II Lent Tuesday – Proverbs 5: 1-15
1 My son, attend to my wisdom, and apply thine ear to my words; 2 that thou mayest keep good understanding, and the discretion of my lips gives thee a charge. Give no heed to a worthless woman; 3 for honey drops from the lips of a harlot, who for a season pleases thy palate: 4 but afterwards thou wilt find her more bitter than gall, and sharper than a two-edged sword. 5 For the feet of folly lead those who deal with her down to the grave with death; and her steps are not established. 6 For she goes not upon the paths of life; but her ways are slippery, and not easily known. 7 Now then, my son, hear me, and make not my words of none effect. 8 Remove thy way far from her; draw not near to the doors of her house: 9 lest thou give away thy life to others, and thy substance to the merciless: 10 lest strangers be filled with thy strength, and thy labours come into the houses of strangers; 11 And thou repent at last, when the flesh of thy body is consumed, 12 and thou shalt say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart avoided reproofs! 13 I heard not the voice of him that instructed me, and taught me, neither did I apply mine ear. 14 I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly. 15 Drink waters out of thine own vessels, and out of thine own springing wells.
Today’s and tomorrow’s readings contrast the life of sexual promiscuity with the life of faithful marriage. Today the loving father warns his son against betraying his wife and destroying himself by wasting his substance upon harlots, and, beginning with the last verse of today’s reading and continuing tomorrow, he will extol the joys of married love. Of course, we can apply his admonitions in the other direction too, warning our daughters against the allurements of immoral men.
St. John Chrysostom contrasts the honeyed speech of the harlot, which conceals destruction, with the plain and hard commands of God, which grant life, and he warns, “Don’t even give this kind of temptation a thought – once you get trapped, you may well not escape!” Here is what he says:
“Give no heed to a worthless woman; for honey drops from the lips of an adulterous woman…sparing her no thought or no glance; they trust not only in their bodily charms, but much more in their speech. Security lies particularly in not being ensnared from the outset; it is difficult for anyone who is ensnared to escape…She normally hides what is deadly and proffers what is attractive so as to ensnare him. God, by contrast, is not like that: far from it…He conceals what is pleasant and proposes what is laborious.”
God is so strict about our use of the sexual function because its misuse destroys everything that makes life worthwhile. On the one hand, the procreative power is Godlike – it gives us the ability to bring forth life itself and is therefore among God’s greatest gifts. On the other hand, it is so easy to fall into a sinful use of it, and it is so pleasurable – at least at first – that it ensnares countless souls in a straitjacket cycle of all-consuming destructive behavior. One of the Optina Elders says that at the tollhouses the demon of fornication will triumph over all the rest, as having destroyed the most people and brought them down to hell.
I have not actually counted them, but it seems to me that after the canons relating to Church administration and the behavior of the clergy, the canons relating to sins of the flesh are the most numerous in Church law. The proponents of the sexual revolution say that sexuality is messed up because the Church made so many rules about it. The reality is that the Church made so many rules about it because sexuality was already messed up.
I am not, in general, for burning books, but I think that I might vote for burning 99% of the books about this topic that have been written in the past 100 years, including the well-meaning “Christian” books. The truth of the matter is that we talk too much about it, due to the constant bombardment of both the openly evil and the purportedly wholesome discussion about it. The only solution to the sexual revolution is a counter-revolution in which we return to strictly traditional mores, one of which is that this topic is something rarely spoken of even in private, and spoken of in public only to adults, simply and shortly, without too much analysis, and with a view to traditional moral admonition. And when spoken of, it must be dealt with in plain words, cheerfully but forcefully, and then put aside. Children should not even know this particular human activity exists until it is time for their bodies to change, at which point their parents will teach them the truth about it. Within a few years after that, they need to become monks or get married, and stay in the schema or stay married to the same person till they die. That’s about it. The current approach is not working, and the old approach did. If we do not make this radical change in our approach to life, all the counseling and analysis and the rest of the blah-blah about sex, even from “Christian” writers and counselors, will not do us any good. By now experience should have proved this to us.
Young parents, attend to this wisdom, put behind you whatever mistakes you made – forget about them! – and rear up your children in the way which they should go! Happiness awaits.