The Trouble with Gifts

Many years ago, I had a fundamentalist Christian tell me that she stuck to the 'Biblical' position of sex as gift; that statement struck me as having something wrong with it at the time and it has taken me over two decades to realise just what it was made me so uncomfortable about it.
For a start, you will notice that I have put inverted commas around her assertion that her opinion is of the Bible. If you actually read what the bible has to say about sex, it is presented as far more of a problem for humans, and there is much more concern to regulate humans' sexual behaviour. My humble opinion is that the actual Biblical position on sex is therefore that it is a base urge which is to be practiced only in certain ways, to be contained, and that this is the law of God. I'll probably get hate comments for saying this, but in my experience, when a Christian describes an opinion as 'Biblical', what they are actually saying is that it is their opinion and they have the backing of the Old Man Upstairs, who wrote it in this here book.
The other thing that made me uncomfortable about her position is that I don't like the idea of things being gifts, purely for the reason that it tends to put the emphasis on the giver, rather than the gift or the recipient. Anyone who has had any contact with Christian culture will have been struck by this dynamic - actually everything is God's gift and he is to be thanked. This idea takes us straight to the major problem at the heart of Christian theology - why bad things happen to good people, a question they get themselves in some incredible contortions to try to solve.
The problem of gift is illustrated by the picture which illustrates this post. It is the foundation stone of the library in Selly Oak, one of several 'Carnegie' libraries in Birmingham. Andrew Carnegie is recorded as the second wealithiest person in modern history (he made his money through industry) and made a practice of endowing libraries. His practice was only to give funds to places where the recipients would also put resources into the running and maintenance of the libraries, and so his incredible wealth meant that he not only has his name memorialised the world over, it means he also got to control the places to which he gave libraries, for time to come.
My problem therefore with gifts is that they glorify the giver but also allow the giver to retain the power over both the gift and the recipient. This goes for the matter of sex, wth which I started this post, just as much as it does for any Carnegie libraries. I had come across witchcraft at that point, although was very early in the series of traumatic events which propelled me into the craft, but even then I was uneasy with this top-down dynamic which I now recognise as reinforcing a dynamic of power and dependence.
How to alter the 'gift' dynamic? Naturally I don't have an easy answer to that one, but suffice to say you won't tend to catch the Hound thanking divinity for stuff. This may seem terribly ungrateful but that is because I don't see myself as her specially favoured recipient of favours, nor even see the things I have as coming from her. I don't have any easy answer to the question of why I have the things I do, but since I don't primarily see them as the gift of divinity, I have effectively ducked the question of why she doesn't give them to other people. Yes, I am relatively prosperous and privileged, but that is for an incredibly complicated set of reasons - to reduce these reasons to a gift of divinity is to negate the injustices that have led to where the world is today. To glorify the giver is a slap in the face to the people who have been disenfranchised to allow other people's prosperity.
At this point I am rather grinding to a halt with my original thought - which was why I am uncomfortable with the idea of things as gifts. What therefore is a witchy way to look on these things? I would like to propose a philiosophy at this point, which will synthesis all the difficult questions of rights, advantage, probably take account of several world religions, and end by creating a world where everybody gets on and there is world peace. But you've guessed it, that's way beyond me and everyone else throughout history. However, I'm a witch to my fingertips so wouldn't really claim to have the old man upstairs on my side, and also don't really want other people to do as I say. I am therefore going to steal a philosophy from Tristram Shandy: ''So long as a man ride his HOBBY-HORSE peaceably and quietly along the king's highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him, - pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?'
Image credit: https://billdargue.jimdo.com/placenames-gazetteer-a-to-y/places-s/selly-oak/