When we think about the effects of pornography, we generally stop once we’ve defined it as morally wrong. We rarely take time to think about how engaging with pornography changes us, and what kind of a person it makes us into. This is not just to say that pornography is bad for you; it is to say that engaging with pornography forms you, or more accurately, deforms you. Pornography is a dangerous liturgy.

Because we are designed as embodied beings, what we do with our bodies doesn’t just flow from what we think, it reinforces and even reconstructs what we believe. Our physical practices shape our desires, and our desires shape everything else. In the church, we have called these practices liturgies. We don’t just think our praises to God; we sing them loudly with our mouths. We don’t just remember what Christ has done on the cross; we eat, and we drink in communion. We don’t just feel love for the body of Christ; we embrace, we kiss, we wash one another’s feet. Again, this doesn’t just express what we believe. Instead, these practices are part of our becoming who God is calling us to be.

However, because this is part of what it means to be human, as James K.A. Smith argues in Desiring the Kingdom, all of life is liturgical, and all our practices are continually shaping us. As he says, “Liturgies aim our love to different ends precisely by training our hearts through our bodies.”¹ This includes a habit of using pornography. This reality is especially heightened when it is tied to the fact that God has designed sex to be a liturgical act in marriage, not merely expressing the marriage covenant but expressing it bodily in a way that shapes the marriage. It says with our body what the marriage is supposed to express in total: I belong to you. Beyond the theological aspect, there is also a biological component that makes pornography especially impacting (and addictive). What this means is that using pornography changes the way we think about (and go about) sexual relationships, and it does so in a way that goes directly against the grain of God’s design.

Pornography trains our sexuality in the wrong direction in very significant ways.

First off, pornography wires us for novelty instead of intimacy. God’s design for sexuality is built into his design for marriage summed up in Genesis 2:24 as “the two shall become one flesh.” Sex is designed to be part of a relationship where two complementary partners devote their lives to becoming one. Sex then is exclusive to that relationship, and our sexual desires are informed by our spouse as they change and age. Pornography, however, presents us with an unending supply of different people available for our pleasure. The user goes from picture to picture, or video to video and is never satisfied with what has been seen in the past. Part of what makes pornography pleasurable is the adventurous process of more and different (and sometimes more extreme). It is easy to see how destructive that is to sex in its designed setting. What should be a lifelong wealth of satisfaction in growing intimacy becomes dissatisfying in its limits and familiarity. Porn use doesn’t just fail to meet God’s design; it moves us away from it.

Second, pornography trains us for selfishness instead of giving.

Pornography is a consumable product that exists solely for our pleasure. We take and give nothing in return. In fact, since God designed our sexuality to be embedded in marriage and coupled not just with the reciprocal act of giving our body, but giving our whole selves (think of the refrain in Song of Songs, “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine”), pornography like all sexual immorality is exploitative. Let me be clear here; many outside the church would express concern that some pornography is exploitative: when it involves minors or those caught in sex trafficking, for example. But for us as Christians, there is no way to be a conscientious consumer of pornography. Unlike livestock, it doesn’t matter if those featured are free-range or if the product is cruelty-free. Porn takes and uses another for our pleasure without offering them ourselves. This is not merely about a lack of reciprocity. Sex within marriage isn’t about only taking as much as you give; it is fully and wholly about giving to the other person. Consider Paul’s advice to married couples in 1 Corinthians 7:3-4:

“The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.”

Notice that Paul sees sex in terms of what we owe our spouse, not what they owe us. This isn’t about demanding our rights but serving the other. Pornography forms us to focus on our needs and see our spouse as a means to gratification, or in the well-crafted phrase of Jonathan Grant, as a “happiness technology.” Again, we find that it’s not just that porn is selfish; it shapes our view of sex selfishly.

Finally, pornography pushes us towards isolation when sex was designed to draw us out of ourselves and into relationship with others.

When God said it was not good that Adam was alone in the garden, it was partly because he couldn’t be fruitful and multiply on his own, and it takes a whole society to display the image of God properly. Sexual desire is tied into this God-designed need for community. Pornography, however, doesn’t move toward community. Pornography thrives in privacy. This is not just because of the shame attached to it, but because it does not require the existence of others to meet our needs. This is only heightened when you include the imagination, as Jesus does, in sexual immorality (Matthew 5:28). C.S. Lewis hits the nail on the head in a letter he wrote to a young man about masturbation:

“For me, the real evil of masturbation would be that it takes an appetite which, in lawful use, leads the individual out of himself to complete (and correct) his own personality in that of another (and finally in children and even grandchildren) and turns it back: sends the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides. And this harem, once admitted, works against his ever getting out and really uniting with a real woman. For the harem is always accessible, always subservient, calls for no sacrifices or adjustments, and can be endowed with erotic and psychological attractions which no real woman can rival. Among those shadowy brides, he is always adored, always the perfect lover: no demand is made on his unselfishness, no mortification ever imposed on his vanity. In the end, they become merely the medium through which he increasingly adores himself.”²

All this means is that present, or even past use of pornography, leaves its mark on us and our relationships.

We see this increasingly in our society; there would be no #metoo movement if we weren’t so shaped as a culture by wrong practices of sex. We see it in the rampant loneliness of a world that has lost the art of family, friendship and community. We see it in countless marriages as our sexual desires dominate and distort God’s purpose in marriage. In a world awash in pornography, this can be tremendously discouraging. Many of us can look back on years of deforming habits and liturgies of sin and wonder if there is any road back. However, the hope we have as Christians is that, in the same way, we can be deformed by pornography, we can be transformed in Christ. This is not just about believing the right things about Jesus, but about practicing his ways. By cultivating proper habits of sexuality (what the church historically has called chastity), and proper relationships with humans that affirm God’s design and their image-bearing nature (think of Paul telling Timothy to treat younger women like sisters with all purity), we can put-off the old practices of sexuality, and through putting on the new ways of Christ, be transformed by the renewing of our mind (Ephesians 4:22-23).

_{Originally published on July 21, 2020}

Notes:

_{¹ Smith, James K.A. Desiring the Kingdom.
² Lewis, C. S. (2004–2007). The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis. (W. Hooper, Ed.) (Vol. 3, p. 758). New York: HarperCollins e-books; HarperSanFrancisco.}

“I think most people have heard of Johnny Cash and would recognize his music, even among today’s young people. He had a unique style of music that transcends time and sets him apart from other musicians.

As an individual, he was unique as well. Sinners thought Johnny was a saint, and saints thought Johnny was a sinner. The reality is, he was both. Just like us, he was flawed, he blew it, and he fell and he got up again. But he never lost his faith. In fact, at the very end of his life, it was stronger than ever.

Johnny Cash embodies the paradox of every Christian who wants to do what is right but struggles to do it, just like the apostle Paul described in Romans. That’s why I’ve wanting to tell his story for such a long time. His story is that of redemption, and it resonates with so many of us who mess up. But God says, “I’m not done with you yet.”

If we learn nothing else from the story of Johnny Cash, we learn that God gives second chances, and third ones, and fourth ones . . .

So I’ve teamed up again with my friend Marshall Terrill to write sort of a spiritual biography of Johnny Cash, a book that really focuses on his faith.”

-Greg

View Available Copies!

2018 CGN Pastors & Leaders Conference Archives

Though I’ve been a Calvary Chapel pastor for nearly five years, this year will be my first time attending the Pastors and Leaders Conference. So I’ve been thinking about the theme, “The Power of the Gospel.”

Power. Good News. These are culturally loaded ideas.

They are not technical terms with stable meanings across the globe. For most people, they are subjective.

When someone hears the word “power,” countless experiences spring into action that flavor the meaning. Wounds are opened, and bitterness comes out to play. Wounds that were given by people with “power.”

I’m not a world traveler, but these past seven years I’ve been doing life together with the Hungarian people. It’s given me a whole new perspective about power, and how for many people, maybe most people, it is not a good thing.

Maybe you’ve been a Christian for awhile and you know Romans 1:16:

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”

But pause for a minute and try to consider what power likely means to the majority of the world, and even to many in America today.

The powerful use their influence, their might, their ability to their own advantage. Power is leveraged against the weak. Those who have it wield it to gain more of it. It’s feared. It’s harmful. And those who have it are distrusted because of it.

Power is distasteful to many people. We should realize this when we speak of the power of the gospel. This is to say nothing of historical abuses of power by those who claimed to represent the gospel. The message of Romans 1:16 is indeed glorious, but it is also an alien concept to most. Power and good news rarely walk together in our world.

And that is precisely where the beauty of the gospel blossoms.

A lot has been said and written about this word, “power.” The transliteration, dynamis, informs the English word “dynamite.” But we must not make the error of reading modern concepts backwards into first century Palestine. Paul knew nothing about dynamite when he wrote to the Christians in Rome.

The idea simply is power. Ability. Force. Might. It speaks of having the innate capacity to bring about change, to effect change by the actions taken.

But power doesn’t exist in a vacuum. In our world it is most often tied to people who use it in harmful, selfish ways. Physical abuse by those in power. Emotional abuse by those in power. Systemic abuse by those in power. Political corruption by those in power. Economic corruption by those in power.

But our God, the God of the Bible, wields His awesome power in a way that is very different than the human authorities who have given us such terrible examples.

God expresses His power in the form of good news. That also is an alien concept. It seems that the only “good” news we get is when we hear something positive from a friend or family member. Many are abandoning the world’s news outlets altogether as the crisis-for-cash industry is finally being seen for what it is.

Yet that is God’s message, good news. And it’s a message infused with His own might, authority and ability. The good news of Jesus goes with, and in, the power of God.

And it is a message for salvation.

In our english Bibles “salvation” isn’t always referring to spiritual salvation. Sometimes it means being kept or preserved from worldly harm. But here in Romans 1:16, it is in fact the “salvation” we as followers of Jesus rest our lives upon.

It’s the salvation that uproots us from the realm of darkness and plants anew into the kingdom of Jesus (Colossians 1:13). It’s the ultimate rescue, the way out everyone who has known fear and oppression longs for. It is the light of day at the end of the valley of the shadow of death. It is a person, and the message of Him is indeed good news, full of God’s power.

It turns out that the God of the Bible, who is said to have all authority, who declares the beginning from the end, and who is the only redeemer (Isaiah 44:6-8), has chosen to use His power for our good. This shatters our worldly experience which tells us that the interests of the powerful and the good of the many are mutually exclusive. God’s ways really are different than our ways! (Isaiah 55:8-9)

In a world where the powerful serve themselves, the God of the Bible, the most powerful of all, expresses His power through care for others. Others who can add nothing to Him and need everything from Him. His power frees the captive (Isaiah 61:1; Luke 4:18). His power uplifts the oppressed (Psalm 9:9-10). His power gives the orphan a family (2 Corinthians 6:18). His power is good news for the salvation of all who believe.

What seems unbelievable is exactly what must be believed.

I wonder if our enemy has intentionally corrupted the idea of power among humanity in order to drive people away from anyone powerful, including God Himself. If you want to keep people from the water of life, try to poison the well.

It seems too good to be true. But what we hope would be true turns out to be exactly the message we’ve received. The all-powerful God has acted in the person and work of Jesus. Forgiveness has been purchased through the Son’s offering of His own life for us all. New life is secured by the Son’s bodily resurrection from the dead.

Just as Abraham hoped against hope and believed that this God could do what He promised (Romans 4:18), we too can enter into what seems impossible, trusting someone in power, by believing the good news of Jesus. Because you are not trusting just anyone, but the One who in His power gave Himself for you, in His power, took His life back from grave (John 10:17-18), and in His power, sends this good news out to all, for anyone who will believe.

Register to the 2018 CGN Pastors & Leaders Conference to hear teachings, interactive workshops, resources, fellowship & more under the theme, “The Power of the Gospel,” on June 25-28.

“Do you think finite sins deserve eternal punishment? How can that be fair?”

It’s a common question we may hear when we’re seeking to understand or discuss the nature of God’s wrath as it’s described in the Bible. And on the surface, it presents a difficult problem. After all, if you commit sin for a period of, say, eighty years, does it seem fair to be sentenced to an eternity of punishment? When stated this way, we might feel there is some sort of disparity. It’s hard to image a just God making this sort of mistake. In fact, it might seem to get worse when we think of each sin individually…maybe the sin lasted a year, or a day, or just a few minutes. How could it merit punishment forever?

And yet, that’s what the Bible does teach about the nature of God’s wrath on those who die in their sins. It’s a tragic, horrifying truth to try to contemplate, but it is the case.

So, what gives? Is God unfair?

Two things help when trying to think this through. First, it helps to ask questions about how we determine what a “fair” punishment is in the first place. Second, it helps to think about the assumptions we might be making about the “eternal” or “temporary” nature of both humans and their sins.

So, when we ask, “Do finite sins deserve infinite punishment?”–we should realize that we first need to answer the question of how someone would assign punishment to a crime at all. Even on a purely human level, do we assign length of punishment to a crime based on how long it took to commit the crime? The answer is generally no. If a murder took 5 minutes to commit, the time factor does not weigh in to the length of punishment. Imagine the trial of someone who spent 5 years masterminding a plot to steal $100,000, and someone who killed several people in 10 minutes of rage. Which one would receive a more severe punishment?

So we see that the length of time it takes to commit a crime, or a sin, is not really something that is taken into account when we think of punishment.

How should we weigh evil acts, then? The answer typically has to do with a mix of the amount of evil committed (money stolen, property damaged, lives disrupted or taken, pain caused), the amount of deliberateness behind the evil (time spent planning, amount of intent to do harm), and some other factors, like the future danger to a society the individual presents. The crucial idea to see here is that even our court systems understand that human acts have consequences beyond the actual committing of the crime. The evil caused does not stop when the criminal stops committing the evil.

So we have a compounding effect of evil to take into account when we assess punishment to criminals. If someone hurt several people badly enough to disable them, we have on our hands effects of evil which will last for the rest of their lives. Would it be unfair to add together the remaining years of each injured person’s life to come up with a “fair” number of years the criminal should be punished? (We should see that we will quickly run out of years left for the criminal, so that he or she wouldn’t even be able to serve the “full” sentence, thinking this way.)

And it gets worse. How would we calculate the “fair” amount of punishment for someone like Adolph Hitler? The amount of evil he committed would need to be assessed over the scale of every life he affected, his amount of malice and conscious intent, and how lasting the effects of his sin were. It boggles the mind. Could he receive a sentence that was “fair” which he could serve in his lifetime?

Secondly, when we ask the question, “”Do finite sins deserve infinite punishment?”–we should notice the underlying assumptions about humans, and our relationship to eternity, that we may need to reexamine. Specifically, we need to contemplate three issues of our own interaction with eternity:

1. The eternal nature of humans.
2. The eternal significance of the things humans do.
3. The eternal authority humans are under.

Let’s look at each one individually.

1. The eternal nature of humans: We’re finite in terms of size, but in terms of time, are we finite, or eternal? The answer the Bible gives is that we are eternal. Humans, by nature, are made in the image of the eternal God, which means that once we come into existence, we never pass out of existence. To exist forever is in the very fabric of what it means to be human. In other words, and this is very helpful to say when we discuss these kinds of things, we are eternal beings.

So when a human commits a sin, it is a sin committed by an eternal being. A new question emerges: Can an eternal being commit a finite sin?

2. The eternal significance of the things human do: Do our acts have temporary, or eternal significance? This returns to an idea discussed above–how long do the effects of our sin last? Now, I may break someone’s arm, and it may heal in six weeks. We could say the effects of my sin lasted six weeks. In one sense that’s true. But in another sense it’s not true at all. How long do the memories of that sin last? How long does the animosity between me and the injured person last? And to get more to the point: once I’ve broken the arm, can I ever undo that action? Is there a way I can make it so I didn’t do it at all? This is why the idea of “significance” is so helpful. I may commit an act whose effects go away after some time, but I can never change the universe so that the act didn’t happen. The fact that I broke the arm is an eternal fact. There will never be a time when I did not break that arm.

Further, think about things we do whose effects don’t go away. What if I hurt someone and it cost them their arm? They will live for the rest of their life maimed by what I did. And since we each only live one life, they will never get to live a full life with both arms. In other words, what I did effects them eternally. There will never be a reality in which they lived a full life with two arms.

Let’s keep going. If I murder someone, think of the eternal results of what I’ve done. For all eternity, the length of their earthly life will have been shortened, by me. They will never get to relive an earthly life which lasts its full course.

These may seem like extreme cases, but once you realize the connection between the fact that we only have one life to live, and that we can not change the past once we’ve lived it, you realize that literally everything we do has eternal significance. Once I say, think, or do something, it, and all its effects, can never be undone. they are just there, forever. I think we’ve answered the next pertinent question: Can an eternal being commit any act that is not eternal in significance?

3. The eternal authority humans are under: Against whom do we sin, when we sin? This is probably the most common way of connecting eternity to our sins. We don’t simply sin against each other–we sin against an infinite, eternal God, who gave us existence and has absolute right to rule over us. Not only that, but He’s shown Himself to be infinitely, eternally loving as well, so when we sin, we sin again someone with both infinite authority and infinite love. We offend infinite majesty. Here’s another question: Can an eternal being commit a finite sin against infinite love and authority?

I think adding the rest of what we’ve seen to this helps even further: Here we are, eternal creatures, given the gift of true existence with eternal significance, so that all we are and all we do has meaning forever. We’re under the infinitely loving authority of our creator as well, and given the ability to act out, in truly significant ways, our desires and intentions. Everything we do, then, has eternity all over it. There’s nothing about us that doesn’t matter, forever.

And when we sin, we sin eternally. We’re eternal beings committing eternally significant sins against an eternal authority.

When seen in this light, I’m not sure how we could see anything other than eternal consequences as appropriate. Eternal punishment speaks to the high calling and intention of God for Man, and the amazing level of significance he has gifted to us. To whom much is given, much is required.

And doesn’t this bring one more thing into glorious light? The grace of God in Jesus Christ is the kind of grace that comes to us–these eternally guilty beings–and actually has the power to change what we never could. Yes, there will never be a time when I did not sin, but by the death and resurrection of Christ I can be given the status of One who never did. When I am united to Him by faith, I find my past covered and atoned for, and what’s left is for me to live out an eternally significant life of righteousness. This is staggering. If anything, contemplating the reality of what Hell teaches us should make us be more in awe of what Jesus truly accomplished. What a massive, unimaginable salvation is offered to us. God is that good.