Deconstructing Sex

I was going to write about the ritual of Sunday mornings and how absolutely disconcerting it is to do something other than go to church on Sunday morning. But the truth is, very little of my church service attendance was motivated by anything other than obligation. Hanging out with people before and after? Coming to the church building and participating in various activities? Potlucks? Oh no, I was there because I wanted to be a LOT of the time. But the worship service was pretty close to 100% obligation. There were things I liked, but having to be there wasn’t one of them.

So instead I want to talk about sex and faith. If you’re Gen X or Gen-X adjacent, you know I have to use a photo of Madonna here.

Isn’t it funny that thinking of not going to church instantly brings to mind the most anti-church thing I can think of and that the most anti-church thing I can think of is sex? Post-deconstruction, I don’t really think sex is anti-church at all. Force of habit I guess.

Truth be told, I think sex is one the main reasons humans developed an organized sense of faith. When you think about religion as the system of answers humans have developed to explain all that exists, what stands out is the why behind the reasoning. Humans have the capacity for rational thought (though it’s more of a side hustle than our main motivation). We are able (and inclined) to ask why. We’re able to predict the future, to some extent, based on our observations of patterns and our capacity for critical thinking. We are aware of the sophisticated differences between us and the rest of the sentient world, which is to say we understand ourselves, the world around us, and we can increase in our understanding AND record our progress. We can, unlike any other creature, enjoy the show AND see behind the curtain.

The bottom line: we’re smart and we know it.

But here’s the rub (pun not only intended but forced): for people who consider themselves rational, sex is freaking weird. As scientists, we can study why and how animals have sex yet still feel perfectly intelligent and distant from the whole thing. But when the topic turns to humans having sex, we start to blush and hear the “bow chicka bow bowwww” porno soundtrack playing in the background of our minds. (I’m convinced this phenomenon was true even before the existence of porn or even the invention of the bass guitar—these art forms and their instruments did not create bass-heavy funk riffs, but were quite rather created by our need to capture the innate soundtrack of human intercourse). This is because very few people can (without training) discuss the finer points of sex intelligently without acknowledging it’s something they like to do like a little freak.

Why is it freaky? Because it’s totally unlike any other human behavior. It crosses all kinds of lines of acceptable personal interaction, private or public. It’s a whole different realm of existence. If the rest of human conduct is Dr. Jekkyl, sex is Mr. Hyde. And, yeah, we hide it. Of course we hide it.

But we also all know it’s a thing. A big thing. It’s its whole giant bagijillion-dollar industry and the marketing driver for loads of other industries on top of it. If humans suddenly switched to some method of lab-based reproduction and systematically disabled our collective libido, the global economy as we know it would instantly shrink like George Costanza’s shriveled turtle in a cold pool.

As very smart humans, we’ve always needed somewhere to put sex in our social consciousness. We need a closet we can hide it in or at the very least a crocheted cozy we can cover it with.

Faith gives us the opportune explanation. Despite the obvious existence of benign sex throughout the animal kingdom (and the plant kingdom, really) we classified human sex as some divinely ordained sacrament or the most evil, evil, wicked (read: awesome) thing a human could do.

As a result, we mystified sex and turned it even weirder and freakier than it is. And nowhere is sexual behavior and sex drive more problematic and destructive than in the church. I’m not even going to discuss it in detail. You know without me doing so.

It’s just so bizarre. We created an entire social and psychological dungeon for sex AND an entire crystal palace in the clouds for it, despite the fact that it’s one of the most accessible, common pastimes in all of human existence. Oh, the unnecessary and often unmitigated damage we do to ourselves and to each other.

I remember one bout of sexual obsession during the turn-of-the-millennium tech explosion. The amount of sexual content available online—much of it broadcast live, which was as far as I know completely unheard of prior to that point in time . . . basically pedestrian now, which is crazy to think about—was like a tidal wave of boobs, vaginas, unnaturally erect penises (thanks, Viagra!) and more lube than I knew existed. To say it was addicting feels like an understatement.

I’ll never forget the shame I felt. The sheer torture and torment of it all and the way that those feelings served only to fuel the addiction. But you know what freed me from it? It wasn’t God. It wasn’t the Holy Spirit. It wasn’t Jesus, and it wasn’t a Bible verse.

It was this question: What’s going on here? And it was this answer: These women have bodily organs surrounded by fat that’s shaped in way I find appealing. And for some reason nipples excite me? I don’t even get why. And all of these images and scenarios make me feel like I’m having sex and that these women want to have sex with me, and that makes me feel really good.

It took like seven seconds for me to wake up. I no longer felt ashamed. I no longer felt like I was sinning. The psychological hold the imagery had on me was gone. The house lights were turned on, and I no longer was.

It wasn’t the last time I ever looked at porn on the Internet, but never again did I feel hopeless against it, addicted to it, or ashamed of it.

Now, there’s obviously a lot more to sex than just pornography, but the same deconstructing question is similarly helpful when the feelings and urges of shame, lust, desire, confidence, longing, loneliness, the entire concept of physical attraction arise: What’s going on here? If your answer to that question includes the words God, sin, or marriage, good luck. But if you answer that question with what you know as fact in commonsense, straightforward terminology and candor, you’re going to witness the sense of mystique vanish pretty fast.

There’s a time and place for mystique. It has its purpose. But we don’t need it when we think about sex intellectually.

Again, there’s more to sex than our intellectual understanding of it. It’s wonderful, and it can be awful. But it’s also completely manageable when we treat it for what is and nothing more.

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