Sex, Death, and Rock and Roll

Whenever I look at the liberal/secular/modernist/call-it-what-you-will mindset that is so ubiquitous these days (and getting almost impossible to avoid), I am always struck by what seems to be a combined obsession with sex and death.

Both obsessions are pretty obvious. The push to have sex, watch sex, talk about sex, listen to sex, and flaunt sex – the kinkier the better – is not exactly a hard-to-spot trend in the culture these days. The drive to normalize homosexual behavior is universal; Brittany and Madonna smooch live on TV; Janet Jackson bares her breast at the Superbowl; there are drives to legalize prostitution in several states; television glamorizes teenage sex; it is only a matter of time before the Animal Channel joins the fray with My Domestic Partner, Rex.

It’s the same with the death obsession: in addition to the sacramentalization of abortion, the “right to die” has already become the “duty to die” in the case of Terri Schiavo. Any time spent channel surfing will take you through a plethora of death-oriented prime time shows: Crossing Jordan, CSI Wherever, Dr. G, Medical Examiner, Seconds from Disaster; you can come up with your own list.

What I don’t understand is why, when cultures are collapsing, the two seem to be inexorably linked. Throughout history you can see the pattern. Biblically, Israel entered a Promised Land where the Canaanite culture linked its religion to male and female ritual prostitution and to (apparently) child sacrifice. Not that many years later, Israel itself succumbed to the same temptations. The Carthaginians were heavily into fertility rites and child sacrifice. Rome at the height of the empire was well known for both the unusual sexual proclivities and excesses of its elites and for the blood of the coliseum and its imitators throughout the provinces. Not to be outdone, the Nazis specialized in homoerotic symbolism and mass slaughter on an unprecedented scale. And now there’s us.

At first glance, one would expect the two obsessions to be mutually exclusive. People enraptured by limitless sex should be in love with life; those belonging to the death cult ought to be pretty impervious to the desires of the flesh. But they almost always seem to go together. The only thing I can think of is that both represent the fully matured rejection of the Divine in favor of my self. If God is the ultimate source of both life and love; to be the UnGod is to negate both simultaneously. Disordered sex, and the concomitant objectification of people, is the ultimate rejection of love, and the lust for death is the ultimate rejection of life. Perhaps the natural end of the search for total self-autonomy is insanity and self-immolation. Come to think of it, that sounds a little familiar.

And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, (Rom 1:28, NASB)