The Great Gospel of John
Volume 3
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus near Caesarea Philippi
- Chapter 214 -
What is unchastity?
Says Jurah, "Well yes, here is light, love and the highest truth concentrated together in one spot! Yes, Lord and Master of eternity, I would truly like to have a little light shed on the whole of Moses? Law that way, and then we could live and move quite unchangingly firmly in Your eternal order! Then afterwards Satan would certainly no longer find any hole through which he could sneak into Your brightly-lit kingdom like a wolf in sheep's clothing and make human statutes out of Your holiest commandments!"
2
I say: "My friend, the hour has not yet arrived in which the dark prince of the world will be judged; but it is very close! But when he will be judged, there will nonetheless be only too soon people who will behave even worse with My purest laws than Satan himself. Light will always have to fight darkness on this Earth!"
3
Jurah says, "Lord, but why? If all people would only recognize the light as I do now, Satan and all his malice will be eternally put out of work on this Earth! It will have to be certain and unchangeable through all time that our children and children of our children will then be brought up in the same light with the best conscience and will remain in it until the end of the world, just as it can be accepted certainly and unchangeably that two units of the same type and another two units of the same type will always make four units of the same type for all time! No man doubts that on the whole Earth, because it is an irrevocable and tangible truth. Your illumination of the Ten Commandments of Moses makes the same into a mathematical principle. But if so, to whom would it then remotely occur to call into question such truth?!
4
But as no-one could doubt that any longer, he would have to also act as a consequence of such a clearly recognized truth, otherwise he would have to appear as the sheerest idiot or he would hear this said about him from every sensible person's mouth!
5
But of course, if the holiest and most important truths for us people are constantly given in a certain puzzling cloak and man can often interpret what he likes, then there are certainly a huge number of liars, through whom Satan and his terrible entourage can keep his totally free movement in the company of people.
6
Therefore give us, most eminent Lord and Master, the truth clearly and openly, so that in future any approach by Satan towards man will be barred by the strong wall of the most unchangeable truth.
7
I want to mention as an example just that Law of Moses, through which he forbids unchastity as a sin. What actually is unchastity then? Does this only consist of sleeping with a woman with an unwashed body and then not washing again after the act? Or does it mean the desirous lasciviousness and sleeping with a woman, a virgin, a whore, a concubine or a young widow?
8
Does blind fornication belong in this category, or even the mute, sodomite sin, or even if one has something with the very desirous wife of another husband? Should one, in order to be fully chaste, totally suppress this most powerful of all natural impulses? But if that is so, then the marriage bed certainly nothing other than a workplace for unchastity which is accepted in society; for who can guarantee us that the man does not sleep with his lush wife more often than is necessary to create a fruit?!
9
I have seen and known people who one could call true people of gold as far as goodness, love, patience, kindness and compassion is concerned; but in the vexed question of chastity they were and remain weak. They did everything, it is true, to become stronger in this area, but it was not in their nature, not even when the natural, full impotence fell on them; a lush virgin still made the same lustful impression on them.
10
And on the other hand I have seen and known people who remained as cold as a stone at the greatest female beauty, true examples of chastity, but otherwise in their lives they were insensitive to everything! Nothing moved them! Affliction and misery of the poor were laughable things for them, tears of suffering were tricks to wake sympathy; a woman was contemptible to them and very easy to do without, something which had no other purpose in the world than a field for the sowing of any kind of grain. They found marriage to be one of the most laughable institutions in human society. In their opinion all healthy women should be locked up in a great building and let strong men well capable of producing heirs sleep with them so that only beautiful, healthy and strong people would be created; but the ugly and weak women should be weeded out or used for the lowest jobs like cattle and work until they perish! Those are facts that I have experienced!
11
Now I ask whether people who are weak in chastity do not have a very great advantage over the ice-cold heathens of chastity in the eyes of every man! As far as I am concerned, they do! Well, I do not know how things stand for You, most eminent Lord and Master, and nor can I know. In order to come into a sort of order in these points which are forbidden by Moses as a consequence, in order not to be in the constant fear of having sinned before God with such an act, and if the act is always a sin, then You, oh Lord and Master, will certainly know some medicine against it through which one can drive out the desire and the pressure like a cold! For there is nothing more miserable for an honest person than to be dragged by the hair to sin by a certain side; nature forces the flesh with an irresistible power, and if one falls through the free air as a normal body, then one has also committed a deadly sin! That is then a little too strict, particularly for a person who for the sake of God has carried his head and heart always in the right place as far as possible. Therefore, Lord and Master, I would like to have a clear explanation about this from You! For that seems to me to be at least one of the prickliest points!"