Should I comment on the Sydney Sweeney controversy? Let’s see – I’m an aging, lifelong celibate male with a shyness disorder. Obviously well qualified to opine on issues of sexuality.

First of all, I shall declare myself entirely on the side of American Eagle. I salute a return to traditional, sex-exploiting advertising. People (even women) like to look at beautiful women, and beautiful women sell product. I’ve missed that crass commercialism. Not only is it good for business, it makes the world (I think) a happier place.

Many Christians, I’ve noticed, strongly disagree. They caution against the display of sexiness, arguing that it incites men to lust in their hearts.

I’ve agonized over that issue all my life. Now that it’s pretty much an academic one for me, I want to say this publicly (many will disagree, I’m sure): When Jesus said that lust in a man’s heart was equivalent to adultery, I don’t think simply seeing an attractive woman and being sexually interested, was what he had in mind. I think Jesus was speaking in hyperbolic terms here, to demonstrate to us our complete inability to be clean before God. He certainly wanted us to curb our lust, but I don’t think He intended to demand asexuality of men, except for when they’re alone with their wives. (I think the sin is in actually contemplating an adulterous act.)

I’ve spent a lot of time lately with my novel Troll Valley. The audiobook version is being evaluated by the Amazon ACX people, and I’m almost ready to release a paperback version too. This is my most autobiographical book, despite the fact that almost none of the events in it bear any relation to my own experience. It’s autobiographical in terms of the Haugean, pietist community in which I grew up. I hope the book expresses, to some extent, how much I appreciate that heritage, but also the problems I discern in it.

One of those problems, I think, is the guilt it lays on boys and young men, the impression conveyed that just being a functioning male is somehow a shameful thing. Sadly, that view of manhood finds support in our time among the feminists, who say the same sort of thing, even more emphatically.

I have never solved the problem of “lusting in the heart” in my own life. In my youth, as an interested non-player, I was an outlier – a weirdo. But in more recent times – to my horror – I see young men rising around me everywhere who seem just like me. Sometimes they’re called Incels. Basement dwellers. There are probably other nicknames for them I haven’t heard yet, but they all describe much the same thing – unfinished young men who are too terrified to find a mate in a world that seems determined to portray them as subhuman losers. I am, in a sense, a father to those young men; I am their avatar.

I think the church needs to offer something to those young men. Something stronger than what we’ve got. Something a little more dangerous. Something edgy.

But I don’t know what that is. I certainly never found it in my own life.

The ideal solution, I think, would be arranged marriages. Historically, arranged marriages have an excellent track record. However, I don’t think the young people would go for it. Also, it’s probably illegal.

But we need something new. I want to see young men swaggering like Kirk Douglas. Grinning at women like Burt Lancaster. Sweeping the girls off their feet like Clark Gable.

I think – personally – that (generally speaking) that would please God, who made Sydney Sweeney beautiful, not without reason.