OceanSide church of Christ

 Previous Return to Articles Next 

SOCIALISM (2)

The Practice of Free Love

Victor M. Eskew

 

            Before individuals begin to support and promote any ideology, movement, or system, it behooves them to investigate it beforehand.  What may appear to be good could be bad.  What might appear to be positive might be negative.  What might appear to be godly might actually oppose God.  Socialism is one of those systems.  It makes bold promises.  It forecasts a utopian future.  However, the evils of socialism are never proclaimed by its advocates.  Because of this, many embrace the positives but fail to examine the negatives of socialism.

One of the positions of socialism involves “free love.”  The socialist compares the desire to have sex with the desire for food and water.  The difference, they say, lies in the ability to fulfill the desire.  A person can eat whenever and whatever he desires to fulfill his craving for food.  With sex, this is not the case.  Societal norms and religion have legislated in such a way that man’s sexual needs cannot be fulfilled in a natural way according to the socialist.

The socialist begins by removing the secular laws and the divine laws against free sex.  These laws, we are told, do not promote a healthy view of sex.  Individuals are ashamed of their bodies.  They do not engage in wholesome relationships.  And, often women are the ones who receive “the short end of the stick” when it comes to sex.

Once the laws are removed, individuals must be educated according to the “rules” of the socialist.  They tell us that they are not for licentiousness.  They also tell us that asceticism is evil.  Wholesome sex lies somewhere between two extremes.  The naked body must be accepted as wholesome and not shameful.  Sexual acts must be seen as being pure instead of being acts of sin.  Each individual is free to choose how he/she will function between the two extremes of asceticism and licentiousness.  He does so with the mutual consent of his partner.  Again, the boundaries are wide open for the socialist.  Sexual relationships can be practiced between one or more individuals.  The individuals can be of the same sex or of a different sex.  They can involve lasting relationships or they can be relationships that are short-lived if this is the will of the individuals involved.  A person could have one type of a relationship with one person and at the same time have a different relationship with someone else.  Communication and mutual agreement are the keys to happiness in all relationships.

            In the book, Love’s Coming of Age, the socialist author, Edward Carpenter, sets forth some of the views of socialism and free love.  Let’s look at a few quotes from the book.

 

It is probably through this fact of the variety of love that it does remain possible, in some cases, for married people to have intimacies with outsiders, and yet to continue perfectly true to each other and in rare instances, for triune and other such relations to be permanently maintained.”

 

“As there is undoubtedly a certain natural reticence in sex, so perhaps the most decent thing in true Marriage would be to say nothing, make no promises—either for a year or a life-time. Promises are bad at any time, and when the heart is full silence befits it best.”

 

“Whatever safeguards against a too frivolous view of the relationship may be proposed by the good sense of society in the future, it is certain that the time has gone past when Marriage can continue to be regarded as a supernatural institution to whose maintenance human bodies and souls must be indiscriminately sacrificed; a humaner, wiser, and less panic-stricken treatment of the subject must set in; and if there are difficulties in the way they must be met by patient and calm consideration of human welfare—superior to any law, however ancient and respectable.”

 

“Polygamy, for instance, or some related form of union, supposing it really did spontaneously and naturally arise in a society which gave perfect freedom and independence to women in their relation to men, would be completely different in character from the old-world polygamy, and would cease to act as a degrading influence on women, since it would be the spontaneous expression of their attachment to each other and to a common husband; Monogamy, under similar circumstances, would lose its narrowness and stuffiness; and the life of the Hetaira, that is of the woman who chooses to be the companion of more than one man, might not be without dignity, honor, and sincere attachment.”

 

These quotes are very revealing.  Marriage as set forth in the Holy Scriptures is set aside.  Togetherness, union, and agreement replace the vows of one man to one woman.  In a society practicing free sex, doors are opened to multiple relationships between men and woman.  There are no hard and fast lines.  Love consists of openly pleasing one’s self and another in whatever manner they so choose.  Those who lived through the 60s remember the "free love" movement among what were called the hippies. Nakedness, fornication, uncleanness, homosexuality, and adultery were practiced out in the open. "Do as you please." "Feel good." "No restraints." These were some of the slogans we heard from those involved in the free love movement.

Think of the things happening in our nation today: the LGBT movement, support being given to the practice of polygamy and pedophilia, the destruction of the home, more women having babies out of wedlock, 1 of 2 marriages ending in divorce, adultery, the increase in co-habitation, the proliferation of pornography, and the expanded practice of abortion, even to the point of advocating the killing of children after they have been born.  All of these practices stem from a mindset of free love.  Why?  Because free love removes God and His Word from the equation.  Man alone makes the rules when it comes to sex.

Can Christians support any of these practices? Doesn't the Word of God promote a very high ideal for sexual expression in marriage (Heb. 13:4)?  Doesn't the Word of God teach the practice of self-control (I Cor. 9:27)?  Doesn't the Word of God call many of the things the socialist wants to practice sin and works of the flesh (Gal. 5:19-21)?  Doesn't the Word of God teach us that these kind of things will destroy a society (Prov. 14:34)?  Doesn’t the Bible tell us that they that do these things will not inherit the kingdom of God (I Cor. 6:9-10)?  The answer to all of these questions is: "Yes."

If a child of God accepts the system of socialism, he will find himself very quickly on the wrong side of God's Word.  He will have to try to categorize his life.  Too, he will have to justify supporting the darkness of this world in some way.  Jesus said this cannot be done.  “No man can serve two masters:  for either he will hate the one, and love the other, or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.  Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Matt. 6:24).  Paul exhorts us, saying:  “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them” (Eph. 5:11).

Remember, socialism is based upon the godless theory of evolution.  Evolution does not believe that man is created in the image of God.  He is just the highest form of evolved animal life.  He has no real purpose while on earth except to satisfy the lusts of the flesh.  Dear readers, we must do our homework on socialism.  If we do not, we will be overcome by it.  Then it will be too late.  Please be aware that we are farther down the road than we think.