Editorial November 2, 1981 Issue

Morality uplifting sexuality

BEULAH M. ROEGGE

The value of morality is to lift human experience out of depraved physicality and into closer accord with spiritual reality—man's natural state. Nowhere is morality more needed than in the area of human sexuality. There are few who have not shed sexually related tears. These may be caused by failure to fill a stereotyped sex role, discrimination encountered because of gender, grief over sexual activity engendering guilt, remorse for failure to fulfill a legitimate marital role, or the torment of perversion.

Only spirituality can wipe away all such tears, and spirituality is the basis of morality. The commandment "Thou shalt not commit adultery" springs from "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."^{Ex. 20:14, 3.} The desire to worship God, Spirit, and to serve Him urges one to strive to express moral qualities. This Christ-impelled desire finds expression in all areas of human life.

Sexuality is strictly a human condition. It is not a spiritual state. In response to the question "What is man?" in the chapter "Recapitulation," and in the Glossary definition of man, both in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy does not employ the terms "male" and "female," but she makes clear that the real man is the child of God (our Father-Mother). In addressing the issue of gender in The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, she writes: "Gender means a kind. Hence mankind—in other words, a kind of man who is identified by sex—is the material, so-called man born of the flesh, and is not the spiritual man, created by God, Spirit, who made all that was made."^{Miscellany, p. 239.} And in Science and Health she notes, "Masculine, feminine, and neuter genders are human concepts."^{Science and Health, p. 516.}