Sex & Jesus
I spend a lot of time thinking about both of these things.
If I’m honest, that’s a bit reductive. Let me be more thorough.
I spend a lot of time thinking about sex, bodies, and how the church fucks us over with a shame and fear based doctrine about our bodies and the sex we have with them. The church does this in Jesus’ name… and I have it on the good authority of my pussy, and my heart, that Jesus is sick of that shit.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how much pleasure, connection, and worship are stifled by the ideas we were taught through Purity Culture.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how to guide folks back to connection with their own bodies and befriend their desires. Placing the authority of those desires in the hands and hearts of the people who have them, rather than the church.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how amazing it is that we have up to 5 different senses to experience the world with. That we can use those senses to amplify our pleasure, to make our daily existence more sensual and erotic, if we want to. And ultimately, it’s our divine right as humans to intimately navigate the world in this way.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how so many of us don’t have access to these possibilities because the church taught that our bodies were to be feared, our “lusty” thoughts would lead us down the slippery slope to eternal damnation, and that the only way to be sexual and righteous was within a marriage with someone of the “opposite” gender.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how to subvert the messaging from the pulpit by having accountability partners for pleasure, praying with our genitals, and experiencing the unconditional love that lives in us - and in one another - by the very nature of being alive and human.
So yeah, in so many words, I spend a lot of time thinking about Sex and Jesus.
When I first started thinking these thoughts I was met with the overwhelming feelings of grief and shame and rage that lived inside me from not being allowed access to my full humanity.
Grief from being strategically and systemically disconnected from my body and my full sexual self lay just below the surface. A loss this significant was so overwhelming that I didn’t know what to do with it until I called it exactly what it was, creating a small space where my mourning could begin.
Shame that held me hostage, making me feel alone, dirty, and irreparably broken. Shame separates me from my connection to myself, my community, and the divine. It tells me I am unworthy of being loved in the full capacity of who I am. Being seen, loved, and celebrated in the fullness of my identity, AS I am, dissolves shame and brings me into closer authentic connection with others and allows me to be curious about my sexual expression.
Rage loudly declared I had been in an abusive relationship with Purity Culture and that I deserved better. Rage activated my agency. The harm that was bestowed upon my heart, my body, and my sexual self, in the name of Jesus, mends a little more each time I tap into and transform my rage.
Maybe this feels familiar to you.
When I say Sex and Jesus how does your body react?
Do you get warm?
Do you get uncomfortable?
Are you turned on?
Does your body freeze?
Do you feel curious?
The wonderful thing is that when we open up this conversation we can feel a little bit less alone. I can name my grief and you can say, “Me too.” We can rage together. And then befriend and claim our own pleasure, sharing what we learn, and celebrating one another. Each time we do this the shame gets a little lighter and our connection to our erotic selves gets a little stronger.