When Is Sex Too Much Sex?

[Valin]

Ricochet: Denise McAllister

2/23/13

 

A friend and I went out for dinner the other night, and she asked what I was working on these days, so I told her about a story I was thinking about writing. I explained the complexity of the characters and the philosophical themes that wove their way through the plot. She listened dutifully, sipping on her wine and occasionally glancing around the restaurant. After several minutes, she started shaking her head. I stopped talking and braced for a critique. What I got was advice.

 

“No, no, don’t write that. I mean, it’s fine, but what you need to write about is sex. Raw, powerful, painful, amazing sex. Erotica is hot now.”

 

(Snip)

 

But maybe I’m over-thinking all this sex stuff. Maybe it really is just about sex; just about women having fun and empowering themselves. Maybe I shouldn’t judge. Christian women are reading erotica and don’t seem to care, so who am I to criticize? I certainly don’t hear men complaining about it. I get the feeling some of them are secretly enjoying it. Maybe I should just lighten up. Let girls be girls.

 

After all, where would I draw the line on sex in the media anyway? It’s been on television and in the movies for years now. Romance novels abound. Cable is like watching soft porn. What difference does it make that a red room of pain is now involved and that bondage and fear have replaced gentle caresses and shy kisses? Is there a breaking point in society? When is sex too much sex?

[Valin]

Benedict and the Rabbi

A Christian pope on the Hebrew Bible.

MEIR Y. SOLOVEICHIK

Mar 4, 2013

 

After Pope Benedict XVI’s surprising announcement that he would resign from the papacy, leading adherents of diverse faiths immediately began to evaluate his legacy. Catholic theologians have emphasized the enduring import of the thought of the man who spent most of his life as the theologian Joseph Ratzinger. Jewish leaders, meanwhile, have by and large celebrated the pope’s statements against anti-Semitism, promotion of interfaith amity, and the further improvement of Vatican-Israel relations. Yet there is one fascinating aspect of Benedict’s legacy that neither side has noted, in which philosophy and interfaith engagement are joined: that he began and ended his papacy by celebrating the Hebraic, traditional Jewish understanding of love and marriage.

 

nown as John Paul II’s doctrinal enforcer who inveighed against a modern “dictatorship of relativism” at his predecessor’s funeral, it was expected that his publications as pope would cultivate further controversy. Many were therefore surprised when Benedict began his papacy by issuing the encyclical Deus Caritas Est (God Is Love), an examination of the biblical notion of erotic love. In this encyclical, Benedict began by noting that much of religious thought tends to draw a sharp distinction between eros, the “love between man and woman which is neither planned nor willed, but somehow imposes itself upon human beings,” and agape, the term taken to mean spiritual, benevolent, generous love. Benedict notes that some Christian thinkers have rejected eros as selfish and physical, and that Christianity in the past has been criticized as having been opposed to the body; he admits that “it is quite true that tendencies of this sort have always existed” in Christian thought. What can cure Christianity of this mistake, he shows, is a deeper study of the Hebrew Bible’s description of love. The Hebrew Bible, while firmly opposing pagan sexual practices, nevertheless celebrates man’s and woman’s desire for each other as divinely designed. To engage in utter rejection of eros would be to divide the physical and spiritual, the body and soul, which only together constitute the essential identity of human beings:

 

(Snip)

 

Under this understanding, eros and agape are not opposites; rather, in marriage, they complement each other, with eros serving as the foundation for agape. In seeking a term that implies the sanctification and elevation of the erotic impulse, the pope emphasized a Hebrew word for love, ahavah, at the heart of a biblical book. “How,” Benedict asks, “might love be experienced so that it can fully realize its human and divine promise? Here we can find a first, important indication in the Song of Songs, an Old Testament book well known to the mystics.” In this book, a searching lover finally finds his beloved, and discovers, in Benedict’s reading, the importance of love beyond one’s self. The ideal of ahavah, for Jewish scripture, is marriage, in which man and woman’s natural urge for each other become sanctified not by denying their natures but by directing their love toward each other. Here, Benedict turns to the first story in the Hebrew Bible.

 

(Snip)

[pollyannaish]

I don't get it. The 50 shades book wreaks of abuse, not love. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer connection, mystery and passion to whips and chains. Really? That's erotic? Erotic is the way Cary Grant's character looks at Debra Kerr's character in the last scene of an Affair to Remember or the way that Spencer Tracy and Kathryn Hepburn talk to each other in Guess Who's Coming To Dinner. And the way Laura and Rob Petrie flirt in the Dick Van Dyke Show.

 

This erotica fetish has always seemed to me to be nothing more than a frantic cheap and counterfiet pursuit by people who are unbelievably emotionally scarred in an attempt to feel and experience real love and connection. And it tends to escalate in dangerous ways.

 

Why are we foisting this brokeness on the next generation? I have always believed that we were more likely to be Brave New World than 1984. I was wrong--it appears we are headed for both.

[pollyannaish]

I should also add that Benedict's perspective is refreshing and dead on. I've appreciated his work.

[Valin]

I don't get it. The 50 shades book wreaks of abuse, not love. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer connection, mystery and passion to whips and chains. Really? That's erotic? Erotic is the way Cary Grant's character looks at Debra Kerr's character in the last scene of an Affair to Remember or the way that Spencer Tracy and Kathryn Hepburn talk to each other in Guess Who's Coming To Dinner. And the way Laura and Rob Petrie flirt in the Dick Van Dyke Show.

 

This erotica fetish has always seemed to me to be nothing more than a frantic cheap and counterfiet pursuit by people who are unbelievably emotionally scarred in an attempt to feel and experience real love and connection. And it tends to escalate in dangerous ways.

 

Why are we foisting this brokeness on the next generation? I have always believed that we were more likely to be Brave New World than 1984. I was wrong--it appears we are headed for both.

 

You're not just hip and with it Lady! And that a good thing.

We as a society are continuing to Define Deviancy Down

[SrWoodchuck]

@Valin

We as a society are continuing to Define Deviancy Down

 

After the acceptance of the deviancy....and the altering of our moral code...we are living in the a new reality. The Obama Legacy has put us in the position of accepting the new deviant reality [in sex, race relations, politics & social behavior] or rejecting it, and becoming out of touch with the path of his New Society. I'd rather remain "twisted" and unchanged from the old reality.