Creating Families

I've read about the hormone Oxytocin before in If you haven't read it, I heartily recommend the fantastic book Unprotected, by Anonymous, MD. The tag line is "A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness in Her Profession Endangers Every Student," and it was a real eye opener for me, and provided a lot of things to think about in terms of how the human mind and body work and how we're told they work. One of the most interesting things I learned about is the hormone Oxytocin. 

The book talks about how when you have sex (or breastfeed), your body releases chemicals that make you form an emotional bond with the other person present. There is a new study out involving oxytocin that got more specific about what sort of reactions the hormone produces. From the abstract:

Humans [...] self-sacrifice to contribute to in-group welfare and to aggress against competing out-groups. [...] Here, we have linked oxytocin, a neuropeptide produced in the hypothalamus, to the regulation of intergroup conflict. In three experiments using double-blind placebo-controlled designs, male participants self-administered oxytocin or placebo and made decisions with financial consequences to themselves, their in-group, and a competing out-group. Results showed that oxytocin drives a "tend and defend" response in that it promoted in-group trust and cooperation, and defensive, but not offensive, aggression toward competing out-groups.

I have not read the full study, but this really got me thinking about how our bodies are an indispensable part of who we are. They have so much power over our identities that they can make other people into family. Our bodies can do that. Sex is not just an enjoyable activity, it literally changes who the other person is to us at the neuro-psychological level. More than that, it changes who we are at the physical level by making us people who want to take care of those we have these bonds with, and to keep out those we don't. It doesn't make us attack outsiders, but it does make us shun.

To me, this makes the issue of sex and marriage much more serious. Every time you have sex with someone, you are making them into family. When you leave that person (whether because you got divorced, broke up, etc.), your family is destroyed. Every. Time. And to think the average youth starts doing this in their early teens. Over and over again, familial bonds are built and broken. Is it any wonder our culture is filled with people who don't know how to love anymore? That every affection is interpreted as sexual, and sexual affection is interpreted as casual?

My classroom isn't just filled with kids from broken homes. It's filled with kids from dozens of broken homes each. How does someone cope with that kind of trauma, a trauma they might not even be aware of? Students might even seek solace in more pain, making the wound deeper and harder to heal, like drinking vodka in the desert. What hope do we have when the thing that can comfort us, the thing we most want--love and affection--is the thing that is killing us?

He who testifies to these things says, "Surely I am coming soon." Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!¹