Pop quiz question for you … what is the most effective way to focus the human mind away from things that would ennoble it, alter brain chemistry until it is powerless to resist, and institute a cycle of degradation that can be more overwhelming than a black hole? Drugs or chemical dependencies like Alcohol maybe? Nope. I am talking about something more insidious, more subtle, and much more dangerous. I am talking about something that is a literal part of our make-up but can be altered beyond all comprehension over time. And it is older than dirt. Well perhaps just a bit younger than dirt …
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 by cruel association with direct evil.
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 purported 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 an 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…
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