Wednesday, November 15, 2006

The Problem of Pleasure (and sex)


Trudging through life, I'm sure dat at times you wonder, why does bad things happen to seemingly good people, like for example, the friend that had her bag snatched by a snatch-thief, or even worse, as Ravi Zacharias puts it, a man who was an eye-witness to the slow murder of young Jewish boys in a Nazi concentration camp; whereupon the boys were hanged and slowly left to choke to death. The Jewish man promptly cried, 'Where is God, in the midst of all this?'

And I'm sure that we can go on an endless debate about the problem of pain. But take a moment with me with this jolly philosopher, who struggled with Christianity before accepting it, and was known as the philosophical Peter Pan of the 20th Century, as it was explained by Phillip Yancey.
'In addition to the problem of pain, G.K. Chesterton seemed equally fascinated by its opposite, the problem of pleasure. He found materialism too thin to account for the sense of wonder and delight that gives an almost magical dimension to such basic human acts such as sex, childbirth, play and artistic creation.

Why is sex fun? Reproduction surely does not require pleasure: some animals simply split in half to reproduce, and even humans use methods of artificial insemination that involves no pleasure. Why is eating enjoyable? Plants and the lower animals manage to obtain their quota of nutrients without the luxury of taste buds. Why are there colours? Some people get along fine without the ability to detect colour. Why complicate vision for all the rest of us?'

and here

'As Chesterton saw it, sexual promiscuity is not so much an overvaluing of sex as a devaluing.
To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once. It was incommensurate with the terrible excitement of which one was talking. It showed, not an exaggerated sensibility to sex, but a curious insensibility to it...Polygamy is a lack of the realisation of sex; it is like a man plucking five pears in a mere absence of mind
'

And thus, wouldn't pornography and masturbation be a devaluation of sex and the intimacy of a Godly, loving relationship that is to come with it? It is like forgoing all aspects of a ten course meal at a lavish, exotic five star restaurant, in order to have the final dish, the ice cream, as an entire meal by itself, on a daily basis.

God Bless!

p/s: Comments welcomed! Please do post your views! ;)

9 comments:

  1. Ya I agree. And I will go one step further -- I think that the current culture of instant gratification further encourages us to devalue sex, because instead of being willing to wait for something wonderful we want to enjoy it now now now.http:

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  2. sounds like you've been reading Philip Yancey's "Where is God when it hurts?" Have you?!

    I agree with Irene. Our age is that of the "instant noodles, coffee 3 in 1, maybank2u online banking...etc" Plus, modern-age selfishness eats us up. So combine that together, you get disaster.

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  3. irene : Thanks ;) Looks like the expected number of commenters didn't work out, though the number of pings were a lot! :p haha..

    florencetoh : Nah ;) It's soul survivor..

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  4. i have never read apologetics or yancey (must try one day).

    chesterton seems to be putting thoughts of a normal non-christian man into christianity context.

    imho, putting pornography and things like that into chesterton's context of polygamy is a different view altogether isn't it? that guy is talking about sex, reproduction and pleasure (assuming sexual intercourse + polygamy).

    porno, masturbate & etc isn't really in my view. you are writing your own discourse though which used chesterton's view into current worldy situation. nice write there.

    assuming (again) it is, why don't you just write on sex pleasure instead of writing from pain to pleasure. it would be easier to read. i will be the first one to write a critic. he he.

    p/s: i read more than 10x this entry to try understand what you getting at. sorry la, u know i am abit slow (and dumb).

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  5. Haha Vincent! :p I'm kinda confused by your statements too..You shure u can read it? Takut u tidor la bro. keke..

    What I meant was that, well, as a Christian, its much easier to explain the problem with pleasure, just as much as the secularist would go around asking us about the problem of pain. If the world is free from pain, shouldn't it be free from pleasure as well?

    And thus, part of the pleasures of life granted by God is..sex, however you might object. However, just as Chesterton talks about the wrong assumption that polygamy actually devalues sex, than to overvalue it, thus the same could be said of pornography and thus, masturbation. Pornography is never art, and never meant to be so, but a thing that devalues the gift of marriage, sex and intimacy as God made it to be.

    Hmm, ;) do lemme knoe lar if u wanna talk more abt it.. God Bless!

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  6. Amen! Pleasure per se is not enemy of faith, it is the measure of how we treasure someone of something.

    Found an insight from "Christian Hedonist" John Piper along same lines:

    "As Christian Hedonists we know that everyone longs for happiness. And we will never tell them to deny or repress that desire. Their problem is not that they want to be satisfied, but that they are far too easily satisfied. We will instruct them how to glut their soul-hunger on the grace of God. We will paint God's glory in lavish reds and yellows and blues; and hell we will paint with smoky shadows of gray and charcoal. We will labor to wean them off the milk of the world onto the rich fare of God's grace and glory."

    More in his delightful book Desiring God...

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  7. hedonese : Thanks! Great comments as usual ;) We should meet more often. Gotta see your book collection dat John See kept telling me about.

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