My tender and urgent longings as a sensual adolescent soon clashed with the harsh reality of a prudish religious upbringing. And for over forty years, I suppressed my gnawing hungers, my incessant desires, and my carnal fantasies.
But a single touch of a friend sent courses of electricity through my being and cast a hot spotlight on my unnatural absence of yearning; my mortified body was reanimated like a modern Prometheus. Courageous reader, I longed to freely indulge my sensual instincts, long buried beneath the rubble of the prudish American culture and religious self-denial.
When free, I would be a sensualist always if I could. Shall I confess?
My transgressions gave me a chance I could not have hoped for—a feast of the senses I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams. I succumbed to a seductress; her name flows off my lips—Barcelona.
Why are our natural yearnings censored, forbidden, punished, and labeled taboo, sinful, and worthy of death? McCammon said it best: “We get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God’s sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they’d allowed to wither in themselves.”
They told us to cut off our hand rather than have sex with ourselves and sentenced us to a lifetime marriage contract with a stranger. They command that we pluck out our eye if we look at another human with desire and doomed us to an eternal hell of worms, fire, and brimstone if we dare attempt to recapture our wildness and youth.
Some of my wildest fantasies have come true: Nude beaches and tantric massage are two I will name here. I have come to understand that sex with myself can be fulfilling and safe rather than guilt-stricken and harmful. That sex with others is okay if all parties are consensual.
Unholy Yearnings? On the contrary. My hungers, desires, and fantasies are holy, just not in the religious sense. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Holy means having a divine quality. Divine means supremely good. Therefore, holy in the truest sense means anything with a supremely good quality.
I recently finished Hilary Mantel’s historical novel, Wolf Hall. I discovered that there is a BBC television series with an all-star cast. But after watching two episodes, I developed deep depression as I watched Christians burning, maiming, and torturing other Christians who had committed the grievous sin of translating the Bible from Latin to English so that ordinary people could read it for themselves. Thus proving that the words purgatory, monks, popes, and indulgences were not in the Bible. Therefore, exposing a few of the many lies religion uses to extort money from the ignorant.
And I let religious lies deprive me of my natural-born yearnings for over four decades. And worse, I gave the prime of my life to a career in the ministry because I believed those lies. The horrific truths of history were censored from my education and even my home by religious authorities. One of the extraordinary gifts of my freedom was the ability to read the truth of historical events that prove without doubt that religion is false and poisons everything.
Once we realize that all religions are false and that a life of self-denial is useless, then we can begin to enjoy life. We can free ourselves from the chains of shame, fear, and guilt. There is no afterlife, so it is best to start enjoying the only one we have.
And to prove how screwed up religion is, take this example. My former Southern Baptist religion teaches a doctrine called eternal salvation and that all one needs to do to go to heaven is utter a few chosen words and mean them. And no matter what, you are assured a home in heaven. I did that as a young man and meant it with all my being.
So now that I have decided that religion is false, if, by some miracle, it happens to be accurate, according to the religious beliefs I was taught, I have assured a place in heaven. Yep. So instead of the adage, “Damned if I do, damned if I don’t”—my adage is “Saved if I do, saved if I don’t.”
For the first time in my life, I am living a life of truth. I don’t need to lie to myself or others about masturbating, thinking the person on the beach is hot, looking at ethical porn, having sex with others, reading censored books, enjoying tantric massage, taking psychedelics, drinking alcohol, creating erotic art, and so much more.
From my decades of conversation, I know that 99.9% of Christians do the things I listed in the previous paragraph. And the only reason they don’t do some is the fear of getting caught. A life of lies. What kind of life is that?
That, my courageous reader, is a life of unholy yearnings.
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