Redefining a Worldview

When I was a teenager my favorite genre of music was straight edge hardcore bands and though I do not listen to them as much anymore they still encompass an important place in my mind and heart. Minor Threat, Fugazi, Black Flag, Refused, Youth of Today, the Cro-Mags (which are technically Krishnacore, but whatever).

These bands have a certain intensity that I enjoyed employing onstage even if my explosiveness was generated by a combination of booze and neuroses. These guys were not exactly my heroes, but I did want to emulate them in some way.

They were my artistic influences more so than any stand-up other than maybe Stanhope and Evan Fowler.

In any case, I loved the DIY scene and its straight edge kin, even if others looked down on the straight edge dudes who were, generally, a lot to deal with just because they sometimes hold themselves higher than others because they are above the influence which sucks because that’s not really straight edge. It’s like being a dry drunk, or in a cult of condescension. Which is why I never fell into the straight edge lifestyle. The music always ruled, though.

There is a distinct sect within the larger subculture of straight edge/hardcore scenes that emerged in the eighties and nineties, dying a rather quick death in the same decade: Hardline. Hardline fascinated me when I was younger due to their professed ecofascist leanings which came from a deep, unshakable respect of all life… Even though bands like the Vegan Reich called for the death penalty regarding meat-eaters, but such is the duality of respecting all life and being a fascist.

It’s a difficult line to walk.

However, what really interested me was their anti-abortion and anti-homosexuality stances, these ideologies in conjunction with animal liberation causes and strict, militant veganism calls to mind the “seamless garment” pro-life approach that includes the opposition to war, abortion, euthanasia, and the death penalty. Much like Hardline there are a lot of critiques lobbied at the latter position. But that’s for a different time.

The important thing is that on the surface of these ideologies the main factor is respect and dignity of all life, which of course contrasts with the Hardline stance on homosexuality. As well as Christians who profess a ‘seamless garment’ perspective. Hardliners view homosexuality as anathema because their view toward sex is that it is solely to be used for procreation. ‘Liberal’ Hardliners justify recreational sex as long as it is within a committed relationship and without the use of contraception, making the act potentially procreative.

This is a narrow view of sex.

It is also a painfully secular one, paradoxically where the Hardliners arrive at a typically conservative Christian viewpoint without the theology that supports their ideas. Due to this, the Hardliners lose the Christian Theology of the Body, which is an anthropological lens aimed at showing how the human body reveals God. The theology of the body supports the Christian teaching of θέωσις (theosis) where we draw closer and closer to God, unifying with Him, through love.

St. John of the Cross wrote about how love, not faith, draws one into an ontological and psychological union with God.

So, with that in mind, using the theology of the body, sex is one of God’s gifts, and as it is a gift it should not be approached in a disorderly, haphazard way, or as a tool to use against others and oneself. This is not in alignment with the respect and dignity of all beings. It is not in alignment with God’s will.

While I agree with the Hardliners’ view on sexuality their definition of procreation is like tunnel vision in which sensuality is suffocated under the heavy weight of militant ignorance.

Procreation, defined as only sexual encounters meant to manifest a child’s life is extremely limiting in scope. It falls short of understanding Life and Creation. Personally, where I agree with them is in my belief that sex should be about procreation, but that does not always mean reproduction.

So, more like pro-Creation.

Sex is a way in which we can experience the rapturous, ecstatic joys of Paradise as well as holding the capacity to make us experience Hades… Such is the essential qualities of the Love of God. The latter sexual encounters, facilitating the experience of Hades would include dissociating during sex, the consumptive state of sexual consciousness, pleasure-seeking for pleasure’s sake. These qualities are not inherently pro-Creation, nor are they procreative.

They are of a pro-self orientation, in which one inflates their own ego by checking sexual encounters off like a keno card, one lusts after the body of another with no regard to their inner world: who they are underneath their skin, how they see the world, how they think, etc., and then there is sex in which one or both shrink in on themselves, triggered by trauma, a poor concept of self, sex, and safe boundaries. These are degenerative forms of sexuality that serve only to sever our connections between ourselves and our neighbor. In fact, they not only sever our connection they harm those connections, actively. 

ProCreation, understood in a broader sense than how we typically do is building with another person, making something new whether there was once nothing: building safety, cultivating comfort and ease, an environment of exploration and dynamism, strengthening a mind-body connection and spiritual communion. These are proCreative acts that I would not necessarily categorize as strictly recreational or simply ‘potentially’ procreative.

The Hardliners go further and condemn pornography and masturbation, as well. Two repudiations I stand with firmly. It might not make me a lot of friends to say, but porn is for losers… and masturbation is not simply a waste of your sexual energy, but an absolute time-suck. I confess my viewpoints do come from an addict’s mindset: if something is a waste of time it is a waste all the way. If I confess my extreme view, then anything that is a waste of time is a sin. I don’t have the luxury of thinking any differently.

To turn to the scriptures for a moment we find the origin of Christianity’s views toward masturbation in the brief life of Onan, in Genesis:

“Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord put him to death. Then Judah said to Onan, ‘Go in to your brother’s wife and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her; raise up offspring for your brother.’ But since Onan knew that the offspring would not be his, he spilled his semen on the ground whenever he went in to his brother’s wife, so that he would not give offspring to his brother. What he did was displeasing in the sight of the Lord, and he put him to death also” (Genesis 38:7-10).

There is a lot going on in this story. I hate to use the word “problematic,” but this seems like the appropriate time to use it.

However, if we can see through the patriarchal horrors of what is happening, we see not the act of autoeroticism, but the use of another person to satisfy one’s sexual gratification. Which can be properly understood as masturbation. Onan is “put to death” for the transgression of spilling his seed on the ground. This is not retributive justice by the Lord, though, this is Onan spiritual killing himself by vainly spreading his sexual energy, wasting it and not giving it direction. Sexual energy is generative energy and to waste it through this form of masturbation and self-satisfaction is a degenerative pattern of sexuality, spiritually spreading oneself thin and not building anything with another, not deepening connection with another.

This is a story about one’s refusal to participate in Creation.

God does not put to death people like Onan. People like Onan cut themselves off from life. These behaviors are degenerative in that they take us away from living, folding in on ourselves, satisfying our ego and baser instincts which can never be truly satisfied.

And yes, it is disturbingly problematic.

Now, the same goes for chronic masturbators, whether or not there is another person involved, same goes for those addicted to pornography which is a lustful orientation that is quite literally disconnecting oneself from reality wherein one interacts with sex through a screen.

It may seem judgmental to say people who watch porn are losers. That is because it is judgmental; I am judging that behavior that makes people not see other people as people as detrimental to society.

When sex is approached through these lenses nothing can be built and neither is our personage defined, because this form of sex dissolves boundaries which are a form of love. This form of sex disrespects others’ personhood as well as our own by devaluing our being to simply pleasure-seeking automatons.

Someone once said the phone is the devil. I believe they are right.

The dignity of our being deepens in proCreative sexual encounters like the kind of sex that builds two individuals, defines their person by establishing boundaries and in that “the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh” (Mark 10:8). We become unified as persons, like the Trinity, without which sex is not special, it’s not communion… It’s just a rote exercise of satisfying our own fleshly wants (not needs).

This deepening of sexual relations does not need to bring a child into the world to be procreative; procreativity is an act allowing two people to be affirmed in their bodies and make something new out of those affirmed boundaries being respected (not for nothing, but a child created under these conditions is a beautiful thing). Relationships being strengthened is an act of proCreation; someone feeling comfortable and safe in the bedroom is an act of proCreation. Two people finding each other and building a life with one another while respecting the personhood of the other is proCreation.

By the way, all these qualities of proCreation deepen the soul connection and make sex better… Which is what I have never picked up from people who talk about sex as if it were sport or a utility. Sex is a spiritual and holistic act, secularizing it, sanitizing it, or corrupting it as a physiological need makes sex worse.

Love, encountered through sex, is of a spiritual nature in which we are giving ourselves to another, but we need to have something to give them in order for this to occur and encourage growth together. Sex is an act of kenotic love in which both parties come together in mutual self-giving. If we understand sex as a spiritual gift of God: one in which we can participate in conjugal union with another as a means for both to experience the uncreated essence that is God through the energies encountered within this self-giving love then we “may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust and may become participants of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).

Furthermore, seeing procreative sex as a way to participate in divine nature we can better understand the Christian belief that “God lives in the world and with the world, in an inter-relationship […] In Himself, God is eternal with Divine eternity in His trihypostatizedness, which is the eternal act of love of the Three in reciprocity […] God’s becoming God not for Himself but for the world together with the becoming of the world” (Bulgakov 133-134).

Framing sex through the Christian teaching of θέωσις gives us a sexuality that is a mutual self-giving, kenotic love that interconnects two beings through the defining and becoming of their respective persons.

This is pro-Creation.

The Hardliners, like me, decried sex in this Western culture as predominately consumptive, transactional, and degenerative much like other symptoms of a capitalist society sex becomes a pleasure-seeking, self-satisfying hamster wheel in which none of us, no matter how many numbers on our keno card we checked right, can ever truly satisfy. By design.

So, combating this commodification of the sacred is a necessary step toward liberating the self in the bedroom and outside of it. The first step is redefining our idea of procreation and respecting the personhood of all beings.

And that goes for the homosexuals, too, you weird, salad-eating fascists.

Si comprehendis, non est Deus

Sources: Bulgakov, Sergius. “The Lamb of God.”