The following is a guest post by Pastor Rob Golding of First Artesia Christian Reformed Church.
Sexual sin dominates the human landscape because, in part, it feeds off one of God’s most physically compelling gifts. However, there is an even stronger desire that more principally compels the human longing to transgress God’s design for sex. The essence of sexual sin’s exhilarating experience is to be found in the defiance of God. Augustine admitted that the apex of his sin was not the sexual sin we are all familiar with. Rather, to the chagrin of many secular commentators, his most hellish self-described sin was stealing pears. Why was this so egregious? It was heinous because Augustine wasn’t hungry. He stole the pears only to cast them before pigs. “Our real pleasure,” he said, “was in doing something that was not allowed” (Confessions, II. iv. 9).[1] His sin was exciting not because it fed an intrinsic lust for pleasure but because it enabled him to momentarily stand above God, looking down his nose at the laws of the King, as king Augustine.
Many in the thralls of the American sexual revolution, which has reverberated its wake across the globe, describe the newfound sexual freedom they enjoy with precisely the word we would expect if the above is true—“powerful.” Note, “pleasurable” is not the most defining adjective. “I felt such a sense of autonomy, freedom, power to participate in this pleasure,” they are wont to say. The demon-child of sexual sin called abortion is regaled with the same terminology. Women feel “powerful” when they murder their unborn children. The experience is so intense that many anticipate the physically painful act with eager anticipation. It is this sense of becoming one’s own lord and god that compels sexual sin, abortion, and every human aberration of the Good. Even the pain and humiliation of male homosexuality is endured for the sake of counterfeit power.
Therefore, a rejection of the pervasive sexual sin in the world today is not most prominently found in the denial of one’s pleasures. Rather, it is our lust for power which must be curbed. The evidence for this assertion is found in the infamous tendency for sexual sin to deviate into more and more devolved forms. Heterosexual promiscuity led to that of the homosexual. Homosexuality leads to polygamy and polyandry. “Throuple” is now part of our lexicon because “homosexual” was removed from our diagnostic definitions (it was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, DSM III, in 1973). When the creature experiences the ecstasy of being god, it is short-lived. The kingdom must advance for the thrill to be maintained. More ground must be gained against the Kingdom of God and its dictates of human life if the kingdom of man is to maintain its reckless spate. New forms of sexual sin must be experimented with and lower forms invented. It is quite a feeling to tell God He is wrong about who I may love. Yet another, more intense experience, to tell Him His rules for man and boy have been burnt like Jehoiakim’s scroll.
The Church’s fight is not against human pleasure but demonic power. Like the Kingdom of God, the lust for power knows no end. It will never cease until it touches the boundaries of all human life, of the created world, of God Himself. Or, the lust for power will cease when the Lord crushes the serpentine head of human autonomy with the gentle feet of His Bride. She will not rail against pleasure, which no man can completely resist. She must rebut human power, which can only be relinquished for that of a greater Power—that which not only conquers evil but bestows upon man “every good and perfect gift” (Jas 1:17). The Bride of Christ has within her bosom a longing for the pleasure of God, which is only found in submission to His power, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine … Draw me after you … The king has brought me into his chambers” (Song of Solomon 1:1–4).
We cannot resolve man’s current lust for pleasure while neglecting his passion for power any more than Augustine could avoid stealing pears by filling himself with apples. Even a cartload of justly purchased pears from the marketplace could not satiate his lust for the forbidden fruit of the shadows. Augustine was to learn of the powerlessness of his own heart that could only find rest in the power of God’s. We must learn that pleasure is only a by-product downstream of the idol factory of human independence, churning out its toxicity at each year’s Pride Parade. Power is what we crave most innately, not sex. And there is no use telling man to relinquish his pleasures if he is allowed to keep his lust for power upon which it rests. We may topple the sexual house of cards, but the pillar of human self-autonomy will still stand.
The most effective solution, therefore, is to indicate the true Source of power. Not the simulacra proffered by Satan, which leads to slavery, but the submission demonstrated by the Savior, which leads to sublimity. Ironically, when this path of submission is followed to its supernatural end, the sons of God are given power to rule the earth itself. The death of Christianity is always in exchange for the life of Christ. The relinquishing of human power is the joyful act of the Church as she relishes in the almighty rule of God.
-Rob Golding
[1]Augustine, trans. Rex Warner, The Confessions of St. Augustine, (NY: Signet, 2009) 45.
The Fight of Faith 