Why Is Christianity So Obsessed With Sex?

[Vigile]

 

 

I disagree.  It also says don't eat shell fish and love thy neighbor.  The bible really has very little to do with xian belief.  They obsess over parts of it because those parts work in terms of keeping the sheep in the fold, controlling the sheep, etc...

 

In the New Testament, God gives permission to eat all kinds of food.

 

And Christians do believe that they should love their neighbour. (Whether or not they actually do is another matter.)

 

 

The NT sometimes contradicts the OT even though god supposedly never changes and the law doesn't pass away.  The NT also tells people to give away all their shit and cut out their eye if it makes them sin.  I've seen very few eye patches in church even though most admit to struggling with lust.

 

The point is, what modern protestants believe varies from church to church and varies quite profoundly from earlier eras and from more orthodox brands of the religion.  This happens because there isn't a book of objective rules that guide their beliefs and behavior, but rather a paradigm that tells them how to interpret a highly subjective book. 

[SquareOne]

There does tend to be disagreement on issues on which the Bible is less clear.  However, it's pretty clear on the sex issues, which is why the majority of Christians follow the text accordingly.  Obviously, not everyone does - which supports your argument that people tend to cherry pick to some extent.

 

If the question is, why do some Christians choose to ignore the rather clear verses on sex, then the answer is this:

 

People like sex.

[Suzy]

There does tend to be disagreement on issues on which the Bible is less clear.  However, it's pretty clear on the sex issues, which is why the majority of Christians follow the text accordingly. 

 

Is it?

 

According to Christians today God intended marriage between one man and one woman (an argument they bring up against gay marriage). However according to the Bible many of God's great people had many wives. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David. Solomon had as many as 700 wives and 300 concubines. How does that fit into the one man-one woman concept of today? The New Testament also doesn't explicitly say it's wrong to have many wives. Only in the case of the elders of the church it is forbidden.

 

Or what about the fact that in the OT Israelites were allowed (or at times even ordered!) by God to rape the women of the enemy in war. Or what abut the concept of taking captives as sex slaves and if the Israelite man was not satisfied with her, he could kick her out (after already having sex with her). 

 

So how is the Bible clear and consistent on sex issues?

[falemon]

I dunno about the rape thing, it's not the only way to interpret it so that means it is undoubtedly open to interpretation. It assumes far too much about the culture and also assumes something that was not said, namely forced rape, so I'm not sure that rape was the intended image the biblical novelist were going for Given it is not the only way to interpret it it stands to reason that it is not accurate to say that it is the way to interpret it. It needs to be unequivocal for me to accept a claim on what one thinks the authors were going for.

 

But yes, from reading the Bible it is clear that multiple wives was the way. It also seems that the man was expected to provide himself to his wife when they wanted and vice versa. There's even a place where it says the woman can leave the man if he doesn't put out, and I'm pretty sure it says the same vice versa.

 

There are many cultural dynamics to sex, there are towns where it is normal for a woman to have children from many men, towns where men spread their seed, towns where it is a free for all and then you have monogamy. So it appears that in the OT their culture was more geared to the one man - many wives model. Bear in mind that it was fiction so it is difficult to know the overall behaviour of the Jews from the bible.

 

So you have the stories of multiple wives, and the instructions that seem to indicate one to one, though with no explicit limit, plus concubines were allowed.

 

By the time of the NT the culture had shifted (which is pretty much the key doctrine of christianity). So to the modern christian the bible is clear, one man and one woman. You need only do a survey to see peoples interpretations to measure how clear it is.

[SquareOne]

Well what do you want from me, I'm no theologian.  I'm not going to argue about this point.

 

It seems to me that the simple answer to the question is that the NT expresses that sex should be within marriage, and that's why Christians believe that sex should be within marriage.  That's why they "obsess" over it.  <-- Actually I'm not they really do obsess over it in the churches I went to, but we all have different experiences, maybe it was like that at your church.

 

The question of why Christians appear to cherry pick is a much broader question, and doesn't just apply to sex.  Happy to get into that one but I wouldn't want to divert this thread too much.

[BMandeville]

For the same reason it's obsessed with death: sex and death influence almost every aspect of our lives. It's a matter of convenience

 and emotional impact which has absolutely nothing to do with morality.

[SquareOne]

 

For the same reason it's obsessed with death: sex and death influence almost every aspect of our lives. It's a matter of convenience

 and emotional impact which has absolutely nothing to do with morality.

 

 

Sex does have plenty to do with morality.  You just have different opinions about where to draw the line in relation to sex, compared to some Christians.  As do I.  As does everyone.  The important thing we need to do is justify why we draw the line at a certain place.

 

(e.g. where do you stand on rape, sex with minors, sex with the mentally disabled, sex with animals)

[LivingLife]

No you are not a slut. I bedded many a 16&17 yo when I was 21ish and what is happening is that you are victim to the hormonal changes in your body. The whole idea that you should keep yourself "pure" has many connotations. The most obvious is that unprotected sex w/o considering STDs, you run the risk of an unwanted pregnancy. 200 years ago at your age, you would probably be expecting your second child.

 

Now we have had the advent of mass literacy, allowing women to finish school and follow a career and the dynamics of of a horny pussy has not changed to keep up with societal norms.

 

I had in excess of 30 GFs before I settled down at 27 going on 28. No one can be expected to hold back so long. Oddly enough, in my dad's church, the girls were encouraged to dress unappealing and remain chaste while menfolk were given a pass to go sow wild oats with any other girls outside the church. Well once they saw the lads were leaving and they ran the risk of becoming spinsters, they too took the plunge with boys outside their church.

 

There is a special bond between father's and daughters and I think it is because we know how horny and how the prime goal is to get laid and as often as possible, part of our natural drive to procreate.

 

Then we have all the secular romance and love issues thrown in for good measure to further complicate everything. I have only been in love twice, the rest was all lust. Been together with wife1.0 for 30 years this Feb and never been unfaithful.

 

In short, have fun but take precautions. Young love is mostly young lust and if you have been together and screwed and there is nothing else, then move on. Wife and I started out as friends with benefits and it grew from there but by that stage I was already 25 and she was 22.

[BMandeville]

 

 

For the same reason it's obsessed with death: sex and death influence almost every aspect of our lives. It's a matter of convenience

 and emotional impact which has absolutely nothing to do with morality.

 

 

Sex does have plenty to do with morality.  You just have different opinions about where to draw the line in relation to sex, compared to some Christians.  As do I.  As does everyone.  The important thing we need to do is justify why we draw the line at a certain place.

 

(e.g. where do you stand on rape, sex with minors, sex with the mentally disabled, sex with animals)

 

 

I'm not saying sex has nothing to do with morality. All I'm saying is that religion's predictable obsession with it has to do with the fact that people in general live their lives with sex constantly on their minds; it's a way to get their attention. In the same way, people fear death, which is why cosmic justice/afterlife/immortality are big selling points with religions. Both are moral issues, but that's not their purpose in religions such as Christianity.

[mymistake]

 

 

For the same reason it's obsessed with death: sex and death influence almost every aspect of our lives. It's a matter of convenience

 and emotional impact which has absolutely nothing to do with morality.

 

 

Sex does have plenty to do with morality.  You just have different opinions about where to draw the line in relation to sex, compared to some Christians.  As do I.  As does everyone.  The important thing we need to do is justify why we draw the line at a certain place.

 

(e.g. where do you stand on rape, sex with minors, sex with the mentally disabled, sex with animals)

 

 

 

The morality of sex is very simple.  Everyone involved must be able to consent and they must give consent.  Being old enough and being informed are part of being able to consent.  That cuts right through it all.

[SquareOne]

I'm going to go off slightly at a tangent here, and this might require a new thread.

 

People talk about Christianity and religion, almost as though "religion" were a concious entity in itself, with particular goals.  Or at least, as though there is a centralised central command, where church leaders deliberately cook up strategies to suppress and control people.

 

This is to fundamentally misunderstand Christianity.

 

These ideas carry on because they are passed from person to person, each convincing the next, and sincerely believing, that what they are doing is a right and good thing.  And so a bad thing is spread by people who think they are doing good.  The effect might be to suppress people's sexuality; but that is not the deliberate intention.  Christians sincerely believe that church teaching brings sexual liberation.

 

So whilst it is easy to point at Christianity as a whole and say "You are suppressing sexuality and freedom!" -- this totally misses the point -- and will not make sense to a Christian.

[OnceConvinced]

Occassionally someone will say... tongue n cheek... that the reason the early bible writers were so down on sex was because they weren't getting any themselves. It's a good chuckle, but you know, there might be something in that. I could imagine those high preists, or whoever were making the rules, would not be that popular with members of the opposite sex, especially considering what sexist a-holes they were. Being in positions of power and seeing others get it where they weren't, is it so difficult to believe that they would get jealous and then start making rules just to prevent those lucky people from getting as much action as they do? I don't think so.

 

The other thing too, is the whole cultural thing of women being possessions. Every man wanted a virgin wife. They didn't want someone that had been with another man, so they made a lot of rules to ensure that they got their clean woman. You can't have people screwing around all the time if you want that. And once your married that woman remains your possession. Woe betide any man that even touches her! Yep, it was clearly a control thing, with women being the possessions.

[mymistake]

I'm going to go off slightly at a tangent here, and this might require a new thread.

 

People talk about Christianity and religion, almost as though "religion" were a concious entity in itself, with particular goals.  Or at least, as though there is a centralised central command, where church leaders deliberately cook up strategies to suppress and control people.

 

This is to fundamentally misunderstand Christianity.

 

These ideas carry on because they are passed from person to person, each convincing the next, and sincerely believing, that what they are doing is a right and good thing.  And so a bad thing is spread by people who think they are doing good.  The effect might be to suppress people's sexuality; but that is not the deliberate intention.  Christians sincerely believe that church teaching brings sexual liberation.

 

So whilst it is easy to point at Christianity as a whole and say "You are suppressing sexuality and freedom!" -- this totally misses the point -- and will not make sense to a Christian.

 

We misunderstand Christianity?  No.  It's a figure of speech.  Talking about it that way saves words.  Christianity is a collection of related cults that thrived or survived with minor changes from even older cults.  When you say "Christians sincerely believe" you are not talking about leaders.  You are not talking about the writers of docterine nor Bible book editors nor the original authors.  You mean the sheep.  Of course confronting such sheep with reality will not make sense to them.  The sects of the Christian cults that survive to this day do certain things.  Whatever those are helped the cult survive.  Sure the doctrine itself is not alive and has no mind.  But it is directed by leaders who make marginal changes, proclaim, pontificate and saber rattle among other things.  So yes those leaders do intentionally keep some effects going.  The delusional ones might do it out of sincere belief but others do it to maximize their con.  It's a complicated situation so the figure of speech saves words.

[Akheia]

OC - ever see that cartoon of aggression transfer? The dad hits the mom, the mom hits the kid, the kid hits the dog... I think in a lot of ways that people in power really need an Other to have power *over*, and women do fit the bill. We tend to be smaller and physically less strong than men, and in the past our reproductive capabilities were not only utterly mysterious, but also debilitating to our own potential. I think that a lot of the women-as-property bullshit came about with the need for men to demonstrate that their children were, in fact, theirs and not someone else's, but women have always been able to sneak behind their backs and to end pregnancies we didn't want, so men never really had total control. I'm sorry if I seem like I'm rambling a bit but your post really sparked something that I'm still kind of chewing on mentally. Perhaps we can spark at each other a bit.

 

I've got an interesting scholarly study of 12th-century European courtly poetry* that demonstrates a subtle shift away from adultery being purely a lineage issue and more toward an attitude that greater control over his wife's body was a way for a nobleman to demonstrate his own qualification to be a ruler. Now that I think of it, that does fit in rather neatly with the Renaissance idea of how a woman's virtue and modesty directly affected her family's honor--not by building it up in the case of a woman who was exceptionally virtuous/modest, but tearing it down in the case of a woman who was not. In other words, a woman's sexuality was a direct indication of just how "manly" her male family members were. A man who could not control his female kinfolk was no man at all. Court cases abound of the violence men inflicted upon their daughters, wives, sisters, and nieces (but no mothers that I can remember off the top of my head) in the name of avenging their honor and taking back their reputations. I'm suddenly wondering if maybe Christianity took some of its obsession with sex from a pervasive cultural attitude of women's sexuality being inherently dangerous to men's honor.

 

* Yes, I'm exactly that nerdy. And a lot of it's in medieval French.

[Vigile]

When we speak of xianity in this way, we are generally discussing memes and paradigms.  Clearly there are nuances amongst various believers and sects.  Consider this philosophical short hand. 

 

 

So whilst it is easy to point at Christianity as a whole and say "You are suppressing sexuality and freedom!" -- this totally misses the point -- and will not make sense to a Christian.

 

Little makes sense to those who are living in the world of spin.  Objective view points are not possible by those who already know their own version of the 'truth'. 

[Akheia]

That and I'm not sure why I should worry about what makes sense to Christians. As SquareOne's pointed out, a lot of stuff won't make sense till they step out of their religion's narrow pathway. It sure didn't for me. I certainly genuinely thought that Christianity--especially the fundamentalist denomination I was in--was sex-positive, that complementarianism was more woman-affirming than feminism ever could be, slavery is freedom, freedom is slavery, etc etc. So when someone said it wasn't, of course I protested that they just didn't understand, but the words still stuck. In retrospect I'm grateful that people did say this stuff. It was a big part of how I summoned the courage to recognize what I was subconsciously noticing.

 

If the Emperor's got no clothes on, it's even more important to say something about it, right?

[OnceConvinced]

OC - ever see that cartoon of aggression transfer? The dad hits the mom, the mom hits the kid, the kid hits the dog... I think in a lot of ways that people in power really need an Other to have power *over*, and women do fit the bill. We tend to be smaller and physically less strong than men, and in the past our reproductive capabilities were not only utterly mysterious, but also debilitating to our own potential. I think that a lot of the women-as-property bullshit came about with the need for men to demonstrate that their children were, in fact, theirs and not someone else's, but women have always been able to sneak behind their backs and to end pregnancies we didn't want, so men never really had total control. I'm sorry if I seem like I'm rambling a bit but your post really sparked something that I'm still kind of chewing on mentally. Perhaps we can spark at each other a bit.

 

I've got an interesting scholarly study of 12th-century European courtly poetry* that demonstrates a subtle shift away from adultery being purely a lineage issue and more toward an attitude that greater control over his wife's body was a way for a nobleman to demonstrate his own qualification to be a ruler. Now that I think of it, that does fit in rather neatly with the Renaissance idea of how a woman's virtue and modesty directly affected her family's honor--not by building it up in the case of a woman who was exceptionally virtuous/modest, but tearing it down in the case of a woman who was not. In other words, a woman's sexuality was a direct indication of just how "manly" her male family members were. A man who could not control his female kinfolk was no man at all. Court cases abound of the violence men inflicted upon their daughters, wives, sisters, and nieces (but no mothers that I can remember off the top of my head) in the name of avenging their honor and taking back their reputations. I'm suddenly wondering if maybe Christianity took some of its obsession with sex from a pervasive cultural attitude of women's sexuality being inherently dangerous to men's honor.

 

* Yes, I'm exactly that nerdy. And a lot of it's in medieval French.

As a Christian I had no clue just how sexist the bible was and just how men viewed women in Old Testament times in particular. Now that I look at it with the Christian glasses off it just horrifies me the way they were treated. Traded and sold. Even callously sacrificed to raging mobs. The bible even had a nice name for sex slaves: "concubines".

 

The bible also shows its desrespect for women by the lack of women portrayed in the bible. Few of them were important enough to be mentioned and one of them was only ever referred to as "Lot's wife". Did God not know her name or did God just not deem her important enough to have it recorded.   If we went by the bible, it would seem that in almost every famous biblical family...apart from the mother and the concubines... they were all male. Where were all the sisters? Why were they never mentioned.

 

I seem to remember coming across a theory once that the reason women were treated so badly in biblical times was due to the fact that Eve was seen as the reason for man's fall and women have suffered the backlash because of it.

[Vigile]

What about Ruth and Esther? 

[Guest MadameX]

If you are interested in an evolutionary biology explanation about why this is so, I'll summarize: it isn't even Christianity so much as the human species that is so obsessed with sex, just like we are obsessed about violence. It is because we are very much like our close relatives, the raping, gang-banging great apes (particularly chimps).

 

Chimps live in male dominated societies and control the females and infants, wage wars against outsiders, and murder their rivals. BTW we share something like 98% of our genes with chimps, having branched off from our common ancestor with them about 4-5 million years ago. Aggression is bred into us.

 

All religions have sexual mores built deeply into their code. Especially regarding females' sexuality and reproduction. Of course they also have other rules for living, too, like hygiene, diet, how to deal with strangers, etc.

 

This is an interesting book on the subject. I read it in just a couple days and recommend it:

 

Demonic Males: Apes and The Origins of Male Violence

 

"Contradicting the common belief that chimpanzees in the wild are gentle creatures, Harvard anthropologist Wrangham and science writer Peterson have witnessed, since 1971, male African chimpanzees carry out rape, border raids, brutal beatings and warfare among rival territorial gangs. In a startling, beautifully written, riveting, provocative inquiry, they suggest that chimpanzee-like violence preceded and paved the way for human warfare?which would make modern humans the dazed survivors of a continuous, five-million-year habit of lethal aggression. They buttress their thesis with an examination of the ubiquitous rape among orangutans, gorilla infanticide and male-initiated violence and hyenas' territorial feuds, drawing parallels to the lethal raiding among the Yanomamo people of Brazil's Amazon forests and other so-called primitive tribes, as well as to modern "civilized" mass slaughter. In their analysis, patriotism ("stripped to its essence... male defense of the community") breeds aggression, yet, from an evolutionary standpoint, they reject the presumed inevitability of male violence and male dominance over women."

 

(edited because I am a bit of an awkward writer so I often re-read and clarify)

[mymistake]

If you are interested in an evolutionary biology explanation about why this is so, I'll summarize: it isn't even Christianity so much as the human species that is so obsessed with sex, just like we are obsessed about violence. It is because we are very much like our close relatives, the raping, gang-banging great apes (particularly chimps).

 

Chimps live in male dominated societies and control the females and infants, wage wars against outsiders, and murder their rivals. Aggression is bred into us. BTW we share something like 98% of our genes with chimps, having branched off from our common ancestor with them about 4-5 million years ago.

 

All religions have sexual mores especially regarding females built deeply into their code. Of course they also have other rules for living, too, like hygiene, diet, how to deal with strangers, etc.

 

This is an interesting book on the subject. I read it in just a couple days:

 

Demonic Males: Apes and The Origins of Male Violence

 

"Contradicting the common belief that chimpanzees in the wild are gentle creatures, Harvard anthropologist Wrangham and science writer Peterson have witnessed, since 1971, male African chimpanzees carry out rape, border raids, brutal beatings and warfare among rival territorial gangs. In a startling, beautifully written, riveting, provocative inquiry, they suggest that chimpanzee-like violence preceded and paved the way for human warfare?which would make modern humans the dazed survivors of a continuous, five-million-year habit of lethal aggression. They buttress their thesis with an examination of the ubiquitous rape among orangutans, gorilla infanticide and male-initiated violence and hyenas' territorial feuds, drawing parallels to the lethal raiding among the Yanomamo people of Brazil's Amazon forests and other so-called primitive tribes, as well as to modern "civilized" mass slaughter. In their analysis, patriotism ("stripped to its essence... male defense of the community") breeds aggression, yet, from an evolutionary standpoint, they reject the presumed inevitability of male violence and male dominance over women."

 

Is that typical for the bonobo as well?

[Guest MadameX]

 

 

Is that typical for the bonobo as well?

 

 

Bonobos speciated from the chimp fairly recently. The separation was the Congo River, with chimps being on the side that had a more stressful food source situation (they had to compete with gorillas). This led to more aggressiveness, apparently, and to hunting - they viciously attack and eat monkeys. Bonobos seemingly live in the land of plenty, mostly eat fruit and do not have to compete with gorillas. They evolved a more peaceful culture, females have higher status and they all have sex with each other all the time (across the generations, every kind of permutation of male and male and male and female etc) as a way of resolving conflict. Fascinating!

 

Bonobos are discussed in the book as a way of showing how selection for less aggressiveness is possible too and therefore the violence typical of humans is not an inevitability.

 

Hmmm, is that even possible? 

[SquareOne]

We misunderstand Christianity?  No.  It's a figure of speech.  Talking about it that way saves words.  Christianity is a collection of related cults that thrived or survived with minor changes from even older cults.  When you say "Christians sincerely believe" you are not talking about leaders.  You are not talking about the writers of docterine nor Bible book editors nor the original authors.  You mean the sheep.  Of course confronting such sheep with reality will not make sense to them.  The sects of the Christian cults that survive to this day do certain things.  Whatever those are helped the cult survive.  Sure the doctrine itself is not alive and has no mind.  But it is directed by leaders who make marginal changes, proclaim, pontificate and saber rattle among other things.  So yes those leaders do intentionally keep some effects going.  The delusional ones might do it out of sincere belief but others do it to maximize their con.  It's a complicated situation so the figure of speech saves words.

 

It seems to me that you have just validated my point by making a distinction between the leaders and the "sheep".  My point is, that there is no division between leaders and everybody else.

 

There are no shepherds, imposing a certain will upon everybody else.  They are all sheep together  To the extent that any individual does have a "leadership" role, they merely regurgitate the same thinking as all their fellow sheep.

 

Nobody controls the meme.

 

Therefore, to impute onto church leaders some specific intention to suppress sexuality is misguided.  They are only doing what they think is correct, and are themselves victims of the same virus.

 

It's a subtle point, and not one that can be applied everywhere.

 

I am not sure that we really actually disagree on the substance of what is said; but rather the language used to describe the same idea.

[mymistake]

My point is, the leaders are sheep.

 

 

We are going to have to agree to disagree.  You are, of course, entitled to your opinion.  I just can't see the people at the very top not figuring it out.  In my opinion once they start acting to protect the con they have to know on some level that it's a con.

[OnceConvinced]

What about Ruth and Esther? 

 

I said there was a LACK of women portrayed in the bible. FEW were important enough to be mentioned. Think about it . Two books out of 66  inspired by women. Seem like a fair porportion?

[Ravenstar]

I wonder how much influence the surrounding religions during the OT had on the sex thing? It is suspected I believe, that Ishtar priestesses were also temple prostitutes and there were probably others as well.