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~ The opposite of a regret, is a story.

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Tag Archives: Christian

Jesus is a Whore

24 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by shieldingc in Catholic Edition, My Incessant Bitching

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

alabaster jar, Catholic, Christ, Christian, eucharist, Feminist, fuck, fucking, Intersectional feminism, intersectional feminist, irreverent theology, Jesus, Jesus is a whore, Jesus porn, Mary Magdalene, pope, porn, pro-sex-worker, prostitute, red umbrella, Sex-positive, Sex-Worker, sinful woman, Stripper, theology without underwear, whore, whorephobia

If you’re a Christian who thinks it’s wrong to be a sex-worker, here’s a counter-reason you probably didn’t consider:

Jesus is a whore.

Terms chosen to explain the deeper spiritual meaning of the crucifixion are consistently transactional.  Christian theologies explicitly state that our sins were all paid for by Christ’s physical body.  This isn’t an accident.  It’s an accurate throwback to stark facts concerning Calvary.

For thirty pieces of silver, Christ was kissed and stripped.  His naked body provided entertainment to voyeuristic strangers.  If you think that isn’t like sex-work because it doesn’t sound sexy to you, I can assure you that the Romans thought differently.  Public entertainment, including executions, were expected to be sexual.  The Latin word for a gladiator-trainer was the same as the word for a pimp, and gladiators were classed the same as prostitutes under Roman law.  Colosseum games included sexual exploits.  Political dissidents were crucified naked specifically as a form of sexual humiliation.  The crowd at Christ’s feet were getting off on it.

People are still are getting off on it.  Don’t Google Loadstar, Him or I saw Jesus Die, but do believe me when I tell you – there is such a thing as crucifixion porn.  And if you’ve never seen a crucifix in Church where Jesus didn’t have at least a chiseled six-pack, you might want to ask yourself why.

Now you’ll argue that Jesus can’t be a whore because he wasn’t the one getting paid.  He didn’t take the silver and his weren’t the sins forgiven.  But this has frequently been the case for prostitutes with pimps, with family in debt, and whose work went to feed their own children.  None of these circumstances prevent people from being labeled sex-workers.

Also, if you’re Catholic, you believe that Christ’s literal flesh is still yours to feast upon.  His body pays your share in eternal life on an ongoing basis.  If the transaction is not voluntary on his end, the Church should consider itself a predator.  Bad for optics, if you still want to deny Christ’s whoredom, is the literal collection of cash before the Eucharistic service.  Also not helping your case – the persistent, soft-spoken comparison of Communion to sex itself.  First Eucharist has often been related to a first passionate kiss.  Little girls waiting to receive it are dressed in wedding-bright white.

If none of that is convincing, I direct your attention to the only story in the bible where Jesus definitely speaks to a prostitute.  This story can only be found in the gospel of Luke (7:36-50).  (Other gospels tell a story that similarly involve a woman with an alabaster jar, but no allusions to prostitution.  John’s story identifies this woman as Mary Magdalene, which is a good case for the Mary-was-a-hooker narrative you’ll hear some bible experts dismissing out-of-hand.)

Luke’s story goes like this:

Christ is at a Pharisee’s house reclining at table, when a whore walks up to him with an alabaster flask, and pours ointment all over his feet.  The Pharisee thinks to himself, “‘If this man were a prophet,  he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.’”

So everyone’s scandalized.  But it’s not for the reason you think.

You’re allowed to have sex with a prostitute.  That’s not a problem.  Not even for a holy man, not even for a rabbi.  Nobody’s shocked to see her in the Pharisee’s house, and in fact all the men seem to know who she is; she’s probably there all the time.  Nobody’s saying out loud that there’s anything wrong with what Jesus is letting her do to him.  He has the right to let her.  They’re just judging him privately.

Because, he’s doing it wrong.

The hooker’s not supposed to pay you.  The hooker’s not supposed to use you and your body for her own comfort and relief.  And that’s what she was definitely doing, and she was not being subtle.  We remember thousands of years later that her jar was made of alabaster; it was a big, showy thing she did to bathe him in that ointment.  She made it rain, to use the modern vernacular of strip-clubs.  She slobbered all over him – kissing, crying, rubbing her hair on his feet.  There could be no mistaking her passion for accident or malady; they know what kind of woman she is.  They assume she’s getting off.  And they’re privately scoffing at the way Jesus can just lay there passively, without seeming to realize that he’s become the whore.

That isn’t a story about how Jesus accepted an apology from a very sorry prostitute.  This isn’t even what Jesus said about the situation.  He said to his host, who sat there quietly mocking him, that the woman’s love was a demonstration of thanks for all that she had been forgiven.  Simon, man of stature, had never been forced by society to grapple with the weight of his own humility.  He didn’t yet know what it was to feel redeemed.  And Jesus said, it showed, in the stingy way that he received his guests.

The prostitute didn’t leave the house that day committed to prostituting no more.  It wasn’t an option; in Jesus-era Palestine, a known whore couldn’t just decide to get married or start up a respectable business instead.  Her redemption was to do with her own sense of integrity.  Her own ability to love and respect herself.  And her finding, in Jesus, the hope that the world she lived in could learn to love her yet.

It was her faith that saved her.  And Jesus heard that prayer.

So he became her.  In front of that entire stuffy dinner party – Christ became a whore, who wouldn’t be shamed.

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Your Confession Appears Forced

09 Monday May 2016

Posted by shieldingc in General, My Incessant Bitching

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2016, A Confession of Liberal Intolerance, Christian, conservative, conservative scholars, discrimination, gay in Mississippi in 1950, Marxist, May 7, Nicholas Kristof, oppression, Republican, South Sudan, trafficked kids, war victims

Nicholas Kristof’s May 7th Op-Ed, echoing similar articles lately floating through the ether, declares itself, “A Confession of Liberal Intolerance.”

He would have more aptly named it, “A way to stop feeling liberal guilt over having political disputes at the low, low cost of your humanitarian priorities.”

Kristof’s not wrong to say that there is such a thing as liberal intolerance, and that it’s a problem.  After that, though, he says things like, “My Facebook followers have incredible compassion for war victims in South Sudan, for kids who have been trafficked, even for abused chickens, but no obvious empathy for conservative scholars facing discrimination.”

Kristof, who identifies as a liberal, clearly finds it helpful to echo the sentiments that are exactly the reason people roll their eyes when Christian conservatives complain of oppression.  So I’ll try not to get very sarcastic.  But I will note that victims of genocide, and child sex slaves, do not fall into the same category as college students and professors who get judged for reading Ayn Rand.

They just, fucking, don’t.

Similarly, conservative professors are not “virtually an endangered species”.  A conservative professor in America is not “the equivalent of someone who was gay in Mississippi in 1950.”  Conservative professors aren’t being rounded up in bars, taken to jail, and beaten bloody on Saturday nights for fun; aren’t being dragged to death behind cars; aren’t being forced by mental health professionals to take drugs or submit to therapies designed to make them stop being conservative; aren’t ignored by the medical community while a deadly virus contracted by a few turns steadily into a plague; aren’t, as children, thrown out of their houses and forced to live in the streets when their parents find out about their career plans.

They are being judged by liberal intellectuals as inferior thinkers, is what is happening.

It’s fucking, different.

Kristoff goes on to remark, “The scarcity of conservatives seems driven in part by discrimination. One peer-reviewed study found that one-third of social psychologists admitted that if choosing between two equally qualified job candidates, they would be inclined to discriminate against the more conservative candidate.”

Right, what you’re describing there is discrimination.  But do you get that the discrimination is the scenario, itself, of having to hire one person?  We judge some qualities as better than others.  That is what is required when you have to make a choice.  The question isn’t whether conservatives or people of color or women are being judged when we go into a job interview, because of course we are.  The question is, on what basis are we being judged?

If the basis is, “she’s a woman”, or “he’s an Indian”, or “they liked Atlas Shrugged” – we all might agree, that’s wrong.  If the basis is, “His decision-making process lends itself to irrational decisions” it is exactly appropriate to discriminate against him.  A woman who tells you that her decision-making process is uncritical, literal acceptance of every injunction in the bible, and that she supports the death penalty for gay marriage as a result, is not equally qualified for a social psychologist’s role as someone lacking this worldview, regardless of other credentials.

You’re entitled to your opinion, but you’re not entitled to my opinion.  The idea that you’re being victimized when others disdain your opinions is sheer irresponsibility.  The valid concern that abhorrent opinions are often attributed stereotypically to Christian  conservatives is isolated right out of the discussion when you hold that your ideology is above peer-review.

Kristof further ruminates that, “it’s easier to find a Marxist in some disciplines than a Republican.”  For this to be a statement of significance, of course, relies on the assumption that there obviously should be more Republicans than Marxists in any discipline.  Which is a far cry from the intellectual inclusiveness identified as necessary at the start of this piece.

The same tenor imbues the line about war victims in south Sudan.  The implication being that it should be easier to empathize with a conservative American professor than with a Sudanese war survivor or a child prostitute.  Which is exactly the fuck kind of attitude words like “diversity” are designed to address, you know?  The kind that says the people like you are the people you should like.  That you don’t have to identify as strongly with the pain of people who are different from you.

Arrogance is abrasive, even when it’s fun.  And it’s not ok to stereotype or to ridicule others before hearing what they have to say.  But the arrogance floating around liberal circles isn’t killing anyone and, objectively, does not matter as much as the kinds of prejudice that lead people to rape and murder and to ignore rape and murder.  Let’s not, anymore, let actual human suffering take a backseat to anyone’s demands for popularity.

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Christian FYI: Gay Marriage

14 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by shieldingc in Catholic Edition, My Incessant Bitching

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Birth of Christ, Christian, Gay, Gay Marriage, God, Jesus, Joseph, Mary

Matthew 1:18-20:

“18Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. 19And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man and yet not willing to make her a public example, planned to send her away secretly. 20But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.”

We’ve been told that the manger in the stable marked Christ’s humble beginning, but it started way before that, and it was way more humble an origin story than plain old being poor.  By every social standard and from every angle, Mary’s pregnancy was an abomination – a freak of nature and a bastard outlaw.  If all due ritual and law had been observed, the story might have ended here, because that bit about Joseph not wanting Mary to be made into a public example had a very specific meaning.  Back in those days, the traditional, law-abiding, scriptures-backed way of dealing with an adulteress was death-by-stoning.

Jo wasn’t thrilled his fiancé got herself knocked up, but he was a nice guy – he didn’t want her to face public execution.  So even though it went against what all the priests and laws and traditions had to say, he was ok with taking the middle road.  He wasn’t going to marry her or condone her behavior, but he wasn’t going to stop her from living her life, either.

Then he went further.  Based on the feeling of his own spirit and his own personal dream, Joseph decided he was more than ok with it – he was ready to fall in love with it.  He shrugged off the stigma on his manhood, the shame of his family, the minus holy points for not observing the letter of the law, and he put his own sense of right and wrong and love above all else.

And you know what?  Thanks to that selfish, pickin-and-choosin-what-doctrines-he-obeyed, shamelessly unorthodox guy, Jesus got to grow up with a mom and two dads, instead of being orphaned and/or aborted.  Think of that the next time some self-appointed level-1000 religious expert tries to tell you what your family ought to look like.

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