Our world is built with stories.

Sometimes these stories cause suffering by pulling us apart from ourselves and each other.

The liturgist podcast helps people love more and suffer less by pulling apart the stories that pull us apart.

Today's story, pleasure is sinful.

Pleasure is sinful.

Pleasure. Pleasure.

Okay, I don't know the right delivery for that line, so I'm just going to leave all those on there.

Although I was never outright told that pleasure is inherently sinful, I was definitely taught that denying myself of pleasure is the only way to live a holy life and the only way to grow as a person.

In the particular intersection of Korean American identity as well as in a very conservative, presbyterian church.

Pleasure being sinful was definitely the dominant worldview for most of my life.

I was raised under the belief that suffering is an apparent part of the Christian life, not that pleasure was.

I was never led to believe that pleasure was a sin, but I was led to believe that pleasure is unnecessary.

I wasn't allowed to be comfortable with the things I felt and wanted and instead had to continuously battle and suppress those things to reach for the higher path.

I suppose I don't believe that experiencing pleasure is inherently sinful, but I was definitely brought up in a theological context that considers most avenues of obtaining pleasure to be sinful.

I think the word pleasure itself had like a stigma around it. Something pleasurable was wrong.

Not only did I believe that pleasure was wrong, I internalized the message of that pain and suffering were the markers of faithfulness to God.

Because I believed the heart is deceitful and the body is not to be trusted, I had to die to the sinful desires of the flesh.

From my professional goals, to my relationship with food, to my queerness, anything I desired or took pleasure was inherently wrong and must be stripped away to please God.

You know, we learned so much about hating your body, hating your flesh, and it wasn't until I was close to getting married that my therapist told me,

you know, pleasure is actually something that you're supposed to experience and it's actually good for your body to experience pleasure.

Hi everybody, my name is Hillary McBride.

And I'm Michael Gunger.

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