Chastity

C. S. Lewis writes that the “Christian rule is, ‘Either marriage, with complete faithfulness to your partner, or else total abstinence’” (95). But if we begin to suggest complete abstinence to society at large we receive howls and moans about how we take away their fun. General society feels no need for abstinence because “it is so difficult and so contrary to our instincts” (95), and if it feels good it must be good. Too much of a good thing is bad though, and just like too much food turns us into gluttons, “sexual appetite . . . grows by indulgence” (97). Society at large places great importance on sexual pleasure, but has missed the bigger picture and design of pleasure.

A little girl possesses a strand of plastic pearls she absolutely adores, and every night her father asks her to give him the necklace, and every night she refuses because she fears losing her most prized possession. But one night, that little girl gives her father the plastic pearls and in return he gives her a strand of real pearls. That plastic necklace represents sex for the world; we are “gorged” (97) and “like titillations” (97) because sex is our greatest possession and our highest pleasure. God made us to “be combined together in pairs, not simply on the sexual level, but totally combined” (104). The real strand of pearls represents total combination of two people because then we no longer have purely sexual pleasure but the pleasure of a deep emotional and spiritual connection with another human being. The problem of “Chastity [being] the most unpopular of the Christian virtues” (95) lies in society’s inability to see the greater purpose of an intimate sexual relationship and thus let go of their plastic pearls to receive the real pearls.

(Quotes taken from C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity)