Religion, Nature and Sex
The three organized religions of the western world—Judaism, Christianity, Islam—have been cultivated upon a strong sense of man’s superiority to nature, provoking in that ego-centered illusion the attitude that in nature’s diversity dwells the contamination of evil. Western organized religions are not exactly philosphies of life: they are philosphies of otherworldly speculations. To pass judgment upon nature from such an arid obsession is to assure failure across all human relationships, for such judgment is an assault upon the pulse of nature within each of us which reflects the spontaneity that is creation.
This negative approach to understanding the energy-activity in which we have our existence has resulted in millennia of needless emotional turmoil to strongly and negatively color the most intense and dramatic way that human relationships can be expressed: sex. Thus, in our western cultures where humans are taught to feel isolated from nature, the diabolical result is that individuals will react in squeamishness at sexual attraction or even to devoted relationships. Christianity with its anti-sex “saints” such as Augustine and Jerome fanning unnatural guilt about passion and attraction have not served as the shepherds of inner peace and contentment. The natural result of pretending to be above or apart from nature is that the organic spontaneity of sexual attraction gets enthroned as forbidden treasure.
When the interacting energies that manifest as nature are assessed as inferior or contaminated with evil, our biological selves react by hoarding attraction and passion in a corner of consciousness to churn there with mental turmoil spoken of as sex on the brain. This negative religious approach to nature and sexual attraction has never allowed a philosphy of life to be integrated with the belief in creative intelligence. Instead of recognizing sexual attraction as a means of spiritual exchange between persons, western religions have installed a formula of prohibitions that reject such attraction as “animal.” Nonetheless, the human physical being is a mammal, a manimal if you will, that has been taught by negative religious interpretations to think that personal ego reflects universal favor.
An example of grudging toleration that western religions extend to sexual attraction is shown in 1 Corinthians 7, where the implication is that marriage is solely for the purpose of avoiding the greater “sin” of being sexually attracted to more than one. The preferred conduct for man, according to verse 1, says, “…It is good for a man not to touch a woman.” The unlikelihood of that gets summed up in verse 9 as “…if they cannot contain, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn.” By that statement it would seem that marriage is not exactly a holy sacrament but a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card.
There is, conversely, in verse 7 of chapter 7 of Corinthians, also a sly nod to nature’s diverse expressons that are present and active within man. There it is ackknoledged, “But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that.”
Strangely, the gay community has neglected to utilize this statement of one’s “proper gift” as defense when the homophobes spout select biblical verses to justify their bigotry.
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