'Glee' in the Land of the Lawless

You would think that having cast off the burdensome weight of Judeo-Christian social ethics would be enough. However, no sooner has this newly 'liberated' culture rejected rules and laws of the old world than they realized the inefficiency of living a 'ruleless' existence.

I present for your consideration the new modern sexual mores. I caught it in its most recent manifestation while watching the TV show 'Glee'. Episode 15 is titled 'The Power of Madonna' and features all songs by - you guessed it - Madonna. In the episode, Rachel decides that she wants to lose her virginity to her new boyfriend, Jesse. (All of this virginity talk is really just a ruse so they have an excuse to sing "Like a Virgin" later in the episode, like we didn't see that coming!) When the big night arrives, she decides that loyalty is the highest virtue and that sleeping with her boyfriend when she isn't ready would be disloyal to herself.

So... loyalty... to yourself... is important? Who says? Where did this impulse come from? Is there Someone behind that belief which gives it validity?

Consider this from another angle; secularized society has taken upon itself the mantle of 'law giver' and in doing so is free to live as it wants. So here we have Rachel; she can do as she pleases. She certainly isn't bound by any old-fashioned, intolerant moral system. She puts herself into a compromising sexual position and yet her sense of morality is pricked to the point that she calls the encounter off. Why? Because of her own loyalty to herself. She has found a way to worship herself while outwardly obeying her conscience. Whereas Joseph, when confronted with temptation by Potiphar's wife, asked the question, "How could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?" Rachel asks Jesse the rhetorical question, "How could I sin against me?"

When man becomes his own moral point of reference, he becomes the arbiter of good and evil, yet in so doing winds up imitating the Christian God in a demonically twisted way. Rachel knows she shouldn't sleep with her boyfriend, but finds an excuse to not do it which makes her the hero of her own narrative. She does what is right for the wrong reasons, thinking she has done something moral, and yet there is no virtue in this vain act of self-promotion.

Man is incurably religious. He has found the old story of the dying God fulfilling the law on our behalf to be boring and irrelevant to modern society. In so doing, however, he has really just resurrected an old Pharisaic religion and dressed it up in a self-righteous miniskirt.