Play, Perversity, and Perversion

Play, Peversity, and Perversion

H.J.H.+ 7/3/09; 7/7/09 . . .

I found the other day only one article on “Google” titled, “Christianity and Homo-eroticism.” As I recall, there was scarcely more on “Christianity and Eroticism.” I should imagine there’s scarcely more on “”Christianity and Eros.” Christianity has throughout the great stretch of its history been hostile to Eros, or deeply suspicious of it at least, often considering it almost antithetical. What is true of the phenomenon is necessarily truer of the phenomenon taken as principle or organizing theory, and still more so of a narrower and perhaps perverse phenomenon. Eros must be distinguished of course from Sex or Sexuality. Those have long been at least tolerated or conceded space in human experience because necessary or at least accessory to recognized goods: procreation, primarily, and intimacy, cooperation, fidelity and commitment, i.e., marriage, secondarily. But Eros seems to mean or entail the sexual expression of our humanity not as a means to a good and justifying end, socially productive or merely useful, but as a means merely to pleasure apart from practical value: mere enjoyment, even self-indulgence, perhaps self-assertion, and as probable consequence, self-regard. Then self-centeredness, and finally selfishness—loving self ahead of, more than, disregardful of or indifferent to, or even in spite or at the expense of others--the antithesis of good –moral indifference extended into evil.

Can there be sexual expression that gives pleasure and/or enjoyment—fun—without disregard for or at least harm to others? That doesn’t in addition serve a good or at least useful purpose, coincidently or at least accidentally? Can there be pursuit of pleasure without purpose that is not sexual? Can there be innocent fun, pursuit of pleasure without utility or purpose that is not harmful? Isn’t there such a thing—a legitimate thing, as PLAY? There is, it would seem, some play that isn’t sexual, or corporeal at least. And there does seem to be some sexual expression that is neither productive or useful, but not harmful either, merely playful, simply enjoyable, simply fun. But doesn’t, or hasn’t Christianity, at least in its customary or usual moral rigorism or asceticism (eremitism, monasticism, Puritanism, Jansenism, Pietism, Evangelicalism) tended to see fun and play as sinful, or tending to sin?

“Play” seems even more than erws [What stupid swine put the Greek font into this machine, not knowing that a sigma takes a different form when terminal?] to have been banished from the dictionary of Christian theology. The Church has not to my knowledge paid much attention to Huizinga. What value or estimation does She place on human creativity, imagination or humor? Traditionally, much human thought—even if in play—is categorized as “evil thoughts.” And we conceive of God—at least as a conception-transcending Ultimate Reality—in some part through our imagination, that is, through projection. If indeed the concept of the person, the category of the personal, really is at the center of either Christian or democratic thought—or both—it would seem that the Transcendant must be personal, just as the created order implies a creating and ordering God, Who, unless human moral consciousness is an accident or an error on His part, must be a Person—and if so, then One who must address the persons in His Creation—as I believe He did in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. But if human projection is a means to communication with Reality as well as to self-understanding, it has to be true that, given the almost infinite variety of human conceptions, projection is also merely and thus often erroneously human. I would hope that is true of the concept of God as held by the homophobic fanatic from Los Angeles—originally Kansas. And I hope almost equally that that is true of the God one finds in the Canon of Sacred Scripture—at least in the Old Testament, and possibly elsewhere, as in the Epistle to the Romans. One hopes Origen had a projection closer to communication—to revelation—than Calvin.

If God is a loving Father, as Jesus taught, surely he must be more tolerant and understanding of the creature he made in His image than one’s loved and trusted psychiatrist. And surely it’s one’s actions, not one’s imaginations, that count, although certainly imagination must have its effect on temper and motive and intention if not finally on act. One hopes so devoutly in view of what one has at times imagined.