Skip to main content

Spiritual, Romantic, Sensual

By by Carl S ~

If you're raised in a society inundated with the indoctrination that spirituality is far, far, superior to sexuality, you might be tempted to believe there's something to it. Is there something to "spiritual" that makes it superior to being a fully aware, alive, person? Can it compete with sex? Nah! Having a "relationship" with a spirit-being in one's own head can't compare with one with a real person, even if it's a messy relationship. You can never be sure where you stand in relation to your imaginary other. This is why so many people have difficulty relating to their biblical god: they're never sure if they're pleasing him. They go to humans to find out, but they might just as well have someone reading tea-leaves for answers, for all the good it does. God the spiritual being is only another vaporous monolith to our senses; there's no "there" there.

Many, many people have tried to live totally spiritual lives. Have you met them? They are boring individuals, hollow inside like Easter candy bunnies, all sweetness and light, without depth. They've traded the dirtiness of sexuality for spiritual antiseptics. Consider nuns offering themselves to Jesus with their "spiritual marriage.s" This is quite an oxymoron, for a woman. Catholics eat wafers and tell themselves they are then in a communion with Jesus. As my ex-wife would say, "Catholics believe in holy communion; but intercourse, now that's real communion." Believers in spiritual things describe a baby as "a miracle." Babies come from sex. Since I've been responsible for making two babies, I guess I'm a miracle worker, having made two miracles that Jesus never did.

Having a "relationship" with a spirit-being in one's own head can't compare with one with a real person, even if it's a messy relationship.Now, some people will claim that the sexual experience is itself spiritual. Tell that to Masters and Johnson. Nobody in his/her right mind would prefer the spiritual over the sensual. If the spiritual is such a superior state of being, why are unwed pregnant girls predominantly in the bible-belt of American southern states? And why are so many clergy members guilty of pedophilic crimes and adultery? Even the celibate know that a spiritual relationship with one's imaginary spiritual lover (all-in-one's-head masturbation) needs to be supplemented with sexual release via imaginary encounters.

Holy experts have prated on for centuries about the war between the body and the much more "superior" mind/soul. They do protest too much. If their spiritual was superior, there would be no contest. It's in their heads, their attitudes towards pleasure. Those of us who are normal know it's a great feeling to be a sensual animal. It's what we are, and trying to be "other" is costly to our minds and bodies. We are all of us "body." There's no separate "spiritual other."

Trust religions to tell us how to live our sex lives? Religions have it in for women. Religions preach a woman's purpose on earth is to have children. Religious pressure is truly against a woman's right to choose. (And it is unfair to children if the woman doesn't want children, but does so because of obligation to her religion.) She has every right to sexual pleasure, to intimacy, without the consequences of pregnancy. Do religious leaders care? All their privileged "spiritual" claims are excuses for all manner of injustice. That's the opposite of making love.

It would be interesting to compare the statistics for religion and pornography to see which is more lucrative. Each is in the business of exponentially making money through excitement and emotional manipulation. We're not counting the millions spent on dating services or sex chat sites. Apparently, a sizable audience for pornography is the spiritually-speaking clergy.

When I was about to be married for the second time, I told a co-worker. Since I was no youngster (close to retirement age), he said, "Oh. For comfort." I told my soon-to-be bride, and we both had a good laugh about it. We'll be old some day, with all our infirmities, reliving our sensuous memories, smiling about our secret time together. No god can match that loving.

Believers will sometimes admit their beliefs make no rational sense, but they do give them "comfort." (Placebos do, too.) Their god and their biblical passages have been sanitized. He is a Mantovani-Leroy Anderson being, pleasant but passionless. If you desire personal recognition, go to a real person, even one who doesn't like you. But you shouldn't feel so desperate you go to God. In agreement with our commenter, Cognitive Dissonance Relief, I think the believer's comfort comes wholly from the human helping and healing of their church tribe. Each to his own. I'd rather cozy up to a homeless person on a park bench who has loved and lost and loved and lost again, and is still a romantic, than seek comfort with churchly companionship. And the homeless person, unlike them, wouldn't judge me. With that homeless person I could learn things about life outside my sheltered existence.

Have you left or been expelled from church and found yourself without that "comfort?" Go out and make friends, already. Don't want to feel depressed? Do something for someone. The world's a big place, and there are a lot more unbelievers like you, waiting to be cared about. (I think of the woman in a Margaret Atwood story who felt ignored by her husband. She thought: I could pick up someone. "At least he would be grateful.") The comfort you're looking for can't come from that God created from spiritual silly putty, changing shape while you try and relate to it. You can do better with a pet. A dog, horse, or cat will love and return your affection, unconditionally, without judging you. Interesting, isn't it, that God is incapable of giving you what a pet can provide?

You can re-appreciate the relationships you have. You can be creative in creating sensual ambiance. I read couples used to warm up to foreplay with Johnny Mathis love songs. It makes sense that each generation has its own songs. Some that should transcend all generations would be "Dances Sacred and Profane,' or Ravel's "Daphnis and Chloe," with its full orchestra and chorus. And I wonder who would make love to "The Rite of Spring?" In the December of my life, I wish to be just like the Alzheimer’s-stricken woman at our local assisted living place. I must have reminded her of someone she no longer recognized. She walked up to me and stood smiling for the longest time. Ah, romance!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~   S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden –  Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

On Living Virtuously

By Webmdave ~  A s a Christian, living virtuously meant living in a manner that pleased God. Pleasing god (or living virtuously) was explained as: Praying for forgiveness for sins  Accepting Christ as Savior  Frequently reading the Bible  Memorizing Bible verses Being baptized (subject to church rules)  Attending church services  Partaking of the Lord’s Supper  Tithing  Resisting temptations to lie, steal, smoke, drink, party, have lustful thoughts, have sex (outside of marriage) masturbate, etc.  Boldly sharing the Gospel of Salvation with unbelievers The list of virtuous values and expectations grew over time. Once the initial foundational values were safely under the belt, “more virtues'' were introduced. Newer introductions included (among others) harsh condemnation of “worldly” music, homosexuality and abortion Eventually the list of values grew ponderous, and these ideals were not just personal for us Christians. These virtues were used to condemn and disrespect fro