Sex
No matter how much the evangelical church might try to ignore or pretend that it doesn’t exist and in other ways silence the conversation, sex is still a foundational, central part of the humnan experience. Sometimes I think the religious movement hopes that if we just ignore or oppose it strongly enough it will dissapear…
A while ago I wrote about the importance of self love and how self love is the first step to loving others since you can only love others as much as you love yourself. Now we know we should love ourselves, and we hopefully feel that it is ok to love oneself. The question then…
IT’S TRUE!! Not even when it’s really good! Not even when it’s long or loud, wet and rowdy. Sex is not even filthy when it is public or outside or taped. Sex is not filthy when it is between two men or two women. It is not filthy no matter what clothes we dress up…
So let’s talk about love. What could be easier, love is after all the foundation of the Christian faith right! Love is the cornerstone, Love is the air that we breathe, all you need is love! Then again for as long as humans have walked the earth we have tried to define love and make sense of…
We talk about love a lot, we say that: God is love! The scriptures say it over and over again, they even say that unless you are in love, saturated with love, bubbling over with love, you are not with god. And so we realise that love is necessary, it’s a fundamental part of our…
In recent conversations the topic of pleasure has come up time and time again. It seems that from a Christian point of view we are as a community ambivalent about god’s view on pleasure. It seems that somewhere deep down we do believe that although god is good and want good things for us, we…
The primary focus of the Song is the passion and the desire between the two lovers yet there seem to be something deeper underneath the surface. Rob Bell astutely asserts that: “You can’t talk about sexuality without talking about how we are made. And that will inevitably lead you to who made us. At some…
It should be very clear at this point that the Song is unashamedly and explicitly sexual. Describing the growing love and passion between two individuals. While It remains uncertain if they are married (what the Song has to say about marriage will be considered later in this essay) the Song clearly describes a passionate love…
Before looking at the Song’s message and theology, some of the Song’s symbols and images must be decoded. It is important to not get carried away in doing this. While the Song is rife with sensual images appealing to all five senses, it is easy to take this decoding too far and end up with…
Song of Songs have been read and interpreted in several different ways, the predominant interpretation is some form of allegorical interpretation (Estes, 2005: 396). Most scholars throughout history have approached the Song this way. Starting with Theogenes who interpreted the Song to be about the relationship between Yahweh and Israel. In this tradition great Christian…
The Song of songs is a much debated and unique book in the Old Testament. It is near impossible to find consensus on any statement about the book except that it is unique. The book has no parallel in the rest of the Jewish or Christian Canon. It becomes difficult to assert anything about authorship,…
I have been putting of writing this post for nearly a week now, I get both uneasy and angry just by thinking about it. Stephen Court wrote the following in his blog the other day: Evangelicals Encouraging Contraception for Singles? It turns out that 80% of American Evangelicals are going to hell. That is, they admit…
Not so long ago I sat in a room with a group of young Christians, no longer teenagers but rather young adults. We where talking about the bible and Jesus. Was it possible that Jesus could have sinned and what does it mean that Jesus felt every human emotion, did he then lust? Masturbate? The…
I have just finished reading Sex at Dawn by Christopher Ryan. It may be the first time in a long while that I read a book that so persuasively and thouroughly deconstructs one of the often unspoken meta-narratives of our contemporary culture, namely the hetero-normative monogamy centred narrative of human sexuality. I also realize that this…
I am not underprivileged, marginalised or persecuted in any ways. I am a Caucasian, heterosexual male with a DipHE in Theology and Mission. I am employed as a full time minister, doing what I love to do: to teach theology; to build and nurture relationships; to be a sign towards a mystery I may never…
“God is not sexual” my friend stated matter-of-factly. It is odd that he did because he also does not believe in god. How the god he does not believe in can be, or not be, anything is beyond me. It is a common notion though to separate the divine from the worldly. It is even…
There was this praise song on my favorite worship album, it always bugged me. “Take me, I am yours”, the woman sang with such throaty passion that it sounded almost sexual, indecent. I mentioned it once to a friend who told me, it’s just your perverted mind that hears it like that. I never broach…
I don’t know how I never saw it; One of the tenets of classical biblicism is faithfulness, I mean I even have it tattooed on my body, inked onto my skin so as to never forget. It is a label given to me by the voice of god on top of a mountain in wales.…
Why is this such a big deal? Why does it matter? It should be a non issue! This is what both right wing and left wing, conservatives and liberals are saying all over the place. In churches people are taught that their sexuality, while important, is not essential. Sexuality does not define you, or who…