Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality (32 page)

Within the church in which I grew up, virtually every family I knew suffered the consequences of religious choices as devastating as my grandmother’s. Were they told that the unwed pregnancies, affairs, divorces, sexual abuse and child abuse were often related to their religion, they would be offended. Guilt and shame blind entire communities to the devastating effects religion has on families and relationships.

The successful adaptation and evolution of our species is predicated on mating and bonding strategies going back hundreds of thousands of years. Religion throws a metaphorical monkey wrench into the works, then condemns us for behaving as normal human beings.

159
“What is Going on with the Pastors in America?” by Dr. Richard J. Krejcir, Schaeffer Institute. Available online at
http://www.intothyword.org/apps/articles/default.asp?articleid=36562
.

160
Cullen, L. “Pastors’ Wives Come Together,” Time Magazine, 29 March 2007. Available online at
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1604902,00.html
.

161
Sargant, W. (1957),
Battle for the mind: a physiology of conversion and brainwashing
. Sargent had a somewhat controversial life and career, but this book still stands as one of the most interesting analysis of religious conversion phenomenon.

162
“US Abstinence Only Programs Do Not Work, New Study Shows,” available online at
http://www.guttmacher.org/media/inthenews/2007/04/18/index.html
.

163
Strayhorn, J.M., and Strayhorn, J.C. (2009). “Religiosity and teen birth rate in the United States.”
Reproductive Health
, 2009, 6:14.

If we don’t want our biology to rule us, we must respect and acknowledge our biological leash. Ignoring or denying sexual urges and drives leads to disappointment and unhappiness. The religious view of monogamy is biologically irrelevant and often destructive. More marriages will last longer with more happiness by eliminating religious ideas of marriage, fidelity and monogamy and adopting ideas and behaviors that meet the real human needs in a relationship.

In this section I want to explore a framework for sex and sexuality. The information may help you make more informed and rational choices about who you are as a sexual being and how you want to relate to others. It may challenge your training and lead you to discover new ideas. You may decide to try new behaviors involving yourself or your partner. I am not advocating any particular course of action, lifestyle or marriage choice. I am advocating clear-headed, non-supernatural thinking in our relationship choices. My goal is to help you to build a more rational and less religiously-influenced sex life.

What makes people convert to the religion of their mate? What is the pattern that sometimes traps even atheists and other non-religious people?

Getting involved with a religious person will sooner or later lead you to a guilt wall. You can have a lot of fun with guilt-ridden Catholics or Mormons, but the fun will come to an abrupt halt when their Jesus steps in – and he will. I call it the “Jesus trap,” and millions of people have been suckered into it. When I give talks on the Jesus trap and ask how many have seen it in friends or family, about one third of the audience raises their hand.

It goes like this. Boy meets religious girl.
¹⁶⁴
Infatuation and NRE
¹⁶⁵
often overcome religious inhibitions, and sex begins. Because she has let go of her religious inhibitions, she can really enjoy herself. As long as the NRE remains strong, the sex will remain great.

Once the NRE wanes or an outside event opens the door, like someone at church finding out she is having sex, she will hit the guilt wall. At this point, she will insist on a “serious talk.” During the talk, she will essentially say, “I can’t continue this and stay faithful to my Jesus. Convert to my religion and we can go back to having fun again.” If the man doesn’t convert, the relationship may end.

If the man does convert, the next conversation will be, “I appreciate your converting, but I can’t continue doing this unless we are married. Marry me and we can go back to having lots of fun.” After marriage, the fun may resume for a while.

Within a few years, maybe just months, guilt over premarital sex or childhood training often creeps back in and the fun dies. You are now converted to a religion you never dreamed you would be in and married to a person who acts nothing like she did when you first met. Sexual ideas and behaviors that both of you enjoyed are now thought to be dirty or wrong. She loved oral or anal sex before, now it makes her feel guilty. She enjoyed role-playing and a porn film occasionally, now she says she cannot be a good mother and Sunday School teacher and still do those things.

You are in the Jesus trap. Getting out will be difficult and painful. Your whole life is now outlined by her religious agenda, and sex is not a very important part of it. When kids come along, she will begin infecting them with her religious sexual guilt. Your objections will mean nothing
because the religion has activated the child infection program. The pattern is the same whether the religious mate is male or female, Baptist, Muslim or Catholic. You can try rational discussion, but once the religious program has been activated, reason is almost impossible.

This pattern is remarkably the same from person to person. Here is an example from a very successful scientist and businessman. Compare his experience to the pattern I described above.

I was an atheist my whole life until I met this incredible woman in graduate school. I was 24 and she was 22. She was smart, intelligent and very sexy. We dated a few weeks. I learned that she was Mormon, but I knew nothing about Mormons so I ignored it. The sex was great, and we seemed to have so much in common. After a few months, she started talking about her Mormon beliefs and asking me to come with her to some services. I went along for the ride. At first, Mormonism looked as crazy as any other religion. But I really liked this woman and soon realized that I wasn’t going to get anywhere with her unless I took Mormonism seriously. I dove in and didn’t come up for air for 22 years
.

In retrospect, it is hard to believe I was so easily sucked in, but I was in love. My two best friends even came to me and said, ‘Have you lost your mind? You are acting like a religious fanatic.’ I was offended by their comments. Within months, I had ended most of my old friendships and moved toward developing new relationships in the church
.

Within a year, I had become a Mormon and we got married. I became very serious about it and rose to some very important positions. I taught a lot and studied constantly. We had five children, which was far more than I ever dreamed of having, but she was insistent that it was our duty to be fruitful. She would have had more if I had not simply refused
.

I took my role as the spiritual head of the family very seriously. Twenty-two years later, I woke up early one morning in a cold sweat. I picked up the Book of Mormon and started reading from cover to cover as if I had never read it before. Then I picked up the Bible and did the same thing. This took me several weeks. The
whole time I had a notebook by my side and I took notes on things that simply did not make sense
.

In the end, I had a couple of notebooks full of contradictions and ideas that I realized were totally crazy. I began asking myself, “What enticed me into this religion? How did I totally ignore reason and common sense to believe this stuff? I have a master’s degree in science for God’s sake.”

I was embarrassed and angry. I soon dropped my church work and made excuses to get out of teaching. I finally had to tell my wife that I had come to my senses. That night was the end of our marriage. She told me that she married a Mormon and would not stay married to a man who was not Mormon. We were soon divorced
.

I look back and see how easily I was duped into one of the most insane religions on the planet – and I was an atheist! It pains me that I helped brainwash five innocent children into that cult. Needless to say, it has put a strain on my relationships with my children, but I am happy to report that two of them have left the church. The other three are even more religious than their mother
.

Why does the Jesus trap work so often? As we discussed in
Chapter 17
, during NRE the rational immune system is compromised. A person’s emotional stability is off balance, and the pleasure hormones strongly affect perception and decision-making. Religion simply hops right into the non-infected person’s mind, and conversion just seems like the right thing to do for someone you love.

The behavior is similar to the effect of the hairworm, a parasite that infects the brain of grasshoppers. Once inside the brain, it induces the grasshopper to jump into water so the parasite can exit the grasshopper and find a mate. The grasshopper dies. The parasite goes on to mate and have offspring. Many parasites and viruses are capable of taking over and controlling hosts so the parasite can reproduce. Religion acts much like the hairworm, taking control of the mind and directing the person to do whatever is necessary to infect new minds.

Just as we have a biological immune system that keeps pathogens out, critical thinking helps keep irrational ideas out of our heads. If one person
is deeply infected with religion and the other person is sufficiently infatuated, religion is able to jump from one brain to the next and infect a new person. Many a Baptist has converted to Catholicism, and many a Hindu has converted to Islam as a result of this infection pattern.

While the pattern occasionally results in the woman converting, the fact that men start off less religious and women more so favors the conversion of the man. Rich Lyons, a former Pentecostal minister, tells how his denomination trained people in “friendship dating.”
¹⁶⁶
The object was to date a person for the purpose of introducing him or her to the Pentecostal church, not necessarily for marriage or a relationship. In Lyons’ view, it was unquestionably manipulative and designed to take advantage of natural infatuations, leading the target into religion using the potential promise of relationship. He saw many people join and stay in the church even though the relationship did not last. This is the Jesus trap in action.

If you are involved in a potentially committed relationship with a religious person, open and detailed discussion of values and beliefs is critically important. The very act of discussing this will quickly reveal important differences, especially with respect to raising children. Honest discussion of these differences can be very uncomfortable and even threatening to the relationship, but once you are married, it is too late for rational discussion and decision making. Here is why.

If you choose to marry a religious person, the negotiation around religious behavior and childrearing practices will be difficult. If you can agree to raise the children in a religiously neutral manner, it is commendable, but unlikely to happen. When children actually come along, many agreements go out the window and the religious program kicks in. The religious spouse infects the children as strongly and quickly as possible as do religious grandparents and other family members. The non-religious parent is often powerless. If you choose to remind your spouse of the agreement, the response will often be anger and a myriad excuses as to why the agreement does not apply. Once the religious program fires off, it is almost impossible to get in the way or slow it down.

This pattern holds for all but the most liberal religions. If you marry an Episcopalian or Unitarian, it probably won’t be a problem. But keep in mind, when you marry someone, you also marry his or her religious parents and relatives. Even if your spouse is not religious, their family may be. She may have a difficult time telling her parents that they cannot take the children to their Evangelical Sunday School. Or the parents may offer to pay for tuition at a private religious school. Religious relatives can offer many temptations and inducements to infect grandchildren with religion. The fact that you are not bringing your children up religious makes them want to step in and do it for you.

The religiously infected person is not generally conscious of the strategy as it plays out. Their own hormones and biology (NRE) simply overwhelm religious guilt for the moment. They may experience guilt after the sex, but they can justify their behavior and reduce the cognitive dissonance in two ways:

1. Ask forgiveness from their Jesus now or promise to ask for it later after they have converted their lover to Jesus.
   
2. Work harder to convert their lover. God may overlook a little sexual indiscretion if it means a new soul for Jesus in the long run.
   

These justifications allow the religious person to engage in extremely uninhibited sex. Many victims of this strategy say that initial sex with the religiously infected person felt like a dam broke. One survey respondent wrote:

She was wild. I have had my share of lovers but never had anyone that fun and creative in bed. Of course, that promptly died when I told her I didn’t care if she was religious – I was never going to become a Christian and if she kept pressing me, I was going to break it off
.

Religious persons are generally very interested in sex just like any normal person – and have an imagination and the energy for it. When constrained by the guilt cycle, however, they keep it under wraps. When guilt is temporarily removed, they can go to the other extreme. Many can remain in the uninhibited phase for weeks – months at most – then a wave of guilt overtakes them.