by Tucker Lieberman

Created on: July 09, 2006   Last Updated: May 11, 2007

Sexual abstinence may be compared to abstinence from food, alcohol, and various material comforts. Physical passions are among the most difficult to master. Undergoing short or prolonged periods of abstinence helps a person to re-evaluate what is truly important in life; it facilitates introspection and can be a mind-altering technique. Eastern religions teach that sex involves the exchange of vital energies that can weaken the person if done improperly or irreverently, and the same belief or superstition appears in some Western traditions. People who have engaged in sex and in deep prayer or meditation understand that they are satisfying in different ways and that spent sexual energy may distract from the energy needed for religious contemplation.

The requirement of abstinence can be shown to serve the goal of submission to a social hierarchy. Children submit to the will of their parents, women submit to men, slaves submit to aristocrats, and everyone submits to God. For this reason, too, most religions value self-control and obedience in certain circumstances.

Promoting abstinence is also a way of guiding young people onto a certain path. Religious authorities pressure young, unattached people to remain celibate because they fear that, if they granted adolescents full moral license to freely act on any sexual impulse, those adolescents might be unprepared for the emotional force inherent in sex, might bear unplanned children they cannot care for, and might fail to mature into disciplined, sensitive, patient adults. The ritualized commitment of marriage gives parents and religious leaders an opportunity to provide guidance regarding where, when, how, and with whom their child's sexual expression and child-rearing will take place. This differs from social control in that it is an attempt to lovingly guide, rather than dominate, a young person's choices.

A final theory is that abstaining from romance is a way of dedicating oneself to God, who is often described as jealous. Devotion to God is often allegorized as a kind of erotic love. Even if celibacy is short-term, as it is before marriage, it teaches the person the meaning of love without sex, which can then be applied to a religious understanding of what it means to love God although one cannot have a physical affair with God. Eliminating sexual jealousy from the scene may also give the person a chance to learn to love humanity more openly and generously.

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