Does it ever trouble you?

Every now and then, I see a post or read a comment in the chat room to the effect of "Gee, I'm surprised to see so many people with such strong faith here." It got me to wondering.

To some extent, submissiveness for women is a pretty easy one, but some specific activities might be a bit more difficult. Same with domination for men. You can find references to those relatively easily. But seeing such comments as often as I have makes me wonder.

Do you ever have trouble reconciling your faith and BDSM?

Maddie this is very interesting especially since I just went through this. I was having trouble feeling one voided the other. I talked with Sir and another friend about how I felt and after much discussion decided one doesn't void the other. I live two lives and both are a part of who I am. It was a difficult internal battle for me to work through though.

I know I have. I used to feel guilty, dirty even after doing somthing associated with BDSM. I would think that it was God kicking in my conscience. I dont think it was though. In reality I believe that it was my mother's "voice" telling me that what I was feeling and doing was wrong. I've read through my bible and I cannot find anything that relates to BDSM as being wrong. I've prayed and never felt as though I recieved an answer that says "yes it is!".

Why would I have been created with BOTH parts of who I am, if they were not both right? I've known I was "different" since childhood. My parents always kept me away from anything "sexual, dirty or perverted" while growing up. So it wasn't nurture that was behind me enjoying getting spanked, or having pain turn me on. It's there as much as having blue eyes is there. It's just who I am.

Once I came to terms with that, I've felt a lot more at ease between my faith and my submission. I still get the niggling doubt in the back of my mind, but that I associate to my mother's nagging. She's the only one whos said straight out (to me) that alternative lifestyles were "sick and wrong"

Umm obviously I can't talk about the "reconciling faith" thing, but I might be able to shed some light on maddie's comment that people say "Gee, I'm surprised to see so many people with such strong faith here."

Ok, I wouldn't say "Gee", but I'm one of the people who think that. However, that's simply because in real life, amongst friends, family and work colleagues, I don't really know any Christian people who have strong faith... or at least, none who talk about it. What I'm saying is "Wow, you have strong faith?" might just be a general comment, as opposed to "Wow, you have strong faith AND you're into BDSM?"

Q xx

I think rather than "Wow you have strong faith" it should be, "Wow you have strong faith and are talking about it!" Many are so afraid to speak of their faith for fear of being accused of "pushing" it onto those they are speaking to. I know I do not talk as much about mine as I would like for this fear.

It is clear that the Bible does not say no to some things society would see as wicked today. For example, incest in Genesis 20:30-36.

I have no trouble with BDSM along with a Christian faith, as long as it is done according to the teachings of Christianity, that is, in a monogamous relationship blessed by God in a wedding.

Admittedly...i am on line only. Personally i think the lifestyle is a beautiful one.

There is one thing to remember here.

We are all God's children and He loves His children. Everyone of us.

I wish I could say it never bothers me and I would be able to make that statement if all my activities were with my wife. Since they aren't and I had to visit a pro for BDSM activities yes I do have a problem reconciling them with my religion.

If all activities were in my bedroom with my wife, I know even my religion wouldn't have a problem with them as long as it was all consensual.

Sex and religion. A discussion and a doubt that has been a part of almost all cultures in one way or another. But why? If one were to read the teachings of all religions, it would show that there aren't any limitations to what one can do sexually, with the exceptions of animal and children. Adultery is also discouraged, but that doesn't mean you are limited to sex with one person. Adultery is when someone, without the knowledge and consent of their partner, is having sex with others. But that does not mean you're forbidden to have sex with others, or to maintain an "alternative" lifestyle. But, unfortunately, many are not as forgiving in their beliefs as they should be. And many of those are "leaders" of their "flock" and have the power to impose on others their own vision of life. Sometimes, that makes life a living hell for their "flock", since what they have been taught, is contrary to what they feel and wish.

I do not believe religion has any place in the sexual debate at all. I believe religion is, as the communists said, "opium for the people". Meaning that religion is a bond through which the people can be controlled to the "leaders'" content. As long as religion continues to meddle in the everyday-life of humans, we will never be truly free of thought and mind. Religion should be what makes you comfortable, showing you you are loved by a higher entity than humans, and give simple rules to follow. Rules that aim to make it easier to live with eachother upon this earth, not harder. Most of the Ten Commandments, everyone can agree on. You shall not steal, you shall not kill, honor you mother and father, you shall not commit purgery/lie to get someone in trouble/get yourself out of trouble, you shall not covet your neighbour's house, wife, ox, donkey, slave or anything that belongs to your neighbour. These rules I believe to be worthy guidelines in life. Though I believe the last one needs to be explained. Biblical language is written so, as to be a subject of interpretation. For me, the last one means that you shall not be jealous of what your neighbour has. To want what he has, and to think that your neighbour's wife is hot, his slave are dutiful and wish that in your own slave, that his ox is virile and hope your own is the same, that his donkey is strong and laborious and want that for your donkey, only says to me that we are humans and admire those who are better off in life through their own labour. They shall be revered for what they can do for you, teach you, not scorned for it. But they must never be allowed to cloud your own judgement either. What once worked for them, may not be of help to you. To blindly follow anyone invites utter destruction. People around you are there to lend you a helping hand, not to be your master in everything.

Actually, I believe life is summed up in an economical teaching. If you have seen the movie "A beautiful mind", you may remember the blonde in the bar. There, he expands on a teaching that has been the Holy Writ for long. To prosper, you must do what is best for you AND the group as a whole. To do what is best only for the group will ensure that not all the group are best off, and to do what is best only for the individual will ensure that the group as a whole isn't content.

I believe we are born with free will. However, I do not believe we were created with free will. And the "fact" that we weren't created with free will, has been hanging over us for far too long. My dream for the world is that everyone will realise that they are the masters of themselves, and not accept mindlessly the mastery of others over oneself. Karl Marx, in my opinion, was ahead of his time. Communism is the ultimate society-model, but we, the humanity, are not ready to accept it yet. It has one flaw, and that is to deny humans the right to believe in a higher entity. Add that to communism, and the world will be a perfect place.

You may now believe I don't know what I'm talking about and think for yourself that I must have forgotten the Soviet Union, Vietnam, North-Korea, The People's Republic of China and so on. I have not, but they did also not fully embrace communism. They did the first steps of it; A peasant revolution, a group of people taking the power of government. But they did not go further. They didn't relinquish power to the people as the teachings of communism say they should. The group held on to their power, they didn't distribute it to the communes. That's the reason why communism failed. The people using it for their purpose didn't read it all the way through. They read only as far as to see that this was a convenient way of gaining power, to awaken imperialism.

Sex and belief should never in my opinion be a part of eachother, except to the degree described further up my post. If you feel comfort because belief is a part of your life and sex-life, that's the best for you, but if you feel uncomfortable because belief is restraining your thoughts and desires and wants, then discard it. Religion was never meant to be a weapon of guilt. Religion was always intended to be a cushion of love and forgiveness, a comfort to us as creatures, an explanation for that which science hasn't answered yet: Are we alone?

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Originally Posted by rce

It is clear that the Bible does not say no to some things society would see as wicked today. For example, incest in Genesis 20:30-36.

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I have to ask, not being an English speaker as native language: The Genesis is the first book of Moses, is it not?

If so, I believe you have either mistyped, or that you have a bible which I don't have. I even searched online at bible.com, but the passage you wrote down, is nowhere to be found. Please answer which version of the Bible you're using, or correct the passage.

Does being BDSM and having a faith cause me to be torn spiritually? At first it did. I took a good hard look at the faith I was currently following (Mormon). I had to ask myself if I really believed in what was being taught, believed in those who were teaching it, believed in the leaders of the faith. What I found is I didn't have enough answers in the affirmitave to keep me there. So I began to ask myself what it was I thought I did believe. I asked myself, did I believe in there being a God, did I believe in there being an afterlife, did I believe in a creator who would provide some sort of eternal damnation or salvation based on my behaviour. The answer I came to was no, I didn't believe or not believe any of it. So I have chosen to abstain from claiming a faith. I chose instead to live a life that I felt would lead me to happiness both spiritually and emotionally. I chose to live a life that follows many of the teachings of the koran of the bible of most religious sects and faiths. I chose to live a life of peace and nonconfrontation (religiously speaking).

I developed my own line of faith, my own interpritation of those teachings. Using the bible as an example for this. If you were to follow just two teachings from the bible (king james version so that we have specifics). The frist rule to follow would be "He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.” Or could say it as "Judge not lest ye be Judged". Follow that rule first. Almost every action you do following that will lead you to treat others as you would like. That leads me into my second guideline. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Follow both of those phrases, you can nearly never go wrong. For if you were to treat those around you as you wanted to be treated, and not judge those you encounter as inferior or superior or any other such thing. Then you would be able to avoid things such as hate, things such as greed, things such as deception.

By living my life this way, I have been able to enjoy the things that life presents me, things such as BDSM. Things such as aquaintences who are gay, who are a minority, who are not as smart as I am, or that are smarter than I am.

I feel at peace, an inner calm. This inner calm is what I believe the point of having a faith is all about to start with.

V/R
ID

No, I don't maddie. In Christianity, the wife is supposed to be submissive to her husband, and the husband is commanded to love his wife. He is to take pleasure in her breasts (Song of Solomon). Anything a husband and wife do in the marriage bed is acceptable as long as they do not defile it, i.e. adultery, animals, incest or menstruation. Um, but I'm probably not the best one to get advice from.... :o

I'm humanist agnositc, so the question doesn't apply to me, but still, I just wanted to acknowledge-- Maddie, what an great thread and incredibly interesting responses. And, particularly, yours OffifantSir--an excellent read.

Ottifant sir. I'm not so sure about religion only coming about as a tool of the leaders to control people. I think there's been a real need for answers and people who could give some that made sense got power. Which is the oposite situation than the comunists like to have us believe. That came a lot later. Originally science and religion was the same subject.

It's not valid to say that religion is an opium for the people in a society where there is no plausible alternative. Religion has been so entrenched in humanity that it's probably been with us since the dawn of man, and it wasn't all that long ago since we got the scientific explanations to easily explain away all religions. Rather than calling it an opium for the people, I'd rather like to call it old science.

Religion isn't just faith in the supernatural. There's many different levels. I read a book this summer called The Global Empire by Alexander Bard, (it's being translated to English now). The book is a compilation and discussion about history and the future based on what modern philosophers have said, and since I'm a philosophy buff I thought he really got all the bits together in a good way.

Even though the belief in the supernatural is important for the defintion of it as a religion, it's only a little part of what it's all about. Atheists need to understand it's history before just pointing and laughing. Tradition is powerful. Personaly I don't understand how religion can be so widespread in these times but I wasn't brought up in a fundamentalist atmosphere, so who am I to judge.

According to Alexander Bard, (and modern philosophy) the evolution of religion follows the technological evolution. At first we had polytheism. Every village had their own diety. At that point the goal of religion was mostly to explain natural phenonema. As ship building technology and the written languages where developed trade between the various culture exploded.

Trust is important in trade which meant that there was a need for common moral and ethical rules. This is when the aggresive monothiest religons entered the arena, which proved very economically beneficial for the internal markets of the regions and therefor conquered all. The religous books also served as a method to spread written languages, further enhancing trade. By the time we had courts, constitutional protection under the law and trade agreements set up these reasons where obsolete. The monotheist power structures that had been built over the years moved over to other areas.

Next blow to the power of monotheism was the scientific break throughs and new view of the world which took away the last bit of justification that the church had for it's existance. This is when the Inquisition came and the prosecution of scientists. At this point the church has gone from being a constructive and positive force in society to a situation where it's only negative and obstructing progress.

Today the church is nothing more than a club for people who show a common interest just like any other hobbyists. Albeit a powerful club. I'm certain what we can see today is the last desperate death rattle of religion and it will die and atheism will take it's place, just like monoteism conquered polyteism. Just like obsolete genes die out, so does obsolete practices in society, (aka memes).

Now over to sexual policy. When the monotestic religions developed and became our common law all power where held by men. It's not hard to understand why the comandments where written as they where. The laws in the Bible were put in place to cater to the needs of the patriarchy, to help them control women, be sure that their women only cared for their own progeny and to avoid conflicts between married men. In every culture that has ever existed we've had prostitutes, and this was fact when the Bible was written and continued un-hindered after. The first time prostitution ever was outlawed was a direct result of women getting the vote in USA.

This is my summary of Alexander Bards summary of 20'th century philosophies take on religion.

I don't think religion was meant to be anything. Religion was created and shaped by man to fit the needs that society needed filling. Freud's and Lacan's theory is that we in the west, (also aplies to Arabs) have a culture of taking pleasure in feeling guilty about ourselves and trying to make ourselves into victims. A form of culture-wide masochism. I personally can't explain how concepts like original sin can have survived in any other way.

And to the spiritual questions, who made the world and are we alone, the obvious answer is that we don't know. Making any certain claims is fooling ourselves. We can take guesses, but it'll never be more than that and there's no shame in admitting we don't know. We haven't known since the dawn of man, so I think we'll do just fine in the 21'st century without any more half-assed explanations. Me personally, I'm leaning toward a theory that doesn't stand all the laws of nature on it's head. Whether you chose to call it god or not is of no consequence.

I group the religious people together with the people who still think steel frames for bicycles is better than aluminium. Sounds good if put in the right context, but is in fact bullshit.

Thanks, y'all for such interesting answers!

The Bible is pretty clear about women submitting to men and men treasuring and caring for them. I have no issues with what I do with my husband, because it's consensual, but I do know there are those with, shall we say, less conventional situations.

I would ask that this thread be kept clear of "religion is irrelevant or useless or unnecessary" sorts of comments. That's not the topic at hand. Feel free to open another topic about that, but please keep it from this thread.

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Originally Posted by maddie

Thanks, y'all for such interesting answers!

The Bible is pretty clear about women submitting to men and men treasuring and caring for them. I have no issues with what I do with my husband, because it's consensual, but I do know there are those with, shall we say, less conventional situations.

I would ask that this thread be kept clear of "religion is irrelevant or useless or unnecessary" sorts of comments. That's not the topic at hand. Feel free to open another topic about that, but please keep it from this thread.

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Sorry about that. I just felt I needed to point out a few things that IMHO needed explaining in Ottifants post. It's not hard to understand that catering to the egos and needs of the people in power, (men) would help in selling in the concept of Christianity at it's infancy, (and all the other monotheistic religions). The opinions on how women are to be treated in the Bible, I think are only about justifying the opression of women that was allready fact at the time it was written.

The world has never really experienced equality between the sexes. Even if it's never been closer than now, and we've still got far from equal oportunities. But I'll leave the issue now to avoid hijacking your thread.

Not that I'm a religious person, but interpretation of religious texts have always been re-evaluated to better fit in with society over the ages. Just ignore the parts you don't like. It's been done before.

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Originally Posted by OttifantSir

I have to ask, not being an English speaker as native language: The Genesis is the first book of Moses, is it not?

If so, I believe you have either mistyped, or that you have a bible which I don't have. I even searched online at bible.com, but the passage you wrote down, is nowhere to be found. Please answer which version of the Bible you're using, or correct the passage.

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Yes, Genesis is the first book of Moses. My copy is comformable to the edition of 1611, that is the King James' Bible, the most common Bible in the English language. However, I typed the citation wrong, it is supposed to be Chapter 19, i.e. Genesis 19:30-36. I am sorry for this mistake. :freakout:

I must admit that there are some aspects of the BDSM lifestyle that I do not think agree with my faith, but those I just do not use.

My faith talks about submission, as anyone who reads the Bible knows, but it also talks about love. Although the BDSM world asks for submission, I, at least, give love fully and completely. In talking about this I realize that I have an unusual way to reconcile my faith and my lifestyle, but it does work for me, so I am sure others can do the same thing.

But why do so many people in the lifestyle have a strong faith, perhaps because faith offfers some of the same benifits of the lifestyle. After all, my faith expects me to submit entirely to Jehovah, and I expect my sub to do the same to me. Think about it, not so far apart, are they?

No, I use my Fitha a general guideline, ni this time 2007 it would personaly be to difficult for me to adhere to it 100% daily, but I also do not believe that doing this make me less Religious then the next person, I have my Faith and my beliefs that is more important to me then to what extent I observe or praactice my Faith, I practice in a way I am comfortable with, as should all people, I use it as a GUIDE not a a rule per sey

l knew this place was going to be interesting in more ways than one.

l'm relatively new to the bdsm life , in fact most of what l've experienced has been very vanilla or on my own...but as a pagan , l find the issue of female submission and male domination an interesting one...in pagan faith the sexes are equel which may explain why l feel l may fit into more of a switch persona rather than a dom or sub ( is switch the correct title for someone who is comfortable being both ? l hope this is the correct term...l'm still learning )...as for the clash , l don't think in paganism there would be one , at least none that l have come across so far in my learning experiences.

l look forward to reading more of people's thought and feelings on the subject , it's a fascinating topic of discussion.

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Originally Posted by firewoman

...in pagan faith the sexes are equel which may explain why l feel l may fit into more of a switch persona rather than a dom or sub ( is switch the correct title for someone who is comfortable being both ? l hope this is the correct term...l'm still learning )...

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You have the term switch correct.

I have come to think of paganism as a collective name of many different belief systems and cults, all of which deals with the divinity of nature itself and perhaps many gods, sometimes a search for the beliefs of the ancient forefathers (and foremothers) before Christianity. If this is correct, is it really true that "in pagan faith the sexes are equ[a]l"? Would this not vary depending on the type of paganism you adhere to? I am just curious.

quite possibly you are correct....but l personally view paganism as equel...can't have male with out female...light with out dark....life with out death , etc....tho at any given period of time one may feel a greater connection with one over the other...to be truely balanced you need an equel measure of both...but that's just speaking from my own lessons , l couldn't and wouldn't speak for anyone else. l could get into more of a discussion about the role of gender and god sv's goddess but it wold be the wrong thread...;-)

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Originally Posted by firewoman

l find the issue of female submission and male domination an interesting one...in pagan faith the sexes are equel.

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Are female submission and male domination not equal, although different? I think they are.

cariad

I think they are with some people.
I think it's obvious that some Doms and subs don't see it as being equal is also true.
I tend to view them as equals.

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Originally Posted by firewoman

...can't have male with out female...light with out dark....life with out death , etc....tho at any given period of time one may feel a greater connection with one over the other...to be truely balanced you need an equel measure of both...

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The concept of a balance between the light and dark, or the male and female, life and death, does not meant that they are equal, just that they are balanced.

To illustrate this, for every life their is a death, but the time that one has in life is less than the time one spends in death. The balance of one against another means that one may be superior over the other aat one point, and that the power would shift back at another time. A balance just puts them in harmony on a csomic scale, not neccessarily a scale that we observe.

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Originally Posted by cariad<U_E>

Are female submission and male domination not equal, although different? I think they are.

cariad

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yes they are..l was repeating the question as part of my reply , tho l can see my grammatical error......thanks:)

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Originally Posted by Rhabbi

The concept of a balance between the light and dark, or the male and female, life and death, does not meant that they are equal, just that they are balanced.

To illustrate this, for every life their is a death, but the time that one has in life is less than the time one spends in death. The balance of one against another means that one may be superior over the other aat one point, and that the power would shift back at another time. A balance just puts them in harmony on a csomic scale, not neccessarily a scale that we observe.

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hrm i disagree. i think that to be balanced they must be equal ..
in the life and death equation.. balance is sometimes found only in the opposite of a thing. Who's to say that one's time in death is not a long as a lifetime ?
Not that either one wins out to create the balance ; light doesn't win out over dark. each slides into the absence of the other, as in during rotation of the planet. there is not Not light or not dark area.