What do religious values have to do with sex?

with contributions from Russ Gerber, Lois Rae Carlson

To be—or not to be—sexually active is a question on the minds of many people, teenagers in particular. If religion comes up in this context, it is often dismissed as offering only guilt instead of real answers. In this interview, which was originally broadcast on the Christian Science Sentinel—Radio Edition, Russ Gerber asked Lois Rae Carlson, a practitioner and teacher of Christian Science from Northfield, Illinois, to shed some new light on the relationship of religious values and moral questions, especially ones regarding sexuality.

Russ Gerber: Lois, I want to talk about teens and sexual activity, but I'd like to bypass all the statistics and studies and really get to a fundamental question. When teenagers, or adults for that matter, are tempted to have sex outside of marriage, what do you think they're really looking for, and how can they find it?

Lois Rae Carlson: Sometimes sexual longing has to do with a desire to feel connected to people or to feel reassured or beautiful or good about yourself, to feel accepted and not alone. But sexual longing can also have a lot to do with boredom, idleness, sometimes rebellion against authority. It can be a form of manipulation and escape. Some of the very worst instincts of the human mind can take form in sexual longing. That's why we have to be so careful about it, and why it's important that we talk about it on a radio program devoted to religious values. A lot of people do a lot of talking about sex in a psychological context, a physical context, an emotional-need context, but we're not hearing a lot about sex in terms of religious values. And frankly I'm convinced that religion is the only answer to sexual issues in our society today.

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