He is arrested for indecent exposure, public lewdness, and corrupting the youth multiple different times. Many people denounce his love of sex and desire to make it a natural part of relationships. Heinlein portrays this clash between temperance and intemperance as a clash of the backwards and prudish with the bringers of truth and light.
Because of the complete lack of objective moral guidelines, many of the characters descend into hedonism. Smith and his closest followers live together in an open, free-loving relationship. Sex is not something that ought to be restricted, but given freely to all those whom are your “water brothers” – those men and women with whom you have an unbreakable bond of love and unity.
As the story progresses, Smith’s “Nest” …show more content…
In the novel, his religion leads to peace, unity, and love. By denying temperance, real humans would become selfish, weak, and divided. Only by denying ourselves pleasures and overcoming our bodily desires are we able to improve ourselves and become more united to Christ and, therefore, each other.
Heinlein romanticizes humanity and fails to account for our shortcomings. We are weak and incapable of giving ourselves completely to each other. We need the strength of God to truly love each other. “Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did” (1 John 2:6). We must live temperately, as Christ did, in order to live in Him, to have access to His loving strength. Without temperance, Heinlein’s dream of a perfect reality is just that: a dream without any basis in reality.
In reality, Smith’s Church would quickly go the way of the hippie movement of the 1960s: originally popular, but fading into relative obscurity. His belief system is, in fact, very similar to the hippie culture. Hippies and Smith both encouraged free love, doing whatever made you feel happy, and bucking the social establishment, in the forms of The Man and organized religion,
Because of the complete lack of objective moral guidelines, many of the characters descend into hedonism. Smith and his closest followers live together in an open, free-loving relationship. Sex is not something that ought to be restricted, but given freely to all those whom are your “water brothers” – those men and women with whom you have an unbreakable bond of love and unity.
As the story progresses, Smith’s “Nest” …show more content…
In the novel, his religion leads to peace, unity, and love. By denying temperance, real humans would become selfish, weak, and divided. Only by denying ourselves pleasures and overcoming our bodily desires are we able to improve ourselves and become more united to Christ and, therefore, each other.
Heinlein romanticizes humanity and fails to account for our shortcomings. We are weak and incapable of giving ourselves completely to each other. We need the strength of God to truly love each other. “Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did” (1 John 2:6). We must live temperately, as Christ did, in order to live in Him, to have access to His loving strength. Without temperance, Heinlein’s dream of a perfect reality is just that: a dream without any basis in reality.
In reality, Smith’s Church would quickly go the way of the hippie movement of the 1960s: originally popular, but fading into relative obscurity. His belief system is, in fact, very similar to the hippie culture. Hippies and Smith both encouraged free love, doing whatever made you feel happy, and bucking the social establishment, in the forms of The Man and organized religion,