BDSM and Religion ?

[Stella_Omega]

Only to limited human understanding.

Okay, mister bullshit artist, I'm calling shenanigans.

 

[rosco rathbone]

Okay, mister bullshit artist, I'm calling shenanigans.

Got to get up mighty early in the morning to call shenanigans on me.

 

[Noira]

I suppose I'd better represent here, since I'm a fairly large minority when it comes to religion and kink AT THE SAME TIME. Warning: long post ahead.

Anal sex was not Sodoms problem but what the Bible refers to an unnatural affection of males toward other males (Since God made Eve for Adam it is assumed that this was His plan...)

Man, so many people don't know the story. The reason Sodom was destroyed has nothing to do with homosexuality!

It was destroyed because their sin was very grievous. They were full of sin. Abraham asks if God will not destroy it if he finds 50 rightous people, and then 45, then 40, then 30, then 20, and then even 10. But there aren't even 10 righteous people in the city.

Then the angels drop by and the men of the city ask for them to be brought out so they can rape them. Lot says no and gives them his two VIRGIN DAUGHTERS instead, so they can do whatever they want to them. D: Raping people sounds pretty sinful to me, not at all adhering to this monogamy thing and sacred marriage bed deal.

Further references about Sodom include Isaiah referring to Babylon ending like Sodom, associating Sodom with shameless sinning. Jeremiah also prophesies the fate of Babylon using Sodom as a comparision. In Exekiel, God compares Jewusalem to Sodom with this: "She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me."

Again, nothing to do with homosexuality.

The closest you will get to a reference of homosexuality (besides the fact that they want to rape the angels! D: ...and the daughters D: ) is "they gave themselves over to fornication and went after strange flesh", which could've been anything from necrophilia and beastality, which were also forbidden in the Bible.

Jewish texts stress their cruelty and lack of hospitality.

So yeah, they probably indulged in some homosexuality, but they were destroyed because they were through and through a wicked city, cruel and inhospitable, who did not help the poor and needy and did detestable things.

After all, was it not said "Hide your wives, hide your kids, hide your husbands too--they're raping everyone out there!"

That's why Sodom was destroyed. Because there were not even ten godly people in the city.

Now, I suppose I'd best represent myself here as maybe the only one hanging about: I am a female sadist and a Christian. This is a very difficult mindset to make meet in my mind, but somehow I worked my way through it.

So it was asked...

Ok, I still keep wondering: what about submissive men and dominant women?

Hi.

(except, you know, I prefer women right now, but being identified as pansexual I don't deny the possibility)

Now, I've seen some posts along the lines of how the Bible stresses women are to be subserviant and how this was started due to Paul.

I want to tell you about my views.

1) God is eternal.
2) Paul is not eternal.

Now, God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. God does not change. However, society changes, as we are mortal people who shuffle off of this coil into eternity or whatever it is you believe is after death. Back in Paul's day, there was a lot of shit going on... slavery, captivity, Romans having sexual relationships with underage boys, woman having no rights, etc. Overall, this society was not a great place to be!

Along comes Paul, who writes the notoriously quoted WOMEN SUBMIT TO YOUR HUSBANDS, MEN LOVE YOUR WIVES.

This is what my view is.

Paul was being really, really new-fangled when he wrote this to the church of that time period. This was UNHEARD of. Women had no rights and here Paul was going and saying "men, take good care of your women. Be monogamous and love them instead of abusing them." Egads, that's practically scandal. On the opposite side of the scale, he told women to work with your husbands. We're trying to shake up society here so that eventually you get more rights than just being abused and ignored, practically slaves if that's what hubby feels--because if hubby is following these rules, he's going to love you as Christ loved the church (that's the quote, ladies and gentlemen and anyone in between!) which means he will die for you if it comes to that, to save you.

Sink that one in.

Now, I feel submit ought to have been translated 'respect'. I, as a dominant female, have absolute respect for anyone who wants me to whip their ass. They're taking a lot of themselves and trusting it to me. And in return, I'm trusting a lot of myself to them. There's a lot of emotions flying around when it comes to BDSM. I'm a sadist and I like causing pain and making people squirm and well, I have a masochistic streak as well that likes being in pain and squirming too. Would I say this fits the Bibical definition from Paul? Sure, I'm not submitting to my Tough Manly Husband (tm) but I'm submitting to making sure that their desires (to experience paaain, of course) are fulfilled and submitting to making certain that they come out absolutely okay. They are in my hands, and that to me is quite a lot of respect and even submission. And are they loving me? Sure thing. They're loving me so much they're experiencing pain for me.

From me.

Well, whatever.

As far as Christianity and sex goes, I think our marriage rites are part of this society of this time... back then it was different, now it is different and later on it is different. Monogamous might be a major feature of the Bible, and I'm okay with that. I'm pretty sure some play with no sex is okay. (whipcrack) And I'm pretty sure that in the bounds of a monogamous relationship, whatever you want to do is perfectly okay. Threesomes not so great when it comes to adhering to the Bible... whips and chains are quite cool if that's what you guys like.

As for God the gender, due to the society in which the Bible was written I'm pretty sure a masculine gender was pretty well a necessity. I don't really care either way what gender identity God takes. It doesn't offend me, even as a feminist. Really, it doesn't. Because it seems to me that for that time period, when the Bible was written, it was awfully pro-female rights. You people may disagree with me, but this is how I feel... that the Bible was written for that time period, Paul was writing to churches in that society, and that though the fundimental truths remain, that God remains through it all an unchanging God... the things that needed to be said to that church at that time may not be what is needed to be said to MY church in MY time.

God is the same.

The things my church needs to know is not the same as the church in Ephesis.

Then there's this.

Galatians 3:28: There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (NIV)

(If you go back to the Greek, it ought to be translated male and female, incidentially. Keep that in mind...)

That in this verse is a message of the struggles our church has had over the years. Back then they worried over whether Gentiles ("Greeks") counted because they were not Jewish. This was a big church issue.

Not all so long ago, the big issue was slaves and free men.

Today the issue is male and female.

Paul said it first. In God, your gender doesn't matter. This may very well apply to BDSM relationships, homosexual relationships, and gender identity. But basically, anyone can be a Christian, regardless of their rank, their religion, their freedom, and their gender, and they will all be equal. Because Christianity is about equality. It was very edgy at the time.

Here's another translation.

And the ISV

"Because all of you are one in the Messiah Jesus, a person is no longer a Jew or a Greek, a slave or a free person, a male or a female."

Here are a couple Bible commentary passages on that verse.

Clarke's Commentary on the Bible
"Neither male nor female - With great reason the apostle introduces this. Between the privileges of men and women there was a great disparity among the Jews. A man might shave his head, and rend his clothes in the time of mourning; a woman was not permitted to do so. A man might impose the vow of nasirate upon his son; a woman could not do this on her daughter. A man might be shorn on account of the nasirate of his father; a woman could not. A man might betroth his daughter; a woman had no such power. A man might sell his daughter; a woman could not. In many cases they were treated more like children than adults; and to this day are not permitted to assemble with the men in the synagogues, but are put up in galleries, where they can scarcely see, nor can they be seen. Under the blessed spirit of Christianity, they have equal rights, equal privileges, and equal blessings; and, let me add, they are equally useful."

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary
"There is no distinction into male and female. Difference of sex makes no difference in Christian privileges. But under the law the male sex had great privileges. Males alone had in their body circumcision, the sign of the covenant (contrast baptism applied to male and female alike); they alone were capable of being kings and priests, whereas all of either sex are now "kings and priests unto God" (Re 1:6); they had prior right to inheritances. In the resurrection the relation of the sexes shall cease (Lu 20:35)."

So, while it seems under today's society that Paul inflicted "women are intended only to submit to Macho Manly ManMcMAAANNN" onto women, what I see is that Paul gave women at that time a great deal of freedom by introducing the concept of equality, and giving them all the rights any Christian had... whether a slave or a Greek or a woman... all considered to be horrible things at that time!

Sure, now, in our society where women have the right to work, to do more than raise children, to be more than almost slaves to their husband and slaves to society, yeah, it seems archaic. But at that point in time, this was a big thing, and...

I DO NOT THINK IT HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH YOUR ORIENTATION IN A BDSM RELATIONSHIP!

I'm pretty damn sure that even if Paul meant submissive, he was not saying "in order to be a good wife you have to let your hubby tie you up and make you have many orgasms and whip you with this cat o' nine tails"... unless that's what you want.

If it's consentual, you're both having fun, and you're both respecting each other's limits I think it's perfect acceptable to be in a male top or female top relationship!

Anyway, there's my take on things and that's how I reconcoiled my orientation with my religion.

 

[teknight]

@ Noira: Thanks for a very well organized response.

 

[seela]

The day I hear women being called "him" all the time-- I'll agree with you that "God the Father" is not gendered. (You don't want to argue with me about this-- just accept my word as fact.) No, they would not.

In the original text the words used to refer to God aren't always masculine, but somehow in the process they all have been translated in with masculine words. I don't see God as having a definite gender, even if we talk about father.

And once again I'm very glad I only have one word that covers both he and she.

But then again, I'm not Christian, so my views about God's gender or the lack thereof hardly are important.

 

[Stella_Omega]

1) Noira, very impressive thinkies there! You'd make the Jesuits proud

2) Seela, what language do you speak? What is the pronoun? How does it translate?

 

[seela]

1) Noira, very impressive thinkies there! You'd make the Jesuits proud

2) Seela, what language do you speak? What is the pronoun? How does it translate?

I speak Finnish, the pronoun is hän and it translates as he/she. It's a 3rd person singular pronoun. We don't differentiate the gender in any words in Finnish, as for example Spanish or German does. Although in normal everyday speech even the word hän isn't used. Instead we use se, which means it.

Ok, we have this suffix -tar/-tär that can be added to make certain nouns (professions only) into a feminine version, but it hasn't been used actively for ages and ages and it only exists as a part of some words, such as kuningas 'king' - kuningatar 'queen'.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Thanks, Seela! What a fascinating language. It's beautiful to listen to.
(sorry for the threadjack guys)

 

[sb2009]

I must respectfully disagree with Noira a bit on Paul.

He was not being new fangled. He was being old fangled. When he was around, women in Rome had more "rights" than women of other nationalities. Roman women citizens were bugging the shit out of him for their uppity ways. Submit to your men, but hey men, do what you do out of love, because if you say you are treating her like shit because you love her, it's all good.

Oh, and women, shut the fuck up when I'm pontificating, just wait until you get home and ask your husbands, you are really fucking annoying me when you try to participate in the conversations at church.

 

[sb2009]

Oh, and hahaha even if Paul was a feminist before it was cool....the topic here is Religion, not "what jesus or paul intended" and if anyone here really wants to argue that Christianity as a practiced religion is a forward thinking institution of the rights of women, well, you can just go on ahead an froth at the mouth.

 

[Passing]

I stand corrected in that the actual account does not refer to homosexuality. Maybe I just got that impression from the whole city surrounding Lots house and demanding that they bring out the two 'men' (in quotes only because the were not men but angels) that Lot brought home so they could rape them.

By the way, they did not take Lot's duaghters nor did they rape them. Lot offered them as a sort of sacrifice to appease them. Both his daughters that were in the house with him were still virgins as was the custon ot the day. They both lost their virginity to their father later.

This is 'almost' the whole account of the story except for Lot being instructed to gather his sons and daughters and their husbands and wives to be taken out of the city before it was destroyed.

Make of it as you will, as people are want to do anyway.



And though I suspect Paul hated women, he was just as most of the men were in their day. Women are rarely named and otherwise mentioned in the Bible as being important. Subservience, respect and obedience were simply expected of them by all men and I cannot list all the many references of disrespect shown to them throughout the bible. It just seems that Paul was a little more dogmatic about it, but that could just be because he wrote most of the epistles.

 

[teknight]

I must respectfully disagree with Noira a bit on Paul.

He was not being new fangled. He was being old fangled. When he was around, women in Rome had more "rights" than women of other nationalities. Roman women citizens were bugging the shit out of him for their uppity ways. Submit to your men, but hey men, do what you do out of love, because if you say you are treating her like shit because you love her, it's all good.

Oh, and women, shut the fuck up when I'm pontificating, just wait until you get home and ask your husbands, you are really fucking annoying me when you try to participate in the conversations at church.

Oh, and hahaha even if Paul was a feminist before it was cool....the topic here is Religion, not "what jesus or paul intended" and if anyone here really wants to argue that Christianity as a practiced religion is a forward thinking institution of the rights of women, well, you can just go on ahead an froth at the mouth.

Tell us how you really feel. But, yes, women back in the day had rights, and Roman women did OK.

 

[JMohegan]

Man, so many people don't know the story. The reason Sodom was destroyed has nothing to do with homosexuality!

It was destroyed because their sin was very grievous. They were full of sin. Abraham asks if God will not destroy it if he finds 50 rightous people, and then 45, then 40, then 30, then 20, and then even 10. But there aren't even 10 righteous people in the city.

Not even children? No innocent toddlers? Infants?

The reason doesn't matter. It's a tale of genocide, regardless. A demonstration of the depth and breadth of the ruthlessness of that Divine Being, as imagined by those ancient goat herders.

 

[Stella_Omega]

The whole story is a fable to explain this rock formation on the slopes of Mt Sodom, overlooking the Dead Sea.

http://www.travelmania.com/gallery/photos/9/52/800x600.aspx

 

[teknight]

The whole story is a fable to explain this rock formation on the slopes of Mt Sodom, overlooking the Dead Sea.

http://www.travelmania.com/gallery/photos/9/52/800x600.aspx

Looks bobbitted to me....the long way!

 

[sb2009]

I think it's kind of ... interesting that Lot, who is apparently a righteous enough man to be saved vs. all the sinners in the city, offered his own virgin daughters to the crowd to save the visitors.

I mean, really? that is the best you can think of? No other heroics? Just "here, rape my daughters, so these men I just met a bit ago can be safe. That's what God wants me to do."

 

[rosco rathbone]

I think it's kind of ... interesting that Lot, who is apparently a righteous enough man to be saved vs. all the sinners in the city, offered his own virgin daughters to the crowd to save the visitors.

I mean, really? that is the best you can think of? No other heroics? Just "here, rape my daughters, so these men I just met a bit ago can be safe. That's what God wants me to do."

On one hand, the temptation is to say "you're celestial emissaries, boys, fend for yourselves!"; on the other hand one doesn't want to make a faux pas and risk giving offense to the Man Upstairs. It's like having the Vice President of the firm over for dinner, everything must go smoothly.

 

[Netzach]

Only to limited human understanding.

Hinduism is so gigantically broad and old that it's pretty impossible to generalize. There are even Hindu atheists, who believe that the gods are not literal, or those who revere RadhaKrishna which is kind of like Krishna-with-his-consort-Radha-each-of-them-manifesting-the-other as a divine pairing - it's kind of perplexing to a culture obsessed with two genders.

Also I've always heard that Sodom's offense was to the extremely BFD hospitality codes of the day. An overzealous interpretation of "know" along carnal lines isn't needed: look at how this part of the world dealt with Hospitality.

Look at Hellenic myth and ancient Egypt. Jason gets stuck chasing fleece because you can't kill your political rivals outright if they join you for dinner.

You do NOT dis your guests in any fashion or abuse them in any way, certainly not "hey throw these guys out so we can intimidate them." Offering daughters being only slightly more extravagant than killing a goat - so basically Lot was the only non-asshole around acting as a human would be expected to.

Remember these people were all basically arguing and fighting Canaanites. You're studying another culture as much as if you were reading the Mahabarata.

 

[Netzach]

Not even children? No innocent toddlers? Infants?

The reason doesn't matter. It's a tale of genocide, regardless. A demonstration of the depth and breadth of the ruthlessness of that Divine Being, as imagined by those ancient goat herders.

Children were pretty much viewed legally as belongings. If they die off you make sure you make more. At no point other than the Isaac story is the potential loss of a child treated as anything other than a comment on parental behavior. Does anyone even know who Yiftak's daughter is? She doesn't get a name.

So there's no real reason that God would feel more strongly about it than your culture that's telling the God story. I don't think it's an accident that a Romantic divine shows up - during, oh Roman rule. For all the oppression, early Christians got their ideas from the Dominant culture. Jews were so Romanized and so Hellenized during the rule of those respective civilizations that classical Gods are all over archaeological finds in Jewish sites.

 

[Kajira Callista]

Only to limited human understanding.

This is why I you so Uncle Rosco!

 

[Stella_Omega]

This is why I you so Uncle Rosco!

A question to ponder; how limited is human understanding? How do we know it's limited, and how do we define the limits?

Do those limits expand, and if so, doesn't that put the lie to the phrase?

 

[teknight]

A question to ponder; how limited is human understanding? How do we know it's limited, and how do we define the limits?

Do those limits expand, and if so, doesn't that put the lie to the phrase?

But, Stella, God works in mysterious ways!

 

[Passing]

I think it's kind of ... interesting that Lot, who is apparently a righteous enough man to be saved vs. all the sinners in the city, offered his own virgin daughters to the crowd to save the visitors.

I mean, really? that is the best you can think of? No other heroics? Just "here, rape my daughters, so these men I just met a bit ago can be safe. That's what God wants me to do."

Lot was not righteous in any way. Abraham was righteous, and when he bargained with God for Sodom, God understood that his real concern was for his nephew whom he loved enough to try to drag along with him in his walk with God. Knowing this, God sent the angels into the city to bring Lot out.

 

[rosco rathbone]

A question to ponder; how limited is human understanding? How do we know it's limited, and how do we define the limits?

Do those limits expand, and if so, doesn't that put the lie to the phrase?

You just blew my fragile eggshell mind.


Daisy...daaaaaaaaaisyyy..give...meee....youuuur

 

[Stella_Omega]

You just blew my fragile eggshell mind.


Daisy...daaaaaaaaaisyyy..give...meee....youuuur

You get two gold stars for perfect cultural reference!