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Sex in the Society (cont.)
By Steve Garber
Why on earth would Jojo “loath himself”? For hooking up with a beautiful woman who comes knocking on his door? Come on. Grow up. We’re sophisticated machines, after all. The old, out-of-date categories of right and wrong no longer apply. “Morals” and “meaning” went out with the Enlightenment. Now we know better.
The first time I really saw that that worldview was more “the emperor has no clothes” than one I should be enamored by was reading another of Steve Turner’s poems some 30 years ago. The artists do “get there” first, and in his little poem, “The Conclusion,” he was in fact “bright as a light, sharp as a razor,” as the book’s cover promised.
My love, she said
When all’s considered,
We’re only machines.
I chained her
To my bedroom wall
For future use.
And she cried.
Jojo loathed himself because he acted against the moral universe that is really there, against his humanity as well as against the law of God. A son of Adam would loathe himself. A sophisticated machine would…. well, in the end, I think he would cry—that is, if the author was reflecting the truth of the human condition. Jojo would have to cry, wouldn’t he? We are our DNA, but we are also able to respond, responsible. It is the secret of our humanity, at the very core of who we are as human beings, made in the image of God.
Yes, Jojo loathed himself. God, human nature and history are together on this one.
This essay first appeared in Critique the publication of Ransom Fellowship [http://ransomfellowship.org]in the spring of 2006. For more than 20 years Steve has served on its board, and counts its founders Denis and Margie Haack as among his dearest friends.
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"...The word ‘mass’ is said to be derived from the final sentence of the old Latin rite, ite missa est. In polite English it might be rendered, ‘Now you are dismissed.’ In more blunt language it could be just, ‘Get out!’ – out into the world which God made and God-like beings inhabit, the world into which Christ came and into which he now sends us. For that is where we belong. The world is the arena in which we are to live and love, witness and serve, suffer and die for Christ..."
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