Sex Passion and Bodily Desires When Encouraged Often Overwhelm Reason and Override the Will

It is well to remember that sex is of God.  God prepared the bodies of men and women so each would feel a need for the other and so both, united in holy marriage, might have a part in the reproduction of the race. Nature, by God's plan, has so arranged that the wholehearted love of man and his wife will lead them to sex intercourse and the conception of children. In other words, God planned that in the natural course of events all normal mar­riages would properly and automatically result in children. So love-rnaking stirs sex desires. But when, outside of marriage, sex desire is stimulated by petting, it may overcome all restraints. Modesty, Christian rearing, purity of heart, good intentions, will power - all these may be broken down before the force of aroused sex desire.

In other words, sex instinct is an automatic matter. It is one of the most powerful of all human instincts and is said to be stronger than any instinct except that of self-preservation. We must re­member that many matters and habits of life carry themselves on without the will. Just as a drunkard might take a glass of beer and then be absolutely unable to control his desire until he was dead drunk, so men and women or young people who play with the sex feeling by petting and fondling one another and by hugs and kisses are likely to find themselves swept off their feet and led on into the actual sin of adultery which they never planned. When people trifle with the human body, then sometimes bodily passions take control and are stronger than the will, stronger than character.

We must remember that this is as true about women as about men. It is as true about good men as it is about bad men. Sex desire, strongly aroused, is often practically beyond control. The fact that the desire when directed towards anyone but one's own married is sinful and dangerous may be ignored just as the danger and sin of drink and dope taking are ignored when a dep seated craving has been aroused by long habit. But the sin and the danger are there nevertheless.

The best Christian in the world, if he is not a good enough Christian to keep from petting, may not be a good enough Chris­tian to keep from adultery.

Lust may be as powerful if aroused by a casual acquaintance as if it were a holy desire between man and wife. And just as the drunkard may make tearful promises and sign pledges and vow he will never grieve his wife by drinking again, but then, if he takes one glass of beer, may plunge into drunkenness and ruin again; so a man or woman may break all his vows and forget all his promises and all of his pure love for somebody else under the blinding, soul paralyzing effect of an aroused sex desire,

A young woman attended a dance with her sweetheart to whom she was engaged to be married. After dancing several times with a high school friend whom she did not love, she and he both became deeply aroused, and they were led into the scarlet sin. Weeping, she told me later that she did not love that young man but that she still loved the boy to whom she was engaged to be married. She had been utterly swept off her feet by physical instincts which are perfectly normal, instincts which all normal people have, but which should never have been aroused to any strong degree but in marriage and by her own husband.