The Midrash, literally “story” in Hebrew, explains the Hebrew Bible and is a vital part of the rabbinic tradition. I find as I look at the push, in the New York school system for example, for compulsory sexual education that the void of moral and practical context is in effect not a solution but actually will compound the problem. We are in effect waiting for the flood.
The midrashic teaching on the time of Noah presents a time of noise. People had lost the ability to communicate because nothing had any meaning. Sex was not a part of the marital conversation between a man and a woman; people just had sex with everything and anything and nothing was channeled or directed. Conversation is, or rather was, more than just shouting at one another our positions; it is an engagement and it is the process of relationship. The flood then is seen as a quieting of the noise and a return to a primordial silence.
Noah built a tebah, an ark, but actually translates as “box” and in later Hebrew as “word”. Noah is said to have himself not been described as heroic or noble; but God had a place in His heart for him. In fact Noah is described as being absent of the word; illustrated in that after God told him to build an ark and of the flood he said nothing in return, no prayers for humanity and no questions. Noah simply does what he was told and finds himself in the anti-flood world of the ark. A celibate life of service to God’s creation now encapsulated within a floating coffin. The Hebrew tradition explains the celibacy in that God called them to enter the arc separately by sex and they were called by God to exit as husband and wife. Noah is said to have worked to feed the animals on their time schedule twenty four hours a day everyday for forty days and nights, just as God does. So the arc is truly the antithesis to the pre-flood world. Life on the arc is ordered, if not naturally ordered, it is supernaturally ordered. It is like a seed or a word filled with meaning waiting to land as all things must to truly live.
The word falls flat upon the ear, Noah is not God, and he pines for the arc. He longs for the God-like stature he held on the arc. So he tastes another kind of apple, alcohol. He becomes drunk, self medicating his sorrows and ennui, letting everything loses order in a morass of self indulgence. His son also pines away for power and attempts to usurp his flagging father while he’s passed out. We return to the fallen world of pre-flood Earth. This is a cautionary tale.
Enter New York Schools in an attempt to mitigate the effects of sex on the youth of New York they have instituted a policy of mandatory sex education with complimentary condom usage demo.
I read an article in the Denver Post on Sunday Tina Griego, a Denver Post Columnist, wrote about the Florence Crittenton school for teen families. She wrote both of how a teen mother and her boyfriend used only condoms because she was afraid of her mother finding oral birth control pills. They used the prescribed method of birth control of the New York school system and yet she still got pregnant at fifteen. A second pregnant fifteen year old at the event got pregnant intentionally because she wanted the love and attention she felt a baby would provide. Condoms do not stop that sort of misguided longing. The communication is garbled to our youth there is too much noise and false promise.
Sex will not make you happy. Sex is for the creation of a totally dependent life. There is a correlation between teen pregnancy and abject poverty. Sex ed has been taught for 40 years and rates of STDs and unintended pregnancies continue to rise. Schools will not be responsible for what they teach about sex until students who are the pregnant fruit of these programs sue them. I hate to suggest litigation but the schools feel no consequence for their actions and it is the children who have to suffer.
No child can give consent to have sex; in fact neurological research suggests that we probably shouldn’t be able to give our consent until about twenty-five years of age. I am not suggesting that course of legislation; I bring it up to highlight how vulnerable children are. Children need our guidance. They need us to be clear and concise. They need us to be authoritative. When we fall short of this it is abusive and we are passively contributing to the sexual abuse of every child who has sex.
What we are creating is a society where sex is for everything but what sex is for; which is the noise the Midrash warns of in the pre-flood society of Noah’s age. Information is everywhere and communication is nowhere. The floodwaters were described as the ultimate crushing noise and following that crescendo was utter silence.
The Midrash tells a cautionary tale but the answers are intuitive. The Tebah floated over the water like the Spirit of God in first Genesis. The side of the Tebah was opened and life poured out of it. The Tebah was the word the word was made flesh in Jesus. The story of the flood ends in a sorrowful Noah for he longed for intimacy with God. Jesus brings us an invitation to intimacy through Him. Through His life, death, and resurrection Jesus has made the answers of the flood more than intuitive. He has made sex, marriage, and family accessible to communication by giving them definite meaning. We transgress those laws at our own peril, waiting for a flood if you will.
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