Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality (4 page)

Because of religious sexual terror:

• An Iranian woman wears a dangerously hot burka in the desert.
  
• A priest prays for hours and hates himself every time he masturbates.
  
• A Christian father explodes on finding out his daughter had sex with her boyfriend.
  
• A minister and his wife can’t enjoy interesting and creative sex.
  
• A woman can’t tell her husband she would like to be spanked occasionally as part of a sexual ritual.
  
• A husband can’t reveal he likes to dress in women’s underwear.
  
• Two Christian teenagers can’t openly negotiate condom use before they have sex.
  

Imagine being taught from childhood that you and most of the people around you have a dangerous medical problem. But thankfully, it can be controlled, even prevented, with a simple button that lights up when pressed. You are given this button when you are 12 years old and told that it must be compressed frequently. If you ever neglect the button, the light will slowly dim, and at that point the medical condition will progress. If the light gets too dim, you will get a disease or have an accident.

To illustrate the dangers, you are shown photos and told stories of people who let go of their button and were destroyed. Adults, physicians, religious leaders and your peers all attest to the terrible things that happen when a person neglects his button. “Learn how to live with the button, then tell others how to live with it too,” they admonish you. “Share the knowledge you gain from reading about your button.” You learn that telling others makes the button glow longer, even brighter. You slowly learn to enjoy having a button. You feel proud of it as you tell others the joy of feeling safe and protected by the button.

This button impacts every aspect of your life. When you talk to someone, you feel compelled to tell them about button power, so you can take your finger off for a little longer. When you tell your children, the light stays on for several hours. You get into bed with your spouse and tell her about your button and she tells you about hers, and you both enjoy some lovemaking before the light gets too dim. Sure you have work to do, a lawn to mow, books to read, projects to complete, but ultimately, the button rules.

Years go by, and you get good at managing your button. Indeed, your button stays lit for days at a time with only the occasional push, because you are so skilled at working button praise into every conversation. Others are not as good at maintaining their button and they have family problems or physical problems. “Press your button. Talk to others,” you urge. But they aren’t as diligent as you and you see them pay the price. It saddens you that others don’t take responsibility for their button and then complain that they are sick or in pain.

One day you meet a person who has no button yet seems perfectly healthy. “Where is your button?” you ask. “I threw it away decades ago. I have no idea where it is.” This forthright and unhesitant answer shocks you, then creates a twinge of panic. First, you think, “He is in grave danger of some horrible illness or accident.” Then another thought occurs. “Maybe
buttons aren’t necessary?” You toss that thought out. What is life worth if you don’t have a button? You would feel emptiness, a true sense of loss. Even if someone could live without it, you can only imagine how miserable and lonely their life must be.

Occasionally, you hear that some of the richest or most successful people do not have buttons. Some people are even encouraging children to throw away their buttons. It terrorizes you to think that one of your children might stop pushing her button and come down with some terrible disease or disability. As a result, you redouble your efforts, telling more people about the joys of the button.

Even so, you find that your button does not glow as long as it used to. You continue faithfully pressing because you know that the warm comfort of a glowing button surpasses all understanding.

While the button premise may seem ridiculous, it resembles many religious practices. For example, you may know Catholics, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs or believers of any number of other religions that use prayer beads. Others clutch their Bibles and display them prominently at work, in their home or in their car. They may display religious symbols in their homes, their lawns and their webpage; others wear crosses, crucifixes or pendants. But it is not just prayer beads, Bibles or a prayer rug; religious people have almost identical beliefs to our button example. They believe that prayer prevents evil, heals illness, gives guidance and much more. They believe that going to church, mass or prayer meeting keeps their soul pure and clean. They believe that reading the Bible or religious material keeps evil thoughts at bay. Each of these is nothing more than a way to press the button. Praying presses the button. Reading the Bible, going to church, praying on a prayer rug, singing a hymn, all are ways to press the button and keep evil, illness or other problems at bay and ensure a reward in the afterlife.

It is the totality of the beliefs represented by these tokens that creates a deep dependency in the religious adherent. Tokens are just a reminder of the underlying belief. The token reinforces the belief and the belief reinforces the token. In our simple example, the belief in the inevitability of disease or accident was the driving belief behind the token. Without that belief, there would be no need for a token.

Religion has used tokens for thousands of years to reinforce beliefs. They are powerful psychological tools. They make soldiers feel invincible before battle, give mothers a sense of supernatural protection for their children and convince people god cured them of a disease.

But tokens are part of a network of conditioned responses. A conditioned response can be programmed into a rat, a dog or a person. Teach a creature that it must have a particular token to feel safe, and it will seek out the token whenever it feels threatened. Much like a child’s security blanket or a dog’s favorite toy, a token can be anything that we have learned to feel comfortable with or that we associate with protection and security.

Many cultures have tokens; it is a common behavior but one designed to make a person feel secure within a particular religious context. A Hindu would not feel comfortable or secure with Catholic prayer beads in his pocket. A Muslim woman would probably feel violated with a crucifix around her neck. A Buddhist wouldn’t find a Baptist prayer meeting inspiring. Tokens are specific to a given religion and even a religious subset. For example, some tokens may only be worn by one gender, not by the other. Some may be used by Protestants and not by Catholics. Some may only be used at certain times of the year or during certain times in life. And most important, tokens are paired with specific beliefs. The crucifix is paired with belief in death and resurrection along with other ideas. A Bible or Koran represents a belief that the deity can and does communicate directly to you.

As humans we want to feel secure. We learn early in life to associate security with things and behaviors. We associate security with our home, with owning property, having money in the bank, going to work every day. In reality, these do not make us secure. We create them to feel more secure. When we feel insecure, we do things to increase security like save money, improve our home, install a security system or take a second job. In each case, these help us feel more secure.

In these examples, our sense of security has some basis in reality. And there is direct evidence that having money in the bank helps protect us from financial stress. Owning a home ensures we have a place to seek shelter when it rains or snows. Security systems can warn us of a fire or an intruder
and
there is direct evidence that they work.

On the other hand, tokens don’t reduce the likelihood of burglary, put money in the bank or decide where to invest a tax refund. Tokens simply evoke a conditioned response that helps us relax and feel secure and reminds
us of beliefs such as: “We will be rewarded in the afterlife,” or “a god or angel is watching over us.” Early childhood teaching and years of practice convince the religious that these actually work. “I prayed a hundred times and my son got well” – never mind that a hundred prayers were said to keep him from getting sick in the first place.

The rituals associated with a token are believed to be mandatory. You cannot just pray to Mary every few years or take your beads with you when you feel the need. “Pray without ceasing,” St. Paul said (I Thessalonians 5:27, NIV).
⁶
The token takes on a life of its own. It must be attended to or it will not work. It demands attention. If you miss a prayer meeting or mass, forget to pray or read the Bible, you will feel anxious – you forgot to press the button. God may not protect or reward you.

What do buttons or tokens have to do with sex? Tokens keep the mind focused on religious requirements, ensuring that the person behaves according to the dictates of the deity. If the deity says masturbation is a sin, then having a set of prayer beads or a Bible next to your bed at night is a powerful reminder of what is and is not sinful. When the person eventually succumbs and masturbates or has sex, he will count two hundred beads for forgiveness. If a woman has the urge to bring a boyfriend to her apartment, she may take the picture of Jesus down before he comes over. If she leaves it up, she may not be able to reach orgasm because Jesus is watching her.

The more the person uses the tokens and prayer to resist sexual temptation, the more the behavior becomes ingrained. Powerful biological urges make the person want to masturbate or have sex, but the fear of hell impinges on her thoughts. She picks up the beads, reads the Bible or kneels and prays to resist temptation. Any number of physical actions may be used, but they all lead to the same result – deeper infection with religious sex.

The person may resist temptation successfully, in which case the biological need generally grows stronger. He may succumb immediately, but have to pray, kneel, count beads, read the Bible or something similar to assuage the guilt.

In other cases, a person may successfully redirect his attention and energy to other activities, often of a religious nature. He may become a
missionary, work for the poor or teach Sunday School. The redirection of energy often benefits the religion. The more a religion makes a person feel guilty and insecure, the harder the person works for the religion. This is especially effective for sexual guilt. Ultimately, a religion may so undermine a person’s sexual confidence that he or she becomes a celibate nun or priest or stops having sex with a spouse in order to be able to channel energies into religious study and endeavors.
⁷

The token keeps the person focused on the god to the exclusion of other more natural behaviors. People who don’t pray, who don’t sing god’s praises, who don’t read the Bible can’t be trusted and are a threat to the comfort and security of the religious. Those without tokens are not a part of the “in group,” which makes them suspect.

The token and the beliefs it represents takes on greater meaning and comfort than real sex. Here is what one religious leader said at the end of a long article on sex and god, “As we conclude our sex series we learn that sex is great, but the kingdom of heaven is better.”
⁸

Religious sexual foreplay often interferes with sex before it even gets started. For example, you dare not ask your spouse for a new kind of sex for fear that he or she will believe it is sinful, even in marriage.

Our culture teaches us to think of marriage as lifelong and exclusive. However, the biological and anthropological facts do not support this notion as we will see in later chapters. Most humans are too sexual to stay tied up in a single sexual style for decades. Of course, people can stay in committed relationships for decades, but they will only be happy if they keep the sexual energy properly channeled and not artificially dammed up by religious ideas.

Failing this, sexuality will express itself – sometimes in unusual or inappropriate places. That is why thousands of “happily married” religious leaders engage in illegal sexual behavior every year, to say nothing of the many Catholic priests “married” to the church. At the same time, millions of religious followers engage in sexual behavior that is legal but violates their
religion’s moral code, such as having heterosexual or homosexual affairs, masturbating or using porn. They can engage in extra prayers, confession, Bible reading or giving money – pushing the button – to gain forgiveness, then go back to doing it again. It keeps the vicious cycle alive.

3
Some examples, from
Rights in Islam
by Ashraf 'Ali Th
ī
(1863–1943): "When a man calls his wife for sexual intercourse, even if the woman is cooking at that moment, she should answer her husband’s call.” Or “If the woman performs nafilah (supererogatory) fasts without the permission of her husband and avoids meeting the desires of her husband, Allah loads the sin of three bad deeds over her.” (Available online at
http://www.darululoom-deoband.com/english/books/rightsinislam.htm
).

4
From Hitchens' memoir,
Hitch-22
(2010).

5
I wrote two books in this field as well:
Teaming Up: Making the Transition to a Self-Directed Team Based Organization
(1995, McGraw-Hill), and
The Performance Culture: Maximizing the Power of Teams
(2001, IPC Press).

6
Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from the Bible are from the New International Version (NIV).

7
Some might call this psychological sublimation. That is, redirecting energy from a socially unacceptable urge or dangerous desire into something more socially acceptable and somewhat gratifying or rewarding. Without going into psychoanalytic theory, I think a cognitive-behavioral explanation is much simpler, and easier to understand as we see it working in the everyday world.