Friday 11 January 2002

Pic of the day: Strangely appropriate ... a recent issue of Strangers in Paradise.

Sex - the final frontier

This is the fourth article in a series that try to explain why religions act in a way that is considered sexually repressive by practically everyone who views them from outside. It may seem to the casual onlooker that God - or gods - randomly demand that people abstain from fun as a price for going to paradise after death. I hope to show that it is not quite that simple.

This series was prompted by a fellow poster to an online forum. He used a funny tagline: He distrusted both dogs and religions because they were both way too interested in his crotch. But is this really so?

In the earlier articles, we saw that religions are partly social constructs, which tie people together or divide them. Partly they are metaphysical worldviews, handing out ideas about why we are born, what will happen after we die, how the world came into being and how it will end. But partly religion is an intensely personal experience. It can be a love affair of the spirit, no less exciting and intense than any earthly romance; or a way to plug into the cosmic consciousness and beyond. And this is particularly so for the founders, early disciples and reformers of religions: Those who give faith the shape we know.

***

Are the ethical standards of religions randomly decided, perhaps developed by trial and error in a kind of Darwinian competition among cultures? One would be excused to think so, when Jews and Muslims don't eat pork while Hindus don't eat beef. Actually, the two cases are very different in origin. In the Hebrew religion, pigs were listed along with a lot of other critters as unclean. The law was big on health issues, containing detailed quarantine regulations as well as rules of daily hygiene. In contrast, Hindus don't eat beef because the cow is sacred. As a symbol of universal motherhood, the cow is not reviled but revered.

Moving from the details to the underlying principles, however, it becomes clear that great religions (and some not so famous ones) have a lot in common, as do some philosophies that were founded by mystics. In fact, the cosmic nexus to which a mystic connects is not value neutral. It is not just a source of spiritual energy; it has a direction. By its very nature it makes certain demands of those who will continue to partake of its mystic union. You cannot approach the Light while holding on to darkness.

What then is this direction? First of all, it is truth. All falsehood, all deceit, all conceit, all betrayal is utterly incompatible with it. For this is a light that shines through heart and mind. It is the bright light of day, and cannot abide in closed rooms.

Second, it is sharing. As all things in the world are connected, on Earth as in Heaven, so we are all part of one another. It makes no sense for one to have more than he can enjoy, while another is starving and lacking. To the mystic that is one with all sentient life (and then some) it makes no sense to stockpile gold or clothes or food or wives. He takes no joy in his surplus, and feels pain in the deprivation of others. For they are all part of him, and he of them.

Third, it is spirituality. As the mystic takes his joy from the realm of spirit (and as I mentioned yesterday, it can be a very intense joy indeed) he is drawn to spend ever more time ever closer to this source of joy, withdrawing naturally from seeking fulfillment in the pleasures of the flesh.

***

This is not to say that religion frowns on the simple delights of earthly life. On the contrary. You will find that the pious eat their bread with joy and a thankful heart. And in the same harmony, they enjoy friendship, family life and sex. They enjoy all this as natural parts of creation, gifts given to them by a benevolent deity or providence. But they avoid extreme asceticism and overindulgence, for both of these draws the mind in the direction of the object sought or avoided.

I believe that humans have certain underlying tendencies. We might call them instincts, except that we actually have some power to resist or deflect them. When living in harmony with these, people feel a deep satisfaction, contentedness and lasting happiness. When thwarting them, they feel discontent and restless. The mystic experience, whether it actually links us to a Higher Being or is just a state of our own brain, it connects us to these underlying principles and aligns us with them.

What religions refer to as sin is usually a knotting or distortion of the normal instincts. Virtue is happiness and enjoyment; vice deviates to the right or the left: The sinner will either seek pleasure by any means, or he will deny enjoyment to himself or others.

My tentative answer to the tagline is, then: Most likely it is you who are too interested in your own crotch, and religion tries to divert you from that, pointing you in another direction. (Not so sure about the dogs, though.)

***

So how about the fact that religion denies young people to have sex, or even masturbate, during the years when they (well, at least the boys) most feel the desire? Is this not pure spite on behalf of the elderly popes and mullahs who never got any and now don't want anyone else to have fun? Or worse yet, cruelty from a disembodied God?

To this I say that the sin is neither in the original religions nor in the young people, but in a capitalist society that has redefined childhood for its convenience. Even though we reach sexual maturity sometime before the age of 15 and the body is fully grown around 18, many young people today have to stay in school until they are 25 or more. This is as it must be, but they should not be expected to act as children for all of that time. In the middle ages, a trader or craftsman would be apprenticed for as long; and a farmer was learning from his father and taking orders from him for much of his life. But they still had certain adult responsibilities. Among them marriage and family. And they better, for life expectancy was much lower than today. You had to make your years count. Today when life expectancy is 70 rather than 40, we are not in such a hurry to procreate. But sex is not just about procreation. People should be allowed to find the love of their life and enter a state of commitment, rather than macking out in secret and trying to hide it from parents and teachers like kids stealing apples.

When you have found that lover to live with (and most do eventually), there is the whole greed thing: Be satisfied with your wife, and don't go stealing other people's wives (or husbands). But when it comes to greed in general, religion has LOST. Mammon (money) reigns supreme, occasionally roaring with evil laughter and kicking the lifeless corpses of the established religions. Sex is the final frontier, where religion still hold a few forts, albeit under siege.

God is not dead; but his churches are. Dead and fossilized. It is up to you now, stop trying to make sense of the priestly declarations. For the rules do not make sense without the life that was supposed to fill them. The wine has spilled from the old bags, they lie empty on the ground. If you want to understand, you have to take the pilgrimage yourself, the inner pilgrimage to stand eventually before the all-consuming Light. If you can endure to have that Light reveal your own hidden chambers, then you will open your eyes and see all around you the scaffolds of men building their own monuments in the name of God. You will hear the chittering, like a multitude of grasshoppers, of well-meant lies spoken in God's name by those who know the Light only from books. Until then, judge lightly.

And quite frankly, if you don't know the Life, I don't think the Form applies to you. Remember what the Christian Bible says: "If I give to the poor all that I own, and my body to be burned, but I do not have love - it gains me nothing."