Our warped natures, the devils who tempt us, and all the contemporary propaganda for lust, combine to make us feel that the desires we are resisting are so 'natural', so 'healthy', and so reasonable, that it is almost perverse and abnormal to resist them.
Poster after poster, film after film, novel after novel, associate the idea of sexual indulgence with the ideas of health, normality, youth ,frankness and good humor. Now this association is a lie. Like all powerful lies, it is based on the truth - the truth that sex in itself (apart from the excesses and obsessions that have grown around it) is normal and healthy, and all the rest of it.
The lie consists in the suggestion that any sexual act to which you are tempted at the moment is also healthy and normal. Now this, on any conceivable view, and quite apart from Christianity, must be nonsense. Surrender to all our desires obviously leads to impotence, disease, jealousies, lies, concealment, and everything that is the reverse of health, good humor and frankness. For any happiness, even in this world, quite a lot of restraint is going to be necessary; so the claim made by every desire, when it is strong, to be healthy and reasonable, counts for nothing.
Every sane and civilized man must have some set of principles by which he chooses to reject some of his desires and to permit others. One man does this on Christian principles, another on hygienic principles, another on sociological principles.
The real conflict is not between Christianity and natural desire, but between Christian principles and other principles in the control of natural desires. For our natural desires will have to be controlled anyway, unless you are going to ruin your whole life.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Lewis on The Great Lie About Sex
Lewis writes,
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Screwtape Explains
Few can grasp hold of the sowing and reaping to the negative things in our lives. We enjoy and embrace the sowing and reaping of the blessings, forgetting when we sow to the flesh, we reap destruction. In essence, nothing in return.
Romans 6:21 says this, too. No fruit to be gained by the former things, which probably were pleasurable but the long term effects were hideous.
Ravi Zacharias on Context
The Cross and Casting Stones
"Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." This thought is often given as rationale for casting any type of public moralizing aside. Evidently, we cannot completely shake off our bequest from a Christian worldview. Ironically, this moral conviction is often given with the reminder that all morality is a private matter and not for public enforcement. But if all moral convictions are a private matter, why is this very conviction itself not kept private too? Why is it publicly enjoined?
When I ask citers of this verse if they are aware of the context in which these words were uttered, it is often unknown. One said it had to do with the woman in adultery. I asked if he was aware of what prompted that imperative and to whom Jesus aimed those words. There was silence. Significantly, the entire confrontation came about because the Pharisees were seeking to trap Jesus into either explicitly defending the Law of Moses or implicitly overruling it. The whole scenario was a ploy, not to seek out the truth of a moral law, but to trap Jesus.
Fascinatingly, Jesus exposed their own spiritual bankruptcy by showing them that at the heart of law is God's very character. There is a spiritual essence that precedes moral injunctions. So when we vociferously demand that only the one without sin may cast the first stone we also need to grant credence to God's character in numerous other pronouncements. But for some, sin is not even a viable category. This selective use of Scripture is the very game the questioners of Jesus were playing. When the law is quoted while the reality of sin is denied, self-aggrandizing motives can override character. Thus, in our spiritually amputated world, the art of obscuring truth has become a
Herein lies what I believe the crucial death of our character. There is no transcendent context within which to discuss moral theory. Just as words in order to have meaning must point beyond themselves to a commonly understood real existence, so also, must the reality point beyond itself to commonly accepted essence. Otherwise, reality has no moral quotient and moral meaning dissolves into the subjective, rendering it beyond debate. Only the transcendent can unchangingly provide fixed moral worth.
But this death of the transcendent comes with a two-edged sword, both for the skeptic and the Christian alike. Yes, the law has moral value, but not as a means for shrewd lawyers to play deadly word games, minimize immorality, and kill the truth. At the same time the law has spiritual value so that we do not destroy the truly repentant individual. The grace of God abounds to the worst in our midst. Hidden in the odious nature of our failures is the scandalous secret of God's forgiveness. When the prodigal returned, the anger he faced was not the father's but the older son's who failed to understand how marvelous was the grace of his father. Throughout history, God's way of dealing with the reckless has disclosed how dramatic are God's ways. We must allow for such possibilities. "My son was dead, but is now alive." Death lay in the wanderings of the passions and the seriousness of wrongdoing. Life was spelled in true repentance to return and "sin no more." But let us take note. Forgiveness is offered in full recognition of the heinousness of what is being forgiven.
On the contrary, when words, consequences, and transcendent contexts have died, a pigsty awaits. Only if we remember our Father's address can we know where to return for forgiveness and love. But if we insist upon arguing as quick-witted political power-mongers or legal wordsmiths with no spiritual context, we may kill both law and love. This, I am afraid, is the abyss over which we often hover.
Yet I am confident that as precipitous as the edge seems, God has always been in the business of rescue. The truth is that as human beings we all fall short. Our only hope is in God's ways, through which forgiveness and responsibility come in balance. There is indeed another bridge, one on which a body was broken so that a path was made that we might cross over and live. In that cross lie both judgment and mercy. The Judge of all the earth cannot be fooled by shades of meaning, nor was Christ obliterated by the shadows of death.
God is our help and our hope in ages past and years to come.
Ravi Zacharias is founder and chairman of the board of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.
"Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." This thought is often given as rationale for casting any type of public moralizing aside. Evidently, we cannot completely shake off our bequest from a Christian worldview. Ironically, this moral conviction is often given with the reminder that all morality is a private matter and not for public enforcement. But if all moral convictions are a private matter, why is this very conviction itself not kept private too? Why is it publicly enjoined?
When I ask citers of this verse if they are aware of the context in which these words were uttered, it is often unknown. One said it had to do with the woman in adultery. I asked if he was aware of what prompted that imperative and to whom Jesus aimed those words. There was silence. Significantly, the entire confrontation came about because the Pharisees were seeking to trap Jesus into either explicitly defending the Law of Moses or implicitly overruling it. The whole scenario was a ploy, not to seek out the truth of a moral law, but to trap Jesus.
Fascinatingly, Jesus exposed their own spiritual bankruptcy by showing them that at the heart of law is God's very character. There is a spiritual essence that precedes moral injunctions. So when we vociferously demand that only the one without sin may cast the first stone we also need to grant credence to God's character in numerous other pronouncements. But for some, sin is not even a viable category. This selective use of Scripture is the very game the questioners of Jesus were playing. When the law is quoted while the reality of sin is denied, self-aggrandizing motives can override character. Thus, in our spiritually amputated world, the art of obscuring truth has become a
Herein lies what I believe the crucial death of our character. There is no transcendent context within which to discuss moral theory. Just as words in order to have meaning must point beyond themselves to a commonly understood real existence, so also, must the reality point beyond itself to commonly accepted essence. Otherwise, reality has no moral quotient and moral meaning dissolves into the subjective, rendering it beyond debate. Only the transcendent can unchangingly provide fixed moral worth.
But this death of the transcendent comes with a two-edged sword, both for the skeptic and the Christian alike. Yes, the law has moral value, but not as a means for shrewd lawyers to play deadly word games, minimize immorality, and kill the truth. At the same time the law has spiritual value so that we do not destroy the truly repentant individual. The grace of God abounds to the worst in our midst. Hidden in the odious nature of our failures is the scandalous secret of God's forgiveness. When the prodigal returned, the anger he faced was not the father's but the older son's who failed to understand how marvelous was the grace of his father. Throughout history, God's way of dealing with the reckless has disclosed how dramatic are God's ways. We must allow for such possibilities. "My son was dead, but is now alive." Death lay in the wanderings of the passions and the seriousness of wrongdoing. Life was spelled in true repentance to return and "sin no more." But let us take note. Forgiveness is offered in full recognition of the heinousness of what is being forgiven.
On the contrary, when words, consequences, and transcendent contexts have died, a pigsty awaits. Only if we remember our Father's address can we know where to return for forgiveness and love. But if we insist upon arguing as quick-witted political power-mongers or legal wordsmiths with no spiritual context, we may kill both law and love. This, I am afraid, is the abyss over which we often hover.
Yet I am confident that as precipitous as the edge seems, God has always been in the business of rescue. The truth is that as human beings we all fall short. Our only hope is in God's ways, through which forgiveness and responsibility come in balance. There is indeed another bridge, one on which a body was broken so that a path was made that we might cross over and live. In that cross lie both judgment and mercy. The Judge of all the earth cannot be fooled by shades of meaning, nor was Christ obliterated by the shadows of death.
God is our help and our hope in ages past and years to come.
Ravi Zacharias is founder and chairman of the board of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
CS Lewis on Sexual Morality
They tell you sex has become a mess because it was hushed up. But for the last twenty years it has not been hushed up. It has been chattered about all day long. Yet it is still in a mess. If hushing up had been the cause of the trouble, ventilation would have set it right. But it has not. I think it is the other way round. I think the human race originally hushed it up because it had become such a mess.
Modern people are always saying, "Sex is nothing to be ashamed of." They may mean two things: They may mean "There is nothing to be ashamed of in the fact that the human race reproduces itself in a certain way, nor in the fact that it gives pleasure." If they mean that, they are right. Christianity says the same.
It is not the thing, nor the pleasure, that is the trouble. The old Christian teachers said if man had never fallen, sexual pleasure, instead of being less than it is now, would actually have been greater. I know some muddle headed Christians have talked as if Christianity thought that sex, or the body, or pleasure were bad in themselves.
But they were wrong.
Christianity is almost the only one of the great religions which thoroughly approves of the body - which believes matter is good, that God Himself once took on a human body, that some kind of body is going to be given to us even in Heaven and is going to be an essential part of our happiness, our beauty, and our energy.
Christianity has glorified marriage more than any other religion and nearly all the greatest love poetry in the world has been produced by Christians. If anyone says that sex, in itself, is bad, Christianity contradicts him at once. But, of course, when people say, "Sex is nothing to be ashamed of", they may mean "the state into which the sexual instinct has now got is nothing be ashamed of".
I think it is everything to be ashamed of. There is nothing to be ashamed of in enjoying your food; there would be everything to be ashamed of if half the world made food the main interest of their lives. there are people who want to keep our sex instinct inflamed in order to make money out of us. Because, of course, a man with an obsession is a man who has very little sales resistance.
Modern people are always saying, "Sex is nothing to be ashamed of." They may mean two things: They may mean "There is nothing to be ashamed of in the fact that the human race reproduces itself in a certain way, nor in the fact that it gives pleasure." If they mean that, they are right. Christianity says the same.
It is not the thing, nor the pleasure, that is the trouble. The old Christian teachers said if man had never fallen, sexual pleasure, instead of being less than it is now, would actually have been greater. I know some muddle headed Christians have talked as if Christianity thought that sex, or the body, or pleasure were bad in themselves.
But they were wrong.
Christianity is almost the only one of the great religions which thoroughly approves of the body - which believes matter is good, that God Himself once took on a human body, that some kind of body is going to be given to us even in Heaven and is going to be an essential part of our happiness, our beauty, and our energy.
Christianity has glorified marriage more than any other religion and nearly all the greatest love poetry in the world has been produced by Christians. If anyone says that sex, in itself, is bad, Christianity contradicts him at once. But, of course, when people say, "Sex is nothing to be ashamed of", they may mean "the state into which the sexual instinct has now got is nothing be ashamed of".
I think it is everything to be ashamed of. There is nothing to be ashamed of in enjoying your food; there would be everything to be ashamed of if half the world made food the main interest of their lives. there are people who want to keep our sex instinct inflamed in order to make money out of us. Because, of course, a man with an obsession is a man who has very little sales resistance.
CS Lewis on Chastity
Chastity is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. There is not getting away from it: the old christian rule is, "Either marriage, with complete faithfulness to your partner, or else total abstinence". Now this is so difficult and so contrary to our instincts, that obviously either Christianity is wrong or our sexual instinct, as it now is, has gone wrong. One or the other. Of course, being a Christian, I think it is the instinct which has gone wrong.
But I have other reasons for thinking so. The biological purpose of sex is children, just as the biological purpose of eating is to repair the body. Now if we eat whenever we feel inclined and just as much as we want, it is quite true that most of us will eat too much; but not terrifically too much. One man may eat enough for two, but he does not eat enough for ten. The appetitie goes a little beyond its biological purpose, but not enormously. But if a healthy young man indulged his sexual appetite whenever he felt inclined, and if each act produced a baby, then in ten years he might easily populate a small village. This appetite is in ludicrous and preposterous excess of its function.
Or take it another way. You can get a large audience together for a striptease act-that is, to watch a girl undress on the stage. Now suppose you came to a country where you could fill a theater by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let everyone see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, really any good kind of meat, would you not think in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food? And would not anyone who had grown up in a different world think there was something equally weird about the state of the sex instinct among us?
But I have other reasons for thinking so. The biological purpose of sex is children, just as the biological purpose of eating is to repair the body. Now if we eat whenever we feel inclined and just as much as we want, it is quite true that most of us will eat too much; but not terrifically too much. One man may eat enough for two, but he does not eat enough for ten. The appetitie goes a little beyond its biological purpose, but not enormously. But if a healthy young man indulged his sexual appetite whenever he felt inclined, and if each act produced a baby, then in ten years he might easily populate a small village. This appetite is in ludicrous and preposterous excess of its function.
Or take it another way. You can get a large audience together for a striptease act-that is, to watch a girl undress on the stage. Now suppose you came to a country where you could fill a theater by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let everyone see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, really any good kind of meat, would you not think in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food? And would not anyone who had grown up in a different world think there was something equally weird about the state of the sex instinct among us?
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
What About Love?
Poetry is often borne from the passion of finding or losing the love of another. Broken hearts litter the pages of history and romantic novels & movies rake in money. C.S. Lewis in his book, "The Four Loves" writes of God's love, which takes the form of not only the romantic love, but also brotherly love manifested like this:
Unconditional love, manifested like this:
Friendship or Affection, manifested like this:
What is strange is that we are so apt to throw ourselves, our completed selves (affection, romance, friendship and unconditional and unrequited love) at others whom we deem worthy to receive it. Yet, God, who embodies all aspects of love, is found unworthy of our trust to abandon ourselves to Him.
Here's how that usually ends up:
The few I have spoke with having issues with God often speak of their disdain for God by citing God's 'need' or 'demand' for praise, adoration and worship. If God needed these things from his creatures, then he really isn't worthy of my praise, an acquaintance has written to me on several occasions. Masking the false bravado that often comes with articulation from those who don't believe is, I believe, the underlying inability to trust God.
Abandoning oneself to others isn't a guarded, calculated endeavor. The first scent of love throws us head long into pursuits that leave friends behind, only to find the odor takes the form of booze and smoke, in a bottle called "Broken Heart". Yet, the human mind calculates how much he is to give up in turning his life over to God and assumes it cost too much. Having decided that he will not 'lower' himself to believe, he chases down what he thinks is love while singing old Barry Manilow ballads.
Surely we have thrown ourselves at others in rapture and infatuation, only to find it wasn't reciprocated or if it was reciprocated, it was for only a moment. Eros love, Lewis writes, isn't meant to sustain love, it is only the spark that starts love.Thus, after having the 'experience' numerous times, souls become more guarded to whom they give love. There's only so many starts in an engine, you know. So, the search is ongoing for the gasoline with which to keep the engine running, but the gasoline is the other three loves, unheralded and under appreciated.
We have mistaken the romantic, infatuated affection for something that should be present at all times, or at the very least, some of the time. God has designed us for friendship, which cannot be romantic by it's very nature because it couldn't be sustained. The other three loves Lewis writes about all have components which sustain love, loyalty and faithfulness. Romantic love isn't faithful but for a season as it wanders looking for the next mountain top experience.
Romantic love says it desires what is best for the loved, but that is false. It desires what is good for itself, as it must be fed. If you won't feed it, it will drink from another fountain. It's insatiable, therefore, it is not aligned with faithfulness. However, when working together, in harmony with the other loves, romantic love is a powerful and fulfilling expression of God's love for us, He the pursuer and courter of us. Harnessed by the integrity of the friendship, affection and the unconditional, it thrives.
My point being is that I find people's objections to God are wrapped in some pseudo-intellectual argument that would be more accurate if they said, "I don't trust Him". That's honest. What isn't honest is throwing out red herrings such as "Where did Cain get his wife?" and "I thought there was only one angel but in one gospel it says there were two!". Really? That's your rub with God and his claim on you?
If you're going to filibuster the reality of God, all the while throwing your affections on whomever will receive them, don't be surprised you can't believe. The irony in attempting to be loved by conditional creatures while rejecting the unconditional love is thick. Stop pretending you're smart by refusing to in the "tribal God of Israel" while giving your heart away to those who have proven they cannot be trusted with it.
Unconditional love, manifested like this:
Friendship or Affection, manifested like this:
What is strange is that we are so apt to throw ourselves, our completed selves (affection, romance, friendship and unconditional and unrequited love) at others whom we deem worthy to receive it. Yet, God, who embodies all aspects of love, is found unworthy of our trust to abandon ourselves to Him.
Here's how that usually ends up:
The few I have spoke with having issues with God often speak of their disdain for God by citing God's 'need' or 'demand' for praise, adoration and worship. If God needed these things from his creatures, then he really isn't worthy of my praise, an acquaintance has written to me on several occasions. Masking the false bravado that often comes with articulation from those who don't believe is, I believe, the underlying inability to trust God.
Abandoning oneself to others isn't a guarded, calculated endeavor. The first scent of love throws us head long into pursuits that leave friends behind, only to find the odor takes the form of booze and smoke, in a bottle called "Broken Heart". Yet, the human mind calculates how much he is to give up in turning his life over to God and assumes it cost too much. Having decided that he will not 'lower' himself to believe, he chases down what he thinks is love while singing old Barry Manilow ballads.
Surely we have thrown ourselves at others in rapture and infatuation, only to find it wasn't reciprocated or if it was reciprocated, it was for only a moment. Eros love, Lewis writes, isn't meant to sustain love, it is only the spark that starts love.Thus, after having the 'experience' numerous times, souls become more guarded to whom they give love. There's only so many starts in an engine, you know. So, the search is ongoing for the gasoline with which to keep the engine running, but the gasoline is the other three loves, unheralded and under appreciated.
We have mistaken the romantic, infatuated affection for something that should be present at all times, or at the very least, some of the time. God has designed us for friendship, which cannot be romantic by it's very nature because it couldn't be sustained. The other three loves Lewis writes about all have components which sustain love, loyalty and faithfulness. Romantic love isn't faithful but for a season as it wanders looking for the next mountain top experience.
Romantic love says it desires what is best for the loved, but that is false. It desires what is good for itself, as it must be fed. If you won't feed it, it will drink from another fountain. It's insatiable, therefore, it is not aligned with faithfulness. However, when working together, in harmony with the other loves, romantic love is a powerful and fulfilling expression of God's love for us, He the pursuer and courter of us. Harnessed by the integrity of the friendship, affection and the unconditional, it thrives.
My point being is that I find people's objections to God are wrapped in some pseudo-intellectual argument that would be more accurate if they said, "I don't trust Him". That's honest. What isn't honest is throwing out red herrings such as "Where did Cain get his wife?" and "I thought there was only one angel but in one gospel it says there were two!". Really? That's your rub with God and his claim on you?
If you're going to filibuster the reality of God, all the while throwing your affections on whomever will receive them, don't be surprised you can't believe. The irony in attempting to be loved by conditional creatures while rejecting the unconditional love is thick. Stop pretending you're smart by refusing to in the "tribal God of Israel" while giving your heart away to those who have proven they cannot be trusted with it.
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