Christian Fundamentalism, Sex and Me: Part Three - Moving On

    

      Paulo Coelho, I believe, once advised, 'Take one step towards life and it will take two steps towards you.' In the time since the events and experiences related in Parts 1 and  2 of this blog post, I have been tentatively trying to do just that. I would not be telling the truth if I were to say that the way forward has been easy. It has not. Many ex-fundamentalists will tell you the same - that leaving CF is a long and painful process. After all, many of those on this journey are recovering from years of indoctrination. Am I fully recovered? Hell, no! But I am further on the road than I was. It's a step by step process for me but I do believe in the truth of the above statement as the more I have trusted to life the more I have discovered that it does come to my aid. The answers are out there - and within us. We just have to have the courage and determination to discover them.

      When I reflect on the origins of all the negativity about sex in our Western culture, I have to conclude that, in the main, it comes from religion, particularly Christianity, and that the antagonism is strongest where that religion is most extreme. Yet sex is such an essential part of who we are; it makes us who we are; it's what keeps the world evolving.
Without it there would be no

life. The cosmos would be a bleak and barren place.
Sex was there at the origin of all life, billions of years before religion or the church. In fact, without sex there would be no religion and no church! Of course, we have to be responsible for how we behave sexually - perhaps even more so the more liberal the societies in which we live - but for the church over the centuries to have tried to suppress and control sex as it has done has created enormous distortions in how we value sex today both in our personal lives and as a society as a whole. I often wonder if the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 70s would have ever occurred had it not been for the preceding centuries of suppression by the church.

     I've been told by some in the church that the Devil is the father of all lies and that my current circumstances result from the Devil playing with my mind. If that were the case then it is a sobering thought to consider that when I look back over those early years it was the church, directly and via my parents, (however well meaning their intentions) who filled my head with such nonsense! 

     I have moved on a long way since those  early adult years of confusion and torment. Needless to say, much of what I believed then I now no longer believe. However, it has taken time for me to disengage from the hard wiring of the past. I've found it difficult sometimes to develop my own ideas about sex and at the same time to be able to let go, to rid myself of the ingrained teaching of my youth. Where this has been the case, it has been imperative to commit to the rationale of my newly worked out perspectives and to the internal witness of my spirit despite how uncomfortable I may have continued to feel about leaving behind those older, entrenched positions. This is what de-programming oneself is like.

     Along the way I have sometimes arrived at granite walls. Sheer, unyielding, impenetrable forces of solid rock. There's nothing worse than this kind of thing. Desperation fills the heart. I want to press on; I want to clear my emotional blockages; I want to experience fuller freedom but, as Churchill once proudly encouraged - we 'never surrender!' When the way seems well and truly blocked that's when I have learned to simply remain where I am and to wait. 'Acceptance' is key here. Acceptance that for the time being I can no longer progress. Rather than being proactive I have found it best to become passive and in so doing to allow space to emerge between myself and the wall, a space in which I can become the observer. Very often when we allow space or stillness to prevail life can speak to us and through this insights and solutions can emerge.  

     I fought those early phobias and to some extent continue to do so. If I had given in to them I would never be where I am now in a loving, stable and happy marriage - and have been so for nearly 30 years - with a wife whom I treasure above all things and two wonderful sons. Those fears don't dominate my life as they used to – yet, if I'm totally honest, I still sense some vestige of their influence in the form of occasional low-key lurking guilt or undesired inhibition. The healing takes time. The difference now is that I recognise those tell-tale apprehensions for what they are - the remnants of a needless defence strategy, designed to protect me from that which I now no longer require any such protection. I am free, I just have to keep telling those parts of me where the dogma lingers. Their control is slipping as I endeavour to take back the reins. As I continue to improve my self awareness through introspective thought, creative therapeutic exercises and enjoying the freedom to write about my experiences, I surmise that those fears which still niggle and persist will eventually diminish into a distant memory of how I used to be. 

     Sex is a wonderful and vitally integral part of who we are as human beings living in an ever increasingly incredible universe. We have been bullied and terrorised by the church for centuries to see it only as being good in a very confined and particular way and anything outside the church's mandate is considered to be highly suspect. The church denies our human capacity to make informed and intelligent choices for our lives where sex is concerned, instead preferring to regard any such decision making where the confines of marriage are not involved as giving in to temptation and thereby inevitably being influenced by malevolent forces. That some people make mistakes and get it wrong with sex does not mean, therefore, that we are all bound to do so if we trust our own judgement, yet listening to some sermons it would seem that without the church's take on things we are all doomed to end up making such a mess of our lives if we enjoy sex and find meaning and fulfilment through it without it being done God's (the church's) way.

      I seek now to be so much more free in formulating my own values and opinions about sex, though I have to keep a careful check on how my mind works. Even now I have to take care to identify and set aside the sometimes obvious yet often subtle influences of old prejudices and susceptibilities as I endeavour to work out my own responses to particular and more general questions relating to sex.

     Letting go of old ways of being, of formulated reactions to specific things; taking care to be sympathetic with oneself and to nurture the tenderness within takes time and gentle patience. As I said earlier, really leaving CF is a long and painful process but by loving and accepting ourselves for who we are allows us to release what we no longer need to hold on to. Sex can be a beautiful part of who we are. We should be free to cherish that fact without any sense of guilt or negativity.