Spring is in the air. The trees are budding, the flowers are blooming, and the non believers are once again totally obsessed with Christianity, sex, and the bible.
Violet made a comment recently, the first part which sayest, “Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines, he was drowning in lust.”
Well now, so much for sexual freedom and tolerance! Apparently even non believers have some limits. Drowning in lust? That sounds somewhat disapproving and almost…self righteous and judgmental.
All in good humor here, but I think it unlikely that King Solomon had any more lust than anyone else. Like it or not, all through human history and having nothing to do with Christianity at all, having many wives and concubines was a symbol of status, wealth, and power. Not unlike owning a flock of goats. Lovely, isn’t it? In much of history, women simply ranked somewhere slightly above livestock as symbols of status. Barbaric, yes I know.
It’s almost a sound argument for modern civilization, Christian values, and heaven forbid, one man, one woman marriage. Marriage seems like a rather woman friendly idea when compared to the concubine and harem mandated life style choices. Toss in human sacrifice and the lack of antibiotics, and I’m totally sold on modern times.
So the current argument is that Christians all through the ages have perverted sexuality, oppressed the masses, been hypocritically self-righteous, and totally broken all that is good and golden about sex. Oh yes! Yes, indeed. Guilty as charged. To try to blame this exclusively on Christians however, or to pretend as if the bible is to blame, is just silly.
People, not just Christians, people in general, have been distorting relationships between men and women and perverting sex since time immemorial. We are complete barbarians by nature. That is our default state! It surprises me that so few people in the Western world truly understand this anymore. In the absence of mores and values the question simply becomes, will this benefit me?
To attempt to pin it all on Christianity, is quite a distortion however. All you have to do is take a good look at the modern secular world and what we have done to sexuality, to understand this. Child sexual abuse, pornography, women’s bodies used to sell products, exploitation, sex trafficking. Look at our popular TV shows, Special Victims Unit, all sex crimes. Vampire love, necrophilia, 50 shades of Gray. We live in a highly repressed culture that still insists on putting sex in front of us 24/7. It’s that odd paradox, caught somewhere between repression and shame. Shame because we promote the most bizarre and unusual aspects of sexuality as evidence of freedom, while portraying the sexuality to be found in marriage as somehow oppressive and weird.
The message from the secular world comes through loud and clear, sex is bad. Sex is bad because “sex” is all about rape, murder, vampires, exploited children, and selling products.
Solomon’s 700 wives and 300 concubines are not examples of biblical sexual morality at all, in fact, Solomon goes on to start worshipping the gods of his foreign princesses. The Lord becomes angry with Solomon because his heart has turned away. Solomon’s kingdom is eventually divided, all because of 700 wives and idolatry.
Violet concludes by stating, “Sex is definitely not a good thing in the Bible.” No, idolatry is not a good thing in the bible, the precise kind of sexual idolatry currently being worshipped by the secular world.
See, there's this thing called biology... 
“The trees are budding, the flowers are blooming, and the non believers are once again totally obsessed with Christianity, sex, and the bible.”
This is something I’ve never understood. Non believers spend an awful lot of their time, energy and brain power on something they claim is invalid, silly and delusional.
I watched a program on atheism not long ago…on CNN. Now…when I watch a program on Christianity 100% of it is on Christianity not atheism, however, the show on atheism was also 99.9% on Christianity not atheism. Weird. Kinda like a professor scheduling instruction on brain surgery but preaching about the evils of tossing rotten lettuce into a salad. If you’re going to teach something then teach it. Unless of course you have nothing to say, share or no guidance on how to be successful at it.
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“In the absence of mores and values the question simply becomes, will this benefit me?”
I agree. That is an evolutionary principle.
So maybe a little mores is not so bad. 😉
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To me it seems there is a crusade against the past, against everything traditional. Those who lament over the stupidities and barbarianism of the past, I wonder where they think they have come from?! Mars? Andromeda galaxy? No, they come from the same past, the same parents. If everything and everyone in the past is so stupid and devoid of value (of course everyone in the world and throughout history except a few western European intellectuals who enlightened us by their grace called science!), then we too, along with our modern, apparently enlightened egos, must be more stupid than ever! The amount of time that a modern critic of the past spends thinking about sex and fighting against something that he/she doesn’t even believe exists, God I mean, is just telling of this stupidity passed for intelligence. If we really believe those in the past, in their infantile reason and utter lack of rationality, are really stupid, then all children too must be really stupid! But no one likes to treat their children this way. What kind of a crooked evolution takes us from having sex most of the time to thinking about it all the time?! Well, the kind of evolution that produces atheists and non-believers who take pride in being descended from monkeys rather than something superior than themselves. I used to think that atheism is the rock bottom of human intelligence but now I am convinced that atheism is the rock bottom of intelligence as such. Why? Because the typical atheist claims he/she is just an animal always driven by survival impulses, and yet he/she is blind to the fact that all his claims too, including his atheism and science, should be the products of nothing but survival impulses and repressed animal drives. What he’s really saying is that “I say the things that I say only because I am horny and hungry.” How can we take such a man or woman seriously, let alone spending time arguing with them?!
When one says that God doesn’t exist and everything is subjective and relative, then they’re being such hypocrites, first because they have removed God only to replace their own intelligence in its place, and second because they exclude their own claims from the assertion that “everything is of subjective/relative,” and hence making themselves representatives of an absolute intelligence whose existence they also deny. The degree to which their infantile intelligence contradicts itself is unprecedented in history; yet, theirs is the rock bottom of intelligence as such.
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Good point. I’ll make an exception for some of those who are simply agnostic or non believers, who for whatever reason are separated from the idea of God.
The militant atheists however, those who have turned their non belief into a political ideology possessing heavy religious overtones, are completely irrational and lacking anything resembling intelligence. Descended from monkeys? I often wonder if perhaps we haven’t evolved backwards and aspire to arrive at the Planet of the Apes some day.
This desire to perceive our past as somehow disconnected from ourselves, our Bronze Age ancestors as some kind of shameful relative we heap disgust on, puts a whole new spin on the idea of honor your parents. If one perceives oneself as having descended from apes and barbarians rather then having a Divine nature, it doesn’t bode well for those of us forced to share the planet with you.
CS Lewis said it well, “If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.”
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Thanks. I love CS Lewis. I too have a different view of most agnostics who are open to knowing the truth though they haven’t found it yet. I myself as an agnostic most of my life but simply wasn’t convinced until I was, and that by experience than dogma. An all of us who believe have in one way or another experienced it; something that has no root in our experience can never become an object of belief. But the precondition for that experience is openness, or more precisely objectivity which is supposed to be the driving force behind science but I have seen that most scientists are dogmatic than objective. They claim that experience is the only source of validity for science but deny the experience of millions, now and before, who believe in God or a divine source of existence. These militants cannot know higher truths because they refuse to be open to it, and truth by its generous and graceful nature never imposes itself on those who are unwilling to listen. we people impose ourselves but God doesn’t, for He is infinitely generous.
What has happened this blind scientism is that they have defined their own version of experience as the only source of validity, their version being the quantifiable experience. If it cannot be quantified, then it is just in your mind; this is stupid because after all it is the mind that quantifies. Some scientists speak as if they discovered science by stepping out of their subjectivity! They fail to see that they cannot quantify the very consciousness that quantifies the world.
Science works no doubt, but at its foundations it contradicts itself when it comes to universal truths about human and existence. Modern science claims that human beings are entirely determined by their surrounding conditions, that they have material and not divine origin; but at the same time this science which is itself a product of human mind excludes itself from these conditions and gives it universal and absolute validity; it treats itself as if it has a divine origin rather than something entirely determined by human condition! Strange, isn’t it?
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“Strange, isn’t it?”
LOL! Yes and generally when you bump into two opposing ideas at the same time, you have encountered something false 😉
All the best scientists had some form of open mindedness. That is the very nature of science, to be inquisitive. Until quite recently, science was never perceived as the antidote to God, but rather the observation of Him. That is still how many perceive science, the new fangled definition is mostly just culture and politics trying to sell us nonsense.
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Very very true. Atheism is really something fashionable these days, and their militants are only Kardashians of academia. It is just the celebrity culture. Almost all atheists, if one listens to them and observes their behavior and mentality, are really upside-down theists. They simply rebranded everything. But we kid them; they’re cute and lovely, and believe in God even more than us; they just don’t know it yet. lol. I call them closet-theists.
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Apparently Violet missed Song of Solomon. It’s rather a positive view.
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LOL, yes! The Song of Solomon does provide one of the most beautifully written love songs of all time.
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R.G. Collingwood once wrote that a savage was uncivilized but a barbarian was anti-civilization. The sexual anarchists are exactly that: they want to destroy civilized sexuality. That accounts for the seeming contradiction between sexual repression (aimed at normal people) and unrestrained sexual license (for perverts).
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I dig your bookends; those two wraps of the post here. First the triple play with obsession, then idolatry. Well played. So there is kinda sorta an obsession with idolatry. You revealed the root of the tree: ‘idolatry is not a good thing………………….,’ the physical stuff is but a smokescreen.
Without God we really do worship our selves, and I suppose the altar is ignorance or pride; isn’t that crazy, to worship and not know it. But the Lord said as much: ‘ye worship ye know not what………………..’
Your commentary of Solomon and his shortcomings compared against ‘the more excellent way’ is hard to argue against insanitybytes. Some real good stuff here.
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Thanks ColorStorm. Your words are much appreciated.
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If I’m going to drown in something…
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ROFL! Good point, Mike 😉
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True. Our old Hindu’s were lusty old fellas. You just have to look at some of our temple carvings, or read the Kamasutra to realise this. Somewhere down the line, we became a country of prudes, and one where we have a lot of double standards.
My ex boss, a Frenchman, once commented to me (more than once, actually) that Indians are not sexual at all. I snorted and said, “Boss, we have one billion people… Do you think that they were all conceived immaculately?”.. He glared, but did not respond;)
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Just want to be sure I’m understanding Violet’s point. God creates a fabulous garden. Then he creates a naked man and a naked woman, almost certainly more beautiful than any people since and the first thing he tells them to do is have sex. Therefore, sex is NOT a good thing in the Bible. Do I have that right?
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