http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=7&article=1153
Sexual Anarchy in the City
| by | Dave Miller, Ph.D. |
If it were any other disease, a national state of emergency would be declared and the entire nation would be mobilized to fight the plague. But due to the moral decline that America has experienced in the last half-century, few seem concerned, let alone alarmed. The New York City Health Department just announced that more than one-fourth (26%) of adult New Yorkers are infected with Herpes Simplex Virus-2—a lifelong, sexually-transmitted infection that causes painful genital sores and doubles the risk of contracting HIV. The rates are higher among homosexuals (32% versus 18%). And it’s not just genital herpes. The NYC Health Department received more than 65,000 reports of sexually transmitted infection in 2007 alone. Rates of gonorrhea, chlamydia, and infectious syphilis are above the national average and HIV infection is on the increase among men (“Survey Finds...,” 2008). For those Americans who have retained a semblance of biblical sensibilities—the moral values on which the nation was founded—this statistic is shocking and shameful. Sexually-transmitted diseases (STDs) are a scourge to American civilization.
As one looks back over human history and observes pagan civilizations that were hotbeds of sexual perversion and promiscuous filth, it is difficult to face the fact that America is swiftly pursuing the same road to decadence and destruction. If one were to try to imagine a more sexually immoral city, one would have difficulty envisioning more degraded conditions than those that prevail in New York City. In fact, the city government Web site reads like a hedonistic center of the ancient world:
Free NYC condoms are available at locations throughout the city.... The Health Department has distributed more than 48 million NYC Condoms since 2007 and continues to give away more than 3 million every month at clinics, health clubs, bars, barbershops and other venues. Any business can order NYC Condoms in bulk by calling... (“Survey Finds...”).
While sex in the city appears to be more widespread, the national average for genital herpes is equally appalling. One in four infected New Yorkers compares with one in five Americans (19%). Think of it: one-fifth of all Americans have contracted one type of venereal disease (not counting all the other STDs)! Again, if it was any other disease, the nation would be in a state of mourning—panic-stricken—and officials would take great lengths to solve the crisis. What’s more, “[d]irect medical costs associated with STDs in the United States are estimated at up to $14.7 billion annually” (“Trends in...,” 2007). Rather than encouraging purity, prudence, and propriety, the liberal “solution” for the past several decades has been to promote “safe sex” by inundating public schools and society with condoms. The stubborn, defiant determination of the last three generations of Americans to plunge headlong into unbridled lust and unrestrained indulgence of illicit passions has led to the sexual anarchy that grips the nation.
Unless the population of America returns to God and His Word, the future of the country is indubitably bleak. The millennia of human history are riddled with civilizations that imploded due to internal hedonism. We are headed in that direction, witnessing American civilization in the throes of pagan immorality. In uncanny—even surreal—anticipation of our times, 150 years ago the 1848 Supreme Court of South Carolina articulated the standard that characterized America until about 50 years ago:
What constitutes the standard of good morals? Is it not Christianity? There certainly is none other. Say that cannot be appealed to and...what would be good morals? The day of moral virtue in which we live would, in an instant, if that standard were abolished, lapse into the dark and murky night of pagan immorality (City Council of Charleston..., emp. added).
It is heart-breaking to realize that we are there.
Though describing the degraded moral and spiritual condition of those who lived in the ancient city of Ephesus in the first century A.D., the words of the apostle Paul ring with relevance to our own promiscuous predicament:
This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But you have not so learned Christ (Ephesians 4:17-20, emp. added).
The only solution? The only antidote to our nightmarish condition? Learn Christ—
[P]ut off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness (Ephesians 4:22-24, emp. added).
For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God (1 Thessalonians 4:3-5, emp. added).
Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh (Galatians 5:16, emp. added).
The alternative is to persist in sexual defilement. In that case, God has promised—
punishment for the day of judgment, and especially [for] those who walk according to the flesh in the lust of uncleanness and despise authority. They are presumptuous, self-willed... (2 Peter 2:9-10, emp. added).
REFERENCES
City Council of Charleston v. Benjamin (1848), 2 Strob. L. 508 (S. C. 1848).
“Survey Finds Genital Herpes is Common Among New Yorkers” (2008), New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, June 9, [On-line], URL: http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/pr2008/pr039-08.shtml.
“Trends in Reportable Sexually Transmitted Diseases in the United States, 2006” (2007), Department of Health & Human Services: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, [On-line], URL: http://www.cdc.gov/std/stats/trends2006.htm.