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Sexual Morality | C. S. Lewis · Reformed Thinking

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Brief audio sting for Reformed thinking.
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Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we're opening up a really
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famous section of Christian writing.
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We're going to be tackling A virtue that the author himself
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calls the most unpopular of the Christian virtues, chastity.
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That's right. And we're looking at CS Lewis's
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discussion on sexual morality in Mere Christianity.
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And what's interesting is he doesn't approach this like some,
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you know, scolding Puritan. It's more like a sharp analysis,
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like a doctor diagnosing a condition.
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Right. And he's really looking at human
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instinct and culture and trying to get us to look at the
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objective standards of the moral law, which of course we believe
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is rooted in God's character. It seems like he's confronting
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this idea, which is still so popular, that if we all just
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relaxed and we're more natural about sex, all our problems
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would just, you know, disappear. Exactly.
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So our goal here is to really pull out Lewis score logic.
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We want to see how he separates the Christian rule from just
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social customs. And then get into why he argues
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the sexual instinct itself is fundamentally broken.
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Right. And then how he frames the whole
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struggle for this virtue. And this is the part I think is
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so fascinating, his conclusion about where sexual sin actually
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ranks among all the other sins. Yeah, that part is always a
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shocker. And for you, our listener who's
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interested in Reformed thought, Lewis's analysis of this warped
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instinct is just a powerful, almost empirical illustration of
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the doctrine of the Fall. It really is the systematic
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corruption of human nature right there.
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Yes, and realizing that it just pushes us toward the only real
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solution in our tradition, which is absolute reliance on God's
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sovereign grace for both the will and the ability to follow
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His commands. OK, so let's unpack this.
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Let's see why Lewis thinks our sexual appetite has gone, in his
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words, so preposterously wrong. And why just defining that
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problem correctly is the first step toward any kind of cure.
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So the first thing he does is separate 2 ideas that we always
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seem to mash together. Yes, chastity and what he calls
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propriety or decency. If you don't make that
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distinction right at the start, you're going to get completely
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lost. You'll end up mistaking what
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changing fashions for a fixed moral principle.
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Exactly. You lose your footing as soon as
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society decides to change its mind, which it always does.
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So chastity, that's the virtue itself.
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It's objective, it's fixed. It's the same for all Christians
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and all places at all times. And his definition is so simple
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and so stark. It is.
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It just cuts through everything. The rule is either marriage with
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complete faithfulness to your partner, or else total
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abstinence. That's it.
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No cultural loophole. None.
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And then you have propriety or decency, and that is, you know,
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completely the opposite. It's all about social
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convention, the shifting cultural rules.
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So that's the stuff that dictates like how much of your
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body you should show, or what words you can and can't say in
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polite company. Right.
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And it's so specific to a time and a place.
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The rules of decency in, say, a small town in the 1950s are
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going to be wildly different from a city today.
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But the virtue of chastity, that doesn't move.
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Lewis gives a couple of really clear examples to show how this
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works, how propriety changes but chastity stays the same.
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The one I always remember is the Pacific Island girl versus the
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Victorian lady. It's a great image, he says.
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You know, imagine this girl wearing hardly any clothes and
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then this Victorian woman covered from head to toe.
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And his point is that both of them could be equally decent by
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the standards of their own society.
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Exactly, and more to the point, they could be equally chased or
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unchaste and it has nothing to do with their dress.
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The virtue is internal, It's in the heart and the will.
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It's not about how many yards of cloth you have on.
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Right. And you could be perfectly
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decent on the outside, you know, conforming to every little
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social rule and be totally unchaste in your heart.
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Or the reverse. Or the reverse.
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You could be technically improper by one culture
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standard, but be completely chased in your actual intent.
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He does the same thing with language, which feels very
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relevant today. It does, he points out, that
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Chase, women in Shakespeare's time, used language that a 19th
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century woman would have found, you know, completely bolder.
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So the words themselves, the taboos, they change, the virtue
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doesn't. And this is such a critical tool
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for moral clarity. It helps us avoid that kind of
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Pharisee ISM. You know, where we get so
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obsessed with the outside stuff that we forget what's required
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on the inside? So the question then becomes,
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when does breaking a social rule propriety actually cross the
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line and become a sin against chastity?
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Right. When does bad manners become a
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moral breach? And Lewis has a very clear
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answer for that. He does.
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He says breaking the rule of propriety only offends against
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chastity if the break is made in order to excite lust, either in
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yourself or in other people. So it all comes back to intent,
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which is, you know, a core biblical idea.
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If you deliberately dress or speak to lead people into lust,
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that's the sin. Doesn't matter how normal that
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style is in your culture. But if it's just ignorance or
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carelessness, maybe you're a young person wearing what
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everyone else wears, but it shocks an older person.
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Then Lewis says it's just bad manners.
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It's not a sin against chastity. What about doing it on purpose
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to get a reaction, you know, to shock people?
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We see a lot of that. Yeah, and his answer here is
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interesting. He says that's a sin against
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charity, but not necessarily chastity.
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So if you get a thrill out of making people uncomfortable or
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embarrassed, that's uncharitable.
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It's cruel, maybe it's prideful, but it's not automatically a
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sexual sin. He's being very precise, trying
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to keep us from just lumping all kinds of impropriety into one
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big category of sexual sin. Which is really helpful.
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Kind of surprising though, is that Lewis, writing when he did,
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actually saw the relaxation of those old fussy rules of
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propriety as a good. Thing.
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I know you wouldn't expect that, would you?
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But I think he just despised hypocrisy.
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He says a strict or fussy standard of propriety isn't any
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proof of chastity, and it's not even a help to it.
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So the old Victorian way of hushing everything up, being
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terrified of basic biology, he thinks that actually made things
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worse. I think so.
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It created this culture where the body itself became this
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shameful, obsessive focus. By relaxing those external
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rules, you force the moral struggle back inside into the
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will, which is where it belongs. It shifts the focus from your
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clothes to your heart. But he does admit it creates a
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problem. Oh, absolutely.
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The problem is confusion. You have different generations,
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different groups of people, all operating by different standards
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of propriety, and that causes friction.
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Right. You get misjudgments, hurt
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feelings. One group thinks being open is
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pure, another thinks being modest is the only virtue.
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And both are missing the point about what chastity actually is.
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So he gives some practical advice for how to navigate that
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confusion. And it's all rooted in charity.
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It is. He basically tells the older
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generation. Be careful.
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Don't just assume that because a young person dresses or speaks
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in a way you find improper that they're morally corrupt.
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That kind of quick judgment is its own kind of sin.
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Exactly. And then he tells the younger
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generation they have a duty too. Don't just.
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Write off your elders as prudes or Puritans because they're
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uncomfortable with the new standards.
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Show them some charity for their discomfort.
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And his solution to all this is so simple.
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Just have a real desire to believe the best you can about
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other people and try to make them as comfortable as possible.
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Which shifts the whole focus away from policing each other's
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behavior and puts it on loving your neighbor.
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Always the higher virtue. Always.
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OK, so once he's clarified the rule, he gets to the core of his
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argument. He says the Christian rule is so
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difficult, so contrary to our instincts, that one of two
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things must be true. Either Christianity is wrong, or
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our sexual instinct as it is right now has gone wrong.
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And he of course argues for the second one.
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He says the instinct itself is broken, and he gives some very
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specific reasons why. And he has to do this because if
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the instinct were healthy, the Christian rule would just seem
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cruel and arbitrary. Like God is just trying to stop
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us from having fun. Right.
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But if you can show that the instinct, I think, is already in
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a, quote, ludicrous and preposterous excess, then the
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rule starts to look like medicine.
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It's corrective. It's meant to heal something
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that's wounded. And that idea fits perfectly
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with the Reformed doctrine of total depravity, right?
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That the Fall corrupted every part of us, including our basic
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drives. It's a perfect illustration of
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it. So let's look at his first
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reason, which you call the biological purpose test.
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Right, his analogy between food and sex.
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He starts with a baseline. The biological purpose of eating
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is to repair the body. The biological purpose of sex is
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to have children. Simple enough.
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Then he asks, how far has our fallen nature corrupted each of
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those drives? With food, he says, look, most
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of us eat too much. If we just follow our
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inclinations, we're gluttonous. Yeah, maybe we eat enough for
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two people, but not enough for 10.
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The appetite has gone a bit beyond its purpose, but it's not
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totally. Unhinged.
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Exactly. It's corrupted, but it's still
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sort of tethered to reality. But then he looks at the sexual
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appetite and it's on a completely different scale.
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This is where he uses that of that thought experiment.
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He says if a healthy young man indulged his appetite every
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single time he felt inclined and each act produced a baby.
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In 10 years he could populate a small village.
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That image is so stark populated village it really drives home
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the sheer scale of the excess. It does.
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It shows. This isn't a small glitch, it's
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a profound structural warping of the whole system.
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The appetite is in ludicrous and preposterous excess of its
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function. It's become an end in itself,
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completely detached from its purpose.
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That's total depravity in action, right there on a
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physical level. Without a doubt.
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And a second reason, the cultural anomaly might be even
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more powerful. I'm talking about the mutton
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shop analogy. It's brilliant because it forces
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you to step outside your own culture and see how weird it
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actually is. So he asks you to imagine a
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country where people pack into a theater to watch a striptease
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act. But instead of a person, it's a
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covered dinner plate, and it's slowly unveiled to reveal a
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mutton chop right before the lights go out.
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If we saw that, we'd immediately think something is seriously
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wrong with the appetite for food in that country.
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Of course we would. Our desire for food might be a
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little greedy, but it's not so broken that we've become
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obsessed with just the symbols and the anticipation of food.
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And Lewis's point is that the state of the sex instinct in our
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culture, with its endless focus on visual titillation and
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suggestion, is just as strange, just as queer.
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Now, a critic might push back here.
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They might say, well, Louis, that's not a fair comparison.
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We don't have strip clubs for food because food isn't private
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or restricted in the same way sex is.
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Right, that's the counter argument, isn't it?
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That this obsession isn't a sign of brokenness, it's a sign of
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starvation. Society is depriving us of
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something natural, so we obsess over it and.
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Louis saw that argument coming. It was very popular in his day
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and it still is. He addresses it head on.
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He tests the hypothesis. He says, OK, if we found that
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culture obsessed with watching mutton chops, what's the first
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thing we'd check? We'd check to see if there was a
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famine, and if we found out that actually tons of food was being
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eaten all the time, we'd have to throw out the famine.
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Idea So applying that to sex, he says there's no evidence of
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sexual starvation in modern culture.
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In fact, it's the opposite. Right.
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Contraceptives had made indulgence much safer and less
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costly. Public opinion was becoming much
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less hostile to sex outside of marriage.
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The cultural barriers were coming down, not going up.
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So the idea that we're obsessed because we're being deprived
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just doesn't hold up to the facts on the ground.
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Which leads him to his alternative theory, the
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Glutton's mindset. And this is such a key insight.
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Starving men think a lot about food, sure.
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But so do gluttons. The person who has already
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gorged also likes tillations, the appetizers, the suggestive
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hints of what's to come. So he's arguing that the nonstop
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flood of sexualized content we see isn't a symptom of
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starvation, but a symptom of being overfed and jaded.
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Precisely, and it reveals A fundamental law of our sole and
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appetites. The appetite grows by
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indulgence. The more you feed it, the more
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obsessed it becomes. That completely flips the modern
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secular narrative on its head. It does, and then he brings in
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his final piece of evidence, which is about perversions.
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This is where the sexual appetite really shows how
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uniquely broken it is compared to other drives.
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He says, look, perversions of the food appetite are incredibly
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rare. People don't generally want to
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eat things that aren't food, like mud or rocks.
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And when they do, we treat it as a serious mental illness because
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it's so abnormal. It's a statistical anomaly.
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But perversions of the sex instinct, Lewis notes, are
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numerous. They're hard to cure.
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They're frightful. And they are not statistical
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anomalies. They are a widespread reality.
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So the sheer prevalence of that abnormality is the evidence.
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It points directly to the fact that the instinct is broken in a
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way that, say, our instinct for food just isn't.
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It's the clear, undeniable evidence of the fall's impact on
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our deepest drives. OK, so having made his diagnosis
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that the instinct is warped, he then moves on to debunk what he
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calls the good solid lies that modern culture tells us about
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sex. The main lie being that the
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sexual instinct is perfectly fine, just like any other
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desire, and the only reason it got messed up was because the
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Victorians were so uptight about.
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It this is the ventilation argument, right?
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Just talk about it more, bring it out into the open, and
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everything will be healthy. Yeah, the idea that secrecy
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creates shame, but transparency creates health.
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And Lewis says, OK, let's test that.
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For the last 20 years, he says, we haven't been hushing it up.
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We've been chattering about it all day long.
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And his conclusion? It's still a mess.
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It's still a mess. If hushing it up was the cause,
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then all this talking should have fixed it.
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But it hasn't, so he suggests the opposite might be true.
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That we started hushing it up because it had already become
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such a mess. Exactly.
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The Victorian silence wasn't the cause of the disease.
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It was a desperate, maybe even clumsy, attempt to contain a
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fire that was already raging. He then moves on to clarify what
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Christianity actually affirms about pleasure, which is so
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important. He looks at that common phrase,
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Sex is nothing to be ashamed of. And he says, well, that can mean
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two very different things. We have to be clear about which
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one we're talking about. The first meaning is that the
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basic fact of human reproduction and the pleasure that comes with
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it is a good thing. And Lewis says, if that's what
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you mean, you're absolutely right.
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Christianity says the exact same thing.
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God made it and it was good. This is where he brings in that
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really counter intuitive point from the older Christian
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teachers. Yes, that if humanity had never
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fallen, sexual pleasure would have been greater than it is
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now, not less. The fall didn't create pleasure,
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it just diminished and distorted it.
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It's such a vital point. We believe matter is good if the
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body is good. Pleasure is a gift from God, And
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Lewis even argues that Christianity is almost the only
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great religion that thoroughly approves of the body.
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Why does he say that? Because of the incarnation and
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the resurrection, God himself took on a human body, and we
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believe we'll be given some kind of glorified body in heaven.
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We don't believe in escaping the physical, we believe in
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redeeming it. So Christianity is all for that
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first meaning of sex is nothing to be ashamed of.
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But then there's the second meaning.
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Right. The second meaning is that the
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current state of the sexual instinct, the obsession, the
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excess, the cultural madness is nothing to be ashamed of.
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And if. People mean that, Louis says.
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They are dead wrong. He says.
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The current state is everything to be ashamed of.
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And he brings back the food analogy to show why he says
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there's nothing shameful about enjoying a good meal.
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But we'd all agree it would be shameful if half the world made
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food the main focus of their lives, spending all their time
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just looking at pictures of it and drooling.
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It's the disproportionate obsession that's the source of
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the shame. It's not the desire, it's the
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disordered and obsessive nature of the fallen desire.
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Now, Lewis does offer some comfort here.
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He acknowledges that we aren't individually to blame for this
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situation. We're born into it.
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We inherit warped organisms. And we grow up surrounded by
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propaganda that encourages unchastity.
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And he's sharp enough to see that a lot of this is driven by
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money. People want to keep our
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instincts inflamed to sell us things.
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Because a person with an obsession has very little sales
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resistance. The battle is internal, but it's
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fueled from the outside. But that context doesn't become
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an excuse. No, he's very clear.
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God knows our situation. He knows how hard it is, and his
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judgment takes that into account.
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What matters, Lewis says, is the sincerity and the perseverance
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of our will to overcome it. Which brings us to the practical
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side of things. How do we actually do this?
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The practice of chastity. And the first step, he says, is
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that you have to actually want to be cured.
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And for a lot of us, even getting to that point is a huge
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struggle. He uses that great anecdote
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about Augustine praying for chastity as a young man.
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And years later, Augustine realizes that while his lips
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were saying, oh Lord, make me chaste, his heart was secretly
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adding, But please don't do it just.
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Yet we want freedom from the consequences of sin, but not
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always from the sin itself. We want the rule to apply, but
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with a personal exemption for right now, that's the first big
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hurdle. And then he lays out three
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specific obstacles that make it even harder.
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The 1st is what I'd call cultural gaslighting.
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The lie of normality, that's a good way to put it, he says.
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All the propaganda from posters, films, novels, it all works
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together to make resistance feel perverse or abnormal.
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It creates this false link between indulgence and things
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like health, youth, and good humor.
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And Lewis just demolishes that lie.
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He says, Yes, sex itself is healthy and normal, but
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surrendering to all your desires?
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That obviously leads to ruin the disease.
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Jealousy lies the exact opposite of health and good humor.
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So some kind of restraint is necessary for any kind of happy
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life, even a secular 1. The desires themselves can't be
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trusted, no. He says every civilized person
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has to have some principles to control their nature.
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The real conflict isn't Christianity versus nature, it's
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Christian principles versus some other set of principles trying
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to control that same fallen nature.
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Which leads to the second obstacle.
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People just think it's impossible.
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They give up before they even start.
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And his advice here is really sharp, almost military.
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He says we must never think about possibility or
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impossibility when a thing must be attempted.
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The compulsory exam question analogy.
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Exactly. This isn't an optional question
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we can skip. It's compulsory.
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God commands it, so we have to do the best we can, even if our
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answer is imperfect. He gives examples from real
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life, like soldiers in a war or someone learning to swim.
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People do impossible things all the time when duty calls.
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But he immediately balances that call to human effort with
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theological reality. He says you can be sure that
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perfect chastity, just like perfect charity, won't be
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achieved by human effort alone. You have to ask for God's help.
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You must. This is where we see the
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absolute need for grace. Our will is in bondage, even the
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desire to be chased as a gift. But he's also realistic about
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the struggle. He says even when you ask, it
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might feel for a long time like no help is coming.
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So what do you do then when you keep failing and it feels like
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God isn't helping? This is maybe the most
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encouraging part of the whole chapter.
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He says that what God often helps us with first isn't the
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virtue itself, it's just the power of always trying again.
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So after every failure you just ask forgiveness, get up and
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start over. Immediately.
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And that process, that cycle of failure, repentance, and trying
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again, it actually trains us in habits of the soul that are even
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more important. What does it teach us?
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It cures our illusions about ourselves.
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We learn we can't trust our own strength.
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It teaches us to depend completely on God.
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And it saves us from despair because we learn our failures
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are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to just
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give up and be content with less than perfection.
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Right. The struggle itself, sustained
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by grace, is what cultivates humility and dependence on
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Christ. OK.
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And the last obstacle he mentions is this
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misunderstanding of the word repression.
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Yes. People hear that from psychology
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and get scared that if they fight a desire, they'll damage
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themselves. But Lewis says that's not what
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repression means. Technically no.
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A repression is a desire that's been pushed into your
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subconscious, usually when you're very young, and it pops
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up later in a disguised form. It's unconscious.
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So when an adult is consciously resisting a temptation, they're
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fully aware of. That's not repression, not at
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all. That's just a moral, spiritual
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act of resistance. In fact, he says, the opposite
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happens. The people who are seriously
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trying to be chased become more conscious of their sexuality,
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not less. They get to know their desires,
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like a general knows the enemy or a rat catcher knows rats.
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They know all the tricks, all the weaknesses, because they're
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in a daily fight with it. Which leads to his conclusion.
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Virtue, even just attempted virtue, brings light.
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Indulgence brings fog. A powerful encouragement for
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anyone in that struggle. And now we get to the end where
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he puts this entire difficult subject into perspective, and
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it's a part that I think is often overlooked, but is maybe
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the most important. I agree, he says.
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After all this talk about sex, he has to be clear this is not
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the center of Christian morality.
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If you think Christians believe unchastity is the supreme vice,
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you're completely wrong. That's a huge statement.
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He then says that the sins of the flesh are bad, but they are
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the least bad of all sins. The least bad?
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It's a radical reprioritization, and the reason is that they come
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from what he calls the animal self.
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They're tied to our physical appetites, which were originally
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good, even if they're now disordered.
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But all the worst pleasures, he says, are purely spiritual.
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They come from the diabolical self.
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And that's the part of us that's worse.
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These are the sins of the Spirit, the corrupted will.
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What are some examples he gives? It's the pleasure of putting
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other people in the wrong, of bossing them around a
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backbiting, spoiling things for others.
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It's the pleasure of hatred and power and pride.
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And this connects directly to the Reformed understanding of
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sin, where pride is the root of it all, the desire to be your
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own God. Exactly.
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Lust might be a failure of the flesh, but pride is the fall.
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It's the core of the rebellion. These diabolical sins are the
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ones that actively destroy charity and cultivate contempt
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for others. So sins of the flesh are sins of
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weakness, but these spiritual sins are sins of malice and
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strength. That's a great way to put it.
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One often leads to self destruction, the other to the
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deliberate destruction of other people, and God finds that cold
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cruelty of pride far more repulsive.
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Which leads to his final shocking comparison.
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He says a cold, self-righteous prig who goes to church
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regularly. Maybe far nearer to hell than a
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prostitute. That's designed to just stop us
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in our tracks. The prig embodies that
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diabolical self pride, judgement, self satisfaction.
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The prostitute embodies the animal self, a disordered
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appetite. And again, he's not excusing the
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sin of the flesh, but he's correctly identifying that the
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corruption of the will, which looks down on God and neighbor,
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is the far greater evil. And he adds that quick little
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corrective. Of course it is better to be
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neither, right? It's not a choice, it's a
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recalibration of our moral compass to stop us from thinking
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that holiness is just about controlling our flesh.
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So what does all of this mean for us?
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Lewis strips away all the cultural noise about propriety
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to get to the real virtue of chastity in the heart.
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He sets a very high standard. He does, but then he puts that
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whole struggle into his proper perspective.
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The big take away for me is that distinction between the
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disordered state of the instinct which is a result of the fall,
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and the goodness of the thing itself as God created it.
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And it gives us so much guidance on how to handle our failures,
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not with despair, which is a sin of that diabolical self.
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But with renewed action and a total dependence on grace,
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knowing that the process of repenting and trying again is
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what's really training our souls and humility and reliance on
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Christ. And he forces us to reevaluate
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what we think of as big sins and little sins.
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We spend so much time making sure we don't look like the
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prostitute, but Lewis forces us to ask if we've ended up looking
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like the prig. Which leads to our final
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thought. If Lewis is right, that the
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worst sins are purely spiritual, rooted in pride and hatred, how
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often do we, in our fight for a difficult virtue like chastity,
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secretly cultivate the far deadlier vices of the spirit?
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Like looking down on others, being satisfied with our own
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performance, a kind of judge mental coldness?
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And how often do we mistake that self satisfaction for true
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godliness? The real battle for holiness has
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to start with the humility to see that our greatest danger
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might not be in our appetites, but in how we see ourselves and
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how we see others.