Do whatever you want as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone...
Today's guest post is from one of my favourite writers Mike Freisen read his blog, and follow him on twitter. Mike was the first person to follow me on Twitter when I launched my blog last year, and since then I have been eagerly reading everything that he writes. He writes about Christian philosophy, theology, and spirituality and I am constantly amazed at how he has the ability to make really complex ideas easy to understand. His writing challenges me to think and I just know you will enjoy it as much as I do.
Over to Mike ...
There is a commonly-held belief amongst some people of my generation (the millennials) that goes: Do whatever you want as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone.
A common expression of this belief is “friends with benefits.” Friends with benefits has a verbal recognition that we are going to have sex to meet our sexual needs, without having feelings for one another. Friends with benefits is ultimately saying, “All I think of you is as a masturbatory prop.” Having sex with someone whom you do not love, when there is not a mutual giving and exchanging of your self, is the same thing as going home and taking care of business with them as your fantasy. Friends with benefits is a live version of porn. Can you imagine going up to your friend and saying to them, “I think about you when I pleasure myself at night.” It kind of puts a damper on the relationship because ultimately you just revealed to this person that you objectify them. I have a need, you’re the means to my end. I get to use you. We may not be thinking that we’re hurting this person because of an “agreement”, but we plant seeds of our estimations of this persons worth, whether we know it or not.
Maybe a better example is this: an alcoholic comes home from the bar, completely drunk, ignored his obligations as a father, husband, and soon again employee. His choice to drink is ultimately not hurting anyone physically. However, it puts drivers’ lives in danger, it creates a greater likelyhood for his kids to become alcoholics, and he essentially tells himself and those around him that alcohol is more important than his own and their own wellbeing.
The job of a Christian is to realize that every moment of every day comes with the opportunity to bless or curse others. Our ability to choose blessings and curses becomes a cosmic expression of The Butterfly Effect, where what we do, think, and how we act has an impact on every part of our lives and those around us.
“Every moment and every event of everyman's life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds, so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men.” -Thomas Merton
Mike Freisen
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Reader Comments (2)
I actually think this goes back to the all-too-common conflation of morality and law. Most people just never get past Kohlberg's stage three or four. Part of this is that the more people are convinced something shouldn't be criminalized, the more they tend to think it's OK.
The law rightly restricts itself mainly with harm to others because of the nature of legal enforcement is itself violence: forcible arrest, confinement, seizure of property, etc. Most of us don't want to criminalize promiscuity among consenting adults because criminal punishment would be a disproportionate response. But morality is about a whole lot more than that. IMO, everybody should read The Nichomachean Ethics.
That said, I think you overstate your case on the "friends with benefits" issue. Calling a non-loving sex partner a "masturbatory prop" wipes out a lot of possible territory between masturbation and loving, committed sex. Consider the case of a video game like Halo; I could:
a. Play alone against the computer
b. Play with strangers on the Internet
c. Play with live friends.
d. Play with a significant other.
Every stage but (a) is a shared experience, and each stage adds a greater level of intimacy and, one would hope, enjoyment. I'm not trying to say playing Halo could ever be as intimate as sex, or carry the same moral weight, but nevertheless sex with a friend is a shared experience and more intimate than masturbation (or sex with a prostitute), though far less so than sex within a committed, long-term, loving relationship, or even your current boyfriend or girlfriend.
James I enjoyed reading your comment. I do think people mistake thinking some is 'ok' for actually realising whether it is good for them or not. The whole 'Friends with Benefits' thing is not good for us.