In "A History of God," Karen Armstrong pointed out that, in ancient Israel, the Rabbis taught that God did not want men and women to suffer. The body should be honored and cared for, "Armstrong writes, and "since it was made in the image of God: it could be sinful to avoid such pleasures as wine or sex, since God had provided them for man’s enjoyment. God was not to be found in suffering and asceticism."
Armstrong is echoing what I had read in another book, the Handbook Of Suggestive Therapeutics, Applied Hypnotism, Psychic Science (1917), by Henry S. Munro M.D. As Munro explains:
The sexual function of the natural instincts is the strongest of all the bodily appetites. It is a most important source of happiness and health, and its normal performance exercises the most beneficent influence upon all other bodily and mental functions. The want of the gratification of the normal sexual instinct is a source of deep moral and mental suffering, lessens the love of life, and induces a sad and despondent existence.
On the other hand, women are frequently observed
who come out of a series of prolonged emotional religious services weak,
nervous, pale, and bedridden, who passively yield to the physical and psychical
reaction of such dissipations feeling that they have conscientiously performed
their duty in “the Lord’s work."
On one occasion, when explaining to a religious devotee the disastrous effect of an emotional sermon, telling her that I believed death itself had frequently been caused by such emotional preaching, a woman replied that “it would be a lovely way to die.” Her response reminded me of the answer given by a mentally decrepit old man seventy- six years of age, who, when told that if he was forced to satisfy the sexual requirements of a young woman twenty- six years of age, whom he was endeavoring to marry, for two weeks it would kill him, replied that if he could live with her for two weeks he would prefer to die rather than live twenty years without her.
The manifestations of the sexual instinct exhibited by this woman in her religious emotion and by this man’s desire to gratify his animal passion are here strikingly ‘similar.
Religious excitement encourages masturbation in both boys and girls. To excite the nervous system in one way encourages abnormal excitability in another. A young woman whose parents were religious enthusiasts, confessed that she had frequently been stirred by a religious service, and as a result masturbated and felt that she had done nothing wrong. The temporary relaxation following orgasm relieved the nervous tension induced by the emotional religious service, and she felt decidedly more comfortable.
The sexual instinct frequently manifests itself in emotional religious meetings by a nervous young woman becoming ardently interested in the religious welfare of some particular young man. A bride of two months became very much aroused by religious emotion, and, as she went forward to shake hands with the minister, her young husband rushed to her and before the entire assembly, kissed her passionately for a half dozen or more times The sexual instinct here manifested seemed to get beyond his control, but the unthinking audience considered this manifestation a beautiful exhibition of his Christian spirit.
In many instances a young woman has mistaken the religious exaltation for what in fact was nothing less than ungratified sexual desire. To what extent religious feelings depend upon physiological conditions has not yet been definitely ascertained. A physician on one occasion asked me in confidence why his wife had grown so indifferent to his approaches in the sexual relation. Upon questioning him, I found that she was an ardent supporter of a worn- out religious creed, around which her entire psychic life centered, and one which his scientific training had caused him to repudiate.
The psychic inharmony existing in his marital relation had robbed him of all happiness to be obtained from this source, and he, still endeavoring to be loyal to her, was despondent, unhappy, and miserable. Upon the discovery of a clandestine relation existing between a married man and a woman who was not his wife, I questioned him “How can a man of your esthetic development live ' that way ? His response was“ This woman loves me, but my wife don’t, and I’d sooner be dead than live a loveless life.”
The Sexual Desire
If sexual desire, the strongest bodily appetite—the highest function of health, love, and happiness—a necessary condition for life itself, is to be regarded as an evidence of sinfulness, and as the sign of the low and baser propensities in man, deserving only to be suppressed, stifled, and killed out in order that the divine and spiritual element, or what is regarded as the higher qualities belonging to human nature, may become manifested in our life and conduct, then we have conclusive evidence that the Creator made an unpardonable mistake, and should have consulted some of the antiquated theologians, who are responsible for much of the erroneous ideas concerning the “ baseness,” “ lowness, and “ sinfulness ” of this beautiful, psychic, and physical passion, which is the most conspicuous and most prominent characteristic in the lives of all of the world ’s greatest men and women, and, above all others, deserves to be exalted, and in its manifestations guided into lines that lift and ennoble mankind, and this guidance is true morality.
The sexual instinct, if properly guided, is capable of elevating and ennobling human character, promoting the development of the higher psychic qualities—generosity, magnanimity, reverence ,altruism, philanthropy, and a tenacious stand; for the right. But if the individual is left to obey the instincts inherent within his protoplasmic elements without judicious guidance, it may lead him to the lowest depths of depravity and jeopardize the happiness and success of the lives of others with whom his life is bound. It is the sexual instinct, which is the source of all that is pure and noble within the human race, and anything which hinders or arrests its normal development robs human character of all those virile qualities which are so highly esteemed. It is identical in every way with creative energy as manifested in all departments of human life and action."
Here, Munro's comment about "properly guided" is believed by Christians to be something best done by men who have chosen to act like eunuchs - which is so unnatural that it has lead saints like Origin to self castration - to show their "God" that praying to such an intelligence should be a greater source of pleasure than what such an intelligence had designed to be the greatest source of pleasure of being human in order to incentive us to "be fruitful and multiply," as He commands. In truth, however, there is no way to prove that the "god" that is alleged to have created us and the whole universe is as purely immaterial as Christian insist they "know" "He" is. For all we know, if such a God exists at all, why couldn't such a God be as flesh and blood as all of us? After all, as Munro continues, sex is the source of all true create-ivity:
"A vigorous sexual nature IS the logical accompaniment of a great intellect and a strong, healthy body. Without it there would never have been a Plato, an Aristotle, a Marcus Aurelius, a Darwin, a Huxley, a Tyndale, a Carlyle, an Emerson, a Goethe, a Shakespeare, a Milton, a Tennyson, an Edison, a Morse, a Stephenson, a Caesar, a Napoleon Bonaparte, a Payne, a Voltaire, a Hugo, a Webster, a Calhoun, a Clay, a Washington, a Grant, a Lee; a Buddha, a Confucius, a Jesus Christ, or any other one of the names of those who have possessed the high order of psychic and physical qualities of manhood to dare to get out of the beaten path of the common herd and give to humanity the highest expression and meaning of a life.
These persons and thousands of like character, who have achieved special success in their respective departments of endeavor and become the world’s true benefactors, have been men who have been endowed with the strongest natural passions and feelings, and their special achievements indicate the channels into which this inherent power of psychic and physical manhood had by them been directed. Without it, ambition would sleep, virtue would flee, pride would vanquish, and we would be as those who are emasculated—impotent, cowardly, and weak. Without it the individual is unfit for life’s battles, lacking in the distinctive qualities of sexual beauty, flabby in muscle, weak in mind, and minus the highest qualities of moral sense.
This guidance, as the result of the influence of environment, maybe for the good or harm of the individual. It may be acquired consciously or unconsciously. Who can determine at what age the impressions made upon the receptive tablets of the child ’s brain plasm are retained, by which ideas, propensities, and inclinations are conserved, to manifest themselves in the life and conduct of the individual later in life ?
Contemporary psychologists are agreed that ideas are conserved by the neuron elements, forming psychophysiological complexes, or physiological centers, the functionating of which determines the individual ’s habits of thought and conduct in life. These groups of ideas are conserved by the neuron elements in such a way as to form physiological centers, that carry with them ideas and bodily feelings as well, and these do not always functionate in such way as to conduce to the best interest of the individual.
The result is the development of many manifestations of abnormal mental and bodily symptoms, commonly referred to as the functional psychoneuroses. The reason for this inharmony between man’s acquired habits of thinking and bodily functions, and those natural physiological processes with which we are born, is the result of false education. All education should be in harmony with the natural functions of the human body, and not antagonistic to them—as such antagonism will pervert them—if health, happiness, and contentment is to be maintained.
This is natural morality, and any educational or religious influence contrary to the laws of nature—Such as cause the individual to condemn the body, and regard his normal sexual feelings as Sinful, as “lust of the flesh ”—is responsible for many unhappy psycho-neurotic manifestations, resulting in divorce, suicide, insanity, and often in death.
Such religious teaching is positively immoral and deserves to be condemned. We should not regard our normal sexual feelings as something Sinful, low, vile, and lustful, as theological morality has taught. They are, on the contrary, indications of normal virility and belong to all normal, healthful, human beings, and are an indication of creative power that can be directed into lines of healthful, useful endeavor, as various as are the pursuits, pleasures, and avocations of mankind, and should at all times be under the dictation and guidance of reason and judgment.
We, are constructed on a double principle. Man has a dual nature, and contains within himself two forms of existence, intimately and mutually interwoven, which are respectively constantly influencing each other, and they should never be at war or out of harmony with each other
By teaching ideas that the flesh is sinful and needs to be treated like a beast that needs to be tamed or a slave whose natural desire for freedom, which is by far the most natural desire of all, must be broken and subdued as a desire most "unnatural" to the will of God, Christianity cultivates disharmony between the two sides of ourselves. Those two sides of ourselves are seen the in the different ways we can see the world, with all of the mechanical perspective of a scientist or an engineer or all of the creativity of a lawyer or an artist, one striving to see things as more literal the other more metaphorical; one more like an infallible religion of "truth," the other like truth is whatever you can make it.
The "tree of knowledge" are the synaptic branches of our own brain, and when harmony in that brain is acquired, our mind becomes a garden of Eden that is our inner peace and contentment. And like preventing a swan from trying to fly by teaching it to believe it is an ugly duckling, teaching children to believe that they are born sinners prevents a child from realizing they don't need a savior, because they can save themselves, because they were not made sinners, they were born to be perfect. And things that are perfect can heal themselves, while things that are perfectly broken are completely dependent upon what will fix them, and by doing so, save them from being thrown into an incinerator.
As a result of this, sex is associated more with sin than with life, so that every life owes a debt to Jesus's death, which is why Christianity sees every human life as born in sin, making pro-life movements really pro-we-are-all-born-sinners movements. Sinners need to be taught to obey a master, and the master is always sinless, for no matter how many horrors he engages in, divine law is always on the side of his divine will - a will that is so contradictory that its incomprehensible mystery is only surpassed by how readily it convinces people they understand it far better than everyone else.
And nothing contributes more to how devout and passionate a person is for such a system of beliefs than the lack or narrowness of one's own education, about the world and especially all of the different ways people can be perfectly human, and their unconscious fear that their doubts about their "beliefs" may be more valid than the beliefs they cling to for all of their meaning, security, and connection, which enables them to better tell the difference between "us" from "them" except when "them" is dressed as a Catholic priest. The point is we don't need priests, the original "men in black," to teach us how to be good and moral. After all, birds don't attack people like they did in Alfred Hitchcock's film "The Birds," if they don't go to church once a week so they can learn to be "good" birds. Instead, people who go to church at least once a week burn witches and heretics, while being exalted into doing so by men-in-black! Hell, during the Rwandan genocide, the Hutus went to church every morning, many even receiving the Eucharist, before spending the rest of the day treating Tutsi's like a loaf of bread and their righteous anger like a butter knife.
By replacing a love for ourselves as being born as perfect as Jesus and Buddha already, with a "love" that depends mostly on attachment to a group and approval from others, people are more easily herded into congregations, where "group-think" becomes "the will of God," especially when virtually every other form of collective action is condemned as communism.
From a psychological standpoint all religious services of all denominations are especially interesting. If we attend them to learn, we usually find our lesson between the lines. The psychic effect of the commingling of several hundred male and female voices, with sentiments of love expressed in song; with the martial spirit of soldiers battling in unison and marching as conquerors from victory to victory; amid music and beautiful flowers, fine clothes and suggestive mottoes, and mystical carvings; all these combine to have a significance but little" appreciated by one in a thousand of the people of our times.
They subtly and gently stimulate all the involuntary cells of the body, and temporarily lift the individual out of his self-conscious physical and psychical weaknesses (especially weaknesses of "sin" that makes it so difficult for them to "obey" God's laws, which they more than make up for in their willingness to burn witches and heretics for failing to believe that they can't just use their "free will" as freely as they choose - because Jesus died for your sins! To believe in Jesus as a God is to also believe that we are so sinful that only an absolute faith in God can save us, even if no two people on the planet have ever had the exact same understanding of a word as infinitely abstract as "God) and, in general, when free from emotional excitement, prove to be an experience which, like other stimulations, reacts with benefit upon both mind and body.
Suggestion is to be seen in all such experiences from start to finish. The methods adopted by the clergyman of getting an rapport with the audience—the unconsciously induced condition of receptivity by quartets composed of male and female voices, the reading responded to by the audience, followed by a female solo, all create a psychic condition which renders the individual forgetful of self and his surroundings. For the time being he is completely amenable to the suggestion given from the pulpit orator, who for from thirty to sixty minutes has the opportunity to create sense impressions and present ideas or suggestions that are beneficial or harmful, as the case may be. They are wholesome, beneficial, and helpful suggestions just in proportion as they are the reflection of a broad, well- educated, truth- loving mind or personality."
The consequence of replacing the sexual instinct with a spiritual lust for salvation is that, on a personal level, sex is interpreted to be a sign of a "love" (ie approval) that lasts forever, even though on a physical level, sex is a celebration of the pleasures of life in the moment. And with a Christian story that sanctifies suffering as the only way to appease a God, that sexual instinct becomes a spiritual lust for salvation in the next life that acts like a willingness to suffer and cause suffering for others in this one.
This is why Christians are as unbothered by their God killing everyone with a flood, intentionally sending plagues and famines or waging wars, and firebombing Sodom and Gomorrah as if they were the World Trade Towers, as they are by their awareness that their religion - which they insist is necessary for a "moral" society - has been used to defend slavery and convince the slave to accept it, justify Inquisitions while burning those they choose to "believe" were witches in league with their devil and heretics to their God, even if it isn't to your own God, neither of which can be demonstrated to be any more true than false than the other; and even protect known pedophiles in its ranks For Christians, such "suffering" is what convinces them their "beliefs" are infallibly true.
And that is a pretty big problem, when you think about it.
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