Season of Doubt

The instrumental introduction to Tori Amos’ Icicle features a setting of the hymn “O, for a Thousand Tongues to Sing.” It’s not what you would hear on a Sunday morning. It’s a discordant, haunting piano solo that prefaces a song about repressed sexual desire.

This is a season of doubt.

Progress on my dissertation has been halting. Parish ministry has been wearying as political polarization encroaches upon church life. “Spiritual dryness” inadequately describes my inner life. I’m parched.

I believe in the soul, the cock, the pussy….
Crash Davis, Bull Durham

Faith is for me admittedly largely speculative. I, too, believe in the soul, but it’s a highly conceptualized, Platonic abstraction. A literary critic described Henry Miller as having developed a “theology of the cunt.” “What holds the world together, as I have learned from bitter experience,” Miller wrote in Tropic of Capricorn, “is sexual intercourse.” There is nothing abstract about the cock and the pussy.

Leaning against the wall, Stephanie wore a mischievous smile. And a slinky babydoll nightgown. “Religion says sex is so bad,” she teased as she unbuckled my belt.

My hand moved underneath her babydoll, caressing her soft skin. She wasn’t wearing any panties. Then I gently lowered one of the straps, revealing her lush breast and erect nipple. “But perhaps it is true after all,” I responded, quoting Buber. That was the most persuasive answer I could venture.

Formed as I was by purity culture, it’s hard to overemphasize how much my faith was inextricably connected with sexual purity as a young man. Believing that true love waits… Since holiness required reining in my sexual desires, a life of faith demanded purity. As other teenagers were losing their virginity in high school, I memorized 1 Thess 4:3-7. Overcoming fleshly desires was at the heart of my religious practice. When “Liz,” a cute blonde classmate at my Christian college, tearfully confessed to having had sex, I confess to feeling a certain pharisaical pride: “I thank you that I am not like other men” (Lk 18:11). Despite the encroaching temptations, I entered my senior year of college still a virgin. Then….

The moment I knew sin, I fucked.

I committed myself to a year of service at an urban Lutheran parish, then commenced my studies at divinity school. I entered lay ministry in the Lutheran church. As I continued to yield to the seductions of Venus, a dark shadow of doubt enveloped me. Thou shalt not commit adultery. The commandment remained unchanged. Yet Jezebel had seduced me into committing fornication (cf. Rev 2:20). When she flashed her panties in that hotel room, my faith was not strong enough to resist.

The commandment, as I have internalized it, stridently forbids me from the sexual activities I engage in. I’ve proved incapable of denying or sublimating my sexual urges, so I maintain a pious façade while secretly indulging my carnal desires. The cost to my faith, as I’ve experienced it, has been considerable. As one college pastor noted, for his students “the Bible unsurprisingly starts to become a lot more ‘doubtful’ for some of them once they’d had sex.”

I’m torn between devotion and desire. I find that I seek solace not between the covers of the Bible but between a woman’s legs.

But her hips sway a natural
Kind of faith that could give
Your lost heart a warm chapel
Tori Amos, “Abnormally Attracted to Sin”

Ass Wednesday

“Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

I assisted with the imposition of ashes at the parish’s Ash Wednesday service. One of our more attractive parishioners has a curvy physique reminiscent of Joan Holloway on Mad Men.

After placing ashes on her forehead, I confess to watching her hips sway as she returned to the pew. For a brief moment, instead of concentrating on ministering to the body of Christ, all I could think was, “Christ, what a body!”

Aroused by Her Presence

First there was the blonde at Starbucks. With her short black dress and long blonde hair, she vaguely resembled Margot Robbie. As I ordered a caramel macchiato, it was difficult not to keep my eyes on her.

Then came my meeting with “Emma.” I’ve been tasked with resurrecting the parish’s Justice and Peace committee, and Emma expressed interest in assisting me. That committee is generally the province of blue-haired old ladies, but Emma is in her twenties, bubbly and energetic, and relatively new to the church. She’s also smoking hot: tall, blonde, slim, and tanned. As we sat in the outdoor patio on a pleasant summer afternoon, I was admittedly aroused by her presence. There was the revelation of a bra strap. Some cleavage. Black capri pants that hugged her tight ass. I furtively peeked down her shirt and mentally undressed her. (I envisioned her totally shaved.) I struggled to hide my erection when she departed.

I confess that my lust for Emma poses ethical issues for one in ministry. Projecting my sexual desire upon someone I am bound to shepherd almost certainly clouds my pastoral judgment. Instead of focusing on her soul, I’m fixated on her breasts. Lust is inherently objectifying, transforming, in Buber’s terms, the “I-thou” relation into an “I-it” relation. As testified to by my own experience, lust is a slippery slope that can lead to physical as well as imaginative transgressions. Samson merely “saw” a prostitute and ended up sleeping with her (Jdg 16:1).

Still, despite my nobler intentions, Emma in her capri pants stimulated me. When I returned home, I searched one of her social media accounts, and found some unexpectedly seductive photos of her. I started masturbating to them. While drooling over Emma’s physical endowments and fantasizing about intimately exploring them, the sheer wrongness of what I was doing hung heavily over me. My personal upbringing was so repressive that virtually any sexual expression induces guilt. Such conduct is not becoming of one in a ministerial role. Sexual temptation, however, is irresistible to me. She had no idea how hard she made me. Imagining the ways she’d suck my cock, draining every drop of my cream into her mouth. So naughty. I finally came.

I meet with Emma again next week.

Domine non sum dignus

“Candidates for ordained ministry shall make a complete dedication of themselves to the highest ideals of the Christian life. To this end, they shall agree to exercise responsible self-control through fidelity in marriage and celibacy in singleness.“

If I am to continue my path to ordination, the Candidacy Committee must grant endorsement. “This is a time for mutual assessment of a candidate’s strengths and growth areas in discerning readiness for completing candidacy.” A crucial step is the endorsement interview with representatives of my synodical candidacy committee and appropriate seminary faculty. The committee uses the interview to decide whether to grant, postpone, or deny endorsement for supervised ministry. The committee scheduled the interview after the spring semester, which allowed me more time to complete my endorsement essay, which guides the discussion during the interview.

I dread the possibility of questions concerning whether I am living entirely in accord with our church’s teachings.

I began my candidacy with the hope that as I progressed toward ordination, I would become capable of dedicating myself to this standard of behavior.

My hands firmly clasp her hips as my pelvis slams repeatedly against her ass. My face is contorted in anguish as I desperately strain to climax. In a perverse sense, this is a mortification of the flesh. Our coupling is starkly emotionless, simply marked by raw physicality. Amidst the intensity of sexual frenzy, I feel driven by a sense of desperation. When Audrey had earlier opened the door to her hotel room in her white lingerie, her sensuality overpowered me. Now as I fuck her with manic intensity, I experience a curious blend of liberation and dread. My muscles tighten, I become slightly dizzy, and an aching cry escapes my throat. The void that follows in the wake of orgasm subsumes me.

As my sexual explorations intensified, it became apparent that my lust was propelling my behavior in a decisive way. Before each furtive encounter I promised, “This will be the last time,” only to once again renege on that promise. I prayed for deliverance. Victory. At one point I bluntly pleaded, “Please stop me before I fuck again.”

But I couldn’t stop fucking.

I came to realize that there wouldn’t be one last time.

Hier ficke ich, ich kann nicht anders.

I recently watched clips from the film Nymphomaniac. The protagonist is a middle-aged woman who proclaims, “I am a nymphomaniac, and I love myself for being one. But above all, I love my cunt, and my filthy dirty lust.” The film details her sexual precociousness in explicit detail (she has anal sex when she loses her virginity), and her sexual odyssey goes on to include sex with an endless number of partners, masochistic encounters, and lesbianism. Simply put, she can’t stop fucking.

I am devoured by desire.
Roland Barthes

Feminist Andrea Dworkin wrote of the “stigma” that indelibly marks the one consumed by sexual compulsion: “The person, made for sex or needing it, devoted to it, marked by it, is a person incarnated restless and wild in the world and defined by fucking: fucking as a vocation….”

Fucking as a vocation. “For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war” (Rom 7:22-23). “The bondage of the will” no longer seems merely theoretical. Each furtive encounter manifests a disequilibrium between my spiritual aspirations and my lust. I struggle to inhabit the dichotomy of piety and passion. My good works vie with the works of the flesh. I’m burdened by a sensitive conscience and a robust libido. Perhaps my perceived calling to ministry is nothing more than the cry of a guilty conscience to atone for this other vocation.

I have an acute sense my profound unworthiness. Domine non sum dignus. I’ve certainly questioned my fitness for ministry. Of course I wouldn’t be the first man of the cloth to succumb to sexual temptation. Among the “cloud of witnesses” I look to for inspiration were men of willing spirit but weak flesh (MLK, Jr.; Merton). The “randy vicar” is a staple of Anglican lore. The prospect of the exposure of my double life, and the disrepute such scandal would inflict on the church, makes me hesitate. “He must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace” (1 Tim 3:7).

A dominant characteristic of the conservative religious culture in which I was raised was what has been termed “sexual exceptionalism,” in which sexual sins outweigh other transgressions. I have acutely felt this thorn of the flesh. My incapacity for sexual discipleship strikes at the heart of my religion.

I don’t want to be pure.

The guilt has been intense. I’ve done things I would have never thought I was capable of. But the pleasure has also been intense. There’s the sheer physical pleasure, of course. But there’s also something else. “In the electricity of stigma there is a mixture of sexual shamelessness, personal guilt, and a defiance that is unprincipled, not socially meaningful in consequence or intention, determined only by need or desire,” Dworkin wrote. By “electricity of stigma” I assume she meant the frisson of transgression. My fascination with call girls, in addition to their practical convenience, certainly derives from the taboo surrounding prostitution. Georges Bataille in Eroticism argues that the transgression of taboos constitutes the erotic. Bataille was haunted by the remnants of his Catholicism yet considered the brothels of Paris as his “churches.” My acquaintance with the mysterium iniquitatis is most keenly felt in sex. There is a genuine thrill in leading a double life. “I have grown to love secrecy,” Oscar Wilde wrote in The Picture of Dorian Gray. “It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.” Replace that common thing with illicit sex and it becomes even more marvelous.

Have my sexual transgressions implanted doubt? Or has my doubt led me to transgress? The late Rachel Held Evans dismissed “doubt as a STD.” I’m not so sure. The distinction between belief and faith is not theoretical anymore. Faith is hard. The divine is notional rather than an experienced presence.

I don’t want to be pure anymore.

“Lead us not into temptation”

She sat alone in a pew on the right.

Dark blond hair. A short blue sundress that showed off a golden tan and a shapely pair of legs.

She kept distracting me during the liturgy. I tried to focus on the sermon and the words to the hymns. I kept peeking at that short little sundress, though.

She had no idea I was visually stripping her dress off her and fantasizing about fucking her.

After the service, a parishioner introduced me to “Emily.” She recently graduated from college and returned to the area. Friendly and sweet, Emily said she is looking for a faith community to connect with. I offered to meet with her and introduce her to our parish’s educational offerings. Emily promised to contact me and set up a time to meet later this week.

Don’t do the pew.

Despite my sexual excesses, one line I haven’t crossed is engaging in a sexual relationship with a parishioner. I’ve certainly been tempted. Heidi and Anne tested my self-restraint. In the era of #MeToo and #ChurchToo, there are few easier ways to get dismissed from ministry than getting caught engaging in sexual misconduct. Sexual desire, however, cannot be so easily bracketed off from the life of the church. “For the pastor there are more situations, more opportunities to act out sexually,” one male pastor observed in Sex in the Parish. “If you’re not clear about your sexuality, you’re going to act on your fantasies.” A poll conducted by Christianity Today in the 1990s revealed that nearly one-fourth of clergy had engaged in some form of inappropriate sexual behavior. Some ministers suggest that even fantasizing crosses a line. “The limits of intimacy with a parishioner are stepped over when sexual fantasies abound.”

Lead us not into temptation.

Even as I spoke with Emily, my hypersexual imagination wondered what was under her dress. I thought about her wetness. Her tightness. Her soft moans. The way her tits would bounce during our exertions.

I doubt the thought would even cross her mind, but if Emily ever came on to me, in my weakness, I don’t think I’d be able to resist pulling her panties to the side.

Destined for Convergence

Today the parish staff was virtually introduced to our new pastoral intern, “Caitlin.” She joined us from Michigan via Zoom and, conditions permitting, hopes to join us this fall. She’s assisted in college ministry and is enthusiastic about working in parish ministry.

As our online conversation progressed, I couldn’t refrain from noticing just a hint of cleavage peeking out from beneath her shirt. Her round, almost cherubic face was framed by shoulder-length blond hair. Afterwards I located some photos of her online. She’s petite yet pleasantly curvy. One picture showed her in a modest swimsuit.

I’m intrigued.

My thoughts returned to the Deaconess. With the Deaconess, I sensed her sexual desperation, which she later confirmed to me in a tearful confession. By outward appearances, no one would have guessed her sexual history. A shy child, she had been raised in a strict and devout Lutheran family. As a freshman in high school, a senior took an interest in her. She lost her virginity and with it any sense of propriety with guys. Even though she was active in church and prayed for deliverance, she couldn’t say no. Periods of abstinence were followed by sexual binges. In college she slept with her minister. As she pursued theological studies and became active in ministry, she set up online dating profiles to arrange sexual encounters. She spoke of her isolation in her parish assignment, which hinted at her use of sex as a salve for loneliness. (A female sex writer bluntly stated, “Women fuck for intimacy, and men fuck for sex.”) I noticed that after our encounters, she struggled to look me in the eye. Her guilt and despondency were palpable.

Yet the next time we were alone, her panties were damp.

Sex is a paradox. It needs the difference between man and woman, yet it reminds them that they are not different at all. In this way pleasure is the world’s great equalizer.
The Kama Sutra

She undid the buttons of her skirt and let it fall. I unzipped my pants. My hand reached up her thigh. My mouth found her breast. My trembling hands pulled down her cotton panties. Wanting to feel her flesh surrounding me, I lay on top of her. My cock and her pussy were destined for convergence. There is something so sublime about penetrating a woman. As I felt her contract around me, I thrust into her even deeper. Her body bucked against mine. Harder. Faster. Louder. “We were nothing more than two sinners fucking.”

Meanwhile, I fantasize about Caitlin.

Forbidden Zone

Being absent from church on Sundays has meant being removed from one of my latest fixations: “Rebecca.” One of our newer choir members, more than once have I visually undressed her during service. She vaguely resembles Amanda Seyfried. I find her makeup and dark red lipstick sexually suggestive. (I’ve aggressively imagined the things she could do with her mouth.)

Despite my lusting over several female parishioners, I have not initiated a sexual relationship with any of them. Discretion has compelled me from refraining acting upon my desires. Such relationships between ministers and congregants are expressly forbidden in my church. According to psychiatrist Peter Rutter in Sex in the Forbidden Zone, sex in a professional-client relationship is unethical because it violates the trust placed by the client in her therapist or teacher or clergyman. (In Rutter’s account, the professional is invariably male.) There is an imbalance of power that renders it exploitative. “[C]lergy invite the women under their care to share secrets, sexual and otherwise, that they would never disclose to anyone else.” Robert Carlson believes that among the helping professions, ministers are most vulnerable to sexually inappropriate relationships. One male pastor admitted, “For the pastor there are more situations, more opportunities to act out sexually.” Carlson even warns against fantasizing about a parishioner: “When will and fantasy compete, fantasy always wins.”

The forbidden zone is nonetheless erotically charged. The temptation presented by Rebecca consists not only in her natural sexiness but in her verboten status. The risk of having sex with her is itself an aphrodisiac. A long, hard, pulsating, pounding, and sweat-drenched romp with her in the choir loft, were it to be discovered, would imperil my career in academia and ministry. Dr. Susan Block attributes the association between fear and sex to a reptilian part of our brain that evolution has yet to extinguish “no matter how moral or dignified we may think we are.” (She notes that sex is fittingly depicted as a serpent or a dragon in some cultures.) Rutter insists on the need to develop and maintain boundaries, but concedes their vulnerabilities. “In the moment it feels so easy, so magical, so relieving for us to cross the invisible boundary and merge with the woman in shared passion.” One pastor admitted, “My theology was unable to prevent me from acting out.”

My theology was unable to prevent me from acting out. I’m supposed to practice “celibacy in singleness.” Have my sexual exploits lowered my resistance to engaging in an inappropriate relationship? If the opportunity presented itself, I would find it tough to resist pulling down Rebecca’s panties.

Lustful Glances

Anne looked absolutely delectable in her white dress this morning. Her black high heels accentuated her shapely legs. Lustful glances stirred illicit desires. This evening I masturbated to her Facebook photos.

While the topic of sexuality hasn’t come up in the meetings of the young adults group I have attended, Anne is from a Wesleyan Holiness background which expects “celibacy within singleness.” (The conservative college she attended lists premarital sex as grounds for “separation from the university.”) Yet ἐπιθυμία is not so easily tamed. A professor of endocrinology at Oxford, noting the dictates of procreative biology, says simply, “I’d regard celibacy as a totally abnormal state.” I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind (Rom 7:23).

Despite my pastoral commitments, I do not have a talent for celibacy. Burdened by a desire to fornicate with Anne, I struggle to refrain from acting inappropriately with her.

Then there’s Sally. She’s relatively new to the church’s young adults group. I imagined sliding my hand up her skirt, sliding her panties to the side, and slipping my finger inside her. I imagined her wetness, her cries of pleasure as she comes. I nevertheless behaved like a gentleman around her.

Perhaps I can find some photos of Sally on Facebook….

“If you can’t be chaste, at least be careful”

Mandi met me last night at the door of her hotel room in a tight black mini dress and black suede boots that went past her knees. Minutes later she teased me, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours!” She seductively stripped out of her clothes, making me throb. Some fun on the bed followed, then she positioned herself by bending over the desk.

We unapologetically committed our sins behind closed drapes and shut doors. Gratifying the flesh inside a 14th floor hotel room. Away from prying eyes.

My position in the church forces me to be discreet about my sexual life. As a single minister, I publicly committed to sexual abstinence before marriage.

Which means I have to use the utmost discretion.

“Si non caste, tamen caute.”
Adalbert of Hamburg, medieval archbishop to his clerics

In one recent online article, the author extols the virtue of purity as not just an intrinsic good but as “prudent” in the digital age. “Almost anything we do on a computer or cell phone, no matter how embarrassing or sensitive, leaves an exploitable record that is difficult to expunge.” The very real danger of exposure recommends chastity.

That’s an ideal solution. But as the good archbishop said, “If you can’t be chaste….”

Outside of my brief (and admittedly very indiscreet) relationship with the Deaconess, I’ve avoided becoming entangled with a woman from my parish. (Although Heidi, with her tight jeans that reveal the contours of her smackable ass, is testing my self-discipline.) One of the advantages of hiring reputable “professionals” is that both parties have an incentive to discreetly arrange the transaction and protect their privacy. “High-basic-quality-escorts will show up on time, match their advertised description, provide the agreed-upon services at the advertised price, be discreet, and generally act in a manner respectful of their client’s privacy and safety,” writes one scholar. Both agencies and independent escorts will screen and verify their clients, treating the received personal information as confidential. “Tina” at a local agency, for instance, knows that I work at a church, but because her business traffics in the keeping of secrets, it is in her interest to not disclose such information.

This is not to discount the very real risks I take. Still, given the alternative, I strive to minimize them. A classmate once proffered these words of wisdom: “You can be smart or you can be celibate.”

Heidi

The parish’s nascent young adults group is finally meeting. It’s a small but dedicated bunch. And then there’s “Heidi.”

A tall, slender brunette, Heidi has been a lively addition to the group. She’s different. In her skintight jeans and suggestive makeup, she contrasts with the more modest young women at church. I also sense a burning eroticism within her. (I once overheard her discussing her busy dating life.) I suspect she’s sexually active.

Last week, after a brief conversation after Bible study, she unexpectedly gave me a hug. Having Heidi’s body against mine was admittedly quite arousing. I imagined her hot naked body pressed against mine. My fingers wrapped around her long hair as I pull it. Her sweet voice emitting moans of pleasure.

I really want to get in between her legs.

Heidi’s sexiness seems out of place (although not unwelcome from my perspective) in our conservative parish. The Christian church traditionally has limited sexual self-expression. A short skirt raises eyebrows. A peek of cleavage can ignite a whispered campaign of slut-shaming. One young woman earned the sobriquet “evangelical whore” for having sex with her boyfriend.

One young woman whose nom de blog is “Horny Christian Girl” describes her battle between her love for God and “the desire to get it on.” She’s managed to maintain her virginity, but she masturbates. “It is rare that I’m ever not in the mood for sex,” she confesses.

Maybe Heidi’s the same way.