Re: Public towel; not in Qotes. Have the source?
Watchtower Nov 15, 1964. Here's the article in full:
How
the Organization Should View ChastenessCHASTENESS takes sex into account. In the light of God?s holy Word sex is sacred. Sex did not spring from blind, unintelligent, unmoral, accidental evolution operating toward a selfish end. Human sex, as well as the sex of animals, fish, birds, insects, and plants, is of God. Is God immoral because he created sex? No! He did not purpose the great wave of sex madness that is sweeping the world, resulting in all kinds of terrible social diseases or unhealth. He purposed that sex should serve a miraculous purpose, that of propagating life in its various forms on earth, including human life. In very simple language the first chapter of the Holy Bible explains to us the origin and the purpose of sex in mankind. Chapter one, verses twenty-seven and twenty-eight, of Genesis (the first book of the Bible) says:
2
"And God proceeded to create the man in his image, in God?s image he created him; male and female he created them. Further, God blessed them and God said to them: ?Be fruitful and become many and fill the earth and subdue it, and have in subjection the fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and every living creature that is moving upon the earth.?"
3
The male sex organs and the female sex organs were to cooperate in fulfilling this God-given command. Thus the sex organs are not playthings to have a lot of fun with, for such fun does not serve the divine purpose. It results in injury not alone to the sex organs but to the whole individual who tries to have fun in this way. The sex organs, rather than being toys, serve a most serious purpose. For that reason the sex organs, male and female, have a sacred aspect or way of being looked at. They have to do with life, especially the life of a coming generation of humans.
4
Is not life, to begin with, a gift from God, and is it therefore not sacred? The life of every human creature now breathing the air is to be considered sacred. Is not the life of the coming generation also to be considered sacred? It is. Remember the sixth and seventh of the Ten Commandments, as given by God to his prophet Moses for the nation of Israel: "You must not murder. You must not commit adultery." (Ex. 20:13, 14) Do you want to kill or even cripple the coming generation, a baby, a child? You can do so by tampering with the sex organs, by using them in a way contrary to God?s purpose and law regarding them, hence in an immoral way that produces loathsome diseases that affect human offspring, fatally.
5
Life, as a gift from God, is sacred. So the seed of life that God put in man and woman is sacred and is meant to serve the noble divine purpose. For that reason, when the life of an individual of the coming generation was started in a woman?s womb, that life was considered sacred. Killing it deserved punishment by taking the life of the killer. In God?s law through Moses the unborn child, the fetus, in the womb of the woman was considered a life, with the right to live through a birth from its mother.
6
In the very next chapter after the one that sets forth the Ten Commandments, God?s law said: "In case men should struggle with each other and they really hurt a pregnant woman and her children do come out but no fatal accident occurs, he is to have damages imposed upon him without fail according to what the owner of the woman may lay upon him; and he must give it through the justices. But if a fatal accident should occur, then you must give soul for soul, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, branding for branding, wound for wound, blow for blow." (Ex. 21:22-25) Thus life had to go for life in this case.
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Quite consistently with this fact, some Orientals like the Koreans date their age in life from the time of their being conceived in the womb of their mothers, not from the day of their birth. This points up the fact that the human embryo is a living creature and should not be destroyed at any stage. Says Dr. J. B. Glenn, in his book
The Bible and Modern Medicine (page 176, paragraph 2, edition of 1963), concerning the embryo that is capable of living: "The viable embryo in the uterus is a human individual, therefore destroying it, is a violation of the sixth commandment."
8
Correspondingly, the life-giving seed in a male should not be willfully misused. Recall the case of Onan the son of the patriarch Judah. He refused to perform his duty to provide a male heir for his dead brother Er by having sex relations with the childless widow Tamar. God killed Onan, not just for this unbrotherly conduct, but because the reproductive seed that should have given life to an heir for his dead brother was purposely spilled upon the ground. For this Onan deserved greater punishment than to have the widowed Tamar draw a sandal off his foot and spit in his face and say before elderly witnesses: "That is the way it should be done to the man who will not build up his brother?s household." (Deut. 25:9; Gen. 38:6-10) On the other hand, no man should engage in sexual immorality and start another human life that he does not want because it will be an illegitimate life. Because it is illegitimate, he purposes to abandon the child and never own it or confess to the fact that he is the father of the illegitimate child. Such a course shows no respect for human life, for the life of a helpless infant.
9
Everyone who commits sexual immorality not only breaks God?s law against adultery and fornication, but sins against his own body, a fact that is plainly stated by Paul in 1 Corinthians 6:18. When sexual union is effected in a legal, Scriptural marriage, it is not a breaking of God?s law or a sinning against the married person?s body. It is in harmony with God?s command to the first human male and female in their physical perfection and innocence.
10
The Christian letter to the Hebrews (13:4) says: "Let marriage be honorable among all, and the marriage bed be without defilement, for God will judge fornicators and adulterers." It is the conduct of the adulterers and fornicators in sinning against their own bodies that brings about the ghastly social diseases and that thus perverts the divine purpose, degrading the sex organs that God created for such high purposes and that he clothes with such importance and dignity. Consequently, can you not be glad that your parents lived morally clean both before and after their marriage?
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Originally, legal marriage was the natural outlook that God set before men and women. Every human has the right to lead a clean life in anticipation of an honorable marriage. No person has the right to pollute his fellow creature who has such a God-given prerogative by forcing sexual immorality upon his fellow creature or by tempting him into it. No selfish person has a right to spoil the privilege and prospects of a fellow creature to an honorable, happy, healthy marriage. No one has a right to prevent another from having such a desirable marriage by misusing the sex organs or processes of that one. We should respect the bodies of other persons as well as our own. Hence no Christian girl should make herself like a public towel on which any man can wipe his hands by means of immorality. What self-respecting man who believes in health and hygiene would want to wipe his hand on a dirty public towel by marrying a girl who makes a harlot of herself, a prostitute? Girls, do not make yourselves a dirty towel for public use, available to the dirty hands of any whoremonger, any symbolic "dog."
12
We should honor our sexual parts. Said Paul to the Corinthian Christians: "The parts of the body which we think to be less honorable, these we surround with more abundant honor, and so our unseemly parts have the more abundant comeliness, whereas our comely parts do not need anything. Nevertheless, God compounded the body, giving honor more abundant to the part which had a lack, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its members should have the same care for one another."?1 Cor. 12:23-25.
13
Those who indulge in sexual uncleanness or immorality dishonor their bodies. "Therefore," says Paul to the Roman Christians, "God, in keeping with the desires of their hearts, gave them up to uncleanness, that their bodies might be dishonored among them." (Rom. 1:24) Until the oncoming battle of Armageddon and the binding and abyssing of Satan the Devil and his demons, God will let immorality prevail and increase on the earth, according to the debased desires of worldly sinners. But fornicators, adulterers, sodomites and Lesbians will not survive into God?s righteous new order.
14
Marriage of the human sexes was purposed by God the Creator and set up by him to serve a happy purpose, that of filling a paradise earth with a healthy, righteous race of perfect men and women. It was our Creator who designed and arranged all our life processes. According to his will, all our normal life processes were made to be happy and healthy. This includes the important sexual union for conceiving children to expand the human family and fill all the earth with human creatures in God?s image and likeness.?Gen. 1:26-28.
15
According to the way in which God made the male and the female, their obedience to his command to fill the earth with their kind was not to be a hardship to them, a burden to them. It was to be a pleasant, delightful procedure, one that contributed unspeakable happiness to living and serving God. But by whom was this to be enjoyed? By married people, by those whom God had joined together, by those who through honorable, legal marriage should become one flesh and stay that way. Those who try to enjoy the ecstasies of sexual union outside the marriage bond dishonor God, disobey him.
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The right viewpoint of these vital concerns according to the inspired Holy Bible helps us to overcome animal passions and to guard against lustfully planning ahead of time on how to satisfy the sexually excited flesh in an immoral way. (2 Sam. 13:1-14) Let us keep always in mind the purpose of God?s endowing us with sex organs. Let us look at them according to their sacred aspect. This in no way means that we should worship the sex organs and engage in phallic worship, committing immorality as a religious privilege and obligation. The sex organs are not to be worshiped, even in one?s mind by one?s constantly or primarily thinking on sexual parts and activities. The sex organs did not give life to the human family. They are only the marvelous means by which life is to be transmitted to our children according to God?s will.
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God the Creator is the sacred "Source of life." He alone is the One to be worshiped as the Giver of life to mankind and the Giver of the reproductive organs for the increase of the human family. (Ps. 36:9) Sex worship is therefore idolatry. Naturally, it leads to moral uncleanness. By all means avoid it.
HOW
TO KEEP PURE, CHASTE 18
We who are associated with the New World Society of Jehovah?s witnesses should always bear in mind that life in itself is sacred as being a gift from the sacred heavenly "Source of life." But especially in our case is life sacred because we have dedicated our lives to Jehovah God through his greatest Public Servant, his High Priest, Jesus Christ. We are under obligation and command to invite and help others to come to the "water of life," namely, God?s provisions for everlasting life in his new order of righteousness. (Rev. 22:17) It ill befits us, therefore, to abuse our God-given physical powers for transmitting life to offspring by immoral conduct between the sexes. Such conduct
may result in an illegitimate, unauthorized offspring as a living witness of its parents? shameful secret conduct or in a foul social disease. But certainly it will result in the condemnation by the pure-minded Creator, who made male and female for an honorable, happy purpose. If anyone abides under his condemnation it means being deprived of eternal life for having abused life and the power to transmit life.
19
To help us to get out of uncleanness and stay out of it, we need to make God our model or standard of purity or chasteness. Said the aged apostle John to Christians who had the heavenly call: "Beloved ones, now we are children of God, but as yet it has not been made manifest what we shall be. We do know that whenever he is made manifest we shall be like him, because we shall see him just as he is. And everyone who has this hope set upon him purifies himself just as that one is pure."?1 John 3:2, 3.
20
The spiritual remnant who expect to become members of God?s heavenly kingdom under Jesus Christ and to see God face to face must by all means live in harmony with their hope of seeing this pure, chaste God just as he is. How could they even hope to be like him in heaven when they have not purified their lives here on earth first? How could they ever desire to be like him, if till their death here on earth they kept on loving impurity, unchastity and moral uncleanness and did not cultivate an enjoyment of the clean qualities that make God what he is? They could not do so.
21
Likewise with all those sheeplike persons who have been separated from the goatlike people of the nations. (Matt. 25:31-46) They have set their hope upon the same God. In harmony with their hope of living in a perfectly pure and righteous paradise earth after Armageddon, they have to purify their lives now. They need to keep pure.
22
Our hope, if it is not to be disappointed, must be in harmony with God?s truth. Like water with which we wash and in which we bathe to keep clean, the truth of God?s written Word helps us to clean up and keep clean, individually and as a New World Society. After we have purified our lives or souls by living up to the truth, there is something else we need to do in a pure, chaste way. The apostle Peter indicates this when he writes to the Christians who had come out of Babylon the Great in his day:
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"Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth with unhypocritical brotherly love as the result, love one another intensely from the heart. For you have been given a new birth, not by corruptible, but by incorruptible reproductive seed, through the word of the living and enduring God. For ?all flesh is like grass, and all its glory is like a blossom of grass; the grass becomes withered, and the flower falls off, but the saying of Jehovah endures forever.? Well, this is the ?saying,? this which has been declared to you as good news. Accordingly, put away all moral badness and all deceitfulness and hypocrisy and envies and all sorts of backbiting, and, as newborn infants [who are innocent of any desires of sex], form a longing for the unadulterated milk belonging to the word, that through it you may grow to salvation, provided that you have tasted that the Lord is kind."?1 Pet. 1:22 to 2:3.
24
Newborn infant boys and girls do not know what sex is about. They have no unclean sexual desires. Hence the apostle Peter says that Christians should "put away all moral badness." We should become like "newborn infants" as to innocence in this regard. We should be full-grown men and women as to understanding what sex is about and as to our moral self-control. The apostle Paul had this in mind when he wrote to the congregation in Corinth these words: "Brothers, do not become young children in powers of understanding, but be babes as to badness; yet become full-grown in powers of understanding."?1 Cor. 14:20.
25
Consequently we need to have mental hygiene as well as physical hygiene. Among the ancient Jews under Jehovah?s law through Moses the circumcision of the flesh of the males proved to be very hygienic and helped to safeguard the health of both male and female Jews. Christians who have been relieved of this law of circumcision do, however, have to practice the ?circumcision of the heart.? No Christian could be a spiritual Jew in God?s sight unless he had this circumcision "of the heart by spirit." (Rom. 2:28, 29) God?s spirit is certainly needed to get such circumcision.
26
For mental hygiene, which leads also to physical hygiene, our mind has to be kept fixed on the upbuilding things. Advising us to do this, the apostle Paul writes: "Finally, brothers, whatever things are true, whatever things are of serious concern, whatever things are righteous, whatever things are chaste, whatever things are lovable, whatever things are well spoken of, whatever virtue there is and whatever praiseworthy thing there is, continue considering these things. The things that you learned as well as accepted and heard and saw in connection with me, practice these; and the God of peace will be with you."?Phil. 4:8, 9.
27
The apostle Paul said that in Rome where he was imprisoned his enemies were publicizing Christ with a malicious, impure motive, but, on the other hand, "some are preaching the Christ . . . through good will. The latter are publicizing the Christ out of love, for they know I am set here for the defense of the good news." For this reason Paul rejoiced. (Phil. 1:15-18) So our thinking on Paul and our practicing what he did helps us to keep clean.
28
We long to be wise with heavenly wisdom, do we not? Then we will be chaste, pure. The unchaste are not wise, but are animalistic. The disciple James, just before rebuking those who are spiritual adulterers, says: "But the wisdom from above is first of all chaste, then peaceable, reasonable, ready to obey, full of mercy and good fruits, not making partial distinctions, not hypocritical." (Jas. 3:15 to 4:4) So remember, heavenly wisdom is "first of all chaste."
29
It is the part of heavenly wisdom for us to strive to keep the New World Society of Jehovah?s witnesses clean, chaste. The results of this continual striving in that direction are becoming manifest all the time, under God?s blessing. As regards ancient Israel, their observance of Jehovah?s laws and commandments made them the healthiest nation on earth, free from the many social diseases that plagued the pagan or Gentile nations. (Deut. 28:1-10, 15, 27-37) Correspondingly, our endeavors to keep the organization of God?s public servants clean, pure and chaste should result not only in keeping us doctrinally pure but also in making us the healthiest society on earth, especially as to social diseases.
30
However, all the time that we are putting forth our personal and organizational efforts, we need to keep looking upward to God the Maker of his organization of public servants under Jesus Christ the King of kings. This organization is now bringing to completion its service assignment of preaching the good news of God?s established kingdom in all the inhabited earth for a witness to all the nations. Jehovah God has charged himself with the main responsibility for keeping his earthly organization that is engaged in this public service clean. Accompanied by Jesus Christ his Messenger or greatest Public Servant, Jehovah has come to his spiritual temple for judgment work. So, in a warning, he says to his professed people: "I will come near to you people for the judgment, and I will become a speedy witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against those swearing falsely, and against those acting fraudulently with the wages of a wage worker, with the widow and with the fatherless boy, and those turning away the alien resident, while they have not feared me." (Mal. 3:1-5) So now his organization of public servants on earth is under judgment.
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Do we desire the great Judge Jehovah God to bear witness against us individually as being like "adulterers," that is, morally unclean, unchaste? If he has the evidence against us on this score, he will unfailingly cause his witness or testimony against us to be made known, in his time, and this will lead to our being put out of his New World Society of His witnesses, that our presence might not defile it. However, do we with all our heart desire to remain in that New World Society for God?s public service? Since our obvious answer is a fervent Yes, then we will each one do his part toward keeping it pure, chaste, to His praise and in behalf of our precious public service for Him.
[Footnotes]
Published by the Bloch Publishing Company, New York, N.Y.
[Study
Questions]
1, 2. (a) How is human sex to be viewed, and why so? (b) How does Genesis 1:27, 28 explain the origin and the purpose of sex?
3. In harmony with this, what purpose were the sex organs to serve, and why is there a sacred aspect about them?
4. Is the life of the coming generation to be considered sacred, and how can the sixth of the Ten Commandments be violated regarding that generation by one?s sexual conduct?
5, 6. (a) How is the seed of life that is put in man and woman to be considered, and how is a life in the female womb to be considered? (b) How was this fact borne out in God?s law in Exodus 21:22-25?
7. (a) Consistent with this, how do some Orientals date their age? (b) How is the human embryo to be viewed and so the destruction of it means what violation?
8. (a) What about the misuse of the male seed of life, and what Bible illustration do we have regarding this? (b) How is disrespect for life shown in the case of an illegitimate child?
9. When is the indulging in sexual intercourse a sinning against the participant?s own body?
10. What does such sinning against one?s own body produce?
11. (a) According to what God set before man and woman in Eden, to what does every human have the right, and what, therefore, have others no right to do? (b) Respect for whose bodies should we show?
12. What is the argument of Paul in 1 Corinthians 12:23-25, and what bodily parts are therefore included?
13. To what dishonor to the human body does Romans 1:24 call attention, and till when will God permit this to go on?
14. What kind of purpose was to be served by human marriage, and this is in harmony with what will of God concerning all our life processes?
15. Obedience to God?s command to fill the earth was to be what kind of experience for man and woman, but outside of what relationship may this experience not be enjoyed?
16. (a) What helps us to overcome animal passions? (b) Why are the sex organs not to be worshiped?
17. In that regard, where is worship to be directed, and what, therefore, is sex worship?
18. (a) Why especially in the case of dedicated Witnesses in the New World Society is life to be considered sacred? (b) What may result from immoral conduct, but what is certain to result to the participants?
19, 20. (a) According to 1 John 3:2, 3, whom must we make our model of chastity? (b) Why especially must the spiritual remnant do so, in harmony with their hope?
21. Why do the sheeplike people with earthly prospects likewise need to keep pure?
22, 23. (a) Because our hope is in harmony with what will we be helped to keep clean, and why? (b) Because they were given a new birth, what did Peter tell God?s spiritual children to put away?
24. (a) In harmony with Peter?s words, in what regard should we become like "newborn infants"? (b) Accordingly, in what regard should we be full-grown men and women?
25. (a) What kind of hygiene is needed in addition to the physical kind? (b) What kind of circumcision should a Christian get, and how?
26. To enjoy mental hygiene, what does Paul tell us to do, in Philippians 4:8, 9?
27. With what kind of motive should we preach the Christ, and whose example helps us to do this?
28. If we want to be wise with heavenly wisdom, what must we be "first of all"?
29. In harmony with the case of ancient Israel when keeping God?s law, what should be the result of our endeavors to keep the organization clean and chaste?
30. (a) Amid all our efforts to keep the organization clean, to whom should we always look, and because of what service assignment? (b) Who takes the main responsibility for keeping the organization clean, and so under what process do we find ourselves now?
31. (a) Why should we not want God to testify against us as being like "adulterers"? (b) To remain in the Society, what will each one of us do?
Englishman.
