[gorbasevhuynani]

Going to church feels like alligator clips on my vaj

[InvertPrete]

It's just one part, for sure.

[JesikaFclq]

A large number of Saints were flagrant masochists.

[nicktender]

I think the whole concept of Pain-Religion Link is a bit outdated but not unheard of. While I personally don't see the appeal, Religion should be a personal/ private Experience. If a person decides self-flagellation/ rapid whirling / nippleclamping or whatever they come up next with strengthens their Bond to God, i do my best to respect that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus_Dei#Mortification

My objection--okay, not my objection, the reason I burst out laughing reading this--was not to her ideas so much as her absurd style of argument, which she shares with postmodernists: point out a similarity or association so mild and tenuous that it could easily be chalked up to coincidence, phrase your arguments to appeal to a bland, fuzzy spirit of open-mindedness, and avoid saying anything specific. What you wind up with isn't an argument so much as a vague sense of linkage between two ideas that can't be explored because there's nothing really in it. Item: fictional rich guy could be argued to share certain traits with certain people's conceptions of God. Item: a lot of religions have stuff to say about sex. Item: Mother Teresa had a rough relationship with God. What's it add up to? A big article that would fail freshman Composition class!

With that said, the ascetic elements of most any religion tend to be fairly similar to martial arts: they're associated with sets of rigid rules to be followed, nothing individualistic about them. Their purpose is not the discomfort in itself but to weaken or overcome undesired aspects of oneself--sensual appetites, passions, whatever they don't like. And they are done by the individual to himself; God didn't make you stand on that pillar for years, you did it yourself to know God better. Whereas she's talking about something that eschews formal discipline for more individual experience, is supposed to be done by God to the believer, and makes no clear sense to the person experiencing, or rather passively enduring, it. To the extent that she's saying anything coherent at all, that is.