Bell - Sex God: exploring the endless connections between sexuality and spirituality

INTRODUCTION
THIS IS REALLY ABOUT THAT

Once there were two brothers.

Jacob had smooth skin. But his older brother, Esau, was a hairy man.

And not only was Esau follicly well-endowed, he loved to be outdoors. He was a skillful hunterpicture Ted Nugent in sandals. His smooth-skinned brother? Jacob stayed inside and cooked and hung out with their mother.

You can smell the conflict coming.

Which it does. Their father, Isaac, was dying, and the custom in the ancient Near East at that time was for the father to give his blessing to his firstborn son before he passed away. This was a symbolic gesture loaded with significance. Isaac sends Esau out to kill an animal they can eat as part of the blessing ceremony. But Jacob, at his mothers prodding, covers himself in goat skins and goes to his ailing blind father, pretending to be Esau. When Isaac hears him, he asks who it is, and Jacob responds, I am Esau your firstborn.

Jacob insists hes someone else.

Isaac falls for the deception and gives Jacob the blessing he intended to give Esau. Jacobs lie is a serious offense against the family, against Isaac, and ultimately against Esau. And when Esau finds out, hes furious and makes it clear that when their father dies, he is going to kill Jacob.

Which Jacob takes as a subtle hint that its time to leave town.

So Jacob is on the move, running for his life, when he stops to sleep for the night. The Bible describes the spot where he rests as a certain place.

What God does here is astounding. People at that time believed the gods resided in religious places, places where gods are expected to betemples and holy sites and shrines and altars. But this God is different.

This God appears at rest areas.
This God speaks to people at certain places along the way.
This God doesnt need temples and holy sites and rituals.
This God will speak to anybody, anywhere, anytime.

Jacob then takes a stone and sets it up as a pillar to mark the spot, making a vow: If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear so that I return safely to my fathers household, then the Lord will be my God.

Years pass. Jacob marries, starts a family, and eventually reconciles with Esau. He stops pretending to be someone hes not. And then one day he returns to the spot where he made his vow to God. The book of Genesis says, He built an altar, and he called the place El Bethel, because it was there that God revealed himself to him when he was fleeing from his brother.

Bet is the Hebrew word for house. El is one of the names for God. Bethel, the House of God.

Imagine youre one of Jacobs kids: you have just arrived in this new land, and theres a stone pillar there that your dad cant stop talking about. Hes telling anyone who will listen this story about something that happened to him years ago, and hes stacking rocks on top of rocks. Hes stacking them so high, he turns the whole thing into an altar. And he keeps talking about a vow he made to God, and you have no idea what the point of this is. It seems a bit much. And then he starts calling this pile of rocks the House of God.

What if you asked, Dad, whats the big deal? Theyre just rocks.

I imagine Jacob would respond, Yes, youre right, theyre rocks, but theyre more than rocks. You have to understand, I was on the run and thought my brother was going to kill me. My life was over. And God saved me. And God brought me to a new home. And I had food to eat and a place to sleep and eventually God gave me a family. These arent just rocks. These are a symbol of life for me. God came through for me.

Theyre rocks, but theyre more than rocks.

We do this all the time.

If we were to go through your garage or storage shelves or sock drawer, I guarantee we would find the strangest things. I have a trophy from when I was fourteen. The little man on the top fell off sometime in the 90s, the lettering that says what its for has faded, and the years have revealed that, shockingly, that isnt real marble. But Ive kept it. I havent thrown it away because its more than a trophy to me. That trophy is the first time I actually won something on my own. It represents a certain period of my life and the struggles of being fourteen and finding my identity and wondering if Id ever be good at anything.

Its a trophy, but its more than a trophy.

Jewelry, pictures, sculptures made by children, antiques that have been in the family for years, art projects, souvenirs, velvet paintingswe hold on to them because they point beyond themselves. If we were to ask you about a certain picture and why you have it displayed in such a prominent place in your home or office or why you carry it in your purse or wallet everywhere you go, youd probably respond by talking about the people in the picture, where it was taken, when it was taken. But that would only be the start. Those relationships and that place and that time are all about something else, something more. If we kept exploring, youd probably end up using words like trust and love and belonging and commitment and celebration.

So its a picture, but its more than a picture.

This physical thingthis picture, trophy, artifact, giftis actually about that relationship, that truth, that reality, that moment in time.

This is actually about that.

Whether its what we do with our energies
or how we feel about our bodies
or wanting to have the control in relationships
or trying to recover from heartbreak
or dealing with our ferocious appetites
or the difficulty of communicating clearly with those we love
or longing for something or someone better,
much of life is in some way connected with our sexuality.

And when we begin to sort through all of the issues surrounding our sexuality, we quickly end up in the spiritual,

because this
is always about that.

And so this guy always has a girlfriend, and it has become a joke among his family and friends that the day he loses one girlfriend, he finds anotherthey actually use the phrase trade her in behind his backwhich raises the question, Why does he need to have a girl? What is his real need, the one that drives him to need a girl? And if we could get at that, would he not need a girl so much?

And shes got a coldness in her heart toward her husband, but its really about something that happened years before she even met him.

And hes got this thing he does, and he keeps telling her that all guys are like this, and she wants to trust him, but shes dying to know if all guys really are like him, because its getting a little weird.

And shes single and fine with it but still has this sense that shes a sexual being, and shes trying to figure out how to reconcile this because her married friends keep trying to set her up with a nice guy they know, which gives her the feeling that her friends think she is somehow incomplete because she isnt married.

And they keep having these arguments about things that are so trivial its embarrassing. Yesterday they got into it over how the cars should be parked, and the day before it had something to do with the phone bill, and before that it was about whose turn it was to take the dog out, and now its happening againtheyre in the kitchen debating how a tomato should be properly sliced. Theyve been living together now for several years, and they would say its been great, but theyre at this point in the relationship where issues like trust and commitment and future and kids and marriage are starting to linger in their minds and hearts, and underneath it all they both have this question: Are you the one? But neither of them has ever actually voiced it, and both of them experienced their parents divorcing at a young age, so anytime the subject of marriage comes up, things get confusing and tense very quickly, and so theyre just at this moment realizing that this argument really has nothing to do with how to slice a tomato.