The Gospel According to Judas - A Handbook on Life

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Sex. Now that I have your attention, let’s talk about sex. According to the moral high ground, that being the Lord’s, we are not to have sex outside of marriage. Or put a different way, a lifetime commitment. This may seem to be quite an unnecessarily high bar to set in this day and age, where contraception is cheap and plentiful, but so is meth. We don’t lower the bar on what it takes to be a saint, do we? And if we did, what would it mean, that word? Why even have such words if you make them meaningless?

He does seem to forgive cases that don’t make the grade at all. He was known to dine with sinners. He said of the adulterous woman, let him without sin cast the first stone upon her, and that after all of them had gone, he himself did not condemn her. We will get back to this point. But for now, suffice it that the bar exists that is high, but he understands if we can’t reach it. And he said nothing about homosexuality. So, as it stands, after all is said and done, only sex within a lifetime commitment is right. But he will forgive we who fail to meet such a demanding virtue. Do your best, right? Hope it is enough. What else can we do?

There is a reason why sex should not happen outside of marriage. And why generally we shouldn’t be shooting up heroin. Let’s take the second: it was described to me once that an addict quit Mr. Brownstone (slang for the drug) because the feeling was so good that it made everything else secondary by comparison. Thus, such an ecstatic feeling — meant, in fact, for perhaps such experiences as true religious ecstasy — this became the mundane. Like an orgasm that lasts an hour available without (much) muss or (much) fuss at any time, day or night. Shall we state that such pleasure was not meant for such base circumstances?

We then harp on sex: this was meant for what, naturally, leads to a commitment that is signified by its procreative aspect. And children are meant for a lifetime. Outside of that, we are not meant to experience that kind of gratification. This translates in all places, even homosexuality, to not doing “you know what” unless we are committed to that person for life. This is how we translate values into new contexts. I understand today that such things may be cheap, or are easily cheapened. It doesn’t mean that we lower the standard of things that are supposed to be. Some things are right. Some are not. It’s not all relative, though we do rely on context to make sense of things. Good is not just a myth we have outgrown.