The Root of Sexual Dysfunction

In the past, allegations of sexual misconduct might occur maybe a few times a year. Now, it is seemingly several times a week. Matt Lauer, Al Franken, Trent Frank, John Conyers, Roy Moore and the list goes on and on. What is going on?

 

To some level, much of what has occurred happened in a much earlier time and women are increasingly emboldened to speak out when in the past they might have been afraid to. I wonder how much of this has occurred that we don't know. But I happen to think the insidious nature of how we look at sexual relationships goes way beyond specific situations to a society that is absolutely saturated with the wrong images of sex.

As much as 20% or more of Internet searches involve pornography. It is so readily available and so easy to get. Free and paid T.V. also glamorize sex as casual and fun. Virtually none of this occurs in the context of traditional marriage. The goal in pornography is self-satisfaction. The other party is simply the means to this end.  It glamorizes how women can exist to pleasure men. Men in particular are really good at storing these mental images in their computer brain and the images intensely cloud how they look at the opposite sex. The can no longer look at them as people but as pleasure makers.

I participate in a number of close knit men's groups and the vast majority of them have struggled with exposure to Internet porn. One pastor I spoke with said 90-95% of the young men (as early as middle school) are purveyors of Internet porn. No wonder we have dysfunction with women, and especially our wives. Sex in the form of marriage is all about other-satisfaction and complete transparency. I wrote about this in my previous blog on intimacy in response to the death of Hugh Hefner.

There are damaging consequences to this behavior. Paul in his letter to the Corinthians says that we are to flee immorality. The word used here is the word porneia which is where the word pornography comes from. He goes on to say that every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body (1 Cor. 6:18-20, emphasis mine). In other words, no other sinful behavior has the capacity to wreck a man physically. I believe that is what David was dealing with in Psalm 32 when he said, "when I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long". The woods are full of people who have messed themselves up. And the list of those that could mess themselves up is the vast majority of us.

Fortunately there is a solution and I will explore this in another week.

Finding Beauty in the Seasons

It has been a long time in-between blog posts. First it was writer's block and then a series of trips for both business and personal down south. Much of the time I was in Florida but now back into the long winter season here in NE Ohio.

I am one of those people who suffer from a malady called Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD for short. Mayo Clinic defines it as a type of depression that's related to changes in seasons — SAD begins and ends at about the same times every year. Symptoms start in the fall and continue into the winter months, sapping your energy and making you feel moody. Strange as it is, I have lived in three of the four snow belts (NW Indiana, NE Ohio, and Western Michigan) which make for long winters. When I was in Florida, I almost felt like I had unlimited energy. When we got home, I felt like someone has sucked the strength completely out of me. I cope through the winters with a lot of Vitamin D.

I have a love-hate relationship with the seasons. Part of me just loves the four seasons. I really think the bad weather in Cleveland from December through April just makes me appreciate the really nice weather from May through October. It also really helps to see the beauty of all the seasons. Today, I decided to take my bike out in 40 some degree weather. Now some of my fellow bicycle enthusiasts will go when it is much colder, but I usually cut it off at 50. But I have found that just getting out even when others aren't helps me to be aware of the beauty around me. That appreciation helps my outlook. God has beauty even in the midst of winter doldrums.

We are in a series of messages in church called "All Things New" talking about what the new heaven and the new earth will be like. I read Randy Alcorn's book Heaven and it really challenged me to look at just the glimpse of heaven that this earth is like. Take things like athletics. Do I think athletics and competition will be heaven. I do! Think of things that give us the greatest joy and multiple by hundred, yet without sin. Competition is referred to in the Scriptures as something positive. Paul, for example talks about running and boxing in such a way as to be successful.

I have seen this video several times over the past number of weeks. This man is color blind and has never seen colors. His family gets him a pair of glasses that allows him to see colors for the first time. This is the kind of amazement that we should see in all we do on this earth and even more as we think of eternity.

The Heart We Don't Know

He was known to only a few and even to them, not well. He was apart from his family, but not completely estranged. His brother was shocked as shown in the video. He was not associated with any extremist organizations. He was by all accounts well off financially. He had a girlfriend but even she was shocked. Yet, Stephen Paddock meticulously planned and carried out a mission of mass execution of strangers.

My wife during the course of coordinating meets a person for the first time and literally only a few minutes later says calls her a liar, says she is getting bad vibes from her, and questions her faith. My wife, who does not have a mean bone in her body, was devastated. There is not a person on this earth who knows my wonderful wife better than I do and I cannot imagine more undeserved comments.

We see in these situations two opposite situations. The first is not suspecting the monster within and the second is making instant conclusions about people we hardly know. As humans, we love to sit in judgment, but most times we get it wrong either way. The human heart is amazingly complex and underneath it all no one can understand it. To quote my favorite poet Shrek "ogres are like onions" meaning they are complicated. Jesus (a little better source) said that he could never require man's testimony "because He knew what was in the heart of man" (John 2:25).

In the course of every day dealings, I constantly have to remind myself of this truth. Most times I have no idea what is going on in the hearts of minds of people. When I want to pre-judge people I hardly know, I have to stop and try to see them as God sees them. I have to take the high road which is what Deb took with her false accuser. She instantly apologized for offending the woman even though she knew she had done nothing wrong.

What about overt wickedness like in Las Vegas? It should remind us of the depravity in each of us. But it should also spur us to the good that is in us. The stories of heroism, of the many who donated blood, of those who supported the grief of others, and so on.  

On Hefner and Intimacy

Hugh Hefner had been married three times and dated numerous women over the course of his 91 years of life. He also claimed to have slept with over 1,000 women. By all definitions, by the definition of worldly pleasure, Hugh had it all. Many guys would have loved to traded places with him. Yet this epitome of success was strangely alone at his death. Hefner had no real transcendental relationships.

King Solomon seems like a close match to Hefner. 1 Kings 11 tells us he "loved foreign women" and he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines (mistresses, girlfriends). If you add up the seven hundred and the three hundred, it strangely matches the 1,000 of Hefner. Solomon was the original Hugh Hefner. But we get a sneak peek of where that left him in the book of Ecclesiastes. It left him empty and void. Solomon calls his chasing after pleasure part of his "vanity and chasing after the wind".

I have been married 32 years. I have had my best friend by my side through thick and thin. I have someone whom I completely trust. I heard a great definition of intimacy as "someone whom you can be completely transparent with". God has wired the marital relationship to be so much more than physical. Intimacy is praying together. Intimacy is crying together. Intimacy is sharing thoughts together. Intimacy is just watching a movie together. And on and on it goes. I doubt that Hefner, the original playboy, really knew intimacy.

The Folly of Perfection

The Cleveland Indians won 22 games in a row before the streak finally ended Friday night, a game I happened to attend. This streak set a major league record previously dating back to 1935 (I am not counting the Elias record from 1916 that included a tie). The Indians did it with surprising ease outscoring opponents by huge margins with few games being close. However, the 22nd game was an extra inning thriller where the Indians came from behind. The players apparently started wishing that the streak was over and they could get back to just playing ball. The streak of perfection was getting harder and harder to maintain. To keep it going was a day to day grind.

Likewise the Old Testament law contains laws that are impossible to keep. I haven't even rolled out of bed and gotten into the morning routine before I have violated at least one law. At the time of Christ's earthly ministry, the Pharisees had even further gummed up the works by adding numerous trivial laws that weighted the people down.

If the perfection of God's law is impossible, why does it exist? Thankfully, the answer is supplied succinctly by Paul in Galatians 3:24. It is our tutor to lead us to Christ. We recognize our own inability and sinful pattern and it reveals our need for a Savior. Tutor is an interesting word. The Greek word denotes a slave whose duty was to take care of a child until adulthood. the tutor escorted the child to and from school and watched over their behavior at home. Tutors were disciplinarians and caused those under their care to yearn for the day when they would be free from under the tutor's custody. Likewise the law is our tutor and shows us our sins leading us or escorting us to Christ.

What Storms Teach Us

Just about all of us have friends and/or family going through a once in a generational storm in Florida as I write this. As I sit here in Northeast Ohio, the sun is shining and it is a beautiful day, but in Florida it is nasty. It is so easy to feel helpless about what is going on. If I could pull a Star Trek, I would beam people up here. But time and space prevents me from doing that. 

The seasoned fisherman were terrified. Storms, like hurricanes were common on the Sea of Galilee. But this one seemed completely out of the ordinary. The boat was being swamped. They feared for their very lives. And there was Jesus asleep like a baby on a cushion, an intentional act of rest, not one like dozing. These fisherman did not suspect that Jesus was unaware, but that He didn't care that their lives were in danger. Jesus calms the storm and says to them "Where is your faith?". (Mark 4:25-41).

What is it to be learned about storms?

1. Storms remind us of our human frailty. 
2. Storms remind us of the brevity of "stuff".
3. Storms offer an opportunity for human generosity and caring.
4. Storms remind us of who is the one who is in control.

The Gift of Pain

I was trying to leg out an infield hit. I stretched to the bag and felt a little pop and realized I had popped my quad muscle. I limped back to the dugout and realized I was done. Two days later, feeling I was recovered enough from my quad, I tried to hit. As a power hitter, when I swing it is all parts of the body working in forward motion. On a 3-1 count, I let her rip and went down. Done for the evening again. Two days later, I am back at it again trying to catch and while stretching right to catch a ball out of the strike zone I did it again.

After three re-occurrences of the same image, it finally sunk into my thick skull that maybe I ought to lay low for a while and let my injury actually heal. So I did or so I thought. I was putting spaghetti away and I dropped a container of spaghetti on the floor. As I was going to pick it up, I felt the most intense pain in the leg to date and I dropped to the floor in agony. This pain caught me by surprise.

Author Philip Yancey has written extensively about the subject of pain. He co-wrote a book called The Gift of Pain and has referred to it in multiple of his books. Leprosy patients are at great risk of doing harm to themselves because they can feel no pain. Someone with leprosy can stick their hand in a fire and not know it. The book makes the fascinating conclusion that pain is actually good for us. Pain is much broader than physical. It reaches to the very core of our being. Some of the worst pain is emotional and spiritual.

Intentional Pain Stops Us from Unintended Consequences
If there were no consequences to our behavior, we would do all sorts of bad things. But the bad things we do leave a mark. My continued insistence on playing through pain only made my situation worse. We can see this with our dabbling with sin. There are always consequences and the mark of pain helps us to recognize it.

Unintentional Pain Reveals Our Need for God
Some of the worst pain comes from outside. It is the consequences of living in a fallen world. My worst pain on my example came from the accidental spill of the spaghetti. Likewise, the unforeseen such as an accident or a trial occurs. This type of trial leads us to recognize our frailty and our need for a personal God.