The Botched Reformation
Cultural standards that are conventionally taught in westernized cultures are toxic, dehumanizing, and destructive. Abiding shame and guilt associated with sex and nudity is not normal. They are taught. They are taught almost as prevalently as people are taught their own names.
Western culture is defined by its social norms, ethical values, traditions, and belief systems. Its most defining element is the church culture that historically dominated it. Western culture has globalized. It has leaked all over the world.
Repressing sexuality is a heinous weapon that is used to empower some and dehumanize others.
Sex is a powerful need that feeds into a constellation of accompanying needs that uplift, nourish, bond, renew, and heal, which is all spiritual stuff.
Inhibiting a person’s need for sex does far more damage than traumatizing a child by locking them into a dark basement (see part 2). Does the Bible actually teach that certain vital needs must be neglected?
Lust
The church teaches lust is a sin. Here is where people see what they want to see.
You won’t find sexual lust in the Bible. The words translated as “lust” mean something else. Here is an example. “Do not covet your neighbor’s wife, male or female servant, ox or donkey, or anything else your neighbor owns,” and then Matthew 5:28, “But I say, anyone who even looks at a woman with lust in his eye has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
There is no honest way ἐπιθυμέω can be sexualized, in this context or anywhere else.
This passage is not about sex. This passage is about respect for ownership and not about getting sexually aroused; “… wife, male or female servant, ox, donkey or, anything else your neighbor owns,…”. The wife is listed with items of personal property.
“Lust” does not automatically imply something sexual. People lust for non-sexual things, like the big-screen TV at the store. The phrase could have just as easily have been translated as “with covetousness in his eye”. In Luke 22:15, Jesus says, “…I have desired to eat this Passover with you…”. “Desired” — same word — ἐπιθυμέω. Nothing sexy about that.
I’m sure you were taught that when the word refers to a woman, everything changes. The word is sexualized and becomes a warning not to feel or think anything sexual. Whether she belongs to someone or not doesn’t matter. It no longer refers to an intended action taken against the owner of the woman. It refers to a reaction to women. If that is what you were taught, that is nonsense.
Shifting the meaning from an action against the owner of someone’s property to having a reaction to women, in general, is a classic example of people seeing what they want to see and ignoring the real message.
Women Were Property
When ἐπιθυμέω refers to a woman, it means the same thing as when it refers to an ox, a slave, food in the dorm fridge, or an Amazon package on someone’s porch. It means, “Do not intend to take a woman that belongs to someone else.”
How you feel about her sexually doesn’t matter.
That is why the warning is directed at men. If it was a warning about getting sexually excited, it would be directed at both men and women. News flash! Women get excited too. The reason it was directed at men is that they could own property. Men battled over property and ownership. Women generally could not own property.
While sexual motivation might be a factor it was not the problem. There was no sin in that.
You could feel as lusty as you want about her. Just do not have any intentions to make her your property, if she belongs to somebody else.
Sex was abundant. Illicit, sex-driven, romantic attachments were not a problem that needed to be addressed, because they were almost unheard of. In cultures where women are property, sex is abundant, and marriages are arranged, there is no romance in the air.
It was a man’s God-given right to demand sex from any number of women. His slaves, servants, concubines, and wives were his to do with as he pleased. They were his property.
Marriage and Adultery
You might think “adultery in your heart” is the clincher. How can that not be illicit sex? Adultery has not always meant that.
Originally adultery was a crime against tribal economics. Our present idea of adultery is a distortion rooted in the terrorism and propaganda of the Dark Ages.
Marriage was an integral part of the Jewish tribal, economic system. Marriages formed political and economic alliances between the men who arranged them.
Judaism is matrilineal. The sole purpose of the marriage was to keep prestige, wealth, and power within the Hebrew community through the lineage of the women. It is the same principle as passing power through lines of royalty to keep it within an elite group.
A marriage included one or more women, usually without their consent. The Jewish bride was the main asset in the bargain, along with servants, slaves, livestock, and other useful items. The wedding involved the groom publicly having sex with the woman before their fathers and other spectators to seal the agreement. Real romantic — right? Are you sure you want a Biblical marriage?
If Not for Lust
Why would a man intend to take, or covet, another man’s wife?
If not for lust, then what? One reason would be because of her inheritance, lineage, and status. If a Jewish man with gentile wives, concubines, and slaves had children, his children would not be Jewish. It would be the end of his family being part of the tribe of Israel and under God’s covenant. That was a big deal.
Jewishness is always passed down through the mother, even to this day in conservative Jewish sects. Further, his Jewish female children were his ticket to climb the social ladder. They gave him bargaining power.
How to Commit Adultery
During biblical times almost every woman belonged to someone. Jewish children were betrothed at a very early age — sometimes before they were born. The father of a son or a man with no betrothed, who wanted his children to be of the tribe of Israel could strike a bargain with the father of a Jewish female to give his daughter to him for marriage. If she had already been pledged to marry someone else, he would be taking another man’s property. That could lead to a serious altercation — a bloody clash of families or tribal groups and factions. That is one circumstance where a man might intentionally take or covet another man’s wife, perhaps even before she is born. That would be an act of adultery.
A man could also rape a Jewish woman knowing that, according to Old Testament law, (Deut:22) she would then be obligated to marry him. He would be required to pay her father for the loss of his property. Again, the sin is not the sex involved nor the violation of the woman but the violation of the owner’s property.
A man could also pass off a daughter born to a gentile concubine as a Jewish daughter of Israel. Adultery was not about sex but about ownership, heritage, and tribal politics.
All regulations that have been sexualized over the ages were not originally about sex. They were about keeping the peace within the tribe. All the Old Testament rules and laws were about the integrity of the tribe of Israel. They have nothing to do with God being squeamish about sex.
Present notions of marriage along with prohibitions of sex and adultery are relatively modern, man-made constructs. If women were still property they might be applicable, but they are not.
It is ridiculous to bend, twist, and contort our social norms to conform to ancient, tribal property laws. We have distorted those laws until they are unrecognizable and have nothing to do with their original intent and meaning.
People reinvented what marriage, adultery, and lust mean. Catholics Christians believe that the church can reinvent what Christians believe. They may feel obligated to conform to those decrees because they are dictates of their Church, but they are dictates that came from a very corrupt time.
Protestant Christians concern themselves with what they feel is the original intent of the biblical writers. They are under no obligation to conform to Roman Catholic, man-made, dictates. To conform is a clear violation of Protestant ideals, principles, and the Protestant concept of grace.
Forbidding Sexual Desire
Forbidding sexual desire is like warning people not to let blood flow in their veins. The feelings you have when someone arouses you are not what the Bible forbids. Godless tyrants wanted people to think that.
Going against nature made everyone struggle, stumble and feel sinful. It made people feel they desperately needed the church to intervene for them. It worked and made the Roman church enormously powerful.
History was naively and inadvertently repeated when the Reformers used the same tactic to convert people.
The ideas got baked into our culture. There is nothing sinful about your sex drive or its gratification. The Bible no more speaks against your need for sex than your need for breath.
Lust and excitement are as much a part of you as feelings that make you laugh, cry, enjoy music, enjoy your food, sleep, or fear danger.
That is not an invitation to a free-for-all. Be smart. Enjoy your “lust” with forethought, ethically and consensually, with wisdom, and respect for all involved, including with serious concern for all the possible consequences.
I can just hear the bigots complain that everyone would behave like animals. Even animals don’t behave like proverbial animals.
Let me assure you, there are healthy alternative ethics, fostered by the sex-positive movement, that don’t treat everyone as if they are irresponsible, out-of-control, children. They keep everyone safe, as well as emotionally and spiritually healthy.
Lust is Healthy
Your sex drive is a magnet that draws people together into wonderful relationships and the glue that keeps them together. Without lust, you are left with indifference. Who can build a relationship on that? Who wants to be with someone who doesn’t lust for them? Lust is at the heart of all kinds of healthy, happy, relationships.
You need a spark to start a fire. You need to get things hot to forge a bond.
When you stop sexualizing the Bible you can see sin for what sin is. It is what leads to violence, exploitation, oppression, discrimination, enslavement, destruction, and hundreds of other ruinous, dehumanizing actions that are rampant. Don’t be misdirected or distracted! It is sickening how preoccupied some are with sex. That is sad, pathetic, and smothers genuine Christian concerns. Satan must think it is hilarious.
How can that which fills you with a sense of awe and magic, which creates a sense of oneness, which uplifts, emotionally nourishes, spiritually bonds, renews, refreshes, validates, and heals not be of the Spirit?
