Most Christian Worship Music is Hilariously Homoerotic
The Bible has never been afraid of a little sex.
From Ezekiel 23:20, “There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.” This may be a joke, or at least an indecorous exaggeration, but it does represent one of many times the Bible brazenly parades around genitals, sex, naked bodies, etc.
I bet if Donald Trump read the Bible even half as often as his so-called “spiritual advisor” Paula White claims he does, he’d probably come across this verse, jump on Twitter, and claim that his penis is actually much larger and much more attractive than the one described in Ezekiel 23:20.
Evangelicals would likely praise him subsequently for his comments, but I digress.
Most religious literature, particularly originating from the Mesopotamian world during the time of the Old Testament patriarchs, exists in a kind of suspended animation between aggressively sexual scenes — often involving rape, group sex, incest, etc. — and a strict, conditional moral code that introduces various classifiers, prohibitions, and consequences around specified, and often bizarre, sexual expressions. I want to examine a bit of the Bible’s relationship to the pornographic (i.e. the depiction of erotic behavior), and point out what I feel to be an obvious reality: Christians ignore or suppress sex in the same breath that they parade it.
Let’s use the particularly saucy book of Song of Songs as an example to illustrate this. Early interpretations of Song of Songs — “shir hashirim”(שִׁיר הַשִּׁירִים) or “the loveliest song”—classified the book as a dramatic composition depicting a three-way romance between King Solomon, a harem girl, and a lowly-stationed shepherd boy. It is an interpretation that was extremely common up until the nineteenth-century, and it has largely been abandoned today. Dating regarding composition is all over the place, ranging from the 10th century BCE to the days of hellenistic dominance.
See, Mom? I do put my twin Master’s degrees to good use some of the time.
Even before this interpretation was given up, however, the sexual imagery and romantic overtures were drastically watered down. Anselm Hagedorn, for instance, maintained that allegorizing the book was a way of making Song of Songs acceptable to both Christians and Jews that found literal interpretations of erotic sex problematic.
That anyone could read that masterpiece of ancient, sexual poetry and reverse-engineer it into merely an abstract totem made in worship of divine symbolism in lieu of a good, horny sweat is beyond me. However, embarrassment and shyness about flagrant, open, and honest depictions of sex are feelings not strictly applied to religious communities.
Remember, though, that Christian men are viewing pornography online at virtually the same frequency, rate, and percentage of the national average.
They’re not that shy.
“Your cheeks are comely with ornaments, your neck with strings of jewels. We will make you ornaments of gold, studded with silver. While the king was on his couch, my nard gave forth its fragrance. My beloved is to me a bag of myrrh that lies between my breasts” (1:10–13).
Song of Songs is whimsical, passionate, and rather on-the-nose as poetic entries in the biblical canon go. I don’t imagine these phrases would take someone very far if employed in attempts at flattery, but they’re nothing in comparison to what the Bible says about other various protagonists throughout the diverse narrative base.
In Judges 16:1, steroidal Israelite hero Samson goes off and bangs a harlot. Genesis 35:22 describes how Reuben went and “lay with Bilhah his father’s concubine: and Israel heard it” (nice little detail there). One of King David’s sons had sex with his dad’s concubines in front of the entire country (2 Samuel 16:22), and this was after King David himself hung brain and danced around — much to the dismay of his wife — in front of everyone with his penis flapping through the air (2 Samuel 6:20).
Oh, and Genesis 19:33 tells us how Lot, the only righteous dude in Sodom, had sex with his two daughters after getting drunk with them.
On consecutive nights.
One after the other.
Even Game of Thrones doesn’t go that far. This kind of stuff would make even the Lannisters cringe. Whatever. It’s made up mythology anyway, but you get my point: the Bible is full of raunchy sex.
I’m not trying to point out the Bible’s cherry-picking precedent setting regarding sexual immorality, but I am eager to emphasize that the treatment of Song of Songs, and other borderline sexual acts in the Bible, are a microcosm of a subconscious discipline practiced by most Christians that attend contemporary worship services every Sunday morning.
They intentionally ignore the blatancy of their sexual imagery.
Christian worship songs are intensely sexual, but worship leaders are scant to admit this. Honestly, I doubt most congregation members or song leaders pay attention to the lyrics half of the time.
While I was still pretending to be a Christian, I once led a church gathering in the singing of “Join hands and hearts and voices; hearts and voices, hands!” Spoiler alert: That’s not a worship song, but it is the refrain section of the “Kellerman’s Theme” from Dirty Dancing. I don’t know how I knew the chords or remembered the lyrics, but the Pastor wanted something played while people were taking communion.
I wish I could tell you that I feel bad about it, but I don’t. Half of the church sang along without thinking, and no one complained about it or raised confused concerns in hindsight. Anyway, lets get back to actual Christian worship songs. They’re dirty as hell. Take these lyrics for example:
“You dance over me while I am unaware.” This seems rapey. I hate it.
“Heaven meets Earth like a sloppy wet kiss and my heart beats violently inside of my chest.” Every Christian that I’ve ever known tells me that they hate this lyric, so I won’t harp on about it. Why would the kiss be sloppy and wet though? It makes you wonder…
“Stretch me bigger.” Yes, this is actually real.
“Gushing with surrender in your hands.” All of the congregation’s Kink.com subscribers likely let out a silent cheer when they hear this on Sunday morning, and you can bet that most of them hide their BDSM collections from their wives and Christian friends.
“Giving it over, I was flat on my back.” This sounds like a weird 50 Shades of Gray power play recollection.
“I’m falling on my knees, offering all of me.” Huh.
“I want to touch You, I want to see Your face, I want to know You more…” If you read these lyrics backwards, they almost formulate a logical progression that might lead to consensual sex…almost.
“Mmm it’s intimate.” WTF?
“Spread wide in the arms of Christ.” The weird thing here is that you’re not being “spread wide” when you’re being hugged, which leads me to believe the proverbial arms of Jesus are spreading the subject’s legs open. Even as a bisexual, I am completely horrified by this.
“No greater love have I ever known; You considered me a friend.” This is extremely funny to me, because the singer just stated how in love with Jesus he/she (probably he) is while making it clear that Jesus has friend-zoned them. Harsh!
“I wanna sit at your feet, drink from the cup in your hand, lay back against you and breathe; hear your heart beat. This love is so deep, it’s more than I can stand. I melt in your peace, it’s overwhelming.” I will give anyone $50 dollars if they paste this into the bio of their Bumble account.
I think you probably get my point, and the irony is that Christians — by and large, with very few exceptions — believe that God is a biological male and that men were made first, before women, in the image of their maker.
It’s important to many Christians that their God has a big, whopping penis.
That means that, for all the men singing these songs in buildings that house blatantly homophobic doctrines that (among other things) teach that homosexuality is a curable disease, of a demonic spirit, or not a part of God’s plan, they are making homoerotic overtures to their cosmic, space penis Christ via the wind song of 5-chord Christian music.
Did it ever occur to them that the imagery of Christian men loving their wives, as Jesus (the bridegroom) loved the church might carry some kind of consummation implication? That’s from Ephesians 5:25.
I never had any desire to go into the bridal suite with Jesus, thank you very much. However, I do quite enjoy the juicy irony inherent to a scenario where in which thousands upon thousands of either blatantly or borderline homophobic Christian men sing with reckless abandon in hopes of someday being “spread wide” by Jesus.
I think that it’s easy to see that many Christian relationships with sex are, like many other things found in American Christian culture, typified by a “hiding in plain sight” reality that illustrates the truly tenuous and delicate relationship with the truth and reality of their lives that many Christians work so hard to balance or repress.
Just remember to keep hidden as much of your non-abstract, actual sexual desires as is humanly possible, boys. Jesus wants you all to himself.
“For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin” (2 Corinthians 11:2).
