Wet dreams are a natural bodily function that we have no control over. This included our Lord Jesus Christ. Given the fact that he was fully human as well as fully divine gives us the place to say that it is conceivable that He had wet dreams, and since He was a man without sin, wet dreams cannot be a sin.

--Post on soc.religion.christian, 3/1/1994

When you are encamped against your enemies, keep away from everything impure. If one of your men is unclean because of a nocturnal emission, he is to go outside the camp and stay there. But as evening approaches he is to wash himself, and at sunset he may return to
the camp.

--Deuteronomy 23:9-11

Most major world religions, from Buddha in the east to Mohammed in the West, from areas reaching to the majestic polar bears in the North Pole to the humble penguins down in Antarctica, preach that the physical plane is implicitly defiled and corrupt. They regard our fleshly state as a fall from grace, a tainted existence, a dirty pigpen filled with pee-pee and ca-ca. If we lived in a state of innate purity and innocence, and if all is natural and nothing is forbidden, there'd be no need for religion or God or redemption. If we lived in the Garden of Eden right now, who the fuck would need God?

At least that's how the ancients saw it. Accordingly, world religions tend to equate the human condition--and the sexuality which perpetuates it--with dirt and sin and separation from God. But more modern-minded people see nothing wrong with being human. They believe we're born perfect. They believe we live in heaven right now, which, if it's true, is a BIG FUCKING disappointment.

But some people try to have it both ways. They vainly attempt to reconcile modern sexuality with ancient sex-hating spirituality. Such latter-day menses-crazed mulligatawny-soup-scented hippie attempts to cram square pegs into round holes are doomed from the get-go.

Therefore, sex-positive Christianity is a contradiction in terms. Nothing Christians hate more than some sex. Put on that fig leaf and forget about it. So if Jesus was a sexual being, as the New Age Earth Mommas insist he was, he couldn't have possibly been the son of God as 99% of Christians define it. And if he was the son of God, ambassador of a spiritual realm forever elevated above carnal stickiness, it would have been a mite undignified if he was runnin' around waxin' ass and jackin' off.

"But Jesus was human," they'll remind us. Well, not exactly. Regardless of denomination, Christians agree that Jesus never sinned. But they'll also claim that being a sinner is a crucial part of being human. It's an inherent contradiction of the messiah myth. Christians can never fully explain exactly HOW human Jesus really was. And while we're at it, why would God need to

BECOME human in order to understand what it's like? He CREATED humans, so we assume the old senile bastard wrote the Owner's Manual. It gets complicated. After a while, it's like asking questions about Santa Claus--none of it makes sense.

I'm not a Christian. I don't expect any of it to make sense. I believe that one should only feel guilty about sex when it's done poorly. Personally, I don't believe Jesus was divine. I don't think he had God's cell-phone number handy or anything like that. I think he was probably a bravely masochistic human being with all sorts of twisted sexual proclivities. C'mon--running around with twelve other guys at age thirty-three?

But for the sake of fun, let's pretend that Jesus was indeed who he said he was. Since he had a body, we can assume that he pooped and peed and farted and slept and ate. These are all things that humans do. But world religions never equate spiritual guilt with any of these functions--only with sex. So sexual energy must be something a little different. Sex is forever entwined with the idea of creation--several ancient religions portray the Big Bang as some sort of divine ejaculation. But interestingly, they depict the event as an act of will, with God either masturbating or intentionally impregnating someone. It's never accidental.

Are wet dreams accidental? Is there a difference between a "nocturnal emission," which sounds like an involuntary physical act, and a "wet dream," which implies that one's consciousness actively creates a pornographic scenario?

Assuming that Jesus was God...and that willfully having sex is part of the sinful human condition...wet dreams would HAVE to be accidental in order for Jesus to have had them. Follow me?

If Jesus ever ejaculated, one cannot help but wonder about the sperm. Was it, too, divine? When it dried up, were millions of tiny deities killed? Did Jesus shoot an average-sized load or a gargantuan Divinity Wad? And dare one wonder about the size, tex

ture...and taste...of his genitals?

The Gospels never allude to Christ as a sexual being. But God DID send a son, not a daughter, so we assume that at the very least, Jesus had a penis. Jesus had a beard, so it must be assumed that he had pubic hair and probably even frequent morning erections. We know that he could suffer...but could he feel pleasure? Sexual pleasure? What sort of chicks might Jesus go for? After a sweaty day of carpentry and eyeballing Israeli maidens, was he tortured by dreams of their carnal allure?

Given that the Old Testament clearly forbids the wasting of one's seed (in Genesis 38, God slew Onan for spilling his jizz on the ground), we can rule out that Jesus masturbated.

So it all hinges on whether or not Jesus had wet dreams. I'm sure the apostles were having them. They were having wet dreams left and right. The apostles were a buncha squirt monkeys.

The quote from Deuteronomy gives us the answer, my brothers and sisters. Israeli soldiers who had nocturnal emissions were regarded as "unclean" and thus tainted by sin. And sin is always a choice, never an involuntary spasm. So the God of the Bible regards a nocturnal emission as the willful act of a sinner.

So, at least within a biblical framework, there's no possible way that Jesus had wet dreams.

IN JEWISH MYTHOLOGY, Lilith was Adam's first wife, but she was a little too butch for him and split for the Red Sea when Adam insisted on the missionary position. She whittled away the hours having group sex with demons, whom she claimed were better in the sack than Adam. By the Middle Ages, her legend as a semi-divine nympho was such that Hebrew men began blaming her for causing their nocturnal emissions. They believed that Lilith or her daughters would visit at night and squat atop their unsuspecting cocks. It was also said that if a male infant laughed in his sleep, Lilith was trying to fondle him. Christians altered the Lilith story into the legend of the succubi, ethereal sex kittens who drained believers' balls as they slept. To ward off their charms, monks would sleep with their hands over their crotch, clutching a crucifix. Christian females could blame their sexual dreams on an incubus, the male counterpart to a succubus; in a pinch, they could also blame the incubus for an unwanted pregnancy.

Of course, nobody blamed themselves for these erotic dreams, nor for the fluids left in their wake.

THE WIZARDS OF MODERN MEDICINE aren't sure what causes wet dreams. As soon as one theory gains credence, some new study will come along to knock everything askew again. Pragmatic explanations for wet dreams have focused on the purely

physiological, pointing a finger at everything from full bladders to excess testosterone. Others blame an accumulation of sexual tension which has found no release through ordinary outlets. It has been speculated that nocturnal emissions are the body's way of flushing out sperm that has aged well past its vintage, but this doesn't account for the fact that some sexually inactive men never have wet dreams, while some sleeping studs squirt all over the duck-down comforter two nights in a row even when enjoying lots of pooty-tang in their waking hours.

What is known is that both men and women are capable of reaching orgasm while asleep, although it's much harder to spot the evidence with females. But the fact that women can also cum while sleeping would cast doubt on the idea that nocturnal emissions are caused
primarily by friction--an involuntary rubbing of the penis on bedsheets, a mattress, or one's pajamas. It's difficult for a woman to accidentally rub her clit against something.

Sleepy-time orgasms occur during the REM phase of sleep, during which most healthy men achieve at least a partial erection and most women lubricate vaginally. But what remains blurry is the role of dreaming...i.e., the role of human consciousness and willfulness...in taking physiological arousal to the level of orgasmic release. If there's a required element of fantasy, then wet dreams are no accident. They are the physical result of human beings creating pornography in their minds while sleeping.

If one can choose to have a wet dream, it would stand to reason that you could will to not have one, too. For me, the proof is in the pudding...or, rather, the lack thereof.

Kind readers, I was a hardcore Christian for nearly two years from the age of 15 to 17. Those mid-teen years are supposedly the prime of one's nocturnal emitting. Before becoming Christian, I spurted out a cream-container's worth of early teen REM-jism. Rarely a day went by that I didn't wake up with Alfredo sauce all over my drawers. But after giving my heart to the imaginary Jesus hologram in my head, I didn't have a single wet dream. Not once for two years did my body feel the need to involuntary flush aging sperm from my sanctified nuts. So I must conclude that willfulness is a part of all sexual thought, whether waking or asleep. If you dream that you're sucking your dad's cock, it isn't "just a dream"--you really wanna huff papa's bone.

So if you wake up one morning with applesauce all over your boxer briefs, don't listen to the pop psychologists who say you shouldn't feel guilty. It wasn't an accident--your dirty mind caused it.