BP57
I was attending graduate school out in Los Angeles when I met Sean. I was at the outpatient hospital day program completing a practicum toward my doctorate degree. Sean, a believer in Jesus, was at the same program as a patient. He was fresh out of the psych ward after an eight-day hospitalization due to clinical depression with severe suicidal ideation. He was riddled with shame and could not understand how he had fallen so far.
Sean had lost everything. His wife. His two children. His job at a law firm. His integrity. What was the evil architect of this precipitous fall? An addiction to alcohol? Opioids? Gambling? Yes, he had an addiction, but not to any of these. His disordered desire was around sexuality.
He had started with pornography, a highly dangerous habit in and of itself but also a gateway to more intense sexual appetites just like marijuana can be a gateway for harder drugs. As he lived in the dark world of sexual addiction, Sean graduated to edgier sex videos, phone sex, dry cruising, massage parlors, strip clubs, sex-for-pay on dark streets, and finally to escort services—high-priced prostitution. He discovered too late that feeding the sexual appetite does not satisfy it; it only increases the longing for more arousing and more frequent dopamine fixes.
Why is a ‘good’ family man like Sean willing to roll the dice and risk everything for the fleeting moments of a sexual high? Before we answer that question, we need to start at the beginning of it all . . .
Designer Therapy for Life is built on the immovable foundation of absolute truth that the Triune God of the universe revealed to the creatures made in His image. This truth is found in the word of God which is both a blueprint for how things are meant to operate in this universe as well as a map that guides us through the dark places of this world toward the Light of life.
In the Bible—the book of maps–Jesus tells us that above and beyond all the other commandments in His word, two ascend above all the others. When a bunch of Pharisees attempted to test Jesus by asking Him which commandment in the Law was most important, Jesus replied, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets ~ Matthew 22:37-40
As we can see in this passage, Jesus is not dismissing all the other commandments that relate to stealing, lying, coveting, slander, anger, immorality. Rather, he is indicating that all of God’s commandments are built on love (if you love me, you will obey me) which is the foundation of all true relationships which, in turn, are integral in reality because at the very core of His being the Designer God who created everything is personal and relational. The true God is not some impersonal force in the universe but a person who loves and engages with us.
Why is relationship so important to the God of the universe instead of power, wealth, and influence?
Because God is a trinity. He has always existed as three personalities, namely, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These three personalities have been communicating and creating things together and loving each other forever. They have been in fellowship with one another for eternity.
In other words, God has never been alone. He has always been in relationship with the other two members of the divine Trinity.
As has been mentioned in prior DTFL blogposts, the Triune God is not characterized only by omnipotence and authority and omniscience and holiness. His divine personality is also known for intimacy, love, invitation, and a desire for relationship.
Back in the beginning of the world, God created Adam to work the garden and keep it. Part of the first man’s responsibility as described in Genesis 2 was to hang out with all the animals and name them. However amazing these animals were, ultimately, they were not fulfilling company for him. Elephants, zebras, dolphins, eagles, horses—not even Golden Retrievers—were enough to prevent Adam from being alone.
God undoubtedly was present for Adam, but the Creator knew that Adam needed someone with skin on who also was created in the image of God—someone like Adam and unlike the animals.
It is significant that Genesis describes Adam as being alone without Eve. The Bible does not say that man was lonely, just that he was alone. Something was missing that he fundamentally needed, namely, a relationship with another being like him who was yet uniquely different. The masculine needed the feminine; and we can assume that the feminine needed the masculine.
In Genesis, then, we see aloneness with the animals and relationship with another person set in opposition to each other. Aloneness was not good, in God’s eyes. Relationship was good. So, God created Eve to be with Adam.
Just as the trinitarian God has forever been in relationship as the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, so He also created Adam at his core to be relational. Adam, like His Creator, was hard-wired for intimacy and love and communication from the beginning.
Adam and Eve were both created for intimacy with an other—with God and with another human. With God, there was an unparalleled, glorious love on the level of the spirit that can never be matched by love between humans. However, the relationship between Adam and Eve was also amazing. They shared an intermingling of souls that could never happen with animals.
God also gave humans a body love, a physical intimacy. It included nakedness without shame and a sexual intimacy that pointed to the unsurpassing spiritual intimacy between God and His children. Those of you who walk closely with God know how awesome that intimacy with the Divine can be if appropriated.
Before the Fall, then, there existed a perfect relationship between the Creator and his creatures and also between the man and the woman. I am not even sure if Adam and Eve had to try very hard to seek God’s presence and to love one another. Seeking and loving were natural to them—both with their Creator and with each other.
But then the enemy slithered into Eve’s mind and planted a seed of doubt in her about God. Adam did not step up to protect his wife and challenge the devious temptation of the serpent. So, Adam and Eve together chose the way of darkness. They turned their faces away from the beautiful face of their Maker. Disobedience and pride mushroomed in their hearts. They chose to be their own gods instead of bowing their knees to the One and Only God.
So, what was the result of this Tragic Face-Turning and the Terrible Fall? One thing that happened was that relationship was destroyed. Intimacy with the perfect, holy God was fractured and a total separation ensued. Adam and Eve had to leave the garden of relationship, driven away because the Triune God’s holy presence would have incinerated anything that was not pure just as the sun incinerates any object that approaches within three million miles of its burning presence.
Total separation. That sounds terrifying. However, some people (all men and women to be accurate) actually desire separation from God—at least until their hearts are awakened by the Spirit of God. Like the first two humans, they want to be a god to themselves.
If these separated people prefer not to be atheists or if they fear the consequences of disobedience from their Maker, they might attempt to impose their relative fallen truth onto God and call it good. These people create a god in their image and make the Bible say what they want it to say. Voila! Their disobedience becomes obedience in their eyes, and their sin becomes who God created them to be.
Isn’t that like the tail wagging the dog? Except that in this case the dog is the God who created everything and has lived forever and will live forever. How can humans—the tail—think they can wag that God? Such a sovereign Creator God calls the shots, I would say.
Going back to the metaphor of the sun again, lifting my truth above God’s truth is like insisting that I can stare at the sun if I wish and there will be no consequences. I impose my belief onto reality and expect it to conform to me since I am a god who creates my own truth.
So, what happens if a god like me insists on staring at the sun?
Typically, a wise person will eventually look away from the sun because staring at a such a bright light causes discomfort to the eye. Common sense tells me to look away from something that causes pain. (Even my mother told me when I was three not to look at the sun or I would go blind.)
But what if I push past the initial discomfort stage (why would I even do that unless I enjoy blowing stop signs of reality and common sense?) and insist on staring at the sun? My eyes will begin to experience sunburn from the ultraviolet infrared light and my corneal cells will begin to crack and blister. After 100 seconds or less, I will likely end up with permanent retinal damage.
The same thing happens when we disavow God (except unlike the sun metaphor, disavowing the Divine involves turning away from God instead of staring at Him). If we deny the reality of His word and scoff at the holiness of His burning character, we will experience consequences just as Adam and Eve did. If we stubbornly insist that staring at the sun is good or that looking away from God to pursue our own truth is in our best interest, we defy absolute truth and will eventually pay a high price.
In summary, the Fall is a tragic separation from God (and from other humans and our own hearts). In the ensuing absence of God’s presence, we seek our own desires instead of His will for us and obey our relative truth instead of His absolute truth.
Love is no longer anchored in obedience to our perfect Creator but flows out of our fallen desires. Ordered love becomes disordered love. We choose what we desire instead of what God desires for us. In fact, we insist that choice is our prerogative. Our practice of presence is distorted. Every relationship is twisted.
After the Fall, we become less like God and more bent toward our animalistic desires. Sigmund Freud, an atheist who believed that in the absence of God humans were nothing more than biological beasts devoid of any divine image, wrote that the Id within us is in control. The id is instinctual and primitive and is driven by sexual and aggressive motives. It operates on the pleasure principle and demands immediate gratification.
In short, we are like beasts of the field, driven by our bodies alone.
As DTFL has discussed elsewhere, Freud is not wrong about everything he said. Ha. He is quite accurate when he describes the human who is separated from God by his or her active rebellion against the divine. When God is dismissed and not allowed any authority in our lives, we devolve into a chaos of pride, rebellion, lust, choice, power, and biological drives. Partly because there is nothing else to pursue.
Nominal believers rewrite the Bible to fit their needs. They turn their faces away from God and stare at the sun of their own desires. They deny reality and ignore common sense. Everything about them becomes distorted because they have cut off divine authority—the blueprint, the compass, the map. Even their sexual desires are disordered . . .
This blogpost and next week’s will both address the Tragic Fall as well as the subsequent separation from and defiance of God as it relates to sexual temptation, lust, and pornography. Today we will consider words from the Bible and thoughts from some Christian writers about how the Fall impacts human sexuality–primarily temptation and male lust. Next week, we will focus on some tools to use in the fight against fallen sexuality and toward redeemed sexuality.
We will begin with a personality in the Old Testament.
Job was a man of God. It was written of him (1:1) that he was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. As godly of a man as he was, he was aware of his temptation to sin due to his fallen nature. He knew that his sexual desires could be disordered and evil. Just because something felt good, he knew that did not mean it was right. So, he wrote, I have made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman (31:1).
Job knew that within his flesh was an unnatural propensity to lust as opposed to love so he intentionally chose a path that would ensure his sexual purity.
C.S. Lewis had something to say about fallen sexuality. Interestingly enough, he did not say that we should kill our desires. Rather, he wrote, It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased (Weight of Glory).
No, Lewis did not instruct us to flee desire, but to direct desire to its greatest end. Pornography and sexual sin certainly were not the greatest end. Quite the opposite, actually.
In personal letters written by Lewis (found in the Wade collection at Wheaton college) and quoted by Cusick in his book, Surfing for God, it is clear Lewis had some things to say about sexual fantasies involving pornography, masturbation and imaginary women. Lewis wrote that these imaginary women are always accessible, always subservient, calls for no sacrifices or adjustments, and can be endowed with erotic and psychological attractions which no real woman can rival. Among those shadow brides, he is always adored, always the perfect lover; no demand is made on his selfishness, no mortification ever imposed on his vanity.
Lewis goes on to write concerning pornography, In the end, [imaginary women] become the medium through which he increasingly adores himself. . . . After all, the main work of life is to come out of ourselves, out of the little, dark prison we are all born in. . . . All things are to be avoided which retard this process. The danger is that of coming to love the prison.
Lewis is telling men (and by extension, women) that our fallen nature desires selfish gratification and admiration with no effort, sacrifice, or real-life love and servanthood to the other. The fleshly man pursues counterfeit love and sex that is no love at all. It does not flow out of a connection with God who is the source of love and healthy sexuality but from the animalistic body that Freud described in the construct he called the Id. Of course, the Bible refers to this part of the human as the flesh, the old man, the fallen self that is dedicated to sinful desires.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who was executed after his failed attempt to free the world of the godless Adolf Hitler, also commented about fallen desire in his writings: In our members there is a slumbering inclination toward desire, which is both sudden and fierce. With irresistible power, desire seizes mastery of the flesh. All at once a secret, smoldering fire is kindled. The flesh burns and is in flames. It makes no difference whether it is a sexual desire, or ambition, or vanity, or desire for revenge, our love of fame and power, or greed for money . . .
At this moment God is quite unreal to us. He loses all reality, and only desire for the creature is real. The only reality is the devil. Satan does not here fill us with hatred of God, but with forgetfulness of God . . . The lust thus aroused envelopes the mind and will of a man in deepest darkness. The powers of clear discrimination and of decision are taken from us.
Bonhoeffer concludes by saying, It is here that everything within me rises up against the Word of God. . . . Therefore, the Bible teaches us in times of temptation in the flesh, there is one command: Flee! Flee fornication. Flee idolatry. Flee youthful lusts. Flee the lusts of the world. There is no resistance to Satan in lust other than flight. Every struggle against lust in one’s own strength is doomed to failure.
In his book, Surfing for God, Michael John Cusick writes, Our deepest longing is to know God in the center of our being, and out of that place to offer ourselves for the sake of others. Augustine taught about the theological idea of incurvatus se—a life turned in on itself. Porn successfully accomplishes this–it causes our soul to turn in on itself in self-absorbed isolation and shame. It diminishes our souls. It seduces a man to use women to meet a need in himself—without meeting any of her needs. And this act of ‘using’ comes not only at her expense but also at the devastating cost of his own heart. We don’t realize the price we pay until we feel empty and bankrupt inside. . . . You were created for something bigger than yourself. You were created for excurvatus se—a life turned outward. . . . I raised a prayer that came straight from my true heart: ‘God, I want more. I want more. I want more’.
Like Lewis, Cusick is telling us that instead of simply mortifying our desires, we need to desire more of God. You may have heard it said that humility is not thinking less of yourself but thinking about yourself less. In a similar way, possibly, healthy sexual desire is not primarily about desiring bad things less but desiring God more. Desire the authentic and shun the counterfeit. Sexuality is a beautiful creation of God. However, it was corrupted at the time of the Fall when obedience to the Creator was supplanted by a prideful desire that will be rationalized and defended.
Chuck Swindoll speaks of the dynamic of sexual temptation (and other temptation) as discussed in James 1:14,15.
He compares temptation to baiting a fish: Temptation that leads to sin always follows the same overall process. Verse 14 begins the process, and verse 15 carries it out. Pay close attention: Step 1: The bait is dropped. Step 2: The inner desire is attracted to that bait. Step 3: Sin occurs when we yield—when we bite the bait. Step 4: Sin results in tragic consequences—we end up hooked and fried. . . .
The word “entice” (v. 14) is a fishing term. When you fish, you’ve got to provide a bait that interests and entices a fish. . . . Here is that fish—safe, casual, doing whatever fish do. Then the bait drops. He has to reckon with it. I don’t know how fish think, but they probably look and think something like, “Wow, that looks great!” And when that fish leaves his hiding place for the bait, he’s as good as caught. So are we.
As long as we remain obedient to the Lord, drawing our strength and our delight from Him, the evil system around us can drop all sorts of bait and it won’t seriously interest us. Oh, it’s there. But our Lord’s Word and power are stronger and more important to us than anything out there. But when we choose not to obey God and slip out after the bait, we’re as good as gone.
Many of you will remember the account of Joseph in the book of Genesis. When he was bought by Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, God blessed him.
In Genesis 39 we read, The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man, and he was in the house of his Egyptian master. His master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord caused all that he did to succeed in his hands. So Joseph found favor in his sight and attended to him, and he made him overseer of his house and put him in charge of all that he had. From the time he made him overseer in his house and over all that he had, the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake; the blessing of the Lord was on all that he had, in house and field. So he left all that he had in Joseph’s charge, and because of him he had no concern about anything but the food he ate.
Are there any better words in the human ear and mind than these five: the Lord is with you? What an amazing thing to experience the Presence of the eternal God in your life and to know that He is giving you success in all that you do. What could go wrong at this point?
Well, we all know that in the middle of all this blessing and God’s Presence, Potiphar’s wife seduced this young man of God and Joseph ended up in prison. Because he fell into sexual sin? Thankfully, no. He resisted the woman’s seduction but landed in prison because Potiphar’s wife lied and accused Joseph of attempting to sleep with her.
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The gospel of Jesus Christ contains the truth behind the universe: God created everything good. But humanity listened to the voice of the prince of darkness and chose to be their own gods instead of continuing in a beautiful relationship with a perfect and holy God. So, we all fell away from our Maker and into darkness and sin. Amazingly, in His great mercy, God did not allow that to be the end of the story. He sent His only Son to buy us back from our captivity to the deceiver, to sin, and to death.
Our loving God also created a new self within us—at least for those who call on His name and desire His salvation. This new self who is daily being conformed further into the image of Jesus, not only wants to say no to the fleeting counterfeit desires of this world (like lust) but to say yes to the genuine desires that God created within us back at the beginning—primarily the desire to seek God and to love Him.
The Creation. The Fall. The Redemption—God’s good news to deliver men and women from captivity to sin, death, and Satan. These are the chapters in the story of humanity.
One of the great ongoing battles in the current chapter of history is between the human desire for God’s authentic gift of pure sexuality and the counterfeit bait of lust and pornography and sexual fantasy that is ever before us.
What will you choose? Above all, don’t settle for less. Desire more. Desire the everlasting God who has given us sexual arousal and fulfillment to point to an even greater pleasure: experiencing intimacy with His being as He lives within us in the person of the Holy Spirit.
Lust or love. The counterfeit or the authentic. God’s gift or a cheap and dark human knockoff? Choose wisely. Do not fight the battle alone. Detect and expose the obstacles that interfere with seeking God instead of lusting for fleeting pleasures. Next week we’ll take a closer look at the weapons to fight this ongoing battle.
For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God ~ 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5
But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death ~ James 1:14,15