Did God create sexuality? (kind of long)
Hedgehog
Peggy Rogers <krogers?@xmission.com> writes:
>Hedgehog wrote:
>> If God found human
>> spirits rather than creating them from scratch, human sexuality
>> already existed and is in a sense prior to God's claims on us.
>> If humans feel transgendered or if they feel same sex attraction or
>> if they have a strong personal preference for celibacy those are
>> intrinsic aspects of their spirits.
>Here we do get into difficulties. Whatever else may come, I would
>guess that Latter-day Saints will continue to affirm that the highest
>ideal, for human beings and divine beings alike, is the union of male
>and female entities into a creative (and procreative) One, and that
>both celibacy and same-sex unions fall short of that ideal. That
>doesn't mean, though, that there _couldn't_ be pre-mortal roots for
>some of these tendencies.
It isn't clear that we have all the means now to solve all pre-mortal
problems. The very essence of mortality is that it is a circumscribed time
period that begins at birth and ends at death. If people simply can't
measure up to the highest ideal during their three score and ten, perhaps a
greater flexibility in policy would be in order. Maybe the ideal is that
all Americans would be fit enough to run a marathon, but just getting them
to exercise three times a week for 20 minutes could be a big improvement
over present circumstances.
We know that some people feel enough desire to not be parents that they
tend to drift away from the Church. It'd be crazy to expect that people
who have other persistant and chronic deviations from ideal Church
sexuality are not also drifting away.
>Perhaps
>one of the things we owe to God is that, without his help, spirits
>could not be united with bodies to become a "soul," and perhpas
>providing the means by which this could be accomplished is what his
>fatherhood consists of.
In a figurative sense, yes. But many LDS want to emphasize that God is a
literal father to us. If my factory job is to weld part 123 to part 346 in
order to make assembly xyz, that doesn't make me the literal father of
assembly xyz.
>So far my favorite quote from Moore's book, which struck me as
>forcibly as a passage of scripture, is this:
>
> If you want to know what sex is, think long and hard about a
> flower, especially its beauty and its appeal to the senses.
> Then think about all of nature and your own place in it.
> Whatever makes a flower glow with enchantment is the essence
> of your own sexuality. (p.8)
>
>We generally think of flowers as possessing the most innocent kind
>of beauty. But flowers, after all, are the sexual organs of plants.
If you asked several thousand people to name a particular type of flower, I
am sure that roses would end up somewhere near the top of the list, if not
at the top, but roses don't exhaust all the possibilities in flowerhood.
Some flowers have no petals and some even grow modified leaves to fulfill
the role of petals (as do poinsettias). Some flowers have only one gender
(roses have both male and female parts). Roses have what humans consider
to be an attractive scent, but some flowers are pollinated by flies and so
tend to smell like dung or rotting meat (stapelias are one example of
this). Orchids have fused their petals to form unique structures not found
amongst roses. One may employ roses as the ideal, but to expect a rosebud
to form on an orchid or a poinsettia is pointless.
>(I'm sure there are people who are glad to look at flower arrangements
>and botanical art who would be appalled by a corresponding display of
>animal organs. Is this a kind of "kingdomism" among us? ;-> )
I think it is, but I think it is excusable in that flowers to primates tend
to mean a promise of food (either by sucking the nectar out, waiting for
the fruit to form, or by picking insects out of the flower). [I tend to
think evolutionary theory matches well an LDS theology which says God
created our world from found materials rather than from nothingness.]
>Moore
>talks about the beauty, the allure, the vitality that sex brings into
>our lives, and what a positive thing this is. Mormonism really does
>put a similar high value on sexuality, as opposed to the manichean-
>inspired ideas of Christians like Augustine, who see the body as
>little more than a snare and a distraction. But this high positive
>value includes a tendency to be strongly aware of the proper uses and
>the misuses of the power of sexuality.
My objection here is that if sexuality is something that God found and
which trancends the specifics of God and the world, then it is an open
question as to what proper use is. It is like asking what is the proper
use of wood or iron or some other substance. Iron can be used to make
skillets or engine blocks or gun barrels. Who is to say whether a skillet
is a more proper use of iron than is an engine? It seems to me that part
of what determines proper use is what human needs are at the moment.
This ties back to the story of Nephi and Laban. Many LDS readers were
willing to accept the propriety of Nephi's killing a helpless man because
that was what Nephi needed to do at that point in time. Yet those same
people tended to argue that even though killing was morally neutral, there
was some inherent morality in sexual matters.
Look where this leads us. If sexuality transcends God's creative acts and
if mortal sexual deviancy has its roots in pre-mortal existence, then there
is a sort of double predestination in LDS theology. Those souls made from
damaged spirits are sinners not because of any act they have done (and not
even because any act their ancestors have done) but because of eternal
flaws in their spirits and sexual/moral principles that transcend even God
himself. God himself is powerless to produce change and so those who sin
have been condemned from all eternity to their state and those who have
happy family life have been so blessed from all eternity.
>That may account, in part, for
>the strictness you observe in this area, especially when it gets
>culturally mixed with "apostate" attitudes about sex being a Bad
>Thing.
Yes.
Peace,
Hedgehog