THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL CONDITIONS

Let me begin this chapter with a query. Is not all the trouble in the modern world over the sexual element in life the evidence of something abnormal and distorted in the very constitution of modern society? Or put differently, would it not turn out that if only men and women were set in just and healthy conditions, given real education and sufficient means of self-expression, the sexual problem would be found very largely to have solved itself? I cannot offer any dogmatic answer to that query, though I have my own conviction that history will one day answer it with an unmistakable affirmative. What we can do even now is to notice that every maladjustment in our present social life tends to increase the amount of failure in true sex morality. All our callousness about social evils revenges itself upon us by confronting us with an increasingly menacing problem in this connection, and all honest service devoted to the increase of social health of any sort is also helping our moral progress.

And I wish to amplify this point because I hope some at least of the readers of this book will find themselves asking eagerly what can be done in view of the seriousness of sexual evil. If those who go wrong in sex matters are spoiling their lives at the core, which of us would not like to do something to guard the young from wandering, and to help to clean the modern world! Therefore it is a real satisfaction to be able to reply, as I do with complete conviction, "Anything you do to help to bring social justice and general health any nearer is also helping towards the solution of this one problem."

Let us consider some of the outstanding social evils from this point of view.

I turn first to the matter of education because it is the primary issue in every connection. Now education that stops at fourteen is hardly worthy to be called education at all. It is after that age that those interests awaken which provide absorbing life for boys and girls, and ensure them against the pains and dangers of empty-mindedness. It is also after that age that most young folks learn the ways and means of self-expression. Probably also, at least in the case of boys, the years between fourteen and sixteen are just the years when the discipline of school life is most valuable, and it is certain that during that period healthy games, played under the discipline of sternly enforced rules, do most to put boys into possession of themselves, and to provide a wise outlet for their abundant energies. Consider then what happens so long as we continue to send boys out of school at the age of fourteen. They go with minds unawakened and therefore empty. They face adolescence in almost complete freedom from control. They very often have far too little opportunity for invigorating games, and they do not know how to express themselves, though vital energies are vibrant within them. It is only natural that they should find orderly ways of life very dull, and that in pursuit of excitement they should take to hooliganism. Not having learnt to appreciate either literature or art, they either read nothing or read stories that are neither true nor decent. They respond only to what is highly spiced and have nothing in their minds to counter balance the meretricious attractions of suggestive stories and undesirable films. The truth about the people who are fond of "blue" stories is often (though not always) that those stories accurately indicate their intellectual level. And the uneducated modern boy is often at that level through no fault of his own. It actually is hard for men to whom the wonder and the splendor of life have been revealed to find room in their mental life for indecent trash. But till we really educate our boys we are sending them out into life unarmed against some of its worst features.

And if the general failure of education has this deplorable effect, what shall we say of the complete lack of any special education relating to sex in at least a majority of modern schools? I know that that is a very difficult matter. I know that disaster may follow from any attempt to do it in a general way through class teaching. I know too that it ought to be done by parents. But it is not done, and both boys and girls go out to face the dangers of life in town and country without the knowledge of physical facts which might guide them into safety. Actual immorality is indeed uncommon between the ages of fourteen and seventeen, but those years are often spent in a way that is the worst possible preparation for the struggle that is to come.

I have put my main stress on the fact that education stops at fourteen, because to my mind that is the outstanding defect of our system. But even the education we do give is ill fitted to attain its true end. It is not the fault of the teachers. Many of them do wonderful work, and long to be allowed to do better work. But with classes of from fifty to seventy the most heaven-born teacher in the world cannot achieve his purposes. It is certain that lovers of purity who really understand human nature cannot be among the panic-stricken economists who want to starve education.