Lenten Gut Check

 ⁴Hear this, you who trample on the needy
   and bring the poor of the land to an end,
⁵saying, "When will the new moon [festival] be over,
   that we may sell grain?
And the Sabbath,
   that we may offer wheat for sale,
that we may make the ephah small and the shekel great
   and deal deceitfully with false balances,
⁶that we may buy the poor for silver
   and the needy for a pair of sandals
   and sell the chaff of the wheat?"

 ....

²¹"I hate, I despise your feasts,
   and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
²² Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
   I will not accept them;
and the peace offerings of your fattened animals,
   I will not look upon them.
²³Take away from me the noise of your songs;
   to the melody of your harps I will not listen.
²⁴But let justice roll down like waters,
   and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream."

--Amos 8:4-6 and 5:21-24

For those of us who are giving something up for Lent, I think it would be good to remember the above passage and examine our motivations.  "Do not compound the sin of disobedience with the sin of hypocrisy," Amos is telling us.  We may not give burnt offerings or celebrate new moon festivals anymore, but for some of us, giving up soda for Lent is just about the only thing we do for God each year.  And that has more to do with culture and looking pious to our peers than honoring the King of the Universe.  But what God says in Amos is that if we're honoring Him falsely, He'd rather we just not do anything at all.

There are many, many people who reflect deeply on what they give up for Lent, and the reasons for their doing so, and live lives of heartfelt obedience no matter what month it is.  But there are also many, many people who "honor God" with their Lenten observances and dishonor Him in every other area of their lives.  Is that you?  Is that me?  Maybe, before we log off of Facebook or forgo dessert, we should examine our hearts and ask ourselves whether we are really trying to honor God this Lenten season, or just mocking Him with lip service.  "Keep your ashes," God says.  "They're worthless without your heart."  

The True Sexual Relationship

I recently read a book in which the author was trying to decipher why our sexual lives are so much different from those of the animals. He speculates on many things, and relates many biological anecdotes, but what many see to be the heart of the whole matter is left untouched. For we as human beings cannot see the sexual act as some pure animal function, but imbue it with powerful spiritual and emotional meaning.

I do not believe that human beings are merely animals, and so what is puzzling to that author seems obvious to me. We have strange sex lives because sex is fundamentally a relationship, and when we try to reduce it to the level of sheer animality we find pain and brokenness. The true sexual relationship is in essence a becoming, manifesting spiritual oneness through bodily activity. It is a renewal of internal intimacy and commitment between two partners in the appropriate context, but divorced from this context is divested or perverted from its organic becoming-nature and becomes artificial and harmful.

But what do we mean by the “true” sexual relationship? Before we proceed, we must draw clearly the distinction between the “true” sexual relationship and the “lower” sexual act. The true sexual relationship is meant to be a relationship between two people only, in the context of a lifetime commitment, and representing a desire for spiritual oneness manifested through physicality. Sex is the seal of oneness. It is a renewal of the covenant between two people to love one another and give their lives for one another. It is like a sacrament, just as the Eucharist is composed of physical elements which denote spiritual transformation.

As we know, though, not all sex happens inside marriage. This is the vulgar Aphrodite of Pausanias, the base animal urge which does not depend on rationality but forsakes it. Though the fundamental desire remains, we pervert it by attempting to strip it of its proper place. As C.S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity, “You must not isolate that pleasure and try to get it by itself, any more than you ought to try to get the pleasures of taste without swallowing and digesting, by chewing things and spitting them out again.”

We are all looking for oneness, and we will never find it in the pure sexual act divested of its relationality. We attempt to reduce ourselves to animals, and we find that as animals we are miserable failures. Seen another way, we look for the reward of accomplishment without the pain of the work that must be done beforehand. And so we are left empty. This sort of sex is stasis masquerading as becoming, artifice attempting to pass as growth. It may satisfy for the moment, but it will not, and by definition cannot, last. The true sexual relationship is a symbol, and so it resides in symbolic space, and endures. The sexual act devoid of relational commitment is just an act, and is over in minutes.

Commitment is necessary for true sexuality, but only a certain sort of commitment will suffice. A plant may be repotted many times, but it must be done carefully. An oak may be uprooted and planted somewhere else, but it is very far from easy, and will be time-consuming as well. Our relationships are alive, and they are growing. Some relationships are peripheral, like potted plants, and forming or re-forming them takes some effort, but it is possible.

The sexual relationship, as a symbol of spiritual oneness, is like a centuries-old oak tree, dominating the landscape of our relationality, taking preeminence over all other human relationships. And this tree can only become what it should be, good and beautiful, in a soil which is permanent. There is a soil of commitment on which the organism of the sexual relationship takes place, and it must be a solid one.

It is therefore self-defeating to express multiple commitments and break them. For growth to occur, there must be only one soil. For the true sexual relationship to occur, there must be only one commitment, only one partner. In ontological categories, I suppose that the true sexual relationship is a becoming preconditioned by a being. The soil of absolute trust and security allow the two individuals to open themselves to each other and engage in the process of becoming one.

Therefore, the true sexual relationship is essentially rational and interpersonal, fostered by a lifetime commitment between two people, and acting as a symbolic manifestation of spiritual oneness. It is a becoming one, grounded in a being committed. But this can only occur if we accept our rational nature, and accept the mental and spiritual union that must go along with the physical act. Otherwise, we pervert the symbol into an artificial substitute that will fail to satisfy us.

Though perhaps more importantly, the true sexual relationship will not be pointed solely inwardly. An inflated view of the sexual relationship is just as harmful as a deficient one. There remains a seeking, though a seeking together, of that which is higher than ourselves. We must, in the end, be seeking God and not each other. To quote Lewis again, taken originally from Denis de Rougement, “Eros ceases to be a devil only when it ceases to be a god.”

Plato and the Postmodern Problem

For herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself: he has no desire for that of which he feels no want.                      --Plato, Symposium

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.                                                                    --Proverbs 14:12 (and 16:25)

I was reading this and was struck by how well this encapsulates the problem so many of us have in speaking to unbelievers today.  It seems that for centuries, we could take for granted the fact that everyone understood the "sin problem."  That is, that we have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, that we do not meet the standard, that we have failed.  But the postmodern individual, gorged on relativism and constructivism, denies that there is any standard at all (at least one that exists outside of themselves, one that exists independently of human thought).  So at the very same time that we see such an increase in humanitarian and humanistic concern, we see the fundamental denial and erasure of the concepts of evil and sin.  The famous line is that we once had to present the sick man with the cure, and now we must not only present him with the cure but convince him that he is sick in the first place!  Or, in Plato's version, ignorant man is unaware of his ignorance.

But we must be careful here.  Romans 1 has the following to say:

¹⁸For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. ¹⁹For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. ²⁰For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. ²¹For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Paul goes on to speak of the self-proclaimed wisdom which is death, and three times (in verses 24, 26, and 28) tells us that because "they exchanged the truth about God for a lie" (Rom. 1:25) God "gave them up" to pursuing their own evil desires.  Is it any surprise that there is such a widespread sentiment of existential emptiness and despair?

God's word is true yesterday, today, and forever.  He did not speak it once, He continues to speak it to each of us, personally, every moment.  So we must remember that even though it seems as if the unbeliever today is "ignorant" of God and His perfect standard (and thus of his own failure to meet that standard), he in fact remains without excuse, having suppressed his own knowledge of God. 

We have two options here: 1) We can hold that God has in fact given them up to their own sin to such an extent that their inner sense of God and His law has in fact been suppressed to such an extent that it is for all extents and purposes erased.  Or, 2) we can hold that despite the declared ignorance of sin and the moral standard, the unbeliever still deep down realizes his own inadequacy.

Of the two options, I would lean more toward the second, but perhaps add that we may need to find a new way to talk about such things.  Though the concept remains the same, we may do well to speak about alienation, empty relationships, isolation, and a sense of futility than the more traditional sin, guilt, shame, etc.  

John Frame on Reason

There is no such thing as 'neutral' reasoning. There is only Christian-theistic reasoning and unbelieving reasoning: the wisdom of God and the wisdom of the world. When there is common ground between believer and unbeliever, that is a sign that either believer or unbeliever is inconsistent with his or her deepest commitments.
--John Frame, Five Views on Apologetics, p. 80, footnote 11


Further, agreements between believers and unbelievers indicate inconsistency in one or the other party. For example, when a Christian and an atheist agree on a scientific theory (assuming that the theory is true), the atheist is inconsistently relying on a worldview in which the universe is a rational order, matching the rational order of the human mind. At that point, the atheist is thinking as a theist. He is assuming a structure of rationality in the world that he has no right to assume.
--John Frame, Five Views on Apologetics, p. 136