Rogue Reverend

Bad Sex

When I was 18 years old, I said to my mom, “I can’t wait to get married.” She asked, “Why?” “Because I can’t wait to have sex!” My mom stopped and looked at me. “How long do you think sex actually takes, Lia?” I answered, “Oh, I don’t know. Thirty minutes?” Remember, I was only 18! I didn’t know these things! Then my mom asked, “And how many times a week do you think couples have sex?” Well, I had seen Oprah, so I answered, “Twice a week?” So then my mom said, “Do the math. That’s 52 hours a year, barely over 2 full days a year. How important should it really be?”

That conversation has stayed with me for 22 years.

Because, on the other hand, sex is one of the major things that people think about. It is one of the driving forces behind all of our culture. We spend an inordinate amount of time thinking, planning, considering, reflecting, meditating, and cogitating on sex. Sex sells cars. Sex sells hair care products. Sex sells movies. Sex sells coffee. Sex sells everything.

According to all the so-called experts, men and women think differently about sex. This is from an article on WebMD by Susan Seliger:

The simplest way to capture the differences between men’s and women’s sex drives is to consider how you’d answer this test: create a sentence using the words “sex” and “love.”

If you’re a woman, odds are your sentence goes something like this: “When two people understand each other, trust each other, and love each other, then the sex is the best.” If you’re a man, chances are your sentence more closely resembles this: “I love sex.”

Ultimately, we all desire connection with other human beings. And we all live in sort of a biological imperative to procreate, even though science has allowed us the freedom to relax this a bit. And well, let’s face it. Sex is fun.

But here’s the thing with sex. It can be both good and bad. It can be heaven and it can be hell. It can be a spiritual experience, and it can be a base experience. It can be a gift; it can be theft. It can be liberating. It can be enslaving. All in the same night.

I should also be clear what I’m talking about when I talk about sex. Bad news, Mr. Clinton: I define sex as anything that is an exchange, whether equal or unequal, whether commercial or non-commercial, reproductive or non-reproductive, that has to do with the sexual organs.

Sex is pretty important in the Bible. It factors prominently in the first few chapters of the Book. In Genesis 1, following the first tale of creation, God says, “Be fruitful and multiply.” Yep. That’s sex. The second time sex is mentioned is in chapter 2, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Yep. Sex again. Just a few verses later, the woman is created and it is written, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.”

You got it. This is about sex. And then comes the fall. Upon eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Adam and Eve realize they are naked. And guess what? Here comes the shame. And contention between men and women. And separation. And blame. And abdication of responsibility.

Bad sex entered the world. And suddenly, being naked together is not all innocent fun. Suddenly, sex is not about intimacy. It’s not about love. It’s not about fun. It’s not about procreation. Suddenly, THIS is not about THAT.

I got into a heated discussion with a friend this week about the $335 million for STD prevention added in funding to the failed bailout proposal. My friend is a pastor, and father of two daughters. He’s upset that there our tax money would go to prevent STD’s when we should just be concerned with abstinence. He’s a proponent of abstinence and monogamy, and that that should be the ideal.

My response? How’s that working for you? His response was:

It worked in the past. When we as a society and as a church allowed advertisers to treat women as sex objects to sell their products, kids started buying into the narrative, and we abdicated our responsibility in correcting that.

We’re not German shepherds in heat. In matters of sex, money, and just about everything else, we do have the ability to control ourselves. And should.

STD numbers are up. Teenagers are having more sex, not less, since the inception of abstinence only sex education. And was there ever really a time that people did not allow women to be treated as sex objects? Was there ever a time that we didn’t use sex to sell products? Was there ever really a time when kids didn’t buy into the narrative?

The discussion got pretty heated.  It wound down with my friend saying this:

Y’all want to perpetuate a culture that assumes my two daughters exist to pleasure men, and there’s nothing we helpless adults can do about that.

You just don’t know how passionately I disagree. It’s not about morality; it’s about raising women who respect themselves, are independent, and refuse to be treated by others as a commodity.

Y’all can abdicate if you want and say it’s “reality”. But what for you is theoretical is for me practical, especially as one of my daughters is approaching dating age. So no, I’m not buying in. There’s just too much at stake.

My friend is scared for his daughters. He wants what is best for them. He wants them to be able to take care of themselves, to have choices and options in their lives. He wants to make sure that they are not saddled down with children or diseases.

But I told him, “You can’t protect your daughters from the fact that sex happens. You can’t convince them to be abstinent and believe that they will be fine from here on out. What you have to do is give them the reality of it all: what it is and what it isn’t and what to do in either case.

My friend just wants to protect his daughters, because he recognizes that THIS is not about THAT.

Ultimately, what are the things that sex is about? Control, power, love, self-esteem, safety, wholeness, God, and so much more.

Ted Haggard is a perfect example, to me of sex being about something else. If you don’t remember Haggard, he was the leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, pastor of a mega-church in Colorado, and an anti-gay activist, preaching against homosexuality and gay marriage. He is in a cycle of misery. His latest? Another gentleman speaking out about his sexual relationship with Haggard.

Haggard obviously makes me angry, because of the hypocrisy of his stance. And on a deeper level, it kills me that anyone can be so hateful and exclusive to a group of loving people.

“Many of the charges against me are exaggerated, but it doesn’t matter,” Haggard told Larry King. “I’m guilty enough of so many things.”

He acknowledged that his actions were hypocritical, but said he could not control his urges.

“I felt like God’s plan was for sexuality to be in a monogamous, heterosexual marriage,” he said. “I wanted that. But at the same time, I had these other things going on.”

Haggard said he had thought that focusing on his spiritual life would help, but found that it did not. “It actually made me worse,” he said.

Haggard said that, for a time, he lost the ability to read the Scriptures and became suicidal. “I think it was divine intervention that stopped me,” he said.

For Haggard, I think that sex is about one thing: shame. Many people who are ashamed of their sexuality go out of their way to have sex that is full of shame, and what is more shameful for a “man of God” than paying for sex? What’s more shameful for a straight man than gay sex?

And what better way to heap shame upon yourself than to talk about how shameful your actions are? Because THIS is not about THAT.

Sex is rarely really just about sex. It combines some of our deepest hurts, because many of us have had sex used against us, many of us feel unworthy of love, many of us feel broken and sex just seems to bring it out.

I met with friend who is a  UU minister this week and we were talking about this very thing. Of course, I used my favorite “f” word to describe my own inner feelings about who I am. I could substitute the words sin or brokenness there, but I hate both of those words and their implications. Finally, my friend said to me, “You know, I’d prefer that you quit saying that you’re “f-ed” up. First,” she explained, “it sounds so harsh. Second, I don’t like the implications for sex.” She asked who was a Christian hero of mine, and I said my preaching professor. She asked what he would name that “f*ed-up ness.” He would use the words “child of God.” So, I’ve taken to call it my child-of-God-ness.

See, I think that God would have like to heal our child-of-God-ness. I think that God would prefer that we not be in pain, whether it is the remembrance of pain in sex, or of sex used against us, or whether it is the pain of our parents, of never having felt loved.

I don’t think that God would have us remain in pain, no matter what kind of pain that we’re in.

At the end of Genesis 3, after the pronouncements have been made about the contention between men and women, the separation, the blame, and the abdication of responsibility, you see this glimpse of God working to heal Adam and Eve. The text says, “The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.” This act, in and of itself, just shows a delicateness and a love that characterizes God. God wants us to get better.

Sure, This is not about That. But this can be healed, though the love and care of God and through the love and care of another.

May it ever be.