Father Peter's Forum

By: Jason & Crystalina Evert & Brian Butler
Reviewed by Val J. Peter

Most everybody says that we live in a culture that is saturated with sex. And most everybody says that we also live in a culture that is saturated with selfishness.

In this culture, many people are searching for the meaning of life, sex and love. They don’t realize that answer is right in front of us. The key to finding it is hidden in God’s original design of our bodies and our souls. God has hidden in our design (in creating us as male and female) a key to the secret of love. Let’s start with some basic definitions:

 Love is a decision to will the good of another person. It involves the sincere gift of oneself to the others.
 Lust is sexual desire apart from God’s love, a selfish desire that seeks one’s own pleasure at the expense of another.
 Love as attraction: recognize the good of another person, seeing the inner and outer beauty of that person.
 Love as desire: wanting true good for yourself, desiring goodness and happiness.
 Love as good will: willing or desiring the good of another person.
 Selfishness: the opposite of love, namely, using a person for your own pleasure.
 Unselfishness: the only adequate proper attitude towards human beings is love.
 Lust: a selfish desire that seeks one’s own pleasure at the expense of another…sexual desire apart from love.

1. Story: Think of the girls you know who have been used and discarded, girls who have been tricked, used sexually and tossed aside. They were not raped. They got what they wanted and had been deceived into believing they were actually cared for by the boy. The boy didn’t want to give her anything. He only wanted to take. Perhaps the girl just wanted to feel good. Perhaps she wanted to believe he cared about her instead of just her body. Perhaps she was just looking to have some fun and ended up feeling regret about having been used. Either way, she felt empty. Think of those guys who would rob a girl of her dignity even if she consented to being robbed. Is there a better way? Yes there is.
The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is using a person. This means focusing on maximizing your own pleasure and minimizing the pain of the other and, yet, pleasing yourself at the expense of the other if necessary. Does real love bring heartache, depression, guilt and loneliness? No. God’s love is life giving.

2. Story: In the early Christian Church, several holy Christian men were gathered outside a church in Antioch when a beautiful prostitute passed by on the street. Most of the men looked away to avoid being seduced. But Nonnus stared intently at her and said to the others: “Did not the wonderful beauty of that woman delight you?” The others remained silent, but he said: “it delighted me and I am weeping for her.” When the prostitute saw how Nonnus looked at her, she was caught off guard. No man had ever looked at her with such goodness. He was not lusting after her, but rather saw something in her she did not even see in herself. The simple purity of that one man’s glance marked the beginning of her conversion to Christ. This former prostitute is known as St. Pelagia.

There is power in the way a man looks at a woman just as there is great power in the way a woman dresses for a man. That man, Nonnus, possessed something called “positive purity.” He didn’t see a prostitute walking toward him. He saw a sister in Christ. The men who looked away had what is called “negative purity.” They were right to avoid the occasion of sin. They did good but did not have the freedom exhibited by Nonnus and offered to all men.

a. In God’s story of Adam and Eve, God knew it was not good for Adam to be alone so he created Eve. Everything was still pure, including Adam’s heart. Adam experienced sexual desire in a totally pure way. So when Adam saw Eve there wasn’t any confusion between love and lust. He saw her body and didn’t want to use her. He saw and experienced this call to love her. This may be hard to imagine because many of us have been led to believe that sex in itself is our goal. Sexual desire in the original plan of God was the desire to love in the image of God. Sexual desire in the beginning was an expression of Adam who desired to make a gift of himself to another person. The original nakedness of Adam and Eve was a peaceful state. There was no struggle to love. That all changed through sin. But before it changed, Adam and Eve were able to mirror the very life of God. It was called original happiness.

b. In Genesis, the serpent told Adam and Eve to question the motives and generosity of God. The serpent tricked Adam and Eve into thinking they were missing out on something and that God wasn’t trustworthy as a loving Father. They fell for the lie. They decided to satisfy their own desires instead of trusting and following God’s ways. Fear and lust entered the picture. So did pride and disobedience.

When God looks at you and sees your body, He sees that it is very good. And it is only because you have not yet seen what God sees in you that you do not agree. You think you should be prettier or more handsome. So we have eating disorders, cutting, steroid use and those are often symptoms of our dislike of ourselves. Our culture expects every man to have six-pack abs and every girl to wear a size zero so must of us feel inadequate. It’s time you start to begin to realize the goodness of your body out of the goodness of God’s creation.

How did shame enter the world? Because of the purity of their hearts, Adam and Eve were able to be seen in their nakedness without any fear of being used by the other. When fear of being used by the other came, shame came and lust which is the selfish desire to seek one’s own pleasure at the expense of the other.

Some people seek to deal with shame by becoming shameless. They feel no remorse for the desire to use another person or to let others use them. There is an interesting story told about the first bikini that was worn on a modeling runway in France in 1946. All the other models refused to wear the outfit. They inherently knew their dignity and they were eager to avoid what was shameful. So a stripper wore the first bikini on that modeling runway in 1946. She wasn’t wearing it because she was comfortable with her body but because she lost her sense of shame. She had lost her understanding that the sexual values of her body would only attract lust from men and she would lose her dignity as a person.

After the fall of Adam and Eve, life has become a tug of war. We often feel like that character in the cartoon where there is an angel on one shoulder telling us to be good and a devil on the other shoulder saying go ahead, it will be fine. That’s the battle between “the flesh and the spirit” that St. Paul writes about in his letter to the Romans. (Romans 7, 15) What should we do?

 Discipline yourself for this struggle just as a long distance runner disciplines herself or himself. You’ll feel better just as a disciplined athlete feels better.
 Run around with kids who have your values, not the opposite values.
 Worship God in the quiet of your heart.
 Remember the devil is not afraid of you, but is petrified of the presence of Christ in you.

3. Story: A girl has the following dream. She was walking in a room that was filled with index card files.

 One file said: Lies I have told.
 Another said: Things I have done in anger.
 Friends I have betrayed.
 Lustful thoughts.
 Mean actions.
 Abuse I have suffered.
 And many others.

 In her dream, Jesus then entered the room. She watched as He began to open the files and read all the cards. And on each card, He began to write His name over hers. She didn’t want Him to do that, but the name of Jesus covered hers. It was written in His blood. He gently put the cards back, smiled a sad smile, placed His hand on her shoulder and said: “It is finished.”
 If you have struggled with painful memories of abuse, lustful thoughts, self-hatred, abandonment or anything else that seems impossible to heal or overcome, God wants to set you free.
 He wants not to simply redeem our souls, but to redeem every part of us including our bodies and our desires.
 It is important to notice that God’s Son redeemed us, not just with His soul, but with His body.
 God loves you so much He would rather die than risk spending eternity without you.

4. Story: Jason was a senior who went to a party where everyone was drinking too much. A girl who drank too much came on to him and he had sex with her. Now he was filled with guilt afterwards because, as he said: “Her eyes looked so sad.” He said: “I thought this was true freedom, but it wasn’t.”

 Freedom is the ability to desire and choose the good.
 Think of when you become 16 and you get a driver’s license which means you are now free to drive. But the only way this freedom to drive exists is if it has boundaries. What if you didn’t have to take a driver’s test? What if there were no rules of the road? No speed limits? You could drive on either side. And do whatever you wanted? It would cause chaos: accidents, traffic jams, drunk driving, even death. With freedom come restrictions.
 If you truly care for any other person, you are making a decision to live your life in a way that places certain restrictions on yourself.
 Selfishness leads to misery.
 Freedom always has certain truths tied up with it. Without these truths, we lose our freedom. One of the truths is that freedom exists for the sake of love.
 Lust is not self-donation and self-gratification at the expense of another.
 Would it be true freedom if you lived in a place where you could, without fear, molest children, rape women, murder Jews in gas chambers or hold black people in slavery? Would that be true freedom? No, it’s the very absence of freedom.

5. Story: There’s an old practice among Eskimos in Alaska on how to deal with wolves in order to protect their herds and family. The hunter doesn’t face the wolf, but uses the wolf’s own appetite to bring it down. He uses the blood of a walrus or seal pouring it over the blade of a knife. The weapon is left to freeze in arctic temperatures and the first coating of blood is set and then a second and a third and a fourth, etc. The Eskimo then buries the handle of the knife in the ground, leaving the blade protruding in the snow. The wolf smells the blood and starts licking the frozen blood. As the taste excites the wolf, he begins to lick more aggressively. The wolf’s tongue is nicked. Having been numbed by the icy blood, the animal is unaware of the damage he is doing himself. The cold blood is replaced by the warm blood of the wolf until the wolf becomes faint and then he dies of loss of blood.

This Eskimo trick resembles the allure of sexual sin. We think we can get away with doing particular things, but only for a while. The pleasure offers us escape from the loneliness and emptiness we often feel. It rests on the deceptive promise that living selfishly will give us more joy than if we live for God.

a. The body has its own language and can be something positive like a hug or negative like a not so friendly gesture on the freeway. Consider that Judas kissed Jesus while betraying him. Judas’ body said one thing. His heart clearly said another.

b. The language of the body is a language of divine love.
c. In the movie Vanilla Sky the leading character slept with a woman and she said to him, “Don’t you know when you sleep with someone, your body makes a promise whether you do or not.” He did not understand.

d. He didn’t know that. She was right. His body spoke a promise he had not intended.

e. When two teens have sex, they’re physically doing the same thing a married couple does, but they do not mean what their bodies are saying.

f. Because they have not made the marriage commitment.
g. They are not making a total gift to each other and that’s what the language of bodily intercourse means, a total gift to each other.

h. They may hope to get married one day, but they do not now belong to each other in the eyes of God.

i. They have not made the commitment through the means that God has established.

Boys Town boys and girls! Relating to each other in high school is about caring for each as a brother and a sister in Christ. To get lovey dovey is to distract yourself from your primary task which is your treatment goals. You need to learn how to be real friends as boys and girls to each other instead of “lovers.” If you work on friendships you would find much more happiness, much more success and you would grow in maturity and love for each other and love for God.

And you will be setting yourselves up for a much happier life when you leave after high school.

Yes, of course the media would have us believe that girls and boys cannot stay only friends, but they have to get involved in sexual relationships. But that’s just the media. It’s a big lie. And if you believe it, you will be involved sexually and it will hurt one or both of you. I’ve been helping high school kids for 50 years now and I’ve never known kids who had sex in high school where one or both of them didn’t get hurt.

So spend your high school days by learning how to be friends, real, true, genuine friends. Friends are those who help each other get better. Friends are those who talk each other out of doing stupid things. Friends are those who resist the temptation to believe the media. Friends are body guards for each other in the true sense of that term.

Help each other, love each other. You will be happy that you did.
Chill out…you won’t be weird if you do.
Let us end with a questionnaire for girls and a questionnaire for boys.
1. Questionnaire for girls:
 Do you do sexual talk with boys?
 Do you put up with being called a “b” or “ho” or other bad language from boys?
 Do you make up stories about sexual things that you have done with boys?
 Do you go along with sexual acts because it helps keep this boy interested?
 Do you let the boy you like talk about the pornography he looks at?
 Do you stay in an inappropriate relationship because you want to say that you have a boyfriend?
 Are you afraid of being alone?
 Do you talk gutter talk with other girls?
 Do you dress inappropriately to get attention?
 Do you let a guy touch you in order to keep him?
 Do you listen to songs that are way too suggestive?
 Do you go to movies which are way too suggestive?
NOTE: The more of these that you answer yes, the more you are going the wrong direction. The more of these that you answer no the more you are going in the right direction.

2. Questionnaire for boys:
 When you look at a girl, do you automatically undress her?
 When you talk to a girl, do you try to say sexual things that you think will excite her?
 Do you try to control a girl with your macho ways?
 Do you use flattery with a girl so that you can get your way?
 Do you get mad at a girl who doesn’t give you what you want?
 Do you push a girl to go further than you know she should otherwise?
 Do you engage sexual acts with girls?
 Do you look at pornography?
 Do you want to have nothing to do with a girl who doesn’t want to have sex with you?
 Do you tell a girl to dress sexy for you?
 Do you tell degrading sexual jokes in front of her?
 Do you call her “my woman?”
 Do you lust after her?
 Do you try to hurt her emotionally?
 Do you try to control her?
NOTE: The more of these that you answer yes, the more you are going the wrong direction. The more of these that you answer no the more you are going in the right direction.

The above is a review of Theology of the Body for Teens: Discovering God’s Plan for Love and Life (Ascension Press: West Chester, Pennsylvania). Please order copies of this book for your youth. It is much more marvelous than this little review would indicate. You can order it at
www.AscensionPress.com