Over the past few months, I’ve been having phone sex with a clinical psychologist. Seriously. “Dr. Madison” says it gives her an opportunity to unleash her deviant side. She’s elicited from me some of my darkest secrets. She’s seen though the morally upright façade I present to my colleagues. Most recently I confessed in detail my most recent encounter with an escort.

During our calls, Dr. Madison has encountered the duality between my religiosity and my sexuality and the inner conflict it produces. When she inquired as to how I reconcile my visits to call girls with my religious commitments, I didn’t have a ready answer.

She’s of the opinion that celibacy, except for a few notable souls, is unrealistic. (Isaac Newton supposedly confessed on his deathbed that he had never had sex.) Despite our elevated view of ourselves, Homo sapiens are ultimately primates designed to reproduce. Sex is our destiny. “Philip, you can’t deny biology,” she told me. “Do you find sex with a woman pleasurable?” Obviously, I replied. Condoning my hiring of prostitutes as an acceptable outlet for my arousal, she finds it implausible that having experienced the pleasures of sex I’ll be able to abstain from it. She also finds my intertwining of sex and religion fascinating, particularly my sexual fantasies about nuns. It’s as if I’ve merged the two crucial facets of my life, she said.

She read a quote from Foucault in which he posited that in sex there is truth (in coitus veritas). I had confessed my spiritual aspirations: “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mt 26:41). She suggested that in my case it was the opposite: the flesh is willing, but the spirit is weak. Despite my protestations to the contrary, I prioritize my sexual arousal.

To put a theological gloss on it, I practice a sexual antinomianism. The strictures on sexual behavior, as evidenced by my behavior, don’t apply to me. At some level I’ve convinced myself that the sacrifices I’ve made in divinity school and parish ministry excuse me from having to follow the rules in sexual matters. The flesh is willing, but the spirit is weak.

Among the many objects of my lust that I confessed was my obsession with Dr. Sheffield. As I relayed my fantasy of dominating her, the psychologist recognized my darker sexual impulses. “Philip, you are such a naughty boy!” she teased.