Man was created with many needs. The need to love and be loved. The need to serve. The need for food, shelter, and survival
essentials. And yes, man (the species
both men and women) were created with a need to procreate. This was originally intended to be expressed
in the most intimate of relationships, namely a marriage of two souls, united
with their creator in matrimony. But as
the disease of sin entered our very consciousness, we became unable to maintain
relationships in any more a perfect manner than we maintain our own characters
in perfection. The ideals of marriage
and intimacy therefore have no standard to live up to, no examples with which
to focus our goals and ambitions. In
short, the imperfection of people, infects the marital relationship itself, and
all the shortcomings of character are revealed in the mirror of the
relationship we hold most dear.
Love survives.
Faithfulness survives but remains on life support. Look around.
Ever notice the advertising motto of “sex sells”. You would have to be blind, death, and locked
in the wilderness not to. Why; because
the motto is a truism. “Sex” in fact
does sell. The idea of sex causes men
and women to drop loads of money on crap they do not need, and will not ever
help them have sex, by the boat load.
How many advertising slogans do you see calling for self sacrifice and
temperate behavior when making a purchase?
That does not work. Sex does.
And it is not as simple as drugs, or alcohol. Our bodies were not created with the need to
drink or consume chemicals to alter our consciousness – we develop those needs
through constant exposure. But we were
created with the need for sexual fulfillment.
We were in fact designed as a species to pair men and women physically
for this purpose. Our bodies are
designed for it, our minds have built in chemical stimulus for it, and the
Bible lays out fairly clear instructions on the ideals for our souls to
experience a higher form of closeness to God through it. To deny our created tendency for sexual
fulfillment is to deny the God who created us.
But our Creator had in mind that our sexual expression be perfect, not
what we see today.
The world’s oldest profession (prostitution – or perhaps
begging that may have predated it) is called that for a reason. The first incidents of man altering what God
had in mind for sexual perfection and finding a ‘different’ method of
expression go back a long way. The
entire Old Testament is filled with stories of the Children of Israel ‘mixing’
with the neighbors until it got so bad, they were allowed to be overrun by a
foreign nation. The cycle of repentance
and restoration, was generally followed by the cycle of sin and degradation,
until the entire circle just kept repeating itself. And I am not just talking about Israelites
engaging in simple prostitution with their neighbors. It never ended there. There were in fact ritual orgies held at
night under a moon goddess for fertility.
And you really cannot have fertility without human sacrifice. Which eventually leads to sacrificing the
male born children in the fires and preserving the females for future temple
prostitutes (again age being no boundary).
About the time Israelites were tossing babies in the fires, God would
send in an invading army.
Thinking about this cycle, like all things evil and
insidious, it never starts with murdering children and innocents. But it inevitably winds up there. I’m sure when the Israelite men first
considered getting a little ‘extra’ action away from ‘home’ it never even
crossed their minds what it might eventually lead to. It never does. Evil seldom reveals its true nature or
intentions right away. That would scare
you off. You need to ease into the idea,
taking one small step towards wrong-doing at a time, until you are “too far
gone” to stop now. Of course the idea is
a lie on its face, but the premise found a home in our minds, and we embraced
it both then and now.
And like usual our new and improved, socially responsible
Christians in today’s day of enlightment, read these stories in the Bible and
scoff at the weakness of ‘those’ idiots.
This as we get into the Mercedes we did not need, wearing the clothes
and perfume we hope to use to attract others, and go home to watch sexually
explicit and immoral shows on our widescreen high-def TV’s. Yeah, those guys were the idiots … No, today’s Christian is much more
sophisticated than the old Children of Israelite males. We can simply watch porn on our computers
when no one is around. Keep a special
DVD in a hidden location. Or perhaps
find another willing partner somewhere in the world.
And what’s more, we no longer practice throwing babies in
the fires for heathen gods; they tend to be abused right in our own homes, or
worse churches. We are in that sense
different than our spiritual ancestors.
We have found a way to make our crimes worse. Instead of participation with willing
partners our own ages, we force unwilling underage participants into our
immoral degraded world. And what is
more, the young are abused by people holding religious authority both priests
and those in the laity forever perverting the image of a loving God.
No you scream. I
would never engage in child pornography or support it in any manner. Yet all too many Christians live the secret
life of porn perusal where the models are all 18 years of age. Do you think those girls turned 18 and
decided randomly to pursue the life of a porn model? Or perhaps they started much earlier in
situations where control was never an option, and what you see online now is a
reflection of how wide-spread this disease has taken hold of our world. Like it or not there is no such thing as
non-support where this industry survives.
Nationality, race, and religion seem to present no barrier
to perversion. While there are child
molestation laws in every country in the world, there is also known abuse of
those laws in every country of the world.
The US may be the worst offender, as all too many reported Christians
participate in this crime. And as usual
it never starts out as abusing small kids, it starts much more ‘innocent’ than
that. But eventually regular old porn is
no longer enough to achieve stimulation.
It requires something more unusual, something different. This progression knows no end, and its
direction is only downwards.
The cycle worked thousands of years ago, and it works
now. We stupidly fall victim to it now,
just as then, just as always. And
treatment is much more complicated. With
drugs and alcohol, your goal can be to abstain.
But how do you abstain when you’re already married? How do you abstain from the nature you were
created with? Not drinking is easier
than not having sex. The addictive
changes in brain chemistry are almost identical between drug, alcohol, and
sexual addiction, but treatment poses and entirely different problem. The gravity of a black hole. And the compromises we propose would have us
end our fates as those who have gone before, in abject failure. So what is the answer?
Like everything else it begins and ends with God. It starts with learning to think differently
about sex itself. Restoration of the
concept of intimacy in the life must become a goal before intimacy with sexual
expression is possible. Reliance on God
to affect the changes you need in character, and allowing those changes to
affect your very desires, wants, and perceived needs is a must. Understanding there is no such thing as “too
far gone”, accepting there is “hope” for everyone and anyone regardless of the
your past whether as victim, perpetrator, or somewhere in the degenerate cycle. Thinking differently. Focusing differently. Learning not to hunt, not to look for
trouble, not to place yourself in situations where failure is all but
assured. The problem here extends beyond
the normal bounds of addiction treatment and requires realigning broken
processes into healed ones. It is
impossible for you. But it is real for
God. God can restore what was broken
beyond recognition. God can heal, and
really ONLY God can heal…
