Is There Room for God in the Bedroom?
Graphic by Emma Baynes
God in the bedroom? The very phrase sounds blasphemous. Excluding the “oh my gods” exchanged in whispers or not-so-whispers, we generally don’t bring up religion in sex.
Religion, famously, promotes sexual conservatism. Many faiths, if not all, condemn premarital/extramarital sex. The reasoning being, if you’re gonna have sex then you’re gonna have a baby and you better be having that baby in wedlock babe or it’s seven levels of hellfire for you - xoxo G-o-d.
Living and being horny in the South brought a lot of shame to my sexual life. Although I did not grow up with a bible by my bedside, I sought spirituality out. I got burned by churches and a few bigoted people, but I still embraced a higher power.
It wasn’t until my final year of college that I heard, for the first time, that religion can embrace sexuality. I didn’t hear this in a pew or a classroom, but on a podcast.
Abby Benson, co-host of Cliterally, retold a story about a theology professor, “I guess [a] student had missed a few classes so my professor reached out to her. She responded saying that there was no need to read the required textbooks or to really attend class anymore because she saw way more of God in having intimate time with her lover than she ever had in a classroom. And he responded, ‘Well of course you did.’
He knew what I know now: God is in the intimate and the sexual and the holy and new.”
I never saw sex as evidence of God, but rather, a secret to be kept. The shameful act (I’m not married!) was meant for the dark, far away from “His” judging eyes.
What Abby described here was a pure light. A guiltless love.
I guess this is my first time publicly announcing that yes, I, little miss religiously ambiguous, love God! You lose me at the weird rules and the image of God as some bearded white guy in the clouds, though. Literally what is that about.
In So Sad Today, author Melissa Broder says, "If we can define god as a static entity using our human mind alone, it probably isn't that rad of a god." If you, on the other hand, prefer to picture god in a digestible way, power to you! That just doesn’t work for me, though.
That doesn’t cut it for Abby either. I got to talk to Abby about god and sex. She came at me with guns blazing:
“A God I can make sense of is not a God who deserves me. The best way I can describe God is in the eyes of everyday feelings.
Maybe God is in a one night stand… the first taste of a green apple... being stuck in traffic... or your 278th kiss with someone.
Maybe God is being late to class because you needed that extra five minutes of sleep. Maybe God is waking up at all. Maybe God is sweaty palms before a first date... the smell of burnt popcorn that resides in the house for a little too long... the floor creaking early in the morning even when you are trying to be quiet.
Maybe God is doing something scary. Maybe God is forgiveness... the way you look at your mom when she is grieving the loss of her dad... or the first time someone tells you they love you, and they mean it.
Maybe God is fucking. Maybe God is making love.
Maybe God just is. Maybe She moves when we move and breathes when we breathe. Maybe She sighs when we sigh and cries when we cry. Maybe She is born when we are born and dies when we die. Maybe all we are is a mirror to God. Maybe it is all we can hope to be.”
I’m not even going to try to follow that up. I asked Abby about her using female pronouns for God, though. She explained that she believes both female and male pronouns are incorrect for God, “I think gender cannot exist with god. It’s a lie we’ve been taught by the patriarchy. As long as female pronouns are still unfathomable for God, I’m going to continue to use them until it’s unfathomable for us to use male pronouns for God.”
Condemning joy in sex is another tool used to control women, she goes on to say, “Female empowerment is the church’s competition.”
The female orgasm is the church’s competition. LGBTQ+ empowerment is the church’s competition. The bedroom is the church’s competition.
“To act as though God cannot be in the bedroom is to deny the sexual beings God created us to be. The bed is holy ground. There is a holiness in appreciating bodies. To stand before yourself, or another, and honor God through honoring yourself is a rather holy notion. It is this empowerment that I think the church is afraid of,” Abby says.