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American Prude Awakening

Newspaper a current event article by Matthew Vea (VnutZ), published on 21 April 2008
tagged as theology, sex, and society
other nerds have left 3 comments below

Not too long ago, a minister in Florida encouraged followers to have sex for thirty days as a means of tightening marriage bonds and improving quality of life. A genuine movement is afoot within the American Christian community to undo centuries of sexual demonization. A Christian psychotherapist from Texas describes the difficulty many believers have struggled with, "It’s a real hard shift for people mentally to go from an entirely prohibited activity to do it all the time." Pastors and ministers involved indicate many of their followers were seeking ways in which to to enjoy themselves without feeling guilty and dirty from the manner in which religion had depicted sex. As such, many have gone as far as re-interpreting biblical passages via the standard poetic tools of allusion in order to take solace that couples taking pleasure with one another are not committing sinful acts. The awakening is summarized best from a popular Christian website, "We discovered that God’s Word is holy and hot … filled with invaluable wisdom for our sexual relationship."

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Why This Bothers Me by VnutZ :: NR10

I’ll be quite happy if the movement succeeds and Americans as a whole stop being such prudes. I mean c’mon, your parents "did it" and their parents "did it". It’s natural – enjoy it.

However, the fact that it takes a minister to make it "OK" and needs allusive re-interpretation of the bible irritates me.

1) Can you really not think for yourself? Do you only do things your pastor tells you to do – ie, when you look in the mirror do you see Ned Flanders? Religion can be your guide to better living … but if you are incapable of surviving without the equivalent of a tribal leader blessing your every decision than the genetic lifeguard needs to blow a whistle and take you out of the big gene pool while so the adults can swim around for awhile.
2) The very fact that the bible is getting "re-interpreted" for the sake of appeasing a mortal desire is everything that is wrong with modern dogma. When the bible serves as your guide for some ethical dilemmas here and there, re-interpretation may not be such a big deal. But when the bible serves as the truth, it is absolutely reprehensible for one not to be furious that its meaning is being altered. Truth is timeless. If truth needs to be updated to fit contemporary times, than either it wasn’t true, people don’t really care if its true as long as its someone else’s call, or society really has strayed that far from the truth. For everyone that’s ever claimed – "no, it is the unchanged word of god" – well, you’re looking at exactly why I don’t buy into religion. In order to keep the flock, the shepherds are changing the meaning to keep them satisfied. How many times over the course of the centuries do you think this has happened? Lots.

So I find myself wrapped in irony. I want the American prude to relax and let themselves have a little fun. But at the same time, the mechanism by which they seem to be achieving that should be infuriating anyone that has ever made the argument that the bible’s word is irrefutable. The message can’t change because you want it to or need it to in order to to make some action "okay".

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