For 10 years I haven't touched a woman. I have also done my best to abstain from masturbation and pornography. Since I haven't been married during these 10 years, I did my best to abide by what I thought God wanted.
I love sex. I love women. I love women's bodies. I love making love. It's part of my nature. In a way, it's kind of who I am. I know you're thinking most guys are sex crazy. But most guys I know would not be interested in 2-3 hours of sex a day. They want to bang and go. For me, it's the far most "spiritual" experience I have ever had. If I have denied myself these 10 year for what turns out to be a delusion, I'm gonna be pissed!
At the moment I'm about ready to bang anything that moves.
And it does raise interesting questions. Like, if I don't have to abide by the bible's sex rules, does anything go? Will I simply feed this passion of mine unabated until it consumes me? In some ways I am afraid of myself. Afraid of that freedom. Insecure about my self-control. I had a period of wanton promiscuity about 15 years ago and I'm not sure I want a repeat performance.
But it sure would be nice to have a sensual night with a good woman.
Some would say, aha, you are abandoning your faith so you can get laid. I swear it didn't happen that way. However, if I abandon my version of the faith, it certainly opens up the possibilities.
Speaking of possibilities, one thing I thought about but never did (during that period of wanton promiscuity) was sexual exploration with a guy. I'm not gay. I have no interest in men romantically. I don't want to make love to a man. But damn, I'm curious what a penis feels like. Sue me.
Okay, umm, Zoe wonders, do I move? LOL!
ReplyDeleteHappily married here so I'm not on the market. ;-) Just wanted to say, I've been reading and appreciate your journey and your questions. If you leave the faith, it won't matter what you end up doing or not doing. Someone out there will blame your loss of faith for it.
I know that when I was in the church, people thought if you left the church, never mind the faith, you'd likely get cancer &/or die. I think there are probably people still waiting for me to die. And of course, eventually you will, and there will be someone out there crazy enough to say, "You see! She died. I knew it!"
So many people think we leave the faith so we can sin. I just haven't seen this play out in my life or in the life of others who have left the faith. Just sayin'. :-)
No. Please don't move! This time around I'm not going there.
ReplyDeleteWe may gain some freedom of choice with deconversion, but it seems we lose a lot more. It's not worth it for just that reason.
I do hope you understand that I was not suggesting it was worth it for that reason...or for that matter, any reason.
ReplyDeleteof course!
ReplyDeleteI too have wrestled for a lot of years with the intersection of my "morality" and my "faith". My faith didn't keep me from being an adulterer. I obviously didn't fear hell enough, nor did I love God enough, so neither motivation was sufficient to keep me from "sinning" and it still doesn't. I usually say stuff like "If I wasn't a moral man, I'd....." and I think your post struck me that maybe that is more like it, really. I am a "moral man" (to the extent that I am), not because I fear God but because I fear myself. I know I am capable of falling into absolute self destructive narcissism in which I have no sympathy or concern about anyone else but my own desires. If I leave a wake of destruction behind me as a Christian, I cannot imagine what I would do if I had no moral boundaries at all. Once I can rationalize some things are permitted, I know I will eventually do all things.
ReplyDeleteSteve
ReplyDeleteI think the germain issue here is one of "self-control," as in, how does one have a sufficient amount of self-control to keep from ruining their own or others' lives? I've been thinking about this the last couple of days and here are my thoughts...
1) In my opinion, lack of self-control is largely a matter of maturity, not of religion. In other words, we all are born with radical self-interest. Nothing else really matters. A big part of any growing up process is learning that we can't always get what we want when we want it... either because it will hurt others or hurt ourself. Everyone in every culture has to learn that. Some do it better than others. Some do it earlier than others. Teenagers usually don't do it very well at all. Parents start out by imposing lots of "other control," but ideally do that less and less as their child learns "self control." Most people eventually grow up, and learn what the limits of their behavior needs to be. Life teaches them. It's simply a matter of what works.
2) Many people reach the point of maturity without the need for the "other control" of an invisible all-powerful justice-meeting being (god) to keep them in line.
3) Most people throughout history have been able to reach this point of maturity without even knowing about the god of the bible.
4) Many people who rely on the justice-meeting god to keep them in line never seem to grow up. They seem to stay stuck in perpetual adolescence... trying to get away with as much as they can without getting in too much "trouble." They never develp an "inner" morality that is a part of who they "are," vs what they "do."
5) For those of us from our background, when we feel out of control it is very tempting to run back to the safety of the god-pen, where the rules are well defined and the consequences for misbehavior are dire. It feels safer. We are relieved. The chaos dissipates somewhat. From a psychological standpoint, however, this seems to be a retreat from the task of maturity that one had been facing. Obviously, this is preferable to running amuck, but is it the best choice?
6) When we feel out of control and have made a mess out of our or others' lives the metaphors of the sinful nature, and the war between the flesh and spirit ring very true. However, in my experience, if I sent one person in this out of control state to a pastor to help them learn the dire consequences of their sin, and to help them learn how to be filled with the spirit and crucify the flesh... and sent another person to a psychotherapist to help them learn self-control... my bet is with the psychotherapist. That is, the person I send there will have a much better chance at truly growing and maturing as a person, vs simply "containing" their most extreme behavior via a perpetual dependence on an invisible and difficult to comprehend/access force.
7) Leaving the god-pen can be very scary. All that freedom. What will we do with it? (Think young adults returning home.) Eric Fromm wrote a book called "Escape from Freedom," wherein he describes the tendency of man to succumb to authoritarian systems (including religion) to escape from the fear and complexities of freedom. But in so doing, they give up a piece of themselves.
8) It may go without saying, but because one finds comfort and relief and less chaos within a punitive religious system does not make it true.
Then again, I could be all wrong.
EI, I think you nailed it. The whole Reformation spin on Augustine's "original sin" and resultant Lutheran/Calvinist "total depravity" think is ultimately a dodge of personal responsibility no matter how you try to spin it with Bible verses. If "God and the Holy Spirit" are the ONLY agents that can free you from your "depravity" you aren't responsible. For someone wrestling with being out of control, I too would go with a psychotherapist before I'd go with a "pastor" dishing out the "reformation cure for sin". I remember reading Fromm (and Frankl, Szasz) back in the 70's and thinking, these guys make sense but it doesn't fit very neatly my evangelical box, (though I heard a lot of people use them as ways to instill more guilt in people.)
ReplyDeleteOne of the things that attracted me to Eastern Orthodoxy is its teachings on radical free will. It is core to its anthropology: God is sovereign and we are created in His image as sovereign beings, AND His image is never lost or obliterated within us = radical personal responsibility in the context of "community" because we are created in the image of a "Trinitarian/communal God". The EO focus of the spiritual life is "the healing of the human person" in "community" (the word "salvation" literally means "to heal", not "to be juridically declared not guilty". Forensic salvation is a subset of radical individualism and demands nothing ultimately of the individual because the focus is on guilt, not "change". The way to get people to change under the juridical model is to apply more guilt: "Look what God did for you, now you should love Him enough to do something with your life..." It's a vicious circle.
It looks to me like you've thought about this stuff for a while. :)
Steve,
ReplyDeleteYes, thinking about things is my gift and curse! lol. My ex wife used to say, "Can't you just live??" No.
I got involved with some teaching awhile back which dismissed the idea that we are basically "bad" because of original sin. The contention was that, as Christians, we are basically good! I forget where this teaching was from. But that's not a common belief today. We're miserable sinners. Even all our righteousness is as filthy rags, yada yada.
And yes, focusing on our behavior is a primitive, step one way of looking at the problem. A higher level is to look at who we actually are as persons. Do we focus on changing our behavior, or changing who we actually are... And the Christian spin is that God is more concerned about us actually becoming like Christ, not just in any particular moment choosing to do something like him or not. Practicing all the spiritual disciplines helps us actually become like him, enabling us ultimately to DO like him.
By the way, it's posts like these that make me REALLY glad I'm anonymous! hee hee
ReplyDeleteI've often thought of starting an anonymous blog. But the stuff I'd blog about too many people know "the players" well enough to figure out who I am and who I'd be talking about. Orthodoxy is a VERY small world. Probably for the best....
ReplyDeletes-p
ReplyDeleteIt would be like one of Obama's cabinet members starting an "anonymous" blog.