Sorry I haven't had much to say recently; a couple of thoughts just came up though.
To me, Christianity is true. I see no reasonable alternative explanation for the available historical accounts other than the resurrection of Jesus. And this forces me to accept things I don't much like, like abstention from sex outside of marriage.
Recently, though, this one has been getting easier; I've been seeing a few reasons to prefer the idea of marriage, or at least a long relationship, before sex.
One is some dommes. The Web is full of nasty, predatory, morally ugly dommes. Looking for porn for my submissive side exposes me to buckets of these. They drip with contempt for their subs, and I am revolted by that. (Note, in their defense, this is apparently what sells best.) I don't want contempt, so I don't want to share my submissive side, other than in this pseudonymous intellectual sense, with anyone I can't trust deeply.
And the other is closely related. It's the stigma of being a male and enjoying submissive play. As far as I can tell, submissive women have it much worse because they are "reinforcing the patriarchy" and "betraying feminism". For a man, though, it's still an insult to imply that he wants submissive sex. And again, that makes me only want to share with the right person.
Other people have already talked about the contempt and stigma and said pretty much everything I'd have to say about it in itself; I only had this little to add about the effect.
Maybe I'm being a big ol' heathen bitch here, but I have to ask: why is the abstinence thing so important to you?
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure the Bible comes out against divorce as well, and yet you're divorced; and although I don't know whether pornography is mentioned in the Bible, I'd be willing to bet that god is against that, too; I mean, in watching porn, you're basically sponsoring the fornication of other unmarried people. So you're following one thing that god seems to want, but not others. From over here it seems like you've picked a totally arbitrary reason to torture yourself.
Reminds me of the time when I got way into the animal rights thing and became vegan. As time went on, it went from a way of eating to the centerpiece of my whole identity; basically, it became my religion. In retrospect, I think I was using self-denial as a way of feeling more in control of my life; I was in a bad marriage with no escape and no hope and so I started micromanaging one of the few things over which I had total dominion: my food intake. I can't help wondering if you're doing something similar.
What's the actual Bible verse that says you have to be abstinent until marriage, by the way? I want to try to get an idea of why god allegedly wants this. For that matter, just out of curiosity, what does the Bible say about marriage itself - is it supposed to be about love, or is it more of a business/financial arrangement?
btw I use phrases like "god seems to want" and "god allegedly wants" because my understanding is that the Bible wasn't written by god directly, it written by people who heard - or claimed to hear - his voice. Everything in the Bible has therefore been filtered through the psyches of regular, fallible ol' human beings. Some of them may have lied about hearing god and made up whatever the hell they wanted; some of them may have actually heard god but interpreted his words to suit their own needs. There's no way of knowing. Plus it's been translated into different languages a bunch of times so a lot of subtle shades of meaning have probably been lost.
Oh hey, you have a post on porn and the Bible. I should've looked around a bit before rambling. :P
ReplyDeleteBut I'd still like to discuss this stuff with you keyboard-to-keyboard so I have a better idea where you're coming from.
Wow, perversecowgirl, thanks for going through the archives and commenting. It's great knowing people read this stuff.
ReplyDeleteI guess you already saw the porn thing. As to the divorce thing, it really only requires one spouse to make a divorce. True, I could fight it in court, and drag out the process by years; but I don't think that counts as a marriage to God anyway, it would just make my wife miserable and feed the lawyers to no purpose. I do what little things I can; I don't look for a new partner, I continue to wear my wedding ring. But being divorced isn't up to me. My sins contributed to driving her away, such as laziness and insufficiently shown love, but the divorce itself is not one of my sins.
Regarding abstinence, it is frankly one of the places where subtle shades of meaning change with translation. Most translations are clearly against "fornication", and mention it many times. The NIV, one of the best modern translations, uses "sexual immorality" where most others use "fornicate/fornication". So looking at the NIV, what can we guess about what sexual immorality is? 1 Corinthians 7:2 says, "Now for the matters you wrote about: It is good for a man not to marry. But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband."
My understanding is that in the first sentence, Paul is talking about total voluntary abstinence as a Catholic priest is supposed to do; in the second, he acknowledges the unrealistic nature of such a goal, and advocates marriage as an alternative to immorality, implying that sex without marriage is immorality.
Another verse is Hebrews 13:4, "Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral." The sexually immoral is here implied to be distinct from the adulterer; and given the use of "fornication" in this spot in most translations, that's certainly my first guess.
The vaugeness of this is one of many reasons Christians should not to be critical of people who don't come to the same conclusions.
As to the divorce thing, it really only requires one spouse to make a divorce. True, I could fight it in court, and drag out the process by years; but I don't think that counts as a marriage to God anyway
ReplyDeleteTrue. Although I doubt a new marriage undertaken out of sheer sexual desperation would appeal to god, either, and I worry that this is exactly what a lot of abstinent people end up doing.
My own opinion on sex (as a non-Christian but spiritual person) is that god (or the universe, or whoever) wouldn't give us this amazing capacity for pleasure/emotional bonding/expression of affection and then tell us it's bad to actually partake. I think it's important to remember that sex is a gift and try not to take it for granted - to make sure you're fucking because you really want to, for instance, and not because you're bored or trying to manipulate someone or want an ego boost. But other than that, it's open season. :)
So, operating from this obvious bias, I have to wonder: could the word "fornication" in the Bible be referring, not to sex in general, but to sex that's not being conducted with proper respect and reverence? Is there any biblical passage that actually defines "fornication" or "sexually immoral"?
The vaugeness of this is one of many reasons Christians should not to be critical of people who don't come to the same conclusions.
...and the fact that you follow your own beliefs as best you can without judging others for theirs is one of the reasons I have a budding e-crush on you. :D
-perversecowgirl
perversecowgirl, I am literally blushing, as in I can feel my cheeks heating. I think very highly of you, and as I mentioned before I think you must be very sexy in person. I'm so glad you have a real Minx, and not just an e-crush. :D
ReplyDeleteIf I was not trying to follow Someone Else's Rules, I think I would come to the same conclusion about sex that you do.
There is no passage that actually defines "fornication" or "sexual immorality". The original Greek word, "porneia", was clear enough to the original readers, but scholars are no longer completely sure. The passages I quoted are the best I have to work with, and I think you can see why I come to the conclusions I do. If I were viewing it as a regulation to be worked around, I could avoid it. But I want to do my best to obey, not see what I can get away with.
The whys are not explained in the Bible. A popular speculation among Christians is that a spiritual connection is made when people have sex, even if the partners don't intend it, which is torn apart when they separate; and it is not meant to be torn; they further speculate that each time it's made and torn, less spiritual connection is made in the future. My two unwanted divorces feel like that.
If I were viewing it as a regulation to be worked around, I could avoid it. But I want to do my best to obey, not see what I can get away with.
ReplyDeleteAnd this is why I respect you more than most people I've met who call themselves religious. You seem to be actually doing what you believe is right, not just adhering to the bits of the Bible that you like and choosing to ignore the rest.
On a related note, a friend of mine works at a Jewish school and says he can understand why so many Jewish kids grow up to be lawyers: because they spend their whole lives looking for loopholes in the Torah that let them "get away with" more.
Thank you so much!
ReplyDeleteI don't mean to pick on my Jewish friends, but mine at least provide the most interesting examples of the spectrum of trying to obey. Some of my wealthier and more orthodox Jewish friends have two separate kitchens, one for meat and one for everything else, in a quest to avoid ever allowing a dairy molecule to contact a meat molecule. All from one simple and apparently limited commandment: "Thou shalt not boil a calf in its mother's milk." Others say the essence of Judaism is to question, practice some of their favorite holiday observances, and then just try to be good people according to their own lights. (With varying and in some cases exemplary success.)
I try to strike a middle ground; I try to figure out what God is asking, and do that. But that's the same thing they're doing. One leans toward the side of "I will try to avoid anything that He might be implying is bad", which Christians call legalism. The other leans toward the side of their own judgement, which we don't have a pat word for.
The porn prohibition that most Christians espouse is legalism in my mind, our equivalent of two kitchens.