Posts Tagged ‘lust’

While reading the verse of the day as delivered to my Google Reader account,  a familiar verse showed up.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)

This verse is often quoted by folks struggling with sin, as it well should be. If we could not find any forgiveness, then we are in big, big trouble! Those of us who are or have been trapped by an addiction to porn know all-to-well the deep hole we have lived in and how much we need God’s help to climb out of it.

What struck me as I read the verse this time is the latter part, “…and purify us from all unrighteousness.” The focus when this verse is quoted is almost universally about forgiveness. But what about being purified from unrighteousness? Isn’t that what we really want? Forgiveness is an amazing thing, but being cleansed of the unrighteousness that brought about the state from which I need to be forgiven is more amazing still! So with this being one of the more familiar verses thrown around in church circles, why aren’t more people experiencing the purification that it promises?

I have worked in sexual integrity ministry for several years now. In both face-to-face and online venues I have been the recipient of many confessions of giving in to the lust of the flesh.

• “I slipped.”
• “I got online.”
• “I masturbated.”
• “I fill-in-the-blank.”

I’ve given confessions of this sort many times myself. I have usually let them leak out reluctantly from a place of shame. My preference would be to keep it silent, let it slide, sweep it under the rug or at the very least minimize it. And as such, these weak little confessions are what I divulge. This, I believe, is the crux of why the purification promised in this scripture is missing.

It seems to me that if anything meaningful is to happen in response to my confession that the confession itself must be meaningful. The easy way out for some is to be overly explicit in describing how they acted out. While this may sound deep to the listener, it can often be an avenue of exhibitionism. Worse still, it may assuage the conscience of the confessor, but not result in any lasting change either. I can describe the mechanics of porn, actions and behaviors without ever really opening my heart up for inspection. And that is what confession is all about.

A quick word-study of the word “confession”, homologeo in Greek, shows it is defined as, “to say the same thing as another.” None of the tiny utterances mentioned above come close to saying the same thing about sexual sin as God does in his word. Taking this view is painful, and extremely necessary if we are to experience the purification from the unrighteousness that got us in this mess in the first place. It is another case of short-term pain for long-term gain!

There is obviously much more to say on this topic, but I will stop here for now.

Eros is not only a word in Greek used to describe romantic love. In Greek mythology, Eros was the god of love and son of the goddess Aphrodite. He is synonymous with the Roman god Cupid, often depicted as a naked, winged boy with bow and arrow.

Most of us have seen cartoons of such a character firing his arrow into an unwitting guy who is suddenly struck with an insatiable compulsion to seek out the object of love’s spell. The lovestruck suitor loses all self control and is at the mercy of base, animal instincts. It would seem to me that such legend exists because of the incredible strength of sexual desire.

I have to admit, there have been times when the draw to consume pornography or reach sexual release was so great it seemed as if I were on autopilot; practically unable to resist the temptation. Most who find themselves in the pitiable state of addiction to porn or sex will attest to similar loss of self control. It would seem as if something has pierced the heart, driving the compulsion. However, rather than an arrow flung from the bow of some chubby baby, I submit that the piercing results from moral boundaries crossed repeatedly. Decades of choosing to indulge my lust brought me to the place of virtual powerlessness over it. It was no single arrow, but thousands of tiny slices at my heart. The Assassin of Character Creep had done its work well, and I was the assassin.

It is important to redeem the word love, in particular the type of love known as eros. What I have been describing is not love at all. It is lust and nothing more. Eros is not lust, but a God-given desire meant to passionately bind husband and wife together. Eros is like fire: inside of proper boundaries it is beautiful and adds warmth to those huddled around it. Outside of safe boundaries, it is a wild force that destroys everything it comes in contact with.

Studying “The Four Loves” has helped me draw a clearer distinction between eros and lust. One is a God-given love. The other is a selfish impulse better defined as unlove. Which do you think best fits pop culture’s portrayal of romance?

The third of the loves C. S. Lewis discusses in his book, “The Four Loves“, is Eros. He describes it simply as, “the love between the sexes.” We may recognize it as the root of the word erotic. However, eros is more than mere eroticism.

Eros is the passionate feeling a man or woman feels towards the opposite sex when falling in love with them. It may be described as a feeling of infatuation. Many phrases do eros justice when describing the experience of falling in love, love-struck or being smitten. Eros is exciting, spontaneous, and occurs in ways that captivate the focus of the lover onto his beloved.

It is would be easy to dismiss eros as inherently evil and lustful. This is a mischaracterization of eros, which we must remember is a creation of God. It draws lovers together in a powerful way which culminates in the most intimate of physical acts: the union of sex. The danger with eros is presented when elevated beyond its proper place and expectations are placed upon it which it cannot deliver.

It is clear in our modern society that eros has been both elevated and debased at the same time. It has been elevated as the most important of the loves, which leave us devoid of love because eros is the most fleeting of loves. It has also been debased as little if nothing more than sex. Lewis describes this misplaced attention on love as expecting from a dive what should rather be expected of swimming. Once the rush of the dive has passed, the lover realizes immediately the rush is gone, swimming requires work and conclude they must have dove into the wrong pond!

Eros is mysterious and difficult to define. Even C. S. Lewis had a difficult time describing it. However, any insight we can gain from studying the topic helps us to discern its proper place and apply wisdom to this intense yet most fickle of the loves.

A new thread really worth reading has been started on the Higher-Calling.com forum. Below is the first post.

A friend of mine showed me this little note that they read at their
recovery meetings. I was struck with the line about religious denial:

“I see now that in all my religious striving and psychotherapy I was
waiting for the miracle to happen first, that somehow I should be
zapped or “fixed”, unable to fall or be tempted again. I thought that
if a person just had the right religious belief, he was automatically
“a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are
become new” – that all thought of lust would be removed, much as a
surgeon would excise a tumor. The “religious solution” was one of the
subtlest strategies in my arsenal of denial.”

“I didn’t realize that the essence of being human is to have free
choice. God doesn’t want to remove the possibility of falling; he wants
me to have the freedom to choose not to fall. I’d been praying
self-righteously all along, “Please God, take it away!” not realizing
my inner heart was piteously whining “…so I won’t have to give it up.”
There was belief without surrender. That belief availed nothing! I had
never died to lust.”

“This program doesn’t tell us how to stop – we had done that a thousand
times – it shows us how to keep from starting again. We had it
backwards. Before, we always wanted the therapist, spouse, or God to do
the stopping for us – to fix us. Now, we stop, and then, in our
surrender, the power of God becomes effective in us. “

Can you relate to the sentence: “my innner heart was piteously
whining…so I won’t have to give it up?” My cry for deliverance &
a miracle was simply to avoid pain and avoid the embarrassment of going
to a meeting or avoiding the confessing to my wife. I wanted to use God
just like I had used everything else in my life. But God won’t be
controlled.

As I was enjoying my daily dose of LOL Cats I came across this picture. It quickly reminded me of how it feels sometimes with lust and temptation.

There are times when it seems to follow me around and haunt me everywhere I turn. All I have to do is “stop the car” and I will be overrun by this behemoth that has been following me around. Not unlike this picture, sometimes an attractive woman in my rear-view mirror while sitting at a red light can be something to kick of fantasy.

Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.
- 1 Peter 5:8

Roaring lion, pack of stampeding elephants; same thing, right?! As this verse tells us, we have to be self-controlled and alert. The enemy literally stalks us at times and he knows our weaknesses.

For those of us who have habitually given in to lust, porn, etc., we have given up self-control to our flesh. We have to work diligently to regain it and be alert. However, there is a twist. Scripture also teaches us that self-control is a fruit of the Holy Spirit (see Galations 5:22-24).

As with anything in the Christian life, success is not measured by work but rather by faith. Growth in Christian character, including the spiritual fruit of self-control, is a work of grace that God is actively pursuing in our hearts. We know that he is working to conform us to the image of Christ. The work that is ours is to trust that God is indeed doing a work in our lives and trust him to bring it to completion.

There is so much more to say on this topic. But for further reference, here are a few more scripture references.

Romans 12:1-2
Philippians 1:4-6
Colossians 3:9-10

At work today, there are these window cleaners right outside my window. Imagine someone just behind your computer monitor doing “wax on, wax off” while you are trying to concentrate. But that’s not all! They aren’t just using the soap and squeegee. They are buffing the windows with an electric buffer! It is the most grating and distracting thing I could possibly think of.

As I think about it, it is not terribly unlike the barrage of images that constantly seem to attack my eyes and tempt me to lust. From television, print advertising, maybe the occasional jogger, email spam, even my MSN Messenger client with those stupid dating or diet flash ads. All of these things distract me from the purity that I desire.

I am sitting here listening to music on my mp3 player trying to drown out the noise. I closed the blinds so I don’t have to watch the guy “buff” the windows. Even with these measures, the annoyance is only muted, not completely removed.

Following the analogy, what can we do to drown out the distractions from our goal of sexual purity?

One thing that comes to mine is to only watch recorded TV shows so that I can fast-forward through commercials (long live the DVR!).

I know that techniques only turn down the volume and do not address the heart issue. But they can make it more bearable to walk through life without feeling like a dog in heat!

What other ideas are out there? How can we drown out the constant annoyances that distract us from purity?