Humans With Chests and No Heart

C.S. Lewis once observed something to the effect that today's humanity is so concentrated on pleasuring their minds and with filling their bellies with all the pleasures this world has to offer that they have become men with bellies, men with brains, yet without chests. Ol' Jack was observing that modernity has pushed its occupents to gratify their senses and the pleasures of today that modern mankind has forgotten the eternal aspect of their humanity and, in so doing, have left themselves devoid of a soul.

Someone else has observed of today's youth that, "They have forgotten what it means to blush." We see it everywhere and, in the midst of a political season, we cannot avoid it. I was disheartened to learn recently that there is a high school system, in the most conservative county one can imagine, that requires its high school freshmen to draw the genitalia of the opposite gender in a coed health class. You read that right: girls are drawing boys' wedding parts and boys are drawing the private areas of girls. Drawing; not labelling a nameless, anatomical cut-away diagram. They pull out their pencil, paper, and high levels of teenage hormones and draw genitalia. Then, seated next to their latest crush, they giggle - as teens are wont to do.

I am certain you are aware of the Mark Foley scandal and what a furor the same-sex, predatory filandering of the ex-congressman has created. The coverage of this grotesque stuff is the subject of kiddy porn and fit only for the burn pile. Yet, it is being read over broadcast and cable airwaves, posted on various blogs and web news rings, and discussed in detail over the watercooler.

Last week, Senator Mark Allen (R-VA)'s campaign released some excerpts from his opponent's - Alex Webb - novels. [Note: As far as I have been able to decipher, Webb's only claim to be able to be a good Senator is that he is: (a) a novelist and (b) a Democrat, hence not Bush. Good strategy.] The words of the novels I dare not repeat for fear that my mother will read them and, knowing that I have actually peeked at them, be rather ashamed of me. Dime-store novels these are not and involve graphic discussions of fellatio between a father and son (defended as "beautiful" and "normal in context" by Webb), descriptions of east-asian whorehouses, and a lurid description of a stripper's ability to slice a bananna without using her hands.

Now that you are back from vomitting in the toilet, let's disect this a bit.

Drawing genetalia by teens, Congressional pages eliciting and being given Congressional assignations, Senatorial candidates praising incestual fellatio - where is their heart? What has become of hummanity's chest?

Has our society become so ruled by its zipper that even our school curriculum - in the name of "health" - demand children draw things that only married women should know how to diagram? Has culture devolved to the point that Congressman, rather than protect innocent children, will take advantage of them? What does it say of a country that an individual who describes insipid sexual behavior is one vote away from becoming a member of the U.S. Senate?

The answer to these questions is nothing new: it has always been so. Culture, society, countries - these are only constructs consisting of individuals, humans - morally deficient beings. No matter how much we insist that we are knowledgeable, no matter how much we say that pleasure is the end-all-be-all to our lives, we must still acknowledge that gnosis and eros must still be grounded in the powerhouse of the human psyche: the heart. And that heart is "deceitfully wicked, above all things."

But to those of you nodding in agreement, shaking you head in disapproval, and uttering a "tisk-tisk" right now, let me ask you this - Do you still blush? What does it take for you to be embarrassed? Have you become so mesmerized by the trappings of the world that you have forgotten that there are some things with which we must be embarrassed?

I hope not.

With such a push for toleration and "love everyone regardless of their sin," I hope you take time to be embarrassed at what you read and see. I hope your collar becomes a bit hot by the blush that creeps into your cheeks. I hope your gut is wrenched and knotted by the depravity around you.

Why? Because I believe that's how a Holy God reacts to what he sees around us.