Harold Carr

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home :: writing :: 2005-01-14-sexAndGod.html

Fri, 14 Jan 2005

sex and god

Sex is a problem in this country founded by Puritans, where, hundreds of years later, despite the evidence, monkey trials are still being fought in courts over creationism versus evolution.

Sex is a problem for Puritans who live for the future, accumulating good deeds to ensure entry into that future. But sex, in its non-reproductive erotic form, is life lived in the moment. Even in its reproductive form, sex still contains an element of the instant, regardless of the future beings being formed.

Different from animals, we are conscious beings, conscious with words of being distinct from each other and all that exists. We suffer anguish and guilt from that sense of separation and desire to be connected with the cosmos.

For Puritans, that connection comes by subordinating themselves to God and the future. For others the anguish of separation and desire for connection is either repressed with drugs or tv, or embraced by way of meditation or wilderness. Regardless, the fundamental social conflict remains, between a focus on living for the future and an understanding of the moment - life lived in the instant.

Sex is a threat to future-oriented beings since it seems to make us immanent with animals. It abolishes the hierarchy of time and the dominion of man over beast. It makes us one in the moment. Sex is a sacred act of connecting beings in a timeless now with no thought for the future. It is being connected and conscious without words - without God as an intermediary.

But Puritans won't stand by idly if you remove God from the equation. Thus rating systems that equate sex and violence. Thus a country that erects barriers to sexual expression but uses it pervasively in advertising. The desire for connection is a fundamental human drive. Sex can be celebrated as sacred connection or denied, only to appear as love for sale in a car commercial.

This social conflict is deep. It relates to the wilderness versus development debate. It is based on a fundamental difference in human values, one based on a future with God, the other with life on the Earth now.

Is a dialog possible or will we stay divided, with one side running around naked in the wilderness while the other sits quietly in cathedrals?

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Harold Carr

Harold Carr