Holy Desire Without God: What the Bible Gets Right About the Body
I come from preachers.
My grandfather was a preacher. My younger brother is a preacher. My youngest son graduated from Lubbock Christian University with a degree in ministerial studies. I was a preacher’s kid, a youth minister for a season, and a song service leader who stood in front of congregations every Sunday guiding people into worship.
So when I speak about the Bible, sensuality, power, and desire, I’m not doing it from rebellion or novelty. I’m doing it from familiarity. I know the text, the culture built around it, and the things we were encouraged to linger on. I also know what we were taught to skip past quietly.
And since today is Sunday, a little preaching feels appropriate.
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The Bible Is Not Afraid of the Body
Many of us were taught that holiness meant distance from desire. That the body was something to manage rather than something through which meaning emerges.
That teaching does not come from scripture itself.
The Bible speaks through bodies constantly. It uses longing, pleasure, exposure, dominance, surrender, betrayal, and reconciliation because those are the experiences human beings actually understand. Desire is not treated as foreign or corrupt. It is treated as powerful and consequential.
What modern language might call kink or sensuality often appears in the Bible as poetry, metaphor, warning, covenant, or devotion. The tension is not that these elements exist in scripture. The tension is that many of us were trained not to notice them.
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Erotic Poetry as Sacred Text
Song of Songs
Song of Songs is unambiguous. Bodies are described in detail. Scent, taste, skin, and hunger are named openly. Desire is mutual and celebrated.
This is not sex hidden behind metaphor. It is erotic love preserved as scripture. Attempts to sanitize it usually say more about cultural discomfort than about the text itself.
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Power, Desire, and Consequence
David and Bathsheba
David sees Bathsheba bathing. He desires her and sends for her. The power imbalance is obvious and never denied.
The Bible does not pretend this moment is neutral. It tells the truth about what happens when desire and authority collide without restraint. Power is acknowledged, and so are the consequences of misusing it.
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Erotic Shame and Reclaiming
Hosea and Gomer
Hosea’s marriage uses explicit sexual language to speak about devotion, betrayal, exposure, and reclaiming. Nakedness and desire are not avoided. They are the medium through which meaning is communicated.
The text relies on erotic imagery because attachment, loss, and longing are embodied experiences. Theology works here precisely because sexuality is not erased.
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Consent, Initiation, and Night Encounters
Ruth and Boaz
Ruth approaches Boaz at night on the threshing floor. She initiates. The setting is private and intimate. Boaz responds with restraint and clarity.
Desire is present, but it is held within awareness and consent. Power exists, but it is not exploited. The encounter leads to covenant rather than shame.
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When the Prophets Use Shock Intentionally
Ezekiel
Ezekiel uses graphic sexual imagery on purpose. Descriptions of arousal, excess, exposure, and punishment are meant to bypass denial and land directly in the body.
This language is not accidental or gratuitous. It works because erotic imagery is visceral, memorable, and difficult to ignore.
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Why This Matters, Even as an Atheist
I want to be clear about my position.
I am an atheist.
I am not suggesting we should explore kink, sensuality, or power exchange because God approved it or buried permission in scripture. I am not appealing to divine authority or theological justification.
What I am saying is simpler.
The Bible does not kink shame. The church does.
Scripture contains erotic poetry, embodied desire, power dynamics, transgression, consent, seduction, devotion, and consequence. The shame around these topics came later, from institutions that were uncomfortable with bodies, agency, and unregulated power.
As someone raised in the church and later able to step outside of it, I can see that clearly now. What many of us were taught was not biblical purity. It was cultural anxiety dressed up as holiness.
That same anxiety still shows up in how people approach kink and D/s dynamics today. Many are already navigating desire, dominance, submission, and surrender in their relationships, but without language, consent literacy, or nervous system awareness. When shame replaces education, people either repress themselves or act without care.
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Bringing This Full Circle to Coaching
This is where my work lives.
In my coaching, we slow things down enough to notice what power and desire are doing in the nervous system, not just in fantasy or behavior. I work with individuals and couples who want to engage dominance, submission, and intimacy with clarity rather than secrecy, and responsibility rather than guilt.
The goal is not rebellion. It is clarity.
The goal is not permission. It is self-awareness.
The goal is not belief. It is honesty.
You do not need religion to do this work. You need consent, reflection, and the willingness to look directly at how power and desire move through you.
If this resonates and you want to explore power and intimacy deliberately rather than accidentally, you can learn more about my coaching work here:
👉 https://www.sirchristopher.org/coaching
If ancient scripture can hold erotic truth without flinching, we can learn to do the same without invoking a sky daddy at all.