Sexual Repression In The Church

 

The Church has a long history since at least 4th Century of repressing sexuality. The obsession with Virginity and the insistence on Vows of Chastity to be monastics helped foster thousands of years of sexual control over Europe and Middle East. Inventions like chastity belts that lock a woman’s vagina up, and even male ones to beat their testicles in a sadistic way to keep them from masturbating ought to go down in history as torture devices. In fact, Nuns, women who are not to be sexually active wrote over three volumes of almost 300pgs a piece of what married couples were allowed to do or not do sexually! (See Martin Luther, Eric Metaxes). The Church of Power dominated the sex lives of Christendom, and ironically violated the words of St. Paul, “Do not deprive one another of sexual intercourse, except by mutual agreement for a time, so that you⁺ might be at leisure for prayer, and may be together the same again, so that Satan may not tempt you⁺ through your⁺ lack of self-control.” (1 Corinthians 7:5). By putting rules on people’s marriage bed, the Church was affording for Satan a place of temptation. 

Sexual repression has not ended with the breaking of the yoke with The Church of Rome in The Reformation. Despite that Martin Luther clearly enjoyed his Wife Katherine Von Bora, evidenced by six children, and mind you he had a late start, because he had been a Monk for 16-20yrs, and so married Katherine at 41yrs of Age, she being 26, truly those who protest age gaps today have no case with The Great Reformed Family, and Luther no doubt took to heart the verse, “Let your fountain be blessed, And rejoice in the wife of your youth.” (Proverbs 5:18). Despite this, churches in Protestantism still act very prude like when it comes to sex. It seems the Puritans have left their mark in North America, as Brian says in Bohemian Rhapsody film, “America, they are puritans in public, perverts in private,” or as the new moniker goes, “Jedi in the streets, Sith in the sheets.” The Sexual Revolution of 1960’s was in direct response to the repression that still pervaded over the West. There was time when women who were pregnant were sent away to Confinement, that seeing a pregnant woman was shameful, despite that she was married! We have come so far, but still there is ground to be break, as hang ups remain chiseled in the churches because of fear of violating verses on sexual immortality. Like the Pharisees, rather than be nuanced, and look at these Scriptures in the light of their context, they throw the proverbial “baby out with the bath water,” because it’s easier to just put up great walls against something, than try to test and find what is the right boundary. We have to remember most of New Testament epistles were written to Greeks and Romans who had orgies and did such sexually taboo things like sex with serpents at Festival of  Dionysian Mysteries that Alexander The Great’s Mother, Olympias attended. Paul like many prophets was trying to dial people back from deviant practices that were fraught with disease and to pagan gods as well as being unfaithful to your marriage covenant. It is easy to take the Bible and make broad line against stuff, but if you do not know the context, you lose the point. 

Purity Culture is the continuation of Sexual Repression in the Church that continues to crush people with shame in name of being a City on A Hill. The Churches see themselves armed as knights on a castle against a tide of sexual immortality in our culture. And while yes, there is things to prohibit like necophilia (sex with the dead), beastiality (sex wth animals), orgies (especially with now people who get jollies giving people Sexually Transmitted Diseases), Tantric Sex (using Hindu gods), Pedophilia (sex with minors), and etc;  but the reality is many in church are having sex out of wedlock, the statistics of unplanned pregnancy is 70% of Woman (27% Catholic, 26% Protestant, and 16% Evangelical), 43% of Women who get abortions are attending church regularly. So you see repression is causing issues, much of this is not spoken of nor addressed; how are we as Christians in a world where a lot of people do not get married till mid thirties and even 41 like Martin Luther, manage our sexuality? The big Don’t Books arn’t helping, for in human nature you say Don’t, and we wanna do. The Church’s fall is poised on this; we either have to afford grace for this, and judge not, “Moses came with the Law, but Jesus came with Grace and Truth,” (John 1:17), and “Do not judge, so that you won’t be judged. For with the judgment you use,[a] you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye but don’t notice the log in your own eye?,” (Matthew 7:1-3), and “He has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit produces life,” (2 Corinthians 3:6), or are we going to continue to bleed and lose believers over being harsh and cruel? Sexuality is a much a right and part of being human as Spirituality, and we need to be very guided by Holy Spirit, and not by Pharisee and old Church of the Middle Ages teaching that shames and crushes people. Sex is an enjoyable thing God made, not just to have children, but to help bond mates, to help a husband leave and cleave to his wife (Matthew 19:5). For the single person, there is no scripture forbidding masturbation, not one, Onan, the story some pastors use is having sex with his Brother’s Wife that he married after his death and God wants Onan to help her bear a child of his Brother and Onan not wanting that spills his seed on the ground, “Then Judah said to Onan, “Sleep with your brother’s wife. Perform your duty as her brother-in-law and produce offspring for your brother.” But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his, so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he released his semen on the ground so that he would not produce offspring for his brother. 10 What he did was evil in the Lord’s sight, so He put him to death also.” (Genesis 38:8-9). That is not Masturbation, that is pulling out intercourse! Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior says not one iota on masturbation, and sexuality save The Sin of Adultery, that is sleeping with another man’s wife or betraying your own marriage bed. The Apostles do bring up sexual immorality a great deal, they use three words to describe this in Koine: 

“Porneia (πορνεία): A broad catch-all term derived from porne (prostitute). In classical Greek it meant prostitution, but in the Septuagint and New Testament it expanded to cover any unlawful or illicit sexual intercourse outside of traditional marriage bounds, including premarital sex, incest, and prostitution, as well as a metaphor for spiritual idolatry.

Moicheia (μοιχεία): Specifically denotes adultery. In ancient Greek and Roman legal contexts, this strictly meant having sexual intercourse with another man’s wife (violating another man's property or household honor) rather than a general term for extra-marital sex by a husband.

Aselgeia (ἀσέλγεια): Often translated as licentiousness, debauchery, or shameless excess. It describes unbridled sexual or social conduct that flouts public decency and restraint.” (Google Search AI Assistant). 

Most of Scripture deals with Moicheia or Adultery, and Aselgeia which is unbridled sexual desire where you violate public laws of decency like going nude where it is not permitted, voyeurism in certain places, looking at porn on a public computer at work where kids are about, etc, and probably Nymphomania, were your sexual desire becomes so consuming you are willing to take greater risks and do things that are not “loving your neighbor as you love yourself.” (Matthew 22:39). Porniea from which we derived porn was exclusively prostitution, meaning paying a sex worker to pleasure you, and while yes it got used more broadly, we have to remember sex slaves were in most Roman and Greek households that Paul and the apostles were writing letters to, and so it is conceivable that when the apostles use this Koine Greek Word they are trying to reform that predatory behavior. 

So if the chief three prohibitions are prostitution and sex slaves, adultery which is having sex with someone else’s spouse or other than your spouse, and not doing sexual acts that violate public laws of decency (in the privacy of your residence this is lifted) then we can have framework better to grasp what the apostles are working against. For the Apostle Paul knew well the passion for sex is consuming, “However, if you cannot control your desires, you should get married. It is better for you to marry than to burn [with sexual desire].” (1 Corinthians 7:9). 

It has been well documented by science and medicine that  masturbation has major health benefits. The releasing of oxytocin & vassopressin (promotes bonding and trust), endorphins,  serotonin (the feel good hormone), prolactin (caused deep relaxation) and dopamine helps lower cortisol levels in the body caused by stress. It improves mood, that is if you can get the Medieval Church’s shame game out of your head. I cannot give you a law that you can preform masturbation or acts such as that because you have to decide in your conscious if its ok, “If you do anything you believe is not right, you are sinning.” (Romans 14:23). But I ask what are single people suppose to do with their horniness as they wait to find someone to marry and enjoy the fruits of intimacy inside the confines of matrimony? I mean how many people do we know, I have relatives even, who were conceived out of wedlock by good Christians who love Christ.. are they to be condemned? Are those children what the mean Monks and Priests of Middle Ages to Renaissance called Children of Sin? Or are they children of love or what was called a Love Child? As Paul warned marry if you burn, well not everyone gets to altar fast enough, and are we going to condemn them? Even when they make it right later? Did not Jesus our Lord say, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” (Matthew 5:7). We should have mercy for this primal and powerfully made desire in us. Sure there is deviancy and degenerate practices that must be condemned like pedophilia, but consenting adults need grace, people burn and the wedding rings don’t always get on in time as the statistic I shared earlier states. Amen.