Kerby Anderson

More than three decades ago, I wrote and recorded a week of radio programs on “The Decline of a Nation.” One of the days I focused on the decline of the family and quoted J.D. Unwin.

I was encouraged to see that in a recent Breakpoint commentary John Stonestreet quoted from this Oxford sociologist who published a book in the 1930s summarizing his research. In it, he described 80 tribes and six historical civilizations over the course of five millennia. His focus was on whether sexual restraint or sexual liberation was a positive factor in these civilizations.

The pattern was repeated many times. Marriage and family may have varied but usually were based on mutual consent and a lifelong association. But decline came when marriage and commitment faded, and sexual restraint was abandoned. He concluded, “The whole of human history does not contain a single instance of a group becoming civilized unless it has been absolutely monogamous, nor is there any example of a group retaining its culture after it has adopted less rigorous customs.”

Whether you are talking about sex or finances, the person who is able to delay gratification will be more successful. Sexual liberation becomes sexual anarchy and eventually social anarchy.

We shouldn’t be surprised that our sex-saturated society is in decline. J.D. Unwin looked at it merely from the practical perspective and even said he had no opinion about the rightness or wrongness of what he studied.

The Apostle Paul looked at the moral implications and warned us in Romans 1 about those who “exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.” There is a price to pay for abandoning biblical principles about human sexuality.