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The spirituality of sexuality
Q: Do your religious beliefs exalt or stigmatize sex (or both)? Is religion a useful tool for helping young people navigate the treacherous world of sex, love and relationships? Does religion present an alternative view of sex and sexual relationships to the culture at large? Should it?
"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine." (Song of Solomon 1:2)
These opening sentenced of the Song of Solomon express the ecstasy of physical love. Love is a gift from God, a source of joy, an intoxicant that makes life worth living. One function of sacred texts is to preserve various genres of ancient writings. The Song of Solomon, the Song of Songs, is a preservation of Near Eastern love poetry. It is similar to love poems found in ancient Egypt, and is not unlike poetry depicting the marriage of the gods that ensures the earth's fertility.
Through the history of Christianity, this book of the Bible has been interpreted to represent God's love for humanity and Christ's love for the church. It can be read as a representation of sexual love inside marriage. However, the Song is more than sexual. It is also a riot of sensuality. Singing birds, the smell of spices, the taste of fruit and wine create an atmosphere for lovemaking. The bodies of the lovers are a source of delight as the lovers describe the physical beauty they see in each other.
The Song is a celebration of mutual love: "My beloved is mine and I am his." The lovers are also friends. "This is my beloved and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem." The Song is also honest about the power of love to leave us vulnerable. We yearn for the beloved with our innermost selves. The Song depicts a dream where the lover is searching for the beloved who cannot be found. The lover is beaten and wounded and undressed by the sentinels in the city.
At the same time, the Song recognizes the power of love. It is strong as death. It is a fire that many waters cannot quench. It cannot be bought or sold. Sex within the context of the Song is an expression of love that is at once intimate, transcendent and eternal. It is an expression of a connection between two souls. God joins them together, and the bond cannot be broken. The sexual love of the Song is an expression of the presence of the Divine.
The Song is a religious exaltation of sex. However there are other kinds of sex to which sacred texts refer that are seen as immoral. Fornication, understood as pornea, includes adultery, prostitution, exploitation, incest, and idolatry. It does not bring human beings closer to each other or closer to God, but rather leads to physical and psychological abuse. Religion can be a useful tool to help young people and people of all ages to navigate sex, love and relationships, but it has not. Far too many religious traditions have too narrow a view of sex, saying it is acceptable only within the confines of heterosexual monogamous marriage. Religious traditions, far too often, do real harm when they refuse to accept that God sends new mercies and that homosexual love is also a gift from God.
Religion is too often silent about the importance and the quality of non-sexual intimacy inside marriage, and is silent about the sexual realities of human biology outside of marriage. Religion has left sex to women's magazines, erotic entertainment, pornography and stand -up comedy. It has left believers to find their own answers to questions of sexual morality, and to find their own techniques for satisfying the body's sexual urges. Thus we see believers choosing from a menu that includes spiritual disciplines to quiet desire to de facto polygamy and polyandry. They simply ignore religious teachings, some with guilt and some without guilt.
The Song provides an alternative view of sex from that of popular culture which accepts casual sex simply for the fun of it. It sets an ideal. The Song helps us to understand sex as an exquisite gift, a joyful, sensual celebration, an acceptance of the beauty and the power of our embodied selves. It shows us the spirituality of sexuality. And that is holy.
By
Valerie Elverton Dixon
|
April 22, 2010; 2:45 PM ET
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Posted by: mw11231 | April 27, 2010 2:42 AM
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Coincidentally or not, there is a great juxtaposition of views on sex and religion in the two comments that proceed mine (Bluefish2012 and Alincoln1). The first represents a perspective based on idolatry of the scriptures, and therefore an assumption that everything the scriptures say is literally true. This leads to a filtering of one's perceptions of reality through our always imperfect interpretaion of those scriptures, and a limited understanding of the whole of creation. This is particularly true in regard to the nexus of spirituality and physicality (the timeless manifesting in time).
In my opinion, the second perspective (ALINCOLN1) provides much more healthy and promising perspective on scriptures and sex. It is humanity's fate to make choices and though we will often err on our path, if we choose "Love God (as we can best understand God/goodness) and love thy neighbor as thyself" as one of our top priorities, we will err on making safer choices. If we pursue that path in our own development (within a religion or otherwise) and in our relations with others (sexual and otherwise), and are rigorous about doing the right thing for our neighbor we will continually develop better discernment, judgement and action. That will reduce the amount of trash in sex.
Posted by: jkarn | April 26, 2010 1:24 PM
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How convenient.
Scripture is quoted insofar as it supports the author's broad view of what sex is and what the nature of this gift is. But kinds of sex that scripture explicitly forbids is the fault of "religion." And so, same-sex sex, auto-eroticism, and fornication are outside the scope of scripture's message.
Nice try. So "today."
Posted by: Bluefish2012 | April 25, 2010 8:26 PM
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Heaven has two components: communion with God and eternal life. Sex has these same two components: the unitive and the procreative. Sex is supposed to be an earthly image of heavenly life. Too often, people deliberately exclude one or both of these components. When that happens, sex loses its meaning and becomes trash. I hope religion can help us recapture the beauty of sex, because no one else can.
Posted by: ALincoln1 | April 25, 2010 4:53 PM
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Just out of curiosity, what does The Song of Solomon have to do with Christianity. Unless I am mistaken, it is a Jewish text. And Judaism does not hold the same views as Christianity does regarding sex. It's nice that Ms. Dixon can find such a wonderful perspective in the Song - but it seems to have little in common with Christianity's historical attitude towards sexuality.