God: Purveyor of Porn

At least if the March issue of Ladies' Home Journal is to be believed. According to an article by Rick Warren, "The Secret to Soulful Sex,"

"God put a sex manual right into the pages of the Bible, in the form of a love poem called "The Song of Solomon," which shows the relationship between a man and a woman from their courtship to their wedding night."

But before you get out there and follow God's call to be fruitful (or maybe just to bang away relentlessly like a shithouse door on a windy night in Sligo), read Rick's disappointing qualification of the image he's presented of God the procurer:

" . . . (R)esearch reveals the pleasures of married sex are far better than those experienced during premarital sex or sex outside marriage. Would it surprise you to know that research suggests married women have more orgasms than unmarried women?"

Well, it might surprise my wife, but that's another story. He goes on:

"When you consider that sex was invented by God and not Hugh Hefner, the findings of these surveys not only reflect reality but also the biblical teaching that sex was designed for our enjoyment within marriage. In other words, God isn't embarrassed by sex or ashamed of it, and when we engage in it within marriage, He's pleased."

Pleased. That's a strange word to use, I think.

Towards the end of his career, Pablo Picasso produced hundreds of pornographic drawings, mainly lesbian orgy scenes, and in each one, just to the side of the main event, he included a sketch of Edgar Degas, in his suit, with a top hat, in profile, watching the goings-on. What Picasso had against Degas, I don't know, but the cumulative effect of seeing these hundreds of obscene pictures, focusing mostly on the female anus, accompanied each time by an unresponsive, voyeuristic Degas in the corner, is both surreal and very funny. And now it's how I will think of God: Skulking in the corner of the room while we're shagging, saying nothing but seeing everything. Still, what else would you expect? After all, he is God.