The Naked Journal
Thoughts, musings, and meanings behind NakedPastor Art.
The Naked Journal
Love, Desire, and Consent: Rethinking Purity Culture Narratives
You Can Never Say No I hope this isn’t too triggering for some of you. But I bet it might be because this theology is so prevalent in the church. It is in society too where men just think it is their right to take a woman’s body. Religion and purity culture takes this patriarchal, male-dominant idea to a whole new level by weaponizing scripture, theology, and spiritual authority to govern and afflict women. (Download a digital copy of this cartoon by clicking on the image or HERE.) This man is in for an important lesson. And it is this: This woman has autonomy over her body, she knows it, and she won’t surrender it. I’ll be honest with you guys. I grew up with this theology that our bodies are not our own. But the thing is, I never saw this… ever… in all my decades in the church and in the ministry… I never saw this used against men. It was always used against women. Basically, it is used to pressure and even force wives to have sex when they didn’t want to. And we all know what sex without consent is. I learned this lesson very early in our marriage. But the lesson wasn’t I had to resentfully wait until Lisa wanted it. It’s deeper and more important than that. What I learned was there is context that we both need to work on. Context like trust, vulnerability, health, mood, communication, connection, intimacy, flirting and wooing, knowledge, practice, experimenting, learning, discovering. All that and more! Sure, there were plenty of what we called quickies. But they too happened against the backdrop of love and all the context I mentioned above. Never a demand. Never a requirement.Never nonconsensual. Drawn together by love and desire is where it’s at. This takes work.My observation: Too many men aren’t willing to do the work. But like most good work, it bears good fruit, and fruit that will last. I know!
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Can You Love Each Other More Than God?
Lisa and I met at a Pentecostal Bible College. We fell madly in love. I was 20 and she was 18. Within a couple of weeks we knew we’d get married. (Click on image or HERE for a digital download!) We found our soul mate. I don’t know if there is such a thing or if it’s necessary. My ideas of romantic relationships and marriage has opened up a lot. So I want to tell you this is my story. Our story. We fell hard for each other. It was magical. Is magical. And the love is very deep and very strong. I believe romantic love is a part of the big “true love”. Not something separate. But I also believe romantic love is a fascinating and complex mix of this true love, but also psychology, projection, fantasy, desire, lust, eroticism, sexuality, intimacy, passion, friendship and polarity, and so much more. I believe that when I found Lisa, I had found the perfect embodiment of my deepest desire, my anima… my female aspect… in real life. And the opposite is true for Lisa with me. How often does this happen? Not very, I don’t think. But how did the Purity Culture we found ourselves in react to it? Yes, I received warnings that I shouldn’t love her more than I loved God. That God is a jealous God and will not be displaced by anyone! I needed to be careful not to allow my love for Lisa dissuade or distract me from my love for Jesus. I needed to make sure I spent at least as much time with the Lord as I did with Lisa. I need to beg God to help me tame my passion and carnality around Lisa. We needed to repent because we love each other too hard. And so on. I didn’t obey. Because, somehow, our passionate love for each other felt a part of the whole of love. It didn’t feel separate or wrong, but part and parcel of the union of all things. We felt that we were, and still are, participating in the bigger picture of universal love, or, as some call it, divine love. Because with love there is no competition or domination. All belongs.
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Are You Ashamed of Your Body and Sex?
There are many ways purity culture can affect your sex life, and one of the most damaging is how it ingrains shame around our bodies and sexuality. 1. The first story in the Bible teaches us that being naked is shameful. When Adam and Eve sinned, they became aware of their nakedness and were ashamed. I was always taught that being naked was a source of embarrassment. How many of us have had dreams where we are naked in a room of people? It’s humiliating. At this point, it isn’t even necessarily about our bodies, but just that we are naked, because just being naked is bad.2. This is further complicated by our culture’s obsession with the shape of our bodies. We are blasted with images of our culture’s idea of a perfect body. If my body doesn’t conform to my culture’s ideal of what a perfect body is, then I’m going to feel embarrassed by it. This dynamic has an enormous impact on our confidence when it comes to getting naked with the one we love and are having sex with. Even in the presence of someone who loves us and who wants to be sexually intimate with us, we are embarrassed that our bodies don’t fit with what we think they desire. We hide ourselves and our bodies from the gaze of our lovers so as not to disappoint them and embarrass ourselves even further.3. Purity Culture has also taught us that sex is dirty, that it is a sinful manifestation of our carnal nature. I was taught that sex didn’t begin until after the Fall, meaning that it was inevitably an expression of our fallenness. We learn that to lose ourselves in sexual passion is an unholy fleshly act. It is a demonstration of our body’s sinful urges, an indication of lust, and a lesser aspect of being human. Holiness and sex can’t be imagined together. Sex is an aberration. It’s something that we do to procreate, not something we do for pleasure, intimacy, and connection alone.Doing it from under the covers and in the light would be a brazen flaunting of lasciviousness and a brazen rejection of our spiritual nature.When in fact it is an embracing of our humanness and our healthy desire to connect with another in a most intimate and vulnerable way.
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5 Ways Religious Trauma Can Affect Your Sexuality (and how to heal)
Many people who attended church for a long time suffer from Religious Trauma. It’s becoming more visible to more and more people as more of us are talking more openly about it. Religious Trauma is often wound up with Purity Culture, which can have a disastrous affect on our attitudes about sex. People who are survivors of Religious Trauma and Purity Culture often struggle to acquire healthy attitudes about sex and feel comfortable with their sex lives. Add to that... if a person suffers these things plus spiritual abuse, there's a lot of healing that needs to happen because these all affect their lives at a deep and fundamental level, including sexually. Here's a couple stuck in a religious mindset caused by Religious Trauma. (Click on this image for a digital download, or click HERE!) 5 Ways Religious Trauma Can Affect Your Sexuality Religious Trauma makes us feel guilty for enjoying our bodies. Christianity, like many religions, castes our bodies and the flesh in a bad light. I was taught that my body was my enemy and something I always had to deny and beat into submission. I had to crucify it daily. The affect this had on my attitudes about sex was that I felt guilt any time I was enjoying my body or being in my body. For some people it’s even worse: they can never have any pleasure because it’s blatantly sinful, goes against scripture, and displeases God. Religious Trauma makes us feel like we’ve got our priorities wrong. For those of us who grew up in intense religious environments, the goal was to always be thinking about God and spiritual matters. Our minds had to be first and foremost stayed upon God, and to allow anything else to creep in was to allow something else to dethrone God from our minds and lives. We could never, to use an analogy, take a vacation and just enjoy ourselves because we were to be “on” 24/7. Even in our sleep, we had to pray for protection so that we wouldn’t stray from this strict path. As a result, when some people are enjoying sex, there can be a deep sense of putting something ahead of God that may anger him, or at least disappoint him. Religious Trauma makes us feel insecure about being confident about our sexuality. Religious Trauma teaches us not to trust our bodies. This is deadly for good sex. One of the most important things for a good sexual relationship is confidence. For sex to be fulfilling for each partner, each one must feel confident in their bodies and have some confidence in knowing or discovering what is pleasurable for their partner. Insecurity and a lack of confidence can kill passion and eliminate a feeling of joy and fulfillment. Religious Trauma makes us second guess enjoying our bodies as not spiritual enough. Religion dichotomizes the world. There’s good and evil, invisible and visible, light and dark, spirit and flesh. And these are always at war with one another. As a result, for many people coming out of a strict religion, when we are making love with someone we love, there is confusion about what’s happening. If their minds are on their body and their loved one’s body and the love and passion taking place, it can feel less than spiritual and therefore, somehow, even sinful, secular, fleshly, or worldly. We can heal ourselves from Religious Trauma. We can educate ourselves by giving ourselves therapy and going to get therapy. We can come to a place where we understand that our bodies aren’t evil, aren’t our enemies, aren’t less than spirit, and not unimportant. When we realize our bodies are good and to be dignified and enjoyed, we are on our way to healing and healthy attitudes about sex and on to enjoying healthy sex lives.
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Letting Go Of Shame After Purity Culture
When it's drilled into your head that your body is not your own... When it's reinforced over and over that sex is for making babies... When you're continually reminded that you must never lose control... When you're taught that you are not to indulge the flesh... Etcetera... Then no wonder so many people experience shame and guilt when they get caught up in the passion of love and sex and lose themselves to pleasure just for the fun of it! I hope these cartoons are helping to thaw the frigid ice of anti-human ideas and are helping you feel free to feel. Purity Culture Resources What Is Purity Culture and Why Is It Harmful?Breaking Free from Purity Culture
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How Purity Culture Creates A Fear Of Sex
Some were or are so immersed in purity culture that the bedroom is a haunted room. It's very complicated, full of verses and sermons and warnings and threats. Instead of a place or rest and recreation, it's a place of anxiety and shame. I hope you break free from it all and that's why I've started this series of cartoons about Purity Culture, called "Sexy Sunday". Purity Culture Resources What Is Purity Culture and Why Is It Harmful?Breaking Free from Purity Culture5 Ways Purity Culture Can Affect Your Sex Life
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Honoring LGBTQIA+ Stories in Art
Sexy Sunday and Pride Month combine to bring you this cartoon. Many LGBTQIA friends and followers requested representation in my Sexy Sunday cartoons But I was reluctant because I feel their intimate sexual lives is NOT my lane. I see so many people, businesses, and institutions take advantage of the LGBTQIA+ community, and I will not participate in that. Exploiting, for example, gay- or trans- or bi- or whatever- sex for profit or popularity is vulgar and cruel, and I refuse to play that game. The fetishization of the private sex lives of my LGBTQIA+ friends is not cool. Also... and I will be vulnerable here... I was sexually assaulted by an older teenager when I was a kid, and also by an older man when I was a teenager. So imagery of men enjoying sex together is something I don't want to imagine or draw. I wish it wasn't so, because it is a perfectly valid expression of genuine love. But there it is. For me. For now. I'm working on it. All that being said, my friends persuaded me that they trusted me and urged me to draw some for them. Here it is, with two women. I personally know many people who have experienced this. You? Related Blog Posts Breaking Free from Purity Culture5 Ways Puriture Culture Can Affect Your Sex Life3 Helpful Resources for LGBTQ+ People Navigating Religion
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Gratifying the Desires of the Flesh
For many people, Bible verses were so pounded into our head that it seems impossible to shut out or even dial down their voices. This couple wants to explore how to give each other pleasure... inside and out. This includes their bodies. Their flesh. How can they surrender to pleasure and not feel gratified? These are some of the conundrums purity culture provides.
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Purity Culture's Impact in the Bedroom
For the past several months I’ve been posting what I call my Sexy Sunday cartoons that challenge Purity Culture. This cartoon about the impact of purity culture on one's sex life is one of them and is titled, A Cloud of Many Witnesses. Many people who grew up in church, Christianity, and purity culture, can't enjoy themselves in bed because they've been convinced that there is a huge invisible crowd watching them. Even though many no longer believe it, they still can't shake the feeling that they're being judged while they enjoy pleasure. Is this you? Related Purity Culture Blog Posts What Is Purity Culture and Why Is It Harmful?5 Ways Religious Trauma Can Affect Your Sexuality (and how to heal)Breaking Free from Purity Culture
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