THE PROBLEMS WE HAVE WITH SEX

    In J. Harold Ellens’ book, Sex In The Bible - A New Consideration, we read,

    “It has always been easy for people devoted to any Sacred Scripture to interpret its meanings and metaphors in erroneous ways not intended by the original writers and readers. Usually this misinterpretation of scriptures arises out of some human need to use the authority of Sacred Scriptures to support a private or institutional, political or religious idea, which the scriptures did not originally intend but for which we would like to assert an authoritative claim. This, for example, is what has happened in regard to sex in the Bible. For the last 20 centuries of Christian history, at least, there has been a tendency in Western society and culture to moralize human sexuality in an exaggerated way. At the same time, it has been our tendency to sexualize morality in a manner that has made it virtually the only issue of morality of which our society is aware.

    “This has resulted in two nearly humorous enigmas. First, it has split off our real social conduct from our official creed. While the society and culture make believe that we hold some norm of sexual decorum, most of the society constantly violates that norm and standard. Alfred Kinsey’s published research, the work of Masters and Johnson, and other similar studies, such as The Hite Report, indicate that approximately three-fourths of both men and women in America violate the official standards for sexual behavior in our society. Our super-moralization of sexuality has made us ethical and social schizophrenics, so to speak.”