Certainly not about sex
Last year my pastor challenged us with a strategy for reading the Bible. His suggestion for daily reading involved four chapters from the Old Testament, four from the New and four from Psalms and Proverbs. The idea was you start at the beginning (Genesis and Matthew) and read straight through, OT and NT concurrently. Actually, it was more complicated than that; that's just the simplified version. But, yes, that's 12 chapters a day. I'd been stuck in the one-random-chapter-a-day routine for as long as I could remember, so it certainly was a challenge.
While I didn't leap into this strategy as is, I did adapt it and make it my own. My take on it was this: start at Genesis and read four chapters a day and pair it with four chapters from the Wisdom books (Job through Song of Solomon). It hasn't worked out exactly as planned, but I've made some good progress.
Anyways... There are two books that I've always had a hard time with. One is Revelations; the other is the Song of Solomon. Revelations scares me, so I tend not to spend much time in it. I haven't got there yet in my current strategy, so we'll deal with that one when I get to it.
In my cycle through the Wisdom books, though, I find myself — yet again — in the Song of Solomon. Ah, yes, the Song of Solomon. I feel very strange about it. If I were to try to explain my feelings towards it, the best word I could come up with is ‘guilty’. It’s funny to think of feeling guilty for reading the Bible. I know better. I know I shouldn’t feel guilty for it. Knowing is not feeling.
The Song of Solomon is explicitly sexual. It is graphically sexual. In our sexually repressed church culture, it feels decidedly wrong to read such an openly erotic work.
I remember once walking along Queen Street with a friend. She wanted to go into a sex shop. Rather than stand outside in the cold, I went into the store with her. It made me uncomfortable; I can’t even begin to express how uncomfortable I felt. I felt like the staff would sense who and what I was and demand that I leave. Or maybe I felt like they were going to start pointing and laughing. I don’t know. But I was certain that everybody in the place could tell I didn’t belong.
Our culture, the secular world, glorifies sex. Sex is everything and it is everywhere. You can’t walk down the street without seeing giant billboards proclaiming that if you buy this perfume (or wear these jeans or drink this brand of vodka or use this brand of friggin’ toothpaste), you will have more sex.
Our church culture, on the other hand, treats the whole topic of sexuality with the proverbial sweep-it-under-the rug mentality. Married people have sex. Unmarried people are supposed to somehow be entirely unaware of the existence of sex and sexuality. We are supposed to refrain — not just from having sex — but from being sexual creatures. We are supposed to live in this sex-absorbed, sex-crazed, sexually explicit world without any kind of knowledge that such a thing might exist. If we do become aware of sex and/or sexuality, we’re meant to act as if it didn’t have anything to do with us.
So, if I commit myself to routinely reading the Bible all the way through, then what am I to do with the Song? Should I skip it and come back if I ever get married? Should I read it, but pretend not to understand what it’s talking about? Should I steel myself for the task of reading that which is distasteful, the way I might if I were reading a newspaper article about the plight of prostitutes and drug addicts?
Really… Does anybody out there have an answer for this? How do I – a single Christian trying to balance life in a sex-obsessed world with life in a repressive church culture – read the Song of Solomon?
While I didn't leap into this strategy as is, I did adapt it and make it my own. My take on it was this: start at Genesis and read four chapters a day and pair it with four chapters from the Wisdom books (Job through Song of Solomon). It hasn't worked out exactly as planned, but I've made some good progress.
Anyways... There are two books that I've always had a hard time with. One is Revelations; the other is the Song of Solomon. Revelations scares me, so I tend not to spend much time in it. I haven't got there yet in my current strategy, so we'll deal with that one when I get to it.
In my cycle through the Wisdom books, though, I find myself — yet again — in the Song of Solomon. Ah, yes, the Song of Solomon. I feel very strange about it. If I were to try to explain my feelings towards it, the best word I could come up with is ‘guilty’. It’s funny to think of feeling guilty for reading the Bible. I know better. I know I shouldn’t feel guilty for it. Knowing is not feeling.
The Song of Solomon is explicitly sexual. It is graphically sexual. In our sexually repressed church culture, it feels decidedly wrong to read such an openly erotic work.
I remember once walking along Queen Street with a friend. She wanted to go into a sex shop. Rather than stand outside in the cold, I went into the store with her. It made me uncomfortable; I can’t even begin to express how uncomfortable I felt. I felt like the staff would sense who and what I was and demand that I leave. Or maybe I felt like they were going to start pointing and laughing. I don’t know. But I was certain that everybody in the place could tell I didn’t belong.
Our culture, the secular world, glorifies sex. Sex is everything and it is everywhere. You can’t walk down the street without seeing giant billboards proclaiming that if you buy this perfume (or wear these jeans or drink this brand of vodka or use this brand of friggin’ toothpaste), you will have more sex.
Our church culture, on the other hand, treats the whole topic of sexuality with the proverbial sweep-it-under-the rug mentality. Married people have sex. Unmarried people are supposed to somehow be entirely unaware of the existence of sex and sexuality. We are supposed to refrain — not just from having sex — but from being sexual creatures. We are supposed to live in this sex-absorbed, sex-crazed, sexually explicit world without any kind of knowledge that such a thing might exist. If we do become aware of sex and/or sexuality, we’re meant to act as if it didn’t have anything to do with us.
So, if I commit myself to routinely reading the Bible all the way through, then what am I to do with the Song? Should I skip it and come back if I ever get married? Should I read it, but pretend not to understand what it’s talking about? Should I steel myself for the task of reading that which is distasteful, the way I might if I were reading a newspaper article about the plight of prostitutes and drug addicts?
Really… Does anybody out there have an answer for this? How do I – a single Christian trying to balance life in a sex-obsessed world with life in a repressive church culture – read the Song of Solomon?
21/10/04 23:30I will start with the caveat that I'm no sex expert. Or religion expert. So, take everything I say with a grain of salt.
Sex is such a powerful force.
Religion deals with complex and important concepts, such as sex, on many levels. Some of which require age and maturity to even begin to understand.
Consequently, the Bible Stories are often expressed to youth such that the characters are almost comic book super heroes, etc. Difficult things, like "Why did my doggy die when I prayed to Jesus to save it?" are glossed over with platitudes that don't answer the question. We don't really want to acknowledge to a kid that the world is often a scary place.
Many of us never go past the grade school level of understanding of our Religion. So, the message on sex is truly dumbed down, even vilified to an extent. You just don't discuss sex with kids, except to instill the idea that it is not for them.
Sex, like food or alcohol, lends itself to abuse, since it is so physically gratifying. But unlike food or alcohol, the act of sex, especially in the days when that Song was being written, resulted in a child. We can't forget that fact - that for centuries the natural and inevitable and normal outcome of a coupling between man and woman was a child. And, the consequences for society, what with the need to provide for children, etc., far surpasses getting fat or drunk.
In that light, it's clear that sex has been dealt with very poorly through the years, again, mostly because it never gets brought out of the grade school level of instruction, be it Bible Study, or Sex Ed.
We are sexual beings, made that way on purpose. There is a message in Song of Solomon that evidently needs to be told. Otherwise, it wouldn't be in there.
It takes, perhaps, an adult outlook and perspective to read and apply Song of Solomon. I would not skip over it just because you are not married anymore than I would skip over the Wedding Feast at Caana story.
We cannot refrain from being sexual creatures. We can refrain from sexual excess or perversion or promiscuity. Which, if you are looking for a definition, a "one size fits all" definition of excess or perversion or promiscuity, I would classify it as anything done simply for your own pleasure that objectifies or depersonalizes (or otherwise damages the physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual nature of)the other person. Or being on the receiving end of all that.
But God made us, male and female he made us, and saw that it was good.
When you get to it, read it. All of it, beginning to end. Read it as the fully functioning adult person that you are, not as some little person not yet ready for 'secrets'. I think you will find it uplifting once you get past the initial surprise of sex in the Bible.
fb
4/11/04 23:25
Yes, Songs is about sex, but it's so much more than that. The author of Songs is singing the praises of his highest love on Earth - it is an ode or the highest of all love songs. Yes, he is telling his love just how much he is attracted to her, but he is also proclaiming his love. When love and sex go together, it is indeed divine. It is one of the greatest gifts given to us by the Divine.
Wyrdsister
http://wyrdworld.orangeblogs.ca/
24/11/04 22:15
It always blows people's minds when I suggest to them that if they really want to read about hot sex, to read the Song of Solomon. (Of course, it's a little easier in translations like The Message, where the flora and fauna are given a bit gentler treatment...) But yeah - it's all there.
I, too, understand SoS as an ideal, and a reward for living the kind of life, and loving another human being, as God would have me love them. It's not just about sex - it's about the ultimate plan for physical and emotional connection between two human beings. And for anyone who's tried it both ways, they know - engaging the heart and mind before engaging the genitals is the best way to maximize physical pleasure.
I think your dichotomy between the world and the lion's share of the church is a completely valid one - the 12-step recovery text describes it this way: "One school would allow man no flavor for his fare and the other would have us all on a straight pepper diet." But in the end, I think both those extremes are humanity's answer...and the Song of Solomon is God's answer.
Blessings on your reading journey.
» Post a Comment