Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling explores the anxiety people feel when they put into action what they have come to accept on faith. Tillich talked about doubt being an integral part of faith so much that many wondered if he was really an atheist. But I don’t see much fear and trembling on the part of Christianists. For them it’s all about certainty. It seems to me that they closely associate their opinions and ideas of God with God. Some don’t even seem capable of understanding that there might be a difference.
I find the idea of reaching into someone else’s head with the intention of manipulating their dreams, thoughts and fantasies to be alarming. I think if anything should give one pause, that would be it. And to blithely do that to a pubescent kid… Explicit sexual thoughts and fantasies are new to them, and they might find them to be frightening to some degree, so it might be traumatic to have some judgmental, know-it-all jerk come in and claim that some of those thoughts are evil. Has it ever occurred to these arrogant people who would impose their ridged, unyeilding sexual ethics on our youth that maybe nature knows what it’s doing in planting those “sinful, lustful” thoughts in the minds of pubescent kids? Maybe it’s an important part of the maturation process. Maybe it’s one of the ways young people come to know that they’re separate from their families with dreams and desires of their own and that they need to start preparing to go out into the world to fulfill those dreams and desires.
I don’t think Christianists care much about maturation and independence. I think their goal is to keep people emotionally dependent, locked in a state of puberty, always worried that they might have a “dirty” thought, always seeking the approval of authority figures who have set themselves up as the lawgivers, the ones who speak for God.
Sexual urges are very powerful. And we see people getting in trouble because of their sexual urges all the time--unwanted pregnancies, the lies and manipulations of seducers who don’t care about the feelings of their partners so long as they get what they want, cheating that leads to broken homes and ruined friendships, saying “yes” when there’s no condoms around and being told six months later that you’re now positive. No wonder some people want to believe there’s some kind of rule book that will protect us all from harm. No wonder some are quick to believe that any sex that’s not approved of by the self-appointed messengers of God is an addiction, something evil in and of itself, something that must be avoided at all costs even if the core of their being is telling them the lawgivers are wrong.
We have heard so much from the Christian Church, and Christianists in particular, about how we should be afraid of sex. But maybe we should be worried about authority, too--the desire to surrender our individuality to it, as well as the flip side of that, the desire to pretend we have more knowledge than we actually do. How many wars have been unnecessarily fought, how many people have been unnecessarily killed, how many dreams have been delayed, cast aside, lost, how many have gone through their whole lives half awake because some of us are too quick to stand up and claim we know more than we do, while others are too quick to follow blustering fools because they’re too afraid of the uncertainty, the fear and trembling, the doubt that comes with thinking for themselves or because their courage to face those things was ripped from them at an impressionable age or during a period of vulnerability?
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