Category Archives: My Reasons and My Reason

The New Covenant, Part 2

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I shared the first essay of this series with two friends.  Both preferred the judgment focus of my Pastor’s sermon, what I called “an invitation to do-it-yourself religion.”[1]  To one it was a desirable limit to “grace,” which was seen as a come on to an open-ended commitment to do whatever a preacher says.  The other saw it as the only path to righteousness since “grace” is just an excuse for indulging whatever sins one wants and then saying, “I’m sorry,” at the end to get into heaven (i.e., to avoid hell).  The unifying thread between these two beliefs is the current understanding of the grace of God.

When I think, speak or write about grace what I mean at the very least is the power to become the righteousness of God.  God made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we would become the righteousness of God.[2]  In practical terms I think we become the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ, receiving his indwelling Holy Spirit and walking in the continuous supply of his own love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.[3]

My Pastor objected to the word power for grace.  The connection to grace is made for me when Paul asked the Lord three times about [a thorn in the flesh], that [this messenger of Satan] would depart from [him]:[4]  But [the Lord] said to me, “My grace (χάρις) is enough for you, for my power (δύναμις) is made perfect in weakness.”  So then, I will boast most gladly about my weaknesses, so that the power (δύναμις) of Christ may reside in me.[5]

I’ve grown up around people who feel that saying too much about the Holy Spirit robs Jesus of some of his glory.  Jesus said (John 16:7-14 ESV):

Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I[6] do not go away, the Helper will not come to you.  But if I go, I will send him to you.  And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the[7] Father, and you will see me no longer;[8] concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.  When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears[9] he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.  He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you [Table].

In the story of the raising of Lazarus Jesus hints at a proximity effect to his grace: Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus has died, and I am glad for your sake that I was not there, so that you may believe.”[10]  “Lord, if you had been here, Martha seems to confirm this proximity effect, my brother would not have died [Table].  But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will grant you.”[11]  At the risk of angering hardcore Trinitarians the Holy Spirit is Jesus omnipresent, Jesus without a proximity effect, Jesus unleashed throughout all space and time.

Here, too, my Pastor objected to my description of the Holy Spirit citing Jesus’ words: Then I will ask the Father, and he will give you another (ἄλλον, a form of ἄλλος) Advocate to be with you forever.[12]  I asked whether—If anyone loves me, he will obey my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and take up residence with him[13]—should be understood as “over and above” the indwelling Holy Spirit.  He said, no, and settled on the word through.  So, I’ll amend my original statement: Through his Holy Spirit Jesus is omnipresent, without a proximity effect, unleashed throughout all space and time.

A more expansive definition of grace is God so loved…that He gave.  Now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things that are freely given (χαρισθέντα, a form of χαρίζομαι) to us by God.[14]  For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son.[15]  Ultimately Jesus is the grace of God.

My faith needs some of the nuts and bolts, how Jesus is the grace of God to me.  And here again Paul associated power with the grace that is Jesus: I pray that according to the wealth of his glory [the Father] will grant you to be strengthened (κραταιωθῆναι, a form of κραταιόω) with power (δυνάμει, a form of δύναμις) through his Spirit in the inner person [Table], that Christ will dwell in your hearts through faith.[16]

I want to consider this grace of God and the new covenant in the light of my own experience as the types of ground Jesus described in the parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1-9).  The first type of ground He described was the path (Matthew 13:19 NET).

When anyone hears the word about the kingdom and does not understand (συνιέντος, a form of συνίημι) it, the evil one comes and snatches what was sown in his heart; this is the seed sown along the path.

This describes me fairly accurately from about five years old to seventeen.  When I said a sinner’s prayer to escape hell, I meant that I disobeyed my parents sometimes.  I was many years and a considerable psychic distance from acknowledging that I was from [my] father the devil, and [I] want to do what [my] father desires.[17]  I was like those who loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil.  For everyone who does evil deeds hates the light and does not come to the light, so that their deeds will not be exposed.[18]

I didn’t know my deeds were evil.  Quite the contrary, I resented anyone who called what I wanted “evil.”  “What I wanted” was the epitome of righteousness in my mind, though I would not have used the term.  I realized as I grew that what adults called righteousness was often not anything I wanted at all.

I don’t recall ever hearing Jesus’ saying—You people are from your father the devil, and you want to do what your father desires—as if it applied to me.  It was relatively recently that I realized He spoke to those…who had believed him.[19]  It was relatively recently that I recognized this saying as one of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven.[20]  I was like one of the outsiders who heard most of Jesus’ sayings as parables: Although they see they do not see, and although they hear they do not hear nor do they understand (συνίουσιν, another form of συνίημι).[21]

This period of my life, being the path, came to an end when I chose to be an atheist.  For a time I actively opted out of being any kind of soil for the seed of God’s word.  Even if I have treated it like some sort of necessity in these essays, atheism was not a foregone conclusion.  I had an alternative at seventeen.

I was driven back to the Bible when God didn’t punish me for the “sin of premarital sex.”  But I rejected the Bible if it didn’t agree with what I “knew” it was supposed to say from years of church and Sunday school, when I was the path, one who heard about the kingdom but didn’t understand it, one who whatever he heard was snatched away by the evil one.

I didn’t realize I was that kind of ground at the time.  There was a tacit assumption among those I knew that the three types of ground that didn’t produce consistent fruit were destined for the lake of fire.  I had said a sinner’s prayer to Jesus to avoid hell.  I was, therefore, good ground by definition.

I have described my time as an atheist as a “decline that is such a cliché, it is too embarrassing to mention in detail.”[22]  There was an upside to becoming a cliché: I could no longer imagine myself to be the unique individual courageously forging my own path into the unknown.  My path was well known and well-worn, most notably well known in the Bible, not that I acknowledged that consciously at the time.

My flirtation[23] with atheism ended when I prayed, “If you’re really out there, I really want to know you.”[24]  Though I had an immediate hunger for the Bible from that moment on, I didn’t study the Bible to know…the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom [He] sent.[25]  I studied to know the rules to obey to keep my end of the bargain.

When I mentioned this to my Pastor, he thought it was a good way to start.  For me it was possibly the only way to start.  But I can’t help wondering: what if I had believed Jesus saying that I was from my father the devil and wanted to do what my father desired?  What if I had let his words create a healthy skepticism in me about those desires and thoughts, those feelings and reasons that came “naturally” to my heart and mind?  What if I had taken Him at his word at five or ten or twenty or even forty-years-old rather than compelling Him to prove to me for sixty-five years that I was from my father the devil and wanted to do what my father desired?

Would it have helped me believe that his grace was enough for me? Could it have shortened the time I spent as the next type of ground Jesus described (Matthew 13:20, 21 NET)?

The seed sown on rocky ground is the person who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy.  But he has no root in himself and does not endure; when trouble or persecution comes because of the word, immediately he falls away.

This ground describes me between the ages of twenty-three and forty-three.  As I searched the Bible for rules to obey to keep my part of the contract and then disobeyed them anyway, I heard Paul’s lament (Romans 7:22-24 NET):

For I delight in the law of God in my inner being.  But I see a different law in my members waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that is in my members [Table].  Wretched man that I am!  Who will rescue me from this body of death?

Paul believed that Jesus had rescued him: Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord![26]  I didn’t understand how at first, even though I was more curious than I had ever been before.  Though now I might be more inclined to translate χάρις δὲ τῷ θεῷ διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν[27] “grace from God through Jesus Christ our Lord” and while I might appreciate more now that Paul may have given a very direct answer to his own rhetorical question, I wouldn’t have understood it any better then.  I didn’t know God or his grace—not yet.

Twenty years of springing up with joy only to fall away again, twenty years of being picked up, dusted off and put back together by Jesus one more time, slowly began to teach me to know Him and his grace.  Paul wrote to Timothy (2 Timothy 2:11-13 NET):

This saying is trustworthy: If we died with him, we will also live with him.  If we endure, we will also reign with him.  If we deny[28] him, he will also deny us.  If we are unfaithful, he remains faithful, since[29] he cannot (οὐ δύναται) deny himself.

Sometimes when I tell this story people want to credit me for continuing to study the Bible over those twenty years.  I also ate food over that time, whenever I was hungry.  Granted, eating food was instrumental in keeping me alive, but the hunger comes from God as did the food.  Eventually, I began to understand that the one bringing forth in [me] both the desire and the effort—for the sake of his good pleasure—is God.[30]

The Greek words translated desire and effort were not nouns but infinitive verbs: θέλειν (a form of θέλω) and ἐνεργεῖν (a form of ἐνεργέω).  Eventually, I was able to make this connection to the hunger, the food and the eating.  The hunger, θέλειν, and the food, the Bible, are from God.  The eating, doing his will, ἐνεργεῖν, becoming the righteousness of God in Him, is the outcome of his grace.  And eventually I trusted Him and his grace more than I trusted myself—good ground at last?

Jesus continued (Matthew 13:22 NET):

The seed sown among thorns is the person who hears the word, but worldly[31] cares and the seductiveness of wealth choke the word, so it produces nothing.

This type of ground characterizes me from about forty-four years of age to perhaps fifty-three.  I got a fulltime job again with a steady paycheck.  I married a woman with two children.  I left all the “spiritual stuff” to the grace of God while I attended to more mundane matters.  This period of my life ended when my wife divorced me.

So from about the age of fifty-four to the present, sixty-eight, have I finally become what Jesus called good soil (Matthew 13:23 NET)?

But as for the seed sown on good soil,[32] this is the person who hears the word and understands[33] (συνιείς, another form of συνίημι).  He bears fruit, yielding a hundred, sixty, or thirty times what was sown.”

Who knows?  I can’t even imagine how to measure such a thing.  My Pastor treated these measurements like ordinary agricultural yields.  And he’s right.

If I think of a kernel of corn (maize) growing to maturity, one ear of corn would easily be thirty times what was sown.  When I think about the time and attention, the forgiveness and patience, the mercy and grace the Lord has lavished upon me, what I share with others is a tiny fraction rather than a multiple.

I planted, Paul wrote the Corinthians, Apollos watered, but God caused it to grow (ἠύξανεν, a form of αὐξάνω).[34]  After all we’ve been through together I can trust Him with that growth.

Tables comparing John 16:7; 16:10; 2 Timothy 2:12, 13; Matthew 13:22 and 13:23 in the NET and KJV follow.

John 16:7 (NET)

John 16:7 (KJV)
But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I am going away.  For if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you, but if I go, I will send him to you. Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.

NET Parallel Greek

 Stephanus Textus Receptus

Byzantine Majority Text
ἀλλ᾿ ἐγὼ τὴν ἀλήθειαν λέγω ὑμῖν, συμφέρει ὑμῖν ἵνα ἐγὼ ἀπέλθω. ἐὰν γὰρ μὴ ἀπέλθω, ὁ παράκλητος |οὐκ ἐλεύσεται| πρὸς ὑμᾶς· ἐὰν δὲ πορευθῶ, πέμψω αὐτὸν πρὸς ὑμᾶς αλλ εγω την αληθειαν λεγω υμιν συμφερει υμιν ινα εγω απελθω εαν γαρ μη απελθω ο παρακλητος ουκ ελευσεται προς υμας εαν δε πορευθω πεμψω αυτον προς υμας αλλ εγω την αληθειαν λεγω υμιν συμφερει υμιν ινα εγω απελθω εαν γαρ εγω μη απελθω ο παρακλητος ουκ ελευσεται προς υμας εαν δε πορευθω πεμψω αυτον προς υμας

John 16:10 (NET)

John 16:10 (KJV)
concerning righteousness because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more;

NET Parallel Greek

 Stephanus Textus Receptus

Byzantine Majority Text
περὶ δικαιοσύνης δέ, ὅτι πρὸς τὸν πατέρα ὑπάγω καὶ οὐκέτι θεωρεῖτε με περι δικαιοσυνης δε οτι προς τον πατερα μου υπαγω και ουκ ετι θεωρειτε με περι δικαιοσυνης δε οτι προς τον πατερα μου υπαγω και ουκετι θεωρειτε με

2 Timothy 2:12, 13 (NET)

2 Timothy 2:12, 13 (KJV)
If we endure, we will also reign with him.  If we deny him, he will also deny us. If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us:

NET Parallel Greek

 Stephanus Textus Receptus

Byzantine Majority Text
εἰ ὑπομένομεν, καὶ συμβασιλεύσομεν· εἰ ἀρνησόμεθα, κακεῖνος ἀρνήσεται ἡμᾶς ει υπομενομεν και συμβασιλευσομεν ει αρνουμεθα κακεινος αρνησεται ημας ει υπομενομεν και συμβασιλευσομεν ει αρνουμεθα κακεινος αρνησεται ημας
If we are unfaithful, he remains faithful, since he cannot deny himself. If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself.

NET Parallel Greek

 Stephanus Textus Receptus

Byzantine Majority Text
εἰ ἀπιστοῦμεν, ἐκεῖνος πιστὸς μένει, ἀρνήσασθαι γὰρ ἑαυτὸν οὐ δύναται. ει απιστουμεν εκεινος πιστος μενει αρνησασθαι εαυτον ου δυναται ει απιστουμεν εκεινος πιστος μενει αρνησασθαι εαυτον ου δυναται

Matthew 13:22 (NET)

Matthew 13:22 (KJV)
The seed sown among thorns is the person who hears the word, but worldly cares and the seductiveness of wealth choke the word, so it produces nothing. He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful.

NET Parallel Greek

 Stephanus Textus Receptus

Byzantine Majority Text
ὁ δὲ εἰς τὰς ἀκάνθας σπαρείς, οὗτος ἐστιν ὁ τὸν λόγον ἀκούων, καὶ ἡ μέριμνα τοῦ αἰῶνος καὶ ἡ ἀπάτη τοῦ πλούτου συμπνίγει τὸν λόγον καὶ ἄκαρπος γίνεται ο δε εις τας ακανθας σπαρεις ουτος εστιν ο τον λογον ακουων και η μεριμνα του αιωνος τουτου και η απατη του πλουτου συμπνιγει τον λογον και ακαρπος γινεται ο δε εις τας ακανθας σπαρεις ουτος εστιν ο τον λογον ακουων και η μεριμνα του αιωνος τουτου και η απατη του πλουτου συμπνιγει τον λογον και ακαρπος γινεται

Matthew 13:23 (NET)

Matthew 13:23 (KJV)
But as for the seed sown on good soil, this is the person who hears the word and understands.  He bears fruit, yielding a hundred, sixty, or thirty times what was sown.” But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.

NET Parallel Greek

 Stephanus Textus Receptus

Byzantine Majority Text
ὁ δὲ ἐπὶ τὴν καλὴν γῆν σπαρείς, οὗτος ἐστιν ὁ τὸν λόγον ἀκούων καὶ συνιείς, ὃς δὴ καρποφορεῖ καὶ ποιεῖ ὃ μὲν ἑκατόν, ὃ δὲ ἑξήκοντα, ὃ δὲ τριάκοντα ο δε επι την γην την καλην σπαρεις ουτος εστιν ο τον λογον ακουων και συνιων ος δη καρποφορει και ποιει ο μεν εκατον ο δε εξηκοντα ο δε τριακοντα ο δε επι την γην την καλην σπαρεις ουτος εστιν ο τον λογον ακουων και συνιων ος δη καρποφορει και ποιει ο μεν εκατον ο δε εξηκοντα ο δε τριακοντα

Addendum: February 6, 2022
I can’t say that a sermon like the following wasn’t preached to me when I was five or ten or twenty or forty-years-old. I can say I heard it today.

[1] The New Covenant, Part 1

[2] 2 Corinthians 5:21 (NET) Table

[3] Galatians 5:22b, 23a (NET) Table

[4] 2 Corinthians 12:8 (NET) with phrases in brackets from 2 Corinthians 12:7 (NET) Table

[5] 2 Corinthians 12:9 (NET) Table

[6] The Byzantine Majority text had εγω here.  The NET parallel Greek text, NA28 and Stephanus Textus Receptus did not.

[7] The Stephanus Textus Receptus and Byzantine Majority Text had μου (KJV: my) here.  The NET parallel Greek text and NA28 did not.

[8] The NET parallel Greek text, NA28 and Byzantine Majority Text had οὐκέτι here, where the Stephanus Textus Receptus had ουκ ετι (KJV: no more).

[9] The NET parallel Greek text and NA28 had ἀκούσει here, where the Stephanus Textus Receptus and Byzantine Majority Text had αν ακουση (KJV: whatsoever he shall hear).

[10] John 11:14, 15a (NET)

[11] John 11:21b, 22 (NET)

[12] John 14:16 (NET) Table

[13] John 14:23 (NET) Table

[14] 1 Corinthians 2:12 (NET)

[15] John 3:16a (NET) Table

[16] Ephesians 3:16, 17a (NET)

[17] John 8:44a (NET) Table

[18] John 3:19b, 20 (NET)

[19] John 8:31a (NET)

[20] Matthew 13:11b (NET)

[21] Matthew 13:13b (NET)

[22] Who Am I? Part 3

[23] I called it a flirtation not to minimize its seriousness but to highlight how I was not serious enough about it to maintain such a demanding faith for any prolonged period of time.

[24] Who am I? Part 3

[25] John 17:3b (NET)

[26] Romans 7:25a (NET) Table

[27] Romans 7:25a NA28  This is what the editors of the NA28 currently believe to be the original text.

[28] The NET parallel Greek text and NA28 had ἀρνησόμεθα here, where the Stephanus Textus Receptus and Byzantine Majority Text had αρνουμεθα.

[29] The NET parallel Greek text and NA28 had γὰρ here.  The Stephanus Textus Receptus and Byzantine Majority Text did not.

[30] Philippians 2:13 (NET)

[31] The Stephanus Textus Receptus and Byzantine Majority Text had τουτου following αἰῶνος (KJV: this world).  The NET parallel Greek text and NA28 did not.

[32] The Stephanus Textus Receptus and Byzantine Majority Text had the article την preceding soil (KJV: ground).  The NET parallel Greek text and NA28 did not.

[33] The NET parallel Greek text and NA28 had συνιείς here, where the Stephanus Textus Receptus and Byzantine Majority Text had συνιων (KJV: understandeth it).

[34] 1 Corinthians 3:6 (NET) Table

My Reasons and My Reason, Part 8

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Considering walking in the light led me back here to try to bring this series of essays to some sort of conclusion.  Much as I might like something more definitive, this—like the rest of my life—will be more in-process.  But it highlights the advantage of taking notes by writing essays.

While it was probably good for me to type out Scripture verses and passages (copy and paste came later) and salutary to suspend my own judgments until a sufficient quantity of God’s own thoughts had washed over and through me, the notes that resulted from this exercise were simply typed lists of Scripture passages bound together only by the Greek or Hebrew word they shared.  Though it shaped my understanding of the Greek or Hebrew word in question, once the meaning of the exercise dimmed in memory my notes didn’t help me recall it.  Writing essays forces me to translate the gestalt that forms from word studies into a linear pattern of words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs that I can return to again and again as new patterns emerge.

This essay begins for all practical purposes with my divorce from my second wife (third wife if you’re willing to count my high school girlfriend).  One of the reasons she divorced me was stated: “I don’t like your sexuality.  And when I do, I don’t like myself.”

I’m persuaded a decade or so later—knowing we get along just fine now that sex and living together are off the table—that it wasn’t female emotional-speak, when a man should hear the emotion conveyed by the words rather than their literal content.  She was a poet, speaking content and feeling in a few precise words.  When I heard them I became the submissive sadist who had goaded her into a discomforting situation.

I was under the most extreme emotional duress, rejected again by another wife after having been accepted (including my masochistic sexuality).  I had believed she was God’s gift to me, that He had given me the desire of my heart and He was about to take that gift away, albeit through my inability to please a wife.  I don’t expect that He will ever taunt Satan with words like, Have you considered my servant Dan?  There is no one like him on the earth, a pure and upright man, one who fears God and turns away from evil.[1]  I was in no shape to say blessed be the name of the Lord.[2]  That was accomplished entirely by the Holy Spirit.  He flooded Paul’s definition of love back into my mind (1 Corinthians 13:4-8a NET):

Love is patient, love is kind, it is not envious.  Love does not brag, it is not puffed up.  It is not rude, it is not self-serving, it is not easily angered or resentful.  It is not glad about injustice, but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never ends.   

That’s not to say that it had ever left entirely.  To Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind[3] and to Love your neighbor as yourself,[4] it’s nice to know what love is.  But under extreme emotional duress Paul’s definition became my mantra.

The obvious advantage of this is that Paul’s definition of love coincides absolutely with the fruit of the Holy Spirit: the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control[5] He is ever-producing in the believer, like a fountain of water springing up to eternal life.[6]  Jesus stood up and shouted out, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.  Just as the scripture says, ‘From within him will flow rivers of living water.’”[7]  And whatever the flow rate in ordinary times I’m convinced He increases it in times of duress, emotional or otherwise.

Though I was completely wrong the first time I was divorced to think that I could love like God and fulfill the law by turning Paul’s definition of love into rules I would obey in my own strength, the Holy Spirit was not wrong to make that definition my mantra.  It reminds me of another mantra from the movie The Patriot.

It comes at the turning point for widower and war veteran Benjamin Martin (Mel Gibson).  He has avoided being dragged back into war until now.  He and his two younger sons Nathan (Trevor Morgan) and Samuel (Bryan Chafin) prepare an ambush for the Redcoats who have captured his eldest son Gabriel (Heath Ledger).  “What did I tell you fellas about shooting,” Benjamin asks his obviously frightened young sons.  “Aim small, miss small,” they respond in unison.  Benjamin prays, “Lord make me fast and accurate.”  Nathan repeats “aim small, miss small” as a mantra to steady his breathing.

When I consider sin as a missing of the mark,[8] “aim small, miss small” has a lot to do with how Paul’s definition of love worked as a mantra of righteousness.  A bit of impatience with God or my wife was a long way from atheism or murder.  Aiming at kindness kept the worst of my bitter diatribes at bay.  A little envy did not lead to adultery.  None of these small misses were quite as devastating as missing the absolutes of God’s law.  Paul’s definition of love may well be the God-ordained hedge about the law working in consonance with the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

Still, here I am with a desire for that combination of humiliation, pain and pleasure called masochism.  Now, admittedly, I have no desire for missionary-position sex with somebody’s grandmother.  Maybe this is the way sexual desire dies, most kinky last.  I don’t honestly know.  But it leads me aside here to another consideration.

Paul wrote believers in Rome (Romans 8:12-14 NET):

So then, brothers and sisters, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh (for if you live according to the flesh, you will die), but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live.  For all who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God.

The Greek word translated you put to death was θανατοῦτε (a form of θανατόω).  I’ve been frustrated at times not knowing how to behead, stab, shoot or poison the practices of the body (πράξεις τοῦ σώματος), as distinguished from the works of the flesh (ἔργα τῆς σαρκός).  In the past believers tried asceticism.  Today psychology is all the rage.  But I think that θανατοῦτε is a bit more passive than its English translation may seem.

Brother will hand over (Παραδώσει, a form of παραδίδωμι) brother to death, Jesus prophesied, and a father his child.  Children will rise against parents and have them put to death (θανατώσουσιν, another form of θανατόω).[9]  Here θανατώσουσιν was associated with Παραδώσει, “to give into the hands (of another).”  The brother, the father and the children would not kill directly but surrender their victims to another authority.  And I think that pattern holds.

The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were trying to find false testimony against Jesus so that they could put him to death (θανατώσωσιν, another form of θανατόω).[10]  When it was early in the morning, all the chief priests and the elders of the people plotted against Jesus to execute (θανατῶσαι, another form of θανατόω) him.[11]  But when it got right down to it the chief priests and elders handed him over (παρέδωκαν, another form of παραδίδωμι) to Pilate the governor.[12]  Even Pilate handed him over (παρέδωκεν, another form of παραδίδωμι) [to others] to be crucified.[13]  I am to put to death the [practices[14]] of the body by the Spirit (πνεύματι, a form of πνεῦμα, dative case).

If I leave the killing to God, suddenly his beyond intimate knowledge of me as an individual is comforting rather than a threat.  Let the Creator and Lover of my soul perform the spiritual equivalent of neurosurgery in his own time with his own steady hand.  My part is to hand the practices of the body over to Him.  For all who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God.

I do, however, recognize another desire of my heart, a desire to do word studies in the Bible to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom [He has] sent.[15]  When I spent countless hours typing Scripture passages, or even copying and pasting them, though I wanted and needed to do it, I felt guilty about all the time I “wasted.”  I should have been making money or music or doing something “good.”  What I’ve learned from all that I’ve suffered is that studying God’s word is doing something good.

Now I have more time off from work than I can actually afford.  Bible study is not only good for me and the thing I look most forward to being off work to do, it is the most economical way to spend idle time.  Also, it is time spent when every inclination of the thoughts of [my mind] is not only evil (raʽ, רע) all the time.[16]  Yes, I have learned a more circumspect view of who and what I am now, as well as my own capacity for doing good (apart from being led by the Holy Spirit).  Why do you call me good? Jesus asked the ἄρχων.  No one is good except God alone.[17]

Of course He chooses which of the desires (mishʼâlâh, משאלת; Septuagint: αἰτήματα, a form of αἴτημα) of my heart (lêb, לבך; Septuagint: καρδίας, a form of καρδία) to grant and which to kill.  The heart (lêb, הלב; Septuagint: καρδία) is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?  I the LORD (yehôvâh, יהוה) search the heart (lêb, לב; Septuagint: καρδίας, a form of καρδία), I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.[18]

If I’m honest about it, almost the last thing I would desire now is a wife to disrupt my Bible study routine.  So, unless I plan to attempt a biblical justification for hiring a dominatrix, my masochism will just have to wither away.  Though I failed to find a definitive “masochism is sin”[19] in Scripture I think my life has demonstrated that for me at least masochism is not beneficial (συμφέρει, a form of συμφέρω).  And I’ve spent the better part of a lifetime coming even to that tentative conclusion.  I can certainly afford to be a little patient with the sexual obsessions of others.

I’ve written about Chad Allen before and won’t repeat it here.  The love and grace he demonstrated toward his accusers as producer and actor of Save Me deeply affected me and I loved him, though we had never met.  “The final thing the movie did for me was introduce me to the Gay Christian Network,” I wrote.

While not untrue it was perhaps misleading since the Gay Christian Network was nothing more than the Scriptural musings of Justin Lee to me.  I didn’t always agree with Mr. Lee’s conclusions but his process gave me confidence that the Holy Spirit would work in anyone pursuing God through his word that way.  Now that he has moved on to other endeavors the Gay Christian Network became the writings of Isaac Archuleta to me.  I admit to being somewhat less sanguine about his more psychological approach.

So, can I live in a world where my heart’s desire to do word studies in the Bible is granted while my heart’s desire to enjoy hot, kinky sex with a loving wife is strangled?  The simple answer is no—not on my own, not apart from the fruit of the Holy Spirit.  This brings me back to Habakkuk.  He didn’t describe the fruit of the spirit as a river or a fountain of living water but as the feet of a deer (Habakkuk 3:17-19 NIV):

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.  The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights (NASB: And makes me walk on my high places).

As a coda to this essay: My eighty-six-year-old mother fell again and broke her arm.  My ex-wife is staying with her until I can get there.

[1] Job 1:8 (NET)

[2] Job 1:21b (KJV)

[3] Matthew 22:37 (NET) Table

[4] Matthew 22:39 (NET)

[5] Galatians 5:22, 23 (NET)

[6] John 4:14b (NET)

[7] John 7:37b, 38 (NET)

[8] Greek: ἁμαρτάνω; Hebrew: châṭâʼ (חָטָא)

[9] Matthew 10:21 (NET)

[10] Matthew 26:59 (NET)

[11] Matthew 27:1 (NET)

[12] Matthew 27:2b (NET)

[13] Matthew 27:26b (NET)

[14] πράξεις (a form of πρᾶξις) is from the verb πράσσω, “to ‘practise’, that is, perform repeatedly or habitually.”  For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be paid back according to what he has done (ἔπραξεν, a form of πράσσω) while in the body, whether good or evil (2 Corinthians 5:10 NET).

[15] John 17:3b (NET)

[16] Genesis 6:5b (NET)

[17] Luke 18:19 (NET)

[18] Jeremiah 17:9, 10 (Tanakh)

[19] I might try again at another time with a word study of ἀσέλγεια.

My Reasons and My Reason, Part 7

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I am persuaded that the primary meaning of πορνεία in the New Testament refers to ancient idolatrous worship practices.  It can be stretched to mean adultery in general (1 Thessalonians 4:3-7 NET Table):

For this is God’s will: that you become holy, that you keep away from πορνείας (a form of πορνεία), that each of you know how to possess his own body in holiness and honor, not in lustful passion like the Gentiles who do not know God.  In this matter no one should violate the rights of his brother or take advantage of him, because the Lord is the avenger in all these cases, as we also told you earlier and warned you solemnly.  For God did not call us to impurity (ἀκαθαρσία) but in holiness.

At least I hope Paul meant that one should not violate the rights of his brother by committing adultery with his wife, rather than that he should simply pass by her at a cultic festival (though I admit that ἀκαθαρσία sounds a lot like demonic worship here).  Paul may have used πορνεία to mean the list of sins found in Leviticus 18:6-23 (1 Corinthians 5:1 NET):

It is actually reported that πορνεία exists among you, the kind of πορνεία that is not permitted even among the Gentiles, so that someone is cohabiting with (ἔχειν, a form of ἔχω) his father’s wife.

If the man’s father was alive this is simply another instance where Paul used πορνεία for adultery.  (Remember πορνεία was almost the only word Paul had for sin as long as he accepted the gutting of the law at the Jerusalem Council.)  If the man’s father was dead πορνεία meant: You must not have sexual intercourse with your father’s wife; she is your father’s nakedness[1] or, A man may not marry his father’s former wife and in this way dishonor his father.[2]

In contemporary Greek πορνεία translates as prostitution in the headline Παιδική πορνεία.  If I select “Translate this Page” Παιδική πορνεία is rendered “Child prostitution.”

The one thing I am persuaded now that πορνεία does not mean in the New Testament is what two teenagers might do in the backseat of a Chevy on a Friday night.  They are not committing πορνεία but marriage by performing the only wedding ceremony yehôvâh ʼĕlôhı̂ym ever created, authorized or honored: If a man seduces a virgin who is not engaged and has sexual relations with her, he must surely endow her to be his wife.  If her father refuses to give her to him, he must pay money for the bride price of virgins.[3]

When I was young it angered me that God gave such undue authority to an autocratic father.  Now that I know Him better and have lived with, and loved, a daughter, though the autocratic father may always be a possible type, I think the point was to give that authority to the one most attuned to his daughter’s heart on the matter in an uncomfortable social situation.  One reason for rejecting this law is the embarrassment a contemporary person feels over its companion legislation (Deuteronomy 22:28, 29 NET):

Suppose a man comes across a virgin who is not engaged and overpowers and rapes her and they are discovered [Table].  The man who has raped her must pay her father fifty shekels of silver and she must become his wife because he has violated her; he may never divorce her as long as he lives [Table].

A scene in the movie “Fury” cast this legislation in a different light.  In April 1945, days from the end of the war in Europe, First Sergeant Collier—Wardaddy—an American tank commander, spies a woman peeking down at them from an upstairs window in the German town they have just conquered.  Wardaddy calls to Norman, Private Ellison, and the two men, armed with machine guns, head inside and up the stairs.  I have every reason to assume that Wardaddy is continuing Norman’s indoctrination into the ways of war.

Norman, a clerk trained to type 60 words per minute, was assigned to Wardaddy’s tank crew as a replacement assistant driver.  His failure and refusal to pull the trigger endangers the rest of his crew and everyone around him.  Wardaddy has already forced him to kill a German prisoner in a macabre hand-over-hand imitation of a mother teaching a child to form letters with a crayon.  I can only imagine what new lesson Wardaddy has in store for him, though the two German women have no illusions that they are anything to their armed invaders but spoils of war.

Wardaddy puts down his weapon, and tells Norman to do likewise, once he has determined that the two women are the only occupants of the apartment.  It’s a clear sign to the women, beautiful young Emma and her older cousin, that they may survive their ordeal if they comply with Wardaddy’s wishes.

Wardaddy wishes to wash with hot water, shave and eat a fried egg.  Norman plays a piece of sheet music at the piano.  Emma, delighted, sings the song and turns the page for him.  She stops when she notices the scars on Wardaddy’s back.

“She’s a good clean girl,” Wardaddy says to Norman.  “If you don’t take her in that bedroom, I will.”

Emma doesn’t need a translator to know what’s expected of her.  Given the opportunity to choose her rapist, she leads her young accompanist into the bedroom.  Norman retrieves his machine gun on the way.  Emma’s older cousin attempts to follow them, whether to intervene or to serve as a substitute is unclear.  Wardaddy stops her with a gesture and a word in German:

“No.  They’re young and they’re alive.”

As a rapist Norman is patient and gentle as a lover.  He and Emma, representing the human beings least degraded by war, exit that bedroom as husband and wife.  They know it.  Wardaddy knows it.  And so does Emma’s older cousin.  As they sit down to a wedding feast of fried eggs the rest of his tank crew—Coon-Ass, Gordo and Bible—knock at the door, calling for Norman.

Coon-Ass and Gordo have cajoled or coerced a “whore” to “entertain” them, and others, one at a time in the tank downstairs.  They have come to share her with Norman.  I get the impression that if Norman were not already married to Emma, Coon-Ass and Gordo would make it very difficult for him to refuse his share.  But seeing Emma, Coon-Ass in particular, representing the man most degraded by war, wants his share of her.  Now, however, even Coon-Ass isn’t likely to take her without Norman’s acquiescence.

“Don’t touch her!” Norman says with the all the force of a petulant child.

“Anyone touches the girl,” Wardaddy says, putting not only his rank but his personal power and authority on the line, “they get their teeth kicked in.”

Coon-Ass and Gordo are deeply hurt.  Even Bible, though apparently powerful enough in the pecking order to abstain from the women without suffering personal repercussions, is hurt to have been excluded from the wedding feast.  They remind Wardaddy that they have been together, brothers in arms, since the Normandy invasion.  Norman has not.

I suspect that Wardaddy would not have denied his brothers, Coon-Ass and Gordo, if they had gotten to Emma first.  He, as degraded by war as any of them, could not risk his rank, personal power or authority except for Norman’s or, if necessary, his own new bride.

And for those who think it might have been a better film, or Emma might have been a better woman, if she had fought to the death to defend her honor, a stray shell kills her in the next scene.  Norman grieves like a widower, though duty calls and limits his opportunity to do her justice.

If one or both of the teenagers in the Chevy come back Saturday night to perform the same ceremony with different partners, they would be guilty of adultery as long as the other lives.  The point was never to make adultery—or divorce, for that matter—the unpardonable sin.  The point was to get religious people to acknowledge that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  But they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.[4]

Other reasons for rejecting the view of marriage described in the law are 1) that a daughter who acted so precipitously may have robbed her father of a better bride price.  Or, 2) in more contemporary terms she may rob herself of a more lucrative match.  And 3) governing bodies, both secular and religious, want to regulate marriage.

Do they have that right (Matthew 16:19; 18:18 NKJV)?

And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

Assuredly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

This certainly sounds like Peter and James had the authority to gut the law.  Were they the only ones?  In the United States of America a woman is free to couple or uncouple as she pleases because she is “endowed by [her] Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”[5]  I often wonder why the lawyers, legal historians, philosophers and ministers who signed the Declaration of Independence didn’t forsee that the pursuit of personal happiness would come to dominate and define both life and liberty.

I’ve been taught to think like John Miller in his March 7, 2015 response to comments and an essay on happiness on blog.dictionary.com:

Everyone here really doesn’t understand the colonial meaning of the phrase.  Pursuit of happiness referred to the pursuit of holiness or godliness.  It had nothing to do with personal pleasures.  Our founders understood that morality and religion were required for a republic to succeed and in those times when someone pursued happiness it was a pursuit of that which is godly.  Sadly, that’s something very few Americans do these days and will be the source of our nation’s demise.

But the Declaration of Independence did not say “that all men are…endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are” the pursuit of Christ and his righteousness.  It said, “pursuit of Happiness.”  And I think I can say on the authority of Scripture and a bare knowledge of American history that “the pursuit of Christ and his righteousness” would never have gained consensus.

That, I think, is what I witness in both the Jerusalem Council and the Declaration of Independence.  They are prime examples of the achievements of committee work and consensus building.  They happened.  They are there for all to see.  I don’t believe these particular results of either exercise.  They are not my faith.  I think what Jesus meant was that those who trust Him would be led by his Holy Spirit (Matthew 16:19; 18:18 NET):

I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.  Whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you release on earth will have been released in heaven.

I tell you the truth, whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you release on earth will have been released in heaven.

One of the ways to know what has been bound and released in heaven is to know God’s law, not because one is declared righteous before him by the works of the law but because the law discloses what displeases Him: through the law comes the knowledge of sin.[6]

I should clarify my thoughts on happiness: I had my ticket home.  I was ready to go.  I would have been happy to sit and watch my daughter’s graduation ceremony from college.  But my twenty-three-year-old daughter had a stroke before I arrived.  Then I was happy to sit and watch as she chewed food and swallowed without choking on it.

I am grateful for happiness.  I think it is essential to the ongoing occupation of living here and now.  But I don’t have a clue how to pursue it.  When I’ve tried, the people, achievements, occupations and possessions I thought would make me happy, did not, not any more or any less than the normal ebb and flow of when I had not pursued happiness.  I will pursue Christ and his righteousness instead.

And to the wag who may say I only do that because it makes me happy, I can honestly answer, not always, my friend, at times it is a sad or a painful thing to do.  Still, it has its moments.

[1] Leviticus 18:8 (NET) Table

[2] Deuteronomy 22:30 (NET)

[3] Exodus 22:16, 17 (NET)

[4] Romans 3:23, 24 (NET)

[5] Declaration of Independence

[6] Romans 3:20 (NET)

My Reasons and My Reason, Part 6

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There is another way I might view the wrath of God…revealed from heaven against [my] ungodliness and unrighteousness,[1] a way more in keeping with my normal method of Bible study—superficially more in keeping with it.  I confess that, Although [I] claimed to be wise, [I] became [a fool] and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for an image resembling mortal human beings…[2]  I am one of them of which Paul wrote: Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity, to dishonor their bodies among themselves.[3]

The Greek word translated dishonor above is ἀτιμάζεσθαι (a form of ἀτιμάζω).  Jesus told a parable about a man who planted a vineyard and leased it out to tenant farmers (Mark 12:2-5 NET):

At harvest time he sent a slave to the tenants to collect from them his portion of the crop.  But those tenants seized his slave, beat (ἔδειραν, a form of δέρω) him, and sent him away empty-handed.  So he sent another slave to them again.  This one they struck on the head and treated outrageously (ἠτίμασαν, another form of ἀτιμάζω).  He sent another, and that one they killed.  This happened to many others, some of whom were beaten (δέροντες, another form of δέρω), others killed.

They beat (δείραντες, another form of δέρω) this one too, Luke’s Gospel narrative reads, treated him outrageously (ἀτιμάσαντες, another form of ἀτιμάζω), and sent him away empty-handed.[4]  So the word translated dishonor in Romans 1:24 was associated here with a beating.  This association is explicit in Acts.  The highest legal court in Jerusalem summoned the apostles and had them beaten (δείραντες, another form of δέρω).  Then they ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus and released them.  So they left the council rejoicing because they had been considered worthy to suffer dishonor (ἀτιμασθῆναι, another form of ἀτιμάζω) for the sake of the name.[5]

I’ve considered that my masochism is one of the potential meanings of the wrath of God revealed from heaven.  It is a desire of my heart.  It could be considered impurity.  It isn’t hard to find people online who propose that sexual desire, especially desire the author considers deviant, is demon inspired if not a symptom of demon possession.  But if I plug that interpretation into Paul’s statement—Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to masochism, to beat their bodies among themselves—I am not convinced or convicted of sin.  I am excited—sexually.  The implication then, if this interpretation were true and I so blindly given over to the desire of my heart, is that I remain under the wrath of God.

Such a conclusion, though disheartening, isn’t rationally problematic if I believe that my salvation is partially, if not largely, predicated upon my desire and effort.  I’ve followed this line of reasoning before, and it led inexorably to my taking charge again of my righteousness without altering my natural responses at all.  If I believe however that it does not depend on human desire or exertion, but on God who shows mercy,[6] this conclusion functions something like a reductio ad absurdum.  It gives me pause to examine the Scriptures in more detail.

Jesus had an interesting exchange with some in the temple courts (John 8:46-49 NET):

Who among you can prove me guilty of any sin?  If I am telling you the truth, why don’t you believe me?  The one who belongs to God listens and responds to God’s words.  You don’t listen and respond, because you don’t belong to God.”

The Judeans replied, “Aren’t we correct in saying that you are a Samaritan (Σαμαρίτης, a form of Σαμαρείτης) and are possessed by a demon?”  Jesus answered, “I am not possessed by a demon, but I honor my Father – and yet you dishonor (ἀτιμάζετε, another form of ἀτιμάζω) me.

Here dishonor (ἀτιμάζετε, another form of ἀτιμάζω) meant name-calling and an accusation that Jesus was possessed by a demon.  Jesus took issue most directly with the latter: I am not possessed by a demon, He said.  As it pertains to impurity then, I have an instance where people with religious minds accused Jesus—for being, doing and speaking the word of God—of being possessed by a demon because they disagreed with Him.  He didn’t comment about being called a “Samaritan” but I think even that is worth some consideration here.

Jesus asked a Samaritan (Σαμαρείας, a form of Σαμάρεια) woman for some water to drink, though that may be difficult to discern in translation: Jesus said to her, “Give me some water to drink.”[7]  Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink (ASV, KJV).  Jesus says to her, Give me to drink (DNT).  Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink of water” (GWT, TEV).  Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink” (NKJV, NAB).  Jesus saith to her, ‘Give me to drink’ (YLT).  Where I hear this as a request is in the woman’s response.

So the Samaritan (Σαμαρῖτις, a form of Σαμαρεῖτις) woman said to him, “How can you – a Jew – ask (αἰτεῖς, a form of αἰτέω) me, a Samaritan (Σαμαρίτιδος, another form of Σαμαρεῖτις) woman, for water to drink?”[8]  The Greek word αἰτεῖς might have been translated beg.  Jesus’ actual tone didn’t convey the gruff and imperious command that many English translations of his request imply.  “Will you give me a drink?” (NIV) and “Would you please give me a drink of water?” (CEV) and “Would you give me a drink of water?” (TMSG) and “Please give me a drink,” (ISVNT) are truer to his tone in this particular case despite the fact that the statement was transmuted into a question or please was added to text.

Jesus asked her to give Him some water (MSNT) strayed even further from a word-for-word translation yet also carries the more accurate tone.  Give me to drink (δός μοι πεῖν) is the same basic construction in Greek as Give us today (δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον) in our plaintive cry for our daily ration of God, the bread of life[9]—Give us today our daily bread[10]—a sinner’s only hope for righteousness.  I don’t think anyone who prays thus with even the slightest understanding thinks it a gruff and imperious command.

Jesus’ request surprised the Samaritan woman.  John, wanting his readers to understand her surprise, added: For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans;[11] or, For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.[12]  The note in the NET explains: “The background to the statement use nothing in common is the general assumption among Jews that the Samaritans were ritually impure or unclean.  Thus a Jew who used a drinking vessel after a Samaritan had touched it would become ceremonially unclean.”  This sounds as if the Jews were prejudiced against the Samaritans.  And, ultimately, I want to assert that they were.  But I need to take the long way around.

The common assumption, if I say that Jews were prejudiced against the Samaritans, is that they misjudged the Samaritans.  But they were fairly accurate in their judgment of Samaritans according to Scripture (2 Kings 17:6a, 24-29, 32, 33 NET).

In the ninth year of Hoshea’s reign, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and deported the people of Israel to Assyria…The king of Assyria brought foreigners from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim and settled them in the cities of Samaria in place of the Israelites.  They took possession of Samaria and lived in its cities.  When they first moved in, they did not worship the Lord.  So the Lord sent lions among them and the lions were killing them.  The king of Assyria was told, “The nations whom you deported and settled in the cities of Samaria do not know the requirements of the God of the land, so he has sent lions among them.  They are killing the people because they do not know the requirements of the God of the land.”  So the king of Assyria ordered, “Take back one of the priests whom you deported from there.  He must settle there and teach them the requirements of the God of the land.”  So one of the priests whom they had deported from Samaria went back and settled in Bethel.  He taught them how to worship the Lord.

But each of these nations made its own gods and put them in the shrines on the high places that the people of Samaria had made.  Each nation did this in the cities where they lived….At the same time they worshiped the Lord.  They appointed some of their own people to serve as priests in the shrines on the high places.  They were worshiping the Lord and at the same time serving their own gods in accordance with the practices of the nations from which they had been deported.

You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water below [Table], the Lord commanded Israel.  You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God…[Table][13]  The Jews’ judgment qualifies as prejudice, I think, because they misjudged themselves and the righteousness of God.  Jesus addressed their prejudice obliquely yet forcefully.

If you had known the gift of God, He said to a descendant of foreign idolaters, and who it is who said to you, ‘Give me some water to drink,’ you would have asked (ᾔτησας, another form of αἰτέω) him, and he would have given you living water.[14]  So, without reproach, while the Samaritan woman was ignorant of the gift of God and who Jesus is, the implication is fairly clear that this living water was hers for the asking.  And as we’ll discover momentarily the gift of God did not merely belong to God, the gift is God in the person of the Holy Spirit.

This is scandalous to a religious mind.  I feel like I’m back in the garden, but instead of a serpent offering a lying promise to be like God, Jesus offered God Himself—not to Eve the innocent or a pious Jewish woman—to a Samaritan—not as a reward for good behavior but as the only source of goodness:  Now as Jesus was starting out on his way, someone ran up to him, fell on his knees, and said, “Good (ἀγαθέ, a form of ἀγαθός) teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good (ἀγαθόν, another form of ἀγαθός)?  No one is good (ἀγαθὸς) except God alone.[15].

“Sir,” the woman said to him, “you have no bucket and the well is deep; where then do you get this living water?  Surely you’re not greater than our ancestor Jacob, are you?[16]  At first I thought she was either not particularly clever or deliberately obtuse, not unlike Jesus’ disciples when he told them to beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.[17]

They had forgotten to bring bread on their journey.[18]  So they began to discuss this among themselves, saying, “It is because we brought no bread.”[19]  When Jesus overheard their discussion, He chided them humorously (Matthew 16:8-12 NET).

“You who have such little faith (ὀλιγόπιστοι, a form of ὀλιγόπιστος)!  Why are you arguing among yourselves about having no bread?  Do you still not understand?  Don’t you remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many baskets you took up?  Or the seven loaves for the four thousand and how many baskets you took up?  How could you not understand that I was not speaking to you about bread?  But beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees!”  Then they understood that he had not told them to be on guard against the yeast in bread, but against the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

Why didn’t He say teaching in the first place?  I assume He wanted to reinforce his own teaching on the social construction of reality: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of flour until all the dough had risen.”[20]  But Jesus didn’t chide the Samaritan woman.

So I began to consider that she was cagey with this Jew who shouldn’t be drinking from her bucket, probably shouldn’t be speaking with her at all, much less about a gift of God.  Besides, she was educated enough to know that they spoke together at Jacob’s well,[21] and indoctrinated enough to have adopted him as her ancestor (πατρὸς, literally father).  So Jesus continued by contrasting living water (ὕδωρ ζῶν) to the water from Jacob’s well.

Everyone who drinks some of this water will be thirsty again.  But whoever drinks some of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again, but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain (πηγὴ) of water springing up to eternal life.[22]  My people have committed a double wrong, the Lord spoke through Jeremiah, they have rejected me, the fountain of life-giving water (Septuagint: πηγὴν ὕδατος ζωῆς), and they have dug cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns which cannot even hold water.[23]  You are the one in whom Israel may find hope, Jeremiah prayed.  All who leave you will suffer shame.  Those who turn away from you will be consigned to the nether world.  For they have rejected you, the Lord (Hebrew: yehôvâh), the fountain of life (Septuagint: πηγὴν ζωῆς).[24]

Sir, give me this water, the Samaritan woman said, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.[25]  Surely this time, I thought, Jesus should have said something to her like, Do not work for the food that disappears, but for the food that remains to eternal life – the food which the Son of Man will give to you.[26]  But Jesus disagreed.  Go call your husband and come back here,[27] He said instead.

What?  Where did that come from?

I have no husband,[28] the woman said.  The Greek is actually ἀπεκρίθη ἡ γυνὴ καὶ εἶπεν, The woman answered and said (NKJV).  But even that translation isn’t quite sufficient.  As I stare at the Greek I begin to think that John or the Holy Spirit has tried to communicate something of the dynamic of this conversation between a man and a woman.

Reference NET Greek
John 4:7 Jesus said to her… λέγει αὐτῇ ὁ Ἰησοῦς
John 4:9 So the Samaritan woman said to him… λέγει οὖν αὐτῷ ἡ γυνὴ ἡ Σαμαρῖτις
John 4:10 Jesus answered her… ἀπεκρίθη Ἰησοῦς καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῇ
John 4:11 the woman said to him… λέγει αὐτῷ ἡ γυνή
John 4:13 Jesus replied… ἀπεκρίθη Ἰησοῦς καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῇ
John 4:15 The woman said to him… λέγει πρὸς αὐτὸν ἡ γυνή
John 4:16 He said to her… λέγει αὐτῇ
John 4:17 The woman replied… ἀπεκρίθη ἡ γυνὴ καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ

I take λέγει αὐτῇ ὁ Ἰησοῦς (Jesus said to her) as my point of departure for normal conversation.  The Samaritan woman (ἡ γυνὴ ἡ Σαμαρῖτις) responded in kind, λέγει οὖν αὐτῷ (literally, “said then to him”).  But Jesus opened up to her, ἀπεκρίθη Ἰησοῦς καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῇ (literally, “answered Jesus and said to her”).  I say He “opened up” because εἶπεν (a form of ῥέω), though legitimately translated said, means to pour forth.  The woman however remained guarded, λέγει αὐτῷ ἡ γυνή.  Undeterred, Jesus remained open, ἀπεκρίθη Ἰησοῦς καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῇ.  The woman began to open up, λέγει πρὸς αὐτὸν ἡ γυνή.  Perhaps I’m reaching here, but πρὸς αὐτὸν rather than simply αὐτῷ seems to accentuate the fact that she spoke to him.  Abruptly, Jesus closed up again, λέγει αὐτῇ, back to normal conversation, and the woman opened up to Him, ἀπεκρίθη ἡ γυνὴ καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ, and said, I have no husband.

Then Jesus commended her.  Again, this may be difficult to hear in English translations: Thou saidst well, I have no husband (ASV); That’s right (CEV), Thou hast well said, I have not a husband (DNT); You’re right when you say that you don’t have a husband (GWT); You are quite right in saying, ‘I don’t have a husband’ (ISVNT); Thou hast well said, I have no husband (KJV); You rightly say that you have no husband (MSNT); You have well said, ‘I have no husband’ (NKJV); You are right when you say you don’t have a husband (TEV); That’s nicely put: ‘I have no husband’ (TMSG); Well didst thou say—A husband I have not (YLT); You are right when you say you have no husband (NIV); You are right in saying, ‘I do not have a husband’ (NAB); Right you are when you said, ‘I have no husband.’[29]

The Greek is καλῶς εἶπας ὅτι ἄνδρα οὐκ ἔχω (literally, “beautifully you poured forth that husband you not have”).  Traditionally καλῶς is translated as the adverbial form (well) of ἀγαθός (good), even καλός (beautiful) is translated as if it were ἀγαθός (good).  Traditions have origins.  J.A. McGuckin[30] credits Maximos[31] with the insight: “The Beautiful is identical with The Good, for all things seek the beautiful and the good at every opportunity, and there is no being that does not participate in them.”  Maximos lived half a millennium after John and the Holy Spirit chose καλῶς.  I want to experiment with a pre-traditional reading of some Scriptures.

Even now the ax is laid at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce beautiful (καλὸν, a form of καλός) fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.[32]  In the same way, let your light shine before people, so that they can see your beautiful (καλὰ, another form of καλός) deeds and give honor to your Father in heaven.[33]  In the same way, every good (ἀγαθὸν, a form of ἀγαθός) tree bears beautiful (καλοὺς, another form of καλός) fruit, but the bad (σαπρὸν, a form of σαπρός) tree bears bad (πονηροὺς, a form of πονηρός) fruit.  A good (ἀγαθὸν, a form of ἀγαθός) tree is not able to bear bad (πονηροὺς, a form of πονηρός) fruit, nor a bad (σαπρὸν, a form of σαπρός) tree to bear beautiful (καλοὺς, another form of καλός) fruit.  Every tree that does not bear beautiful (καλὸν, a form of καλός) fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.  So then, you will recognize them by their fruit.[34]

Rather than a metaphor about bad fruit (καρποὺς πονηροὺς) what follows is a vivid contrast of Jesus’ beautiful good with the Pharisees’ pious good (Matthew 12:10-14 NET):

A man was there [in the Synagogue] who had a withered hand.  And they asked Jesus, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” so that they could accuse him.  He said to them, “Would not any one of you, if he had one sheep that fell into a pit on the Sabbath, take hold of it and lift it out?  How much more valuable is a person than a sheep!  So it is lawful to do beautifully (καλῶς) on the Sabbath.”  Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.”  He stretched it out and it was restored, as healthy as the other.  But the Pharisees went out and plotted against him, as to how they could assassinate him.

Some explanation why I called—the Pharisees went out and plotted (or, counseled) against him, as to how they could assassinate (or, destroy) him—a pious good rather than evil is in order.  Jesus came to make atonement for sin but had not yet accomplished it in this period of transition.  There is nothing beautiful about plotting to kill or destroy a man as there is nothing beautiful about running a man and woman through with a javelin.[35]  But Phinehas was commended for the latter (Numbers 25:11-13 NET):

“Phinehas son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, has turned my anger away from the Israelites, when he manifested such zeal for my sake among them, so that I did not consume the Israelites in my zeal.  Therefore, announce: ‘I am going to give to him my covenant of peace.  So it will be to him and his descendants after him a covenant of a permanent priesthood, because he has been zealous for his God, and has made atonement for the Israelites.’”

The Pharisees had this Scriptural precedent when faced with Jesus’ willful and recalcitrant desecration of the Sabbath (as they perceived it).  I could go on and on about the beautiful good but will entertain only a few more examples here (Luke 6:26-31 NET):

“Woe to you when all people speak (εἴπωσιν, another form of ῥέω) beautifully (καλῶς) of you, for their ancestors did the same things to the false prophets.

“But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies, do beautifully (καλῶς) to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.  To the person who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other as well, and from the person who takes away your coat, do not withhold your tunic either.  Give to everyone who asks you, and do not ask for your possessions back from the person who takes them away.  Treat others in the same way that you would want them to treat you.

I am the beautiful (καλός) shepherd, Jesus said.  The beautiful (καλός) shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.[36]  And Paul’s words make so much more sense if I recognize that he desired Jesus’ beautiful good rather than the Pharisees’ pious good,[37] of which he was already a master (Romans 7:15-21 NET):

For I don’t understand what I am doing.  For I do not do what I want – instead, I do what I hate.  But if I do what I don’t want, I agree that the law is beautiful (καλός).  But now it is no longer me doing it, but sin that lives in me.  For I know that nothing good (ἀγαθόν, a form of ἀγαθός) lives in me, that is, in my flesh.  For I want to do the beautiful (καλὸν, a form of καλός), but I cannot do it.  For I do not do the good (ἀγαθόν, a form of ἀγαθός) I want, but I do the very evil (κακὸν, a form of κακός) I do not want!  Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer me doing it but sin that lives in me.  So, I find the law that when I want to do the beautiful (καλὸν, a form of καλός), evil (κακὸν, a form of κακός) is present with me.

I’m not advocating for a new translation of καλός and καλῶς.  As words go beautiful is as slippery as good.  I’m not likely to heal a withered hand in a synagogue or church any Saturday or Sunday soon, something I would wholeheartedly consider a beautiful good.  And it is a fair question how beautiful I feel blessing those who curse me, praying for those who mistreat me, with both cheeks red and stinging, missing my coat and my shirt.  But when the One who commended Phinehas made atonement Himself and told us to live this way instead, I think it is important to see it as a beautiful good.

I had to go this roundabout way to get over my tendency to hear sarcasm and ridicule in Jesus’ voice.  Now I believe He took his roundabout course to find a reason to commend the Samaritan woman: This you said truthfully[38] (τοῦτο ἀληθὲς εἴρηκας).  And then He added that she in her beautiful truthfulness was exactly the kind of worshipper his Father is seeking: a time is coming – and now is here – when the true (ἀληθινοὶ, a form of ἀληθινός) worshipers will worship the Father in spirit (πνεύματι, a form of πνεῦμα) and truth (ἀληθείᾳ, a form of ἀλήθεια), for the Father seeks such people to be his worshipers.  God is spirit (πνεῦμα), and the people who worship him must worship in spirit (πνεύματι, a form of πνεῦμα) and truth[39] (ἀληθείᾳ, a form of ἀλήθεια).

Now I can back up and hear Jesus’ other statements for what they are.  “Right you are when you said, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the man you are living with now is not your husband.  This you said truthfully!”[40]  I would have no way of knowing this about the woman if Jesus hadn’t said it.  More to the point, He demonstrated something important for her.

“Sir, I see that you are a prophet,”[41] she said.  Taking Jesus at face value allows me to take this woman at face value as well.  Recognizing a prophet before her, she broached the single most pressing religious issue on her mind: Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you people say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.[42]  I have no idea how she was treated when she climbed the mountain in Samaria to worship God.  I can only imagine how she might have been treated if this Samaritan woman had dared to journey to Jerusalem to worship God.

The priest sent back to teach her ancestors was from the northern kingdom of divided Israel.  From its very beginning Jeroboam, the first king, had changed the Lord’s decrees (1 Kings 12:26-32 NET):

Jeroboam then thought to himself: “Now the Davidic dynasty could regain the kingdom.  If these people go up to offer sacrifices in the Lord’s temple in Jerusalem, their loyalty could shift to their former master, King Rehoboam of Judah.  They might kill me and return to King Rehoboam of Judah.”  After the king had consulted with his advisers, he made two golden calves.  Then he said to the people, “It is too much trouble for you to go up to Jerusalem.  Look, Israel, here are your gods who brought you up from the land of Egypt.”  He put one in Bethel and the other in Dan.  This caused Israel to sin; the people went to Bethel and Dan to worship the calves.

He built temples on the high places and appointed as priests people who were not Levites.  Jeroboam inaugurated a festival on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, like the festival celebrated in Judah.  On the altar in Bethel he offered sacrifices to the calves he had made.  In Bethel he also appointed priests for the high places he had made.

I could have pummeled this woman with chapter and verse after chapter and verse of Scripture proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jerusalem was the place where people must worship God.  Jesus did not.  All He said on the subject was: Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.  You people worship what (ὃ) you do not know.  We worship what (ὃ) we know, because salvation is from the Jews.[43]

I don’t know why ὃ was translated what rather than who or whom.  I hope it’s a subtlety of the Greek language, for Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship[44] is very near the beginning of the translation of Scripture into English.  I would hate to think that the translators made a conscious decision to turn the eyes of the English-speaking world to doctrine and dogma at the very moment when Jesus turned his away.  You Samaritans don’t really know the one you worship.  But we Jews do know the God we worship… (CEV)  You worship One of whom you know nothing.  We worship One whom we know… (MSNT)  You Samaritans do not really know whom you worship; but we Jews know whom we worship… (TEV)

Crouching furtively in the Samaritan woman’s conundrum was a desire to worship God and a concern to do it as He desired.  Jesus heard that desire and concern, and responded to it: But a time is coming – and now is here – when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such people to be his worshipers.  God is spirit, and the people who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”[45]

I don’t get the impression that she understood Him.  Then, I’ve spent my adult life trying everything from obeying the law to faith alone.  I suppose my current understanding of worshipping the Father in spirit and truth is living honestly by the Holy Spirit.  The Samaritan woman did reveal a profound and faithful hope: “I know that Messiah is coming” (the one called Christ); “whenever he comes, he will tell us everything.”  Jesus said to her, “I, the one speaking to you, am he.” [46]

Fresh from this knowledge of God I can look at the original Scriptures with fresh eyes.  In Jesus’ parable about the owner of the vineyard ἠτίμασαν and ἀτιμάσαντες (forms of ἀτιμάζω) associated with forms of δέρω described slaves who were beaten up.  I have been beaten up before.  I felt pain, anger and humiliation but no sexual excitement whatsoever.  I can’t dismiss the judicial beating associated with ἀτιμάζω in Acts 5:40 and 41 quite so easily.

I typed “judicial whipping fantasy” into Google and “Maragana Girl, Chapter 12 – The Punishment in the School Auditorium”[47] by caligula97236 came up (second, actually, scanning the titles quickly I mistook “Judicial Spanking in Taiwan” for actual rather than fantasy punishment).  It is a tale about twenty naked male criminals humiliated and switched by female medical students and police officers as an educational spectacle for teenage girls.  It is couched in terms of how wrong this was and in need of reform.

There is no denying that the judicial or punishment whipping fantasy is part of sado-masochistic lore.  It is part of the reason I attempted to distinguish sadism from masochism in the first essay of this series.  I recall my own state of mind whenever I was the dominant masochist, as I call it:

First, and not incidentally, was the sight of a beloved woman’s body laid out for my enjoyment.  I measured each stroke of the whip by the sound it made, the mark it left on her beautiful flesh, how she flinched, and the whimpers or gasps she vocalized as a result.  My goal was to whip her in tempo (both velocity and frequency) with her own growing euphoria, the same euphoria I had known at her hand as a submissive masochist.  But beyond any goal or thought of the future was the sheer pleasure of the moment, sharing that extreme intimacy with her.

I have no access to the mind of the judicial torturer who beat Jesus’ disciples.  I suspect that it was not what I have just described.  As I perceive it a judicial torturer is the business end of an institutional belief that certain actions, words or thoughts deserve, or may be modified for the good through, the application of physical pain and social humiliation (though I suppose the hope is that the fear of physical pain and social humiliation will achieve the latter end more often than not).

Fiery hell seems to be presented in terms of physical pain.  For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable…For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.[48]  The prospect, that so offended Ingmar Bergman, of the dead being raised and given new imperishable, immortal bodies only to suffer for an eternity in hell lends credence in my mind to the deservedness of physical pain.  Though I admit, I tend to abstract fiery hell as a metaphor for knowing, face to face beyond any doubt, that God is Love and then being cast out from his omnipresence forever.  In that sense I can see physical pain as salutary, a welcome distraction from the actual horror of the situation.

The application or the fear of the application of physical pain and social humiliation inspires many to a hypocritical compliance with many kinds of social norms.  It will never produce goodness: No one is good (ἀγαθὸς) except God alone.[49]  The Holy Spirit mocked a faith in physical pain and social humiliation when Jesus’ disciples were beaten to conform their behavior to Jewish social norms.  He filled them with his joy[50] (χαρά) instead so they walked away from their beatings rejoicing (χαίροντες, a form of χαίρω) because they had been considered worthy to suffer dishonor (ἀτιμασθῆναι, another form of ἀτιμάζω) for the sake of the name.[51]  Viewed this way, my concern that my masochism, dominant or submissive, is the wrath of God revealed from heaven seems as absurd as Jesus’ disciples fretting because they had brought no bread.[52]

[1] Romans 1:18 (NET)

[2] Romans 1:22, 23 (NET)

[3] Romans 1:24 (NET) Table

[4] Luke 20:11b (NET)

[5] Acts 5:40, 41 (NET) Table

[6] Romans 9:16 (NET) Table

[7] John 4:7b (NET)

[8] John 4:9a (NET) Table

[9] John 6:25-71 (NET)

[10] Matthew 6:11 (NET)

[11] John 4:9b (NET) [Table] The NET parallel Greek text and NA28 had Σαμαρίταις here, where the Stephanus Textus Receptus and Byzantine Majority Text had σαμαρειταις.

[12] John 4:9b (NKJV) Table

[13] Exodus 20:4, 5a (NET)

[14] John 4:10 (NET)

[15] Mark 10:17, 18 (NET) also Luke 18:18, 19 (NET)

[16] John 4:11, 12a (NET)

[17] Matthew 16:6 (NET)

[18] Matthew 16:5 (NET)

[19] Matthew 16:7 (NET)

[20] Matthew 13:33 (NET)

[21] John 4:6, 12b

[22] John 4:13, 14 (NET)

[23] Jeremiah 2:13 (NET)

[24] Jeremiah 17:13 (NET)

[25] John 4:15 (NET)

[26] John 6:27a (NET)

[27] John 4:16 (NET)

[28] John 4:17a (NET)

[29] John 4:17b (NET)

[30] http://www.spc.rs/eng/notion_beautiful_ancient_greek_thought_and_its_christian_patristic_transfiguration_ja_mcguckin

[31] http://ww1.antiochian.org/saint_maximos

[32] Matthew 3:10 (NET)

[33] Matthew 5:16 (NET)

[34] Matthew 7:17-20 (NET)

[35] Numbers 25:1-9 (NET)

[36] John 10:11 (NET)

[37] Philippians 3:1-11 (NET)

[38] John 4:18b (NET)

[39] John 4:23, 24 (NET)

[40] John 4:17b, 18 (NET)

[41] John 4:19 (NET)

[42] John 4:20 (NET)

[43] John 4:21, 22 (NET)

[44] John 4:22 (KJV)

[45] John 4:23, 24 (NET)

[46] John 4:25, 26 (NET)

[47] http://www.i.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=464923

[48] 1 Corinthians 15:52, 53 (NET)

[49] Luke 18:19b (NET)

[50] Galatians 5:22 (NET)

[51] Acts 5:41 (NET) Table

[52] Matthew 16:7 (NET)

My Reasons and My Reason, Part 5

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Late that summer before we began our senior years of high school, I asked B if she wanted to have sex for real.  “I think you already know the answer to that,” she said.  Actually, I didn’t.  That’s why I asked.  But I took her evasion for a negative answer.  When I asked C to the first football game of the season, I imagine that B felt rejected for her refusal.  But I had been biding my time all summer, waiting for the seniors who buzzed around C to leave for college.  I didn’t have the connection with B, that sense of loyalty and commitment, I had experienced with A.

A week or so after that football game C and I had sex for real for the first time, for both of us.  Everything began to change for me.  I didn’t think so concretely at the time, but if someone had tried to communicate the fruit of the Spirit to me then, I would have argued that sex with C was my source of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and, after I failed to inaugurate my water brothers scheme, faithfulness and self-control.  I had my parents’ example.

They could barely tolerate one another. I might have suspected, since I existed, that sex lacked the staying power I thought, and hoped for, at the time.  I reasoned instead that my parents didn’t do it right, and suspected that their religion inhibited and prohibited them from doing it right.  Now, I believe that the forbidden fruit was a forbidden fruit, that Adam enjoyed a blessed wedding night and a wonderful afterglow that first Sabbath with his beautiful naked wife (Proverbs 5:18, 19 NET).

May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in your young wife –a loving doe, a graceful deer; may her breasts satisfy you at all times, may you be captivated by her love always.

But at seventeen it was all too easy to assume that forbidden fruit was a religious euphemism for sex.  I didn’t recognize that new-found faithfulness and self-control as something alien to me, as something quite contrary to my own will in fact.  I assumed that I had changed my mind.  It was My love for C, after all, that filled me with joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, even faithfulness and self-control.  Isn’t that what we mean and expect of someone who loves us?  He/She is filled with joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and even self-control (as it pertains to another) in our presence?  And aches for the want of these things in our absence?

It wasn’t long before C and I discovered a mutual attraction for spanking and whipping (though I had  more affinity for dominant-submissive role-play than she did).  It became a routine part of our foreplay.  Yes, I was spanked as a child.  No, she was not.  But I’m not interested in psychological explanations.  What interests me is the wrath of God…revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth by their unrighteousness.[1]

Clearly, I did not glorify him as God or give him thanks, but [I] became futile in [my] thoughts and [my] senseless [heart was] darkened.  Although [I] claimed to be wise, [I] became [a fool] and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for an image resembling mortal human beings…[2]

I didn’t know that Jesus was with God in the beginning.  All things were created by him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created.[3]  I didn’t know that Jesus was fully God.[4]  I had wondered about John’s mysterious Word, thrilled to the sound of the words that sang its praises, but hadn’t connected that Word with Jesus.

Jesus was the Son of God, less than God by definition, I thought. I believed in Jesus as a child but later (about twelve or thirteen) I put childish things away and prayed to God the Father, the true God, instead.  Jesus was the bait; God the Father was the switch.[5] For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life,[6] sounded wonderful in the sales pitch.  When I learned that faith wasn’t enough, that I had to live as a child of God, the deal changed dramatically: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.[7]  And Jesus being found in fashion as a man, was the image of the good son: he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.[8]  But at the critical moment when Jesus was most obedient to God the Father’s will, God the Father abandoned Him because, Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity…[9]  Or, as another story goes, rather than abandoning Jesus on the cross God the Father hurled even more secret punishments at Him, because his death alone was not sufficient to atone for sins.

I feel bad about the previous paragraph, and can’t continue without correcting it. Though the Scriptures are true, my tone was all off.  The surprise when Jesus appeared on earth as a man born of a virgin was not that Yahweh had a Son, but that He had a Father: Jesus said to them, “I tell you the solemn truth, before Abraham came into existence, I am!”[10] For this is the way God [the Father] loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.[11]  He gave Him in the garden of Eden, and in the burning bush, and on Mount Sinai, and at Bethlehem and on Golgotha. No one [not Adam, not Eve, not Moses] has ever seen God [the Father]. The only one, himself God, who is in closest fellowship with the Father, has made God [the Father] known.[12]

When Philip said to Jesus, Lord, show us the Father, and we will be content,[13] Jesus said: Have I been with you for so long, and you have not known me, Philip? The person who has seen me has seen the Father!  How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?  Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me?  The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own initiative, but the Father residing in me performs his miraculous deeds.[14]  To imagine secret punishments (and one must imagine them since they are not revealed in Scripture) which God the Father hurled at Jesus on the cross, is to misunderstand his salvation (Colossians 1:13-20 NET):

He [God the Father] delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.  He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation, for all things in heaven and on earth were created by him – all things, whether visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominions, whether principalities or powers – all things were created through him and for him.  He himself is before all things and all things are held together in him.  He is the head of the body, the church, as well as the beginning, the firstborn from among the dead, so that he himself may become first in all things.  For God [the Father] was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in the Son and through him to reconcile all things to himself by making peace through the blood of his cross – through him, whether things on earth or things in heaven.

The reason Jesus’ death on a cross makes any peace or atonement is that God the Father is pleased to accept it as such. Human attempts to rationalize his salvation are rationalizations by definition. And in context Habakkuk had whined that Yahweh/Son/Jesus was too longsuffering (Habakkuk 1:13 NET):

You are too just to tolerate evil; you are unable to condone wrongdoing.  So why do you put up with such treacherous people?  Why do you say nothing when the wicked devour those more righteous than they are?

The point here is that He was putting up with such treacherous people.  It is not particularly prudent then to turn it around and use poetic language—Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity—to make a rule forbidding God the Father from drawing near to, or compelling Him to turn away from, God the Son at the moment He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we would become the righteousness of God,[15] when Scripture states otherwise (Psalm 22:21b-24 NET):

You have answered me!  I will declare your name to my countrymen!  In the middle of the assembly I will praise you!  You loyal followers of the Lord, praise him!  All you descendants of Jacob, honor him!  All you descendants of Israel, stand in awe of him!  For he did not despise or detest the suffering of the oppressed; he did not ignore him; when he cried out to him, he responded.

This is the very Psalm Jesus quoted from the cross, when he cried out in Aramaic, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”[16]  Psalm 22 is a heartrendingly accurate prophecy of the death of Yahweh the Son of God from his own point of view. Whether one believes that it was a psalm of David or not, it was clearly part of the Scripture translated into Greek in the Septuagint a couple of centuries before Jesus died in Jerusalem.  It is fitting that He, who lived by every word that comes from the mouth of God,[17] died with that word in his heart and mind as well.

But even years later after I returned to faith, I strove with every Zen particle of my being to let patience have her perfect work, that [I] may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.[18]  When I read my sister’s annotated Shakespeare and realized for the first time that, “Wherefore art thou Romeo,” means, “why is your name Montague,” I got my first Bible translated in my own tongue.  I was shocked to learn that wanting nothing meant lacking in nothing (James 1:4 NASB):

And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

The King James translation had made sense to me. Nothing angered my father more than my wanting something from him.  I assumed that God the Father was the same. Wanting nothing was difficult but possible to achieve, I thought.  But lacking in nothing?  How could I achieve that through some form of meditation or patience or endurance?  It was crazy stuff.

I will not carry out my fierce anger, nor will I devastate Ephraim again. For I am God, and not a man—the Holy One among you.[19]  I didn’t believe it at first.  I thought it was some evil introduced into a modern translation.  So I checked the Bible, you know, the King James version: I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God, and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee:[20]

In my mind to carry out fierce anger was the essence of God the Father, the Lord Jehovah.  How could He turn it around and blame it on man?  How did He dare try to distinguish God, the Holy One among you, from man with a statement like, I will not carry out my fierce anger, nor will I devastate Ephraim again? It was nuts.

So, I was guilty. I had a man-made image of God in my mind, one much more like a man—my father[21]—than like God revealed in Scripture.  And I endeavored to worship that image, even after I prayed, if You are there I want to know You. Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity, to dishonor their bodies among themselves.[22]  I have connected this to, Flee sexual immorality! “Every sin a person commits is outside of the body” – but the immoral person sins against his own body.[23]  So, I have considered unfaithfulness to a spouse to be the impurity to which God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to dishonor their bodies among themselves.

In an absolute sense taking up with C may have been a matter of infidelity to B or A, but in dynamic terms I was returning to a belief in faithfulness to one woman.  Now, I credit that to the Holy Spirit trying mightily to get through to me.  At the time I thought it was my doing.  After C and before my first wife (or, second, depending on your willingness to receive the law) there were other women, not enough to brag about, just enough to be ashamed of.  Two of those women were married.  The first was separated from her husband.  The second was living with her husband, but I was beyond caring.  If this was God’s wrath revealed from heaven I can easily attest to its justice, for I recall it as a time of profound loneliness, a loneliness I have not experienced since though I have mostly been alone (without a wife).

I’ll pick this up again in the next essay.

[1] Romans 1:18 (NET)

[2] Romans 1:21-23 (NET)

[3] John 1:2, 3 (NET)

[4] John 1:1 (NET)

[5] bait-and-switch

[6] John 3:16 (KJV)

[7] Hebrews 12:6 (KJV)

[8] Philippians 2:8 (KJV)

[9] Habakkuk 1:13a (KJV)

[10] John 8:58 (NET)

[11] John 3:16 (NET)

[12] John 1:18 (NET)

[13] John 14:8 (NET)

[14] John 14:9, 10 (NET)

[15] 2 Corinthians 5:21 (NET)

[16] Mark 15:34; Psalm 22:1 (NET)

[17] Matthew 4:4; Deuteronomy 8:3 (NET)

[18] James 1:4 (KJV)

[19] Hosea 11:9 (NIV)

[20] Hosea 11:9 (KJV)

[21] Though to be fair, my father had serious reservations about, and had stopped attending, the church where I became an atheist, and to which I returned after I returned to faith.

[22] Romans 1:24 (NET) Table

[23] 1 Corinthians 6:18 (NET)

My Reasons and My Reason, Part 4

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My first dates were all about driving—driving and not killing us, and talking to a girl when I wasn’t driving (and while I was for that matter). Then I met A. I’ll call her A. Girlfriend has a meaning I don’t want to imply, more like wife, or concubine I suppose. (In most States a girlfriend can’t take half of everything a man owns when she leaves him or is sent packing.) My mother had warned me about A, how she would seek male affection. A had grown up without a father.

Her mother was divorced, and could never remarry. Today, Jesus’ saying—everyone who divorces his wife, except for immorality (πορνείας, a form of πορνεία), makes her commit adultery‎[1]—sounds to me as if He assumed she would remarry. But then, I understood it as a prohibition. Besides, whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery,[2] Jesus continued. That pretty much assured her that no one at my church would marry her.  Marrying someone “outside of the faith” (someone who believed that a divorced person could remarry) was frowned upon there.

When I began to squeeze A’s breasts and fondle her nipples, I didn’t realize that God might have something against it. At sixteen I don’t recall knowing the word of the Lord that came to Ezekiel [Table] (Ezekiel 23:1-3 NET):

“Son of man, there were two women who were daughters of the same mother [Table]. They engaged in prostitution (zānâ, ותזנינה) in Egypt; in their youth they engaged in prostitution (zānâ, זנו). Their breasts were squeezed there; lovers fondled their virgin nipples there” [Table see Addendum].

I’m not sure what difference it would have made. I knew that breast squeezing and nipple fondling was frowned upon. I thought that was because it would lead to the sin of premarital sex. As it turned out, A’s nipples weren’t so virgin. She and her former boyfriend, a friend of mine from church, had committed the sin of premarital sex. They only did it once. Then they stopped seeing each other and never did it again.

I enjoyed squeezing A’s breasts and fondling her nipples. I think she enjoyed it, too. I found it very hard to believe that I was just a surrogate for the father she didn’t have. It seemed like she really loved me, as me, not as a symbol of something else. It all felt very real. And I was happy and satisfied squeezing her breasts and fondling her nipples. I had no intention of committing the sin of premarital sex. She didn’t want to do that again either.

At sixteen I didn’t study the Bible. I was flying blind. I read only the minimum that was presented in church services and Sunday school. There were moments when I was in a particularly religious mood that I tried to read more, but then I was in the wrong frame of mind, expecting, hoping that the Bible would confirm and applaud my religiousness. So I didn’t recognize the Lord’s ἐγκράτεια standing between A and me and the sin of premarital sex.

I hadn’t heard the fruit of the Spirit. I’m not saying no one ever talked about it. I’m saying I hadn’t heard it yet. I certainly wasn’t taught that I was strong, and the word of God resides in [me], and [I] have conquered the evil one.[3] That would have stood out amidst all the teaching that any contact with a young female would lead inexorably to the sin of premarital sex.

I didn’t know a thing about ἐγκράτεια. It was literally “all Greek to me.”[4] I didn’t have a Bible that translated ἐγκράτεια self-control, which I might have related to sexual matters. My Bible read temperance. I was sixteen; I didn’t drink. But even if I had considered the fruit of the Spirit I would have considered the works I was required to do to please the Spirit of God.

Now concerning the things of which you wrote to me:[5] It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality [KJV, to avoid fornication], let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband.[6]

I am fairly sure now that squeezing A’s breasts and fondling her nipples qualifies as sexual immorality (NKJV). I wasn’t so sure then (nor am I now) that it qualified as fornication (KJV). And I sincerely doubt that it qualifies as πορνείας (a form of πορνεία; translated sexual immorality [NKJV] or fornication [KJV]). I don’t say this to justify myself but to know God. There is no way that my understanding of πορνείας at age sixty can justify my behavior at age sixteen.

Children,obey your parents in the Lord for this is right, was Paul’s understanding of the law: “Honor your father and mother,”which is the first commandment accompanied by a promise, namely, “that it may go well with you and that you will live a long time on the earth.”[7] I was clearly disobeying my parents, squeezing A’s breasts and fondling her nipples. For the one who obeys the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.[8]

God, for better or worse, has entrusted (or abandoned) children to the mercy of parents. And I don’t say abandoned for my sake, but for the many women I know molested as children by their fathers. My childhood was idyllic by comparison. My travails were my struggles to understand biblical words and concepts, my troubles were not understanding them.

At the same time, however, knowing God is not simply a matter of semantics but a uniquely profound intimacy. Did He intend for me to understand that the two women in the allegory He gave Ezekiel engaged in prostitution in Egypt because their breasts were squeezed there; lovers fondled their virgin nipples there? Or was the breast squeezing and nipple fondling incidental to engaging in prostitution (zânâh)? I have a fairly good idea how pre-modern Jews answered that question:

Jews in the pre-modern world lived, with few exceptions, in Jewish communities and under the yoke of Jewish tradition and halakhah. This affected every aspect of their lives, including sexual relations. As stated above, every sexual act between a man and woman outside marital relations was considered as coming within the definition of prostitution (be’ilat zenut), and the rabbis strongly condemned manifestations of sexual license in the Jewish community. Many regulations were issued by the various communities to fight prostitution in all its forms.[9]

If they were correct, then I was guilty of πορνεία when I squeezed A’s breasts and fondled her nipples. I was one of the πόρνοι by definition: Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! The sexually immoral (πόρνοι, a form of πόρνος), idolaters, adulterers, passive homosexual partners, practicing homosexuals, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, the verbally abusive, and swindlers will not inherit the kingdom of God.[10] Today, forgiven by the grace and mercy of God in Jesus Christ, that verdict against me is bearable. What is too hard to bear, then as now, is that this particular understanding of πορνεία makes a πόρνῃ (prostitute) of A by definition. My emotional aversion to that gains some spiritual credence if I plug this behavior into Jesus’ statements regarding divorce and πορνεία:

Matthew 5:32 (NET) Matthew 19:9 (NET)
I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for “her virgin breasts were squeezed and her nipples fondled,” makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. Now I say to you that whoever divorces his wife, except for “her virgin breasts were squeezed and her nipples fondled,” and marries another commits adultery.

I don’t think any of the women at my church who considered themselves holier than God would have called A a prostitute because I squeezed her breasts and fondled her nipples, though I am fairly sure they considered it sexual immorality forbidden by Paul in the Bible. Committing the sin of premarital sex was the primary meaning of fornication there.

Matthew 5:32 (NET) Matthew 19:9 (NET)
I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for “the sin of premarital sex,” makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. Now I say to you that whoever divorces his wife, except for “the sin of premarital sex,” and marries another commits adultery.

This interpretation of πορνεία has some precedent in the practice of the righteous in first century Israel (Matthew 1:18, 19 NET).

Now the birth of Jesus Christ happened this way. While his mother Mary was engaged to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph, her husband to be, was a righteous man, and because he did not want to disgrace her, he intended to divorce her privately [Table].

It seemed plausible that Jesus meant the sin of premarital sex for πορνείας (a form of πορνεία) as recorded by Matthew, until I considered his law.

Exodus 22:16, 17 (NKJV) Deuteronomy 22:28, 29 (NKJV)
If a man entices a virgin who is not betrothed, and lies with her, he shall surely pay the bride-price for her to be his wife.  If her father utterly refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money according to the bride-price of virgins. If a man finds a young woman who is a virgin, who is not betrothed, and he seizes her and lies with her, and they are found out [Table], then the man who lay with her shall give to the young woman’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife because he has humbled her; he shall not be permitted to divorce her all his days [Table].

At sixteen when I believed in the sin of premarital sex I thought that A and my friend did the right thing by breaking off their relationship. In the light of God’s law however I hear Jesus say, Having no regard for the command of God, you hold fast to human tradition…You neatly reject the commandment of God in order to set up your tradition.[11] In others words, to accept the sin of premarital sex as Jesus’ meaning for πορνείας in Matthew 5:32 and 19:9 is to liberate young men from any sense of obligation to the young women they seduce or date-rape. (In fact, they were encouraged to send those young women away, to divorce them, that is.) At the same time it offers men a ready excuse to divorce their wives who have been seduced or date-raped, at any time men choose to play that card. Viewed in the context of God’s law the sin of premarital sex sounds like a man-made religious belief with no relationship to the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

I don’t think the people who enacted this legislation intended any of that any more than Caiaphas intended to condemn Yahweh come in human flesh to death. I assume that my religious forbears were shotgun-wedding-type of folk. Without wasting a lot of time tracking down documentary evidence it’s not too difficult to imagine that their children thought that was too harsh or even hypocritical. After all, people should confess their sins and turn from them. (I’ll ignore the timing with a political need to delay baby boomers’ entrance into the labor force as coincidence only.)

At sixteen I didn’t mistake the Lord’s ἐγκράτεια, keeping A and me from the sin of premarital sex, for my own righteousness. I didn’t feel very righteous. Though it’s probably an exaggeration I felt like I was always at odds with my parents over A. So I simply discounted the credibility of my counselors, those who assured me that “familiarity breeds contempt,”[12] that was “that familiarity leads to the sin of premarital sex.”

I did have a vague sense of an overarching dishonesty to my life. I may have called it hypocrisy at times, but I was destined to go much deeper into that hypocrisy before I recognized what it was. In the spring of my junior year of high school after I had turned seventeen, I made a conscious decision to reinvent myself. I moved away from the “straight” world of my parents, my church, even my friends at school, to turn toward the “hip” world. It seemed more honest somehow. And A was caught up, and discarded, in that self-reinvention. The tension at home was eased.

Over the summer I took up with B. She was not “hip” precisely, but she was an accomplished musician. We enjoyed hours of arty conversations, went to ballets, operas and musicals together. And, fully clothed, we aped all the motions of the missionary position until we both achieved orgasms. We could do it openly in a public park on a Sunday afternoon, surrounded by “hip” people who knew exactly what we were doing and blessed and approved it.

A and I had taken it for granted that we would grow up and get married. We talked about it all the time. I didn’t share that with B. I’m not sure what she thought about it. She knew that she would go away to school to pursue a music degree. I knew that I already had my sights set on C, the young woman who became my high school girlfriend/wife/concubine that fall.

At a party in C’s basement the spring before my junior year ended, I had sat at the bar watching her. She was the queen bee of “hip” at school. I found out later she had dropped acid for the first time that night. She had broken up with her boyfriend, a senior. But a couple of other seniors buzzed around her all night. I was nobody, a “straight,” a “hip” wannabe—and a junior.

“You must be a real head,” the long-haired guy next to me said as he looked up from his cheap wine.

Head had no negative connotations in my mind at the time. It was the exalted appellation reserved for the long-haired Jesus-like bodhisattvas who ran the head shop. I had short hair! I didn’t know what he was talking about, and said so. As it turned out, he was impressed that I wasn’t drinking (part of “straight” culture) but was holding out, apparently, for dope (part of “hip” culture).

Looking back now I wonder what more I needed to perceive that “hip” culture could be as superficial and status conscious, as “dishonest,” as “straight” culture. At the time what I heard was a long-haired disciple of the long-haired Jesus-like bodhisattvas saying, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile[13]—to me! I was grateful that (so long as I kept my mouth shut) I could be accepted into the kingdom of “headom” even before I had my bona fides in order. And later that night, after the cops broke up the party, I shared my first joint. It did absolutely nothing for me, except to make what hair I had and my clothes smell funny.

[1] Matthew 5:32a (NET) Table

[2] Matthew 5:32b (NET) Table

[3] 1 John 2:14b (NET)

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_to_me

[5] The Stephanus Textus Receptus and Byzantine Majority Text had μοι (KJV: unto me) here.  The NET parallel Greek text and NA28 did not.

[6] 1 Corinthians 7:1, 2 (NKJV) Table

[7] Ephesians 6:1-3 (NET)

[8] James 2:10 (NET) Table

[9] http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/prostitution.html

[10] 1 Corinthians 6:9, 10 (NET) Table

[11] Mark 7:8, 9 (NET)

[12] http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_said_Familiarity_breeds_contempt; “Familiarity breeds contempt–and children.” http://www.twainquotes.com/Familiarity.html

[13] John 1:47 (KJV)

My Reasons and My Reason, Part 3

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“I was really hoping that I could, um, move back in here for a while,” Linda probed her mother.

“Here?” her mother asked.

“Yeah.”

“No, you know that’s not possible.”

“Why not?” Linda asked.

“How would it look for a married woman to move in with her parents apart from her husband?”

“He hits me, Ma.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” her mother sighed.  “What did you do?”

“What do you mean, what’d I do?”

“What did you do to make him angry?  He didn’t just hit you out of the blue.”

Linda fought off her instinctive reaction to her mother’s judgment as she searched for a diplomatic answer to keep the conversation going.  “I guess I didn’t do what he wanted me to,” she said finally.

“You took a vow, a very serious vow.”

“Can’t I just stay, like, a few days, Ma, please?”

“And then what?  You gonna get a divorce?  What do you think we are, Protestant?”

“Ma, you just don’t understand.”

“Linda, I was…I was 18 years old when I had your sister. Unmarried…and all alone…before I met your father.  I’d suffered long and hard.  How dare you come here and tell me I don’t understand.  I understand.  Now, God gave you a husband…who provides for you.  And you…Look at me.  Go home to Chuck.  Be a good wife.  Listen to him, and obey him.”

Linda’s mother thought she was sending her daughter home to be a particular kind of submissive masochist,[1] Mrs. Chuck Traynor (or a “normal” woman, accepting his “implicit” right to hit her as she learned to “submit to his stronger will,” all while she took no pleasure in it whatsoever).  She assumed that Chuck was, what I am calling, a dominant masochist (fig. 4), someone with Linda’s best interests at heart.

fig. 4

fig. 4

She knew what a handful Linda could be.  She had no way of knowing that Chuck was much closer to a sadistic top than a dominant masochist.  And she certainly had no way to know that she was sending her daughter out to become Linda Lovelace of “Deep Throat” fame.

This scene from “Lovelace,”[2] affected me deeply.  Linda’s mother, written by Andy Bellin and played compassionately by Sharon Stone, is compellingly authentic.  Though her how-would-it-look line sounds crassly self-serving today, it was the effective meaning of one of the “laws of Paul” in the seventies: Abstain from all appearance of evil.[3]  Her refusal even to “appear” to support divorce by allowing her daughter to return struck home.  We didn’t drink, dance or smoke to prove how much better we were than Catholics.  At least that’s what I learned, which is not the same as saying that is what I was taught.  (It should be obvious by now that I learned many things I wasn’t necessarily taught.)

Linda, played by Amanda Seyfried, was lying to her mother.  Her line, “He hits me, Ma,” though objectively true wasn’t the reason she showed up at her mother’s door.  But I understand completely why she didn’t say, “He pimps me out for money, Ma,” to the woman who became so righteously indignant when the tie-strap of Linda’s swim top was undone to avoid tan lines.  And I honestly don’t know how her mother would have responded if Linda had told her the truth.

I didn’t see this film because I was interested in Linda Lovelace, but because Amanda Seyfried chose to play her.  (And now I’ll have to pay more attention to Sharon Stone.)  I’ll follow any actor who gives me aesthetic moments like the mother-daughter confrontation in “Mamma Mia,” especially one who can go toe-to-toe with Meryl Streep.  Sophie, the daughter played by Ms. Seyfried, was troubled about the mess she had made inviting three possible fathers to her wedding.  Her mother, played by Ms. Streep, thought (hoped) she didn’t want to marry.  Poor Linda Lovelace thought “Deep Throat” might be her stepping stone to becoming Amanda Seyfried (or, Meryl Streep).

I’ve never seen “Deep Throat” or anything else Linda Lovelace has done.  Clips I’ve seen in documentaries, and now recreations in “Lovelace,” don’t recommend the film to me.  I’ve never read her book Ordeal.[4]  I do recall sneering and scoffing when I heard about it.  The mother-daughter scene in “Lovelace” made me question, why?  The only answer I came up with is that I had seen pictures of Ms. Lovelace smiling.  I supposed she took some pleasure in sex and public attention.  Thinking and writing about my own masochism I had to repent of that sneering and scoffing.

Part of me (perhaps the submissive masochistic part) would like to tell a different story, a story about an innocent boy who rescued a stash of porn from a dumpster, hid it in the woods, read it, returned again and again to look at its pictures, and became corrupted.  That’s a story I could sell to my fundamentalist Christian friends.  And it’s based, at least, on a true story.  It’s just not mine.  It was another boy’s story when he brought that stash of porn to me and asked me to keep it away from him.  He lived next door while I worked on “The Tripartite Rationality Index.”[5]

It was summer.  I had no air conditioning, not even a fan.  I stayed up late until the apartment cooled down enough that I could sleep.  This boy came over and sat with me at night while his mother was out, or even if she was occupied at home.  She wasn’t exactly a prostitute.  She got all dressed up, went out to a bar or club, picked up a man, brought him home and lived with him as long as he paid the bills.  “You should marry her,” the boy said to me more than once.  “She’s pretty.”  She was pretty, especially when she went out to hunt.  I didn’t marry her.  I only talked to her once, long enough to convince her I wasn’t a child molester.

I didn’t have access to porn as a child; I was quarantined.  I use that word because of a story my mother told me recently on a different topic.  After I was born she spent many lonely days in the hospital at Christmastime.  She heard about another woman whose baby was born in the car on the way to the hospital.  She asked a nurse if she could visit that woman and see her baby.  The nurse told her that neither was in the general hospital population, having given birth (and being born) in such unsanitary conditions.  Though it seemed harsh to my mother at the time, it became her rationale for hell, God “quarantining” the righteous from the evil.

My mother was twenty-two-years-old.  She had just given birth to her first child.  And this was the authoritative word of medical science.  Suddenly my childhood made sense to me.  I was quarantined, not to keep me in hell, but to protect her “innocent” baby from the evil world.  It was 1953; discrimination was still a matter of good taste.  The problem was, the porn was already in me.  And I am truly sorry that I infected the pristine female world she constructed for me with my dirty male mind and desires.  (I know a Freudian would have a field day with that, but I’m being as sincere as I know how to be.)

My mother, however, was not alone in her germ theory of sin, sin as an infection from without.  “I feel dead inside, no, something worse than death,” reads an excerpt from nineteen-year-old Hannah’s diary, the main character in the film October Baby.  “I am still a child, a child trying to find a place in this world.  I have so many unanswered questions, questions I feel but can’t even begin to speak because there are no words to express them.  Something is missing.  Why, God, do I feel unwanted?  Why do I feel I have no right to exist?  Why do I spend more time wanting to end my life than live it?”

Knowing that this was a Christian film, a pretty girl who didn’t have a boyfriend, take drugs or drink or smoke and yet felt as Hannah did, seemed to recall Paul’s letter to the Romans (Romans 3:10-18 NET):

There is no one righteous, not even one, there is no one who understands, there is no one who seeks God.  All have turned away, together they have become worthless; there is no one who shows kindness, not even one.  Their throats are open graves, they deceive with their tongues, the poison of asps is under their lips.  Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.  Their feet are swift to shed blood, ruin and misery are in their paths, and the way of peace they have not known.  There is no fear of God before their eyes.

“Hannah, I believe that what you’re feeling is normal and is even expected,” wasn’t counsel from her Baptist minister, but from her doctor.  For it was not sin that caused her to feel as if the sentence of death had been passed against[6] her, rather it was a quasi-mystical intuition that she was a failed abortion, the truth her parents had hidden from her.  They hadn’t even told her she was adopted.  Once I got over that hump, it was an okay movie about a young woman dealing with an extraordinarily painful reality.  And Rachel Hendrix as Hannah is a delight to watch.  When the filmmaker’s finished the pro-life-message-film their financial backers paid for, Hannah, back where she started, visited a Catholic priest.

“I can’t figure out how to let go of the fact that I feel hatred for myself and others,” she told him.  Another secret she had learned along the way was that she was a twin.  Her elder brother was more damaged in the botched abortion and died three months after their birth.  “And I feel guilty,” Hannah continued her confession.  “Part of me feels like he should be alive and I shouldn’t.  I wonder if he would have been a better person than me, what he would have been like.  I just hate myself for feeling this way.”

So Hannah came very close to actually confessing the sin in her flesh.[7]  The priest told her about Jesus’ forgiveness, and her ability through Him to forgive others.  And I should probably remember that a Christian film is intended for Christians as an audience.  I’ve already written that most Christians I know don’t see themselves as “great sinners who were forgiven much and were called by God to forgive lesser sinners than themselves.”[8]  And who am I to see things so differently?  For who concedes [me] any superiority?  What do [I] have that [I] did not receive?[9]

In the previous essay I quoted, “If O is willing to sustain her devotion all the way through to her own destruction, so be it.  She wants to be ‘possessed, utterly possessed, to the point of death,’ to the point that her body and mind are no longer her responsibility.”[10]  To my religious mind this would have sounded (and sounds) absurd.  I kept my own masochism from my first wife as a shameful secret as I resolved to follow God as Moses instructed Israel (Deuteronomy 30:15-19 NET).

Look!  I have set before you today life and prosperity on the one hand, and death and disaster on the other.  What I am commanding you today is to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to obey his commandments, his statutes, and his ordinances.  Then you will live and become numerous and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you are about to possess.  However, if you turn aside and do not obey, but are lured away to worship and serve other gods, I declare to you this very day that you will certainly perish!  You will not extend your time in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.  Today I invoke heaven and earth as a witness against you that I have set life and death, blessing and curse, before you.  Therefore choose life so that you and your descendants may live!

Preoccupied with my attempt to obey him in my own strength, I didn’t hear, I also call on you to love the Lord your God…and be loyal to him, for he gives you life and enables you to live continually…[11]  So I did not love the Lord my God, walk in his ways, or obey his commandments, statutes and ordinances.  And my first wife divorced me for my religion.  “I don’t want to read the Bible,” she exclaimed.  “Everyone who reads the Bible turns out like you!”  That’s when I began to feel as if the sentence of death had been passed against[12] me.  And that’s when I began to hear, and perhaps began to choose, death instead.

For if we are out of our minds, Paul wrote in his second letter to the Corinthians, it is for God; if we are of sound mind, it is for you.  For the love of Christ controls us, since we have concluded this, that Christ died for all; therefore all have died.  And he died for all so that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised.[13]

I began to perceive in Scripture a diminished responsibility for righteousness for one led by the Spirit: For who concedes you any superiority?  What do you have that you did not receive?  And if you received it, why do you boast as though you did not?[14]  I have been crucified with Christ, Paul wrote the Galatians, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.  So the life I now live in the body, I live because of the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.[15]

I sat silently in an adult Sunday school class as a woman was reprimanded for quoting this verse, because she hadn’t earned the right to say it by her own works of righteousness as Paul had done.  And I was the one who had whispered it in her ear the night before as a possible path of righteousness.  I never expected her to shout it from the rooftops in Sunday school!

But Paul wrote, I do not set aside God’s grace, because if righteousness could come through the law, then Christ died for nothing![16]  Or do you not know that as many as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may live a new life.[17]  How may we live a new life? …through the glory of the Father…just as Christ was raised from the dead.

I began, tentatively at first, to perceive a diminished responsibility for sin for those led by the Spirit: Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer me doing it but sin that lives in me.[18]  But my religious mind (and not mine only) thinks this is a cop out.  It confuses confessing sins with taking responsibility for them, though it knows full well that if we deliberately keep on sinning after receiving the knowledge of the truth, no further sacrifice for sins is left for us, but only a certain fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume God’s enemies.[19]

“‘What does a Christian seek,’” Carmela Ciuraru quoted the author of Histoire d’O in her article ‘The Story of the Story of O,’ “‘but to lose himself in God,’ Aury, a devout atheist, once said. ‘To be killed by someone you love strikes me as the epitome of ecstasy.’”[20]  While it is still somewhat difficult for me to grasp exactly what Dominique Aury meant, I agree that to be killed by, or through, Someone I love and yet live by and through Him is the epitome of ecstasy.

I know these things because I have received them from his Spirit.  But it is impossible for me to determine or to gainsay how much I feel these things through my masochism.  And if my masochism is the wrath of God revealed from heaven, that is truly amazing, that the wrath of God…revealed from heaven against all [my] ungodliness and unrighteousness[21] is also an aid in my enlightenment to, and salvation from, that very ungodliness and unrighteousness.

So, do I whip myself into a euphoric state of submission to obey God?

It’s a fair question, given what I’ve written.  The primary meaning of the Greek word translated subdue is “to beat black and blue, to smite so as to cause bruises and livid spots” in Paul’s confession: Instead I subdue (ὑπωπιάζω)[22] my body and make it my slave, so that after preaching to others I myself will not be disqualified.[23]  Frankly, I have no idea if I should take this literally, nor do I care.  Paul also wrote (Colossians 2:20-23 NET):

If you have died with Christ to the elemental spirits of the world, why do you submit (δογματίζεσθε, a form of δογματίζω)[24] to them as though you lived in the world?  “Do not handle!  Do not taste!  Do not touch!”  These are all destined to perish with use, founded as they are on human commands and teachings.  Even though they have the appearance of wisdom with their self-imposed worship and false humility achieved by an unsparing treatment of the body – a wisdom with no true value – they in reality result in fleshly indulgence.

I have pondered this question idly from time to time: if Paul engaged in self-flagellation as a spiritual exercise before he wrote to the Romans and the Colossians, did he continue it as a fleshly indulgence after realizing it had no true value spiritually?  But I don’t know the answer to either component of that question, or even how to know how to search out an answer.  I suppose I could consider it the thorn in Paul’s flesh (2 Corinthians 12:7b NET):

Therefore, so that I would not become arrogant, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to trouble me – so that I would not become arrogant.

My elderly Pastor thought that thorn was failing eye sight, my Catholic friend thinks it was masturbation and Bishop Spong[25] thinks it was latent homosexuality.  I feel a little ridiculous pronouncing it self-flagellation, though I’m intrigued by the possibilities for self-acceptance the Holy Spirit created by being non-specific here (e.g., Paul could have said precisely what he meant).  I’ll probably wait and ask Paul.

But no, I don’t whip myself into a euphoric state of submission to obey God.  I believe (I believe; help my unbelief![26]) the death He has given me in Christ Jesus and the fruit of his Spirit.  I have whipped myself at times as a lonely fleshly indulgence.

 My Reasons and My Reason, Part 4

Back to Condemnation or Judgment? – Part 9

[3] 1 Thessalonians 5:22 (KJV)  It might still be what Paul meant.  Though the NET translation is—Stay away from every form (εἴδους, a form of εἶδος) of evil—the Greek word εἴδους was also used in 2 Corinthians 5:6, 7 (NET): Therefore we are always full of courage, and we know that as long as we are alive here on earth we are absent from the Lord – for we live by faith, not by sight (εἴδους).

[6] 2 Corinthians 1:9 (NET)

[9] 1 Corinthians 4:7a (NET)

[11] Deuteronomy 30:20 (NET)

[12] 2 Corinthians 1:9 (NET)

[13] 2 Corinthians 5:13-15 (NET)

[14] 1 Corinthians 4:7 (NET)

[15] Galatians 2:20 (NET)

[16] Galatians 2:21 (NET)

[17] Romans 6:3, 4 (NET)

[18] Romans 7:20 (NET)

[19] Hebrews 10:26, 27 (NET)

[20] “The Story of the Story of O,” Carmela Ciuraru, Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics http://www.guernicamag.com/features/ciuraru_6_15_11/

[21] Romans 1:18 (NET)

[23] 1 Corinthians 9:27 (NET)

My Reasons and My Reason, Part 2

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I took my mother to see “Saving Mr. Banks” after Christmas.  We enjoyed it.  It was a well-done adult Disney movie.  (I wouldn’t recommend it for children.)  We’re both interested in the creative process so a movie about making a movie didn’t seem too masturbatory.  It was interesting to consider how P.L. Travers’ reservations about Walt Disney making “Mary Poppins” impacted the final project.  And it was enlightening to me that the “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” ending was born not of an idyllic childhood but of a troubled and conflicted relationship with fathers, both Disney’s and Travers’.

My mother and I hadn’t seen a movie together in a theater since “The Sound of Music.”  We almost didn’t see that.  She read a blurb in the paper that indicated it was about a “young prostitute.”  Later she read another that described Maria as a “young postulant” and chided herself for misreading the word.  Knowing my mother and her voracious reading habits, I doubt she mistook “postulant” for “prostitute.”  I suspect a typo in the first blurb.

We recalled how we had seen “Mary Poppins” at a matinee together with my younger brother and sister in the summer of 1965.  We liked it so much we stayed to watch it again.  We forgot about (and I missed) my ballgame that evening.  That was not easy to live down with my teammates.  Missing a game for “Goldfinger,” maybe, but “Mary Poppins” was definitely not cool.  I wasn’t permitted to see movies like “Goldfinger.”  I didn’t tell my teammates how I spent my time viewing the movie the second time.  Almost fifty years later I didn’t tell my mother either.

I was young enough that I still couldn’t predict a storyline.  The first time through I thought the movie was ending when Bert and Mary and Jane and Michael looked out over the city after climbing the stairs made of smoke.  All movies ended too soon to my childish mind.  I did feel the pathos of Mr. Banks’ situation and rejoice at his redemption once I saw it.  I just had no idea that it was coming.  Of course, “Saving Mr. Banks” informed me that his redemption was a late idea anyway.

What troubled me the second time through the film was Mary Poppins’ righteous indignation over the children’s concern that she had been “sacked.”  I didn’t know what “sacked” meant, but could glean from the context that it had something to do with losing her job.  But her reaction seemed too over-the-top for something so trifling.  (I was eleven.)  Before the movie ended the second time, I had satisfied myself with a definition for “sacked” that included Mary Poppins, naked, tied spread-eagle between the pillars in the entry foyer of the Banks’ home, and soundly whipped by Mr. Banks with a buggy whip.  That seemed sufficient to justify her reaction.

I laughed rather inappropriately a decade or so later watching the “The Story of O,” when the door at the top of the stairs opened to reveal the scene I had imagined as a child.  O had recreated it with the maid to educate a young man who wanted to rescue her from her slavery.  He gazed from her sweaty beaten body to the inexplicable look of her face.  The disheveled maid regarded him as an unwelcome intruder.  Obviously, she would resume beating O the moment he left.  This “harsh reality” was just too much for O’s would-be rescuer, so he fled.

I thought I might be dragged off in handcuffs from the Fine Arts Theater for watching “The Story of O.”  I thought maybe I deserved to be arrested and charged with something for enjoying it so much.  And I felt like that every time I saw it.  I saw it three different times with three different male friends.  But I was the only one who got it.  I knew something at twenty-two I didn’t know at eleven.  I didn’t want to beat O, necessarily, I wanted to be her.  We shared an intimate secret by then courtesy of my highschool girlfriend; namely, that we could be whipped into a euphoric state of submission.

O was the fictional creation of French author Anne Desclos, a.k.a. Dominique Aury, a.k.a. Pauline Réage.  She wrote it for her married lover, twenty-three years her senior.  “I wrote it alone, for him, to interest him, to please him, to occupy him….I wasn’t young, I wasn’t pretty, it was necessary to find other weapons…The physical side wasn’t enough.  The weapons, alas, were in the head….You’re always looking for ways to make it go on….The story of Scheherazade,[1] more or less.”[2]  Histoire d’O, its title in French, was first published in 1954.[3]

“The author said later,” according to Carmela Ciuraru,[4] “that Story of O, written when she was forty-seven, was based on her own fantasies…Some twenty years after the book came out, she admitted that her own joys and sorrows had informed it, but she had no idea just how much, and did not care to analyze anything.  ‘Story of O is a fairy tale for another world,’ she said, ‘a world where some part of me lived for a long time, a world that no longer exists except between the covers of a book.’”  Earlier, she had quoted the author, “‘By my makeup and temperament I wasn’t really prey to physical desires…Everything happened in my head.’”[5]

Ms. Ciuraru also quoted Susan Sontag, “the first major writer to recognize the novel’s merit and to defend it as a significant literary work….In her 1969 essay ‘The Pornographic Imagination,’ Sontag…compared sexual obsession (as expressed by Réage) with religious obsession: two sides of the same coin.  ‘Religion is probably, after sex, the second oldest resource which human beings have available to them for blowing their minds,’ she wrote.”

I can’t help but see the relationship to πορνεία[6] here as Ms. Ciuraru continued to highlight Sontag’s contribution:  “In her disciplined effort toward transcendence, O is not unlike a zealot giving herself to God.  O’s devotion to the task at hand takes the form of what might be described as spiritual fervor.  She loses herself entirely…”[7]  Then she connected this kind of πορνεία to death.

“If O is willing to sustain her devotion all the way through to her own destruction, so be it.  She wants to be ‘possessed, utterly possessed, to the point of death,’ to the point that her body and mind are no longer her responsibility.”[8]  I’ve not read the book, and this particular concept of possession was not clear to me from the movie I saw almost forty years ago.  One of the friends who saw it with me had a more filmic eye than mine and recognized the genre as horror, a monster movie.  Then I saw it as a tale of a damsel in distress who became a monster.

As O questioned whether her master could or would endure for her what she had endured for him, she branded him with an ‘O’ from a hot cigarette holder.  (She had been branded for him earlier in the film.)  She was both dominant and submissive, top and bottom, and I would be hard-pressed to decide if she was more masochistic or sadistic by my own understanding of the terms (fig. 4).

fig. 4

fig. 4

But in the above description—“She wants to be ‘possessed, utterly possessed, to the point of death,’ to the point that her body and mind are no longer her responsibility”—I perceive some insight from “The Story of O” into πορνεία as an ancient religion of the flesh, primarily as ironic contrast to being led by the Spirit.

Writing to the Corinthians about ancient Israel at Sinai, Paul said, God was not pleased with most of them, for they were cut down in the wilderness.  These things happened as examples for us, so that we will not crave evil things as they did.  So do not be idolaters, as some of them were.  As it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.”  And let us not be immoral (πορνεύωμεν, a form of πορνεύω),[9] as some of them were (ἐπόρνευσαν, a form of πορνεύω), and twenty-three thousand died in a single day.[10]  Paul was fairly explicit here that the Israelites’ play to celebrate the golden calf was πορνεία, the noun which signifies what those who engage in πορνεύω do.

In college, the second time after I gave up writing “The Tripartite Rationality Index,” I read “The Sacred Fire, the story of sex in religion”, by B.Z. Goldberg[11] (the pen name of Benjamin Waife).  Goldberg, a journalist and managing editor of the Yiddish “the Day…found time to research in the field of psychology of religion” as he wrote a daily column on foreign affairs.  Of Baal, he wrote:

Baal was the one great abstract god of antiquity.[12] 

On the summit of every hill and under every green tree Baal is worshipped—the god whom people knew long before they had heard of Jehovah, the divinity whom they loved long after they had learned of the one and true God.[13] 

Baal was the greatest god of all, but what was Baal? How could one fathom this infinite mystery? Primitive man, limited in his thinking and circumscribed in his imagery, sought a concrete form for the mightiest of the gods. So he looked into the mirror of life and in the image of what he saw therein he created his Baal.[14]

The consummation, if you will, of this man-made religion, according to Goldberg, is “in the union of the sexes.”[15]

The songs grow wilder, the contortions of the bodies more frenzied, while the drum and the flute fill the air with passionate tones that steal into the hungry hearts of dancer and worshipper. The dances break up in chaotic revelry. Priestess and worshipper join in the merry-making. Tired, drunk, half-swooning, the dancer is still conscious of one thing: somebody will touch her navel—she must follow—but the coin; he must first give her a coin, the coin that is sacred to Baal. As she is trying to seat herself, hardly able to stand upon her feet, a worshipper touches her. She rises as if awakened from sleep. She follows him blindly into a tent, where both priestess and worshipper consummate the final crying prayer to Baal, the prayer of love.[16]

The instructor who employed me as a TA was a neo-pagan, a witch in his own words, who worshipped Celtic Baal.  The ligature marks on his wrists after a Samhain[17] celebration alerted me that πορνεία might be kinkier than Goldberg let on.  I didn’t call it πορνεία yet.  I only saw the relationship to ancient Israelite religion in the Old Testament.

O as a slave was naked.  When worshippers “entered the most sacred chamber and faced the statue of Baal, they would have to present themselves naked before their god.”[18]  (“Only a few laymen ever entered this vestibule, the holy of holies of the great god.”)[19]  Though the translations are disputed by the translators of the NET, the sight Moses witnessed according to the King James translators was that the people were naked; (for Aaron had made them naked unto their shame among their enemies).[20]  Or as John Nelson Darby (known as the father of Dispensationalism[21]) translated the verse: And Moses saw the people how they were stripped; for Aaron had stripped them to [their] shame before their adversaries.[22]

So in contradistinction to the nakedness of πορνεία as a religion of the flesh, God said, And you must not go up by steps to my altar, so that your nakedness is not exposed.[23]  Beyond that He told Moses to make undergarments for the priests to cover their naked bodies; they must cover from the waist to the thighs.[24]  Consider Leviticus 18:6-18 (NKJV) in this context:

None of you shall approach anyone who is near of kin to him, to uncover his nakedness: I am the Lord [Table].
The nakedness of your father or the nakedness of your mother you shall not uncover. She is your mother; you shall not uncover her nakedness [Table].
The nakedness of your father’s wife you shall not uncover; it is your father’s nakedness. [Table]
The nakedness of your sister, the daughter of your father, or the daughter of your mother, whether born at home or elsewhere, their nakedness you shall not uncover [Table].
The nakedness of your son’s daughter or your daughter’s daughter, their nakedness you shall not uncover; for theirs is your own nakedness [Table].
The nakedness of your father’s wife’s daughter, begotten by your father—she is your sister—you shall not uncover her nakedness [Table].
You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s sister; she is near of kin to your father [Table].
You shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother’s sister, for she is near of kin to your mother [Table].
You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s brother. You shall not approach his wife; she is your aunt [Table].
You shall not uncover the nakedness of your daughter-in-law—she is your son’s wife—you shall not uncover her nakedness [Table].
You shall not uncover the nakedness of your brother’s wife; it is your brother’s nakedness [Table].
You shall not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her daughter, nor shall you take her son’s daughter or her daughter’s daughter, to uncover her nakedness. They are near of kin to her. It is wickedness [Table].
Nor shall you take a woman as a rival to her sister, to uncover her nakedness while the other is alive [Table].

The note in the NET claimed that to uncover nakedness “is clearly euphemistic for sexual intercourse,” and the translators translated the phrase have sexual intercourse.  They may be correct.  Consider, Nor shall you take a woman as a rival to her sister, to uncover her nakedness while the other is alive.  But the more literal translation seems pointedly addressed to familial Baal worship.

For the submissive masochist, however, nudity is the preferred state of being.  Even the humiliation of nakedness is a pleasure.  The wrath of God…revealed from heaven,[25] as Paul described it was, God gave [those who exchanged the glory of the immortal God for an image resembling mortal human beings or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles[26]] over in the desires of their hearts to impurity, to dishonor their bodies among themselves.[27] Even in wrath there is mercy.

For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any double-edged sword, the writer of the letter to the Hebrews wrote, piercing even to the point of dividing soul from spirit, and joints from marrow; it is able to judge the desires and thoughts of the heart.  And no creature is hidden from God, but everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must render an account.[28]  The truth of this image, being naked and accountable to God, that so horrifies my religious mind, is warm, familiar and comforting to my masochism.

[2] “The Story of the Story of O,” Carmela Ciuraru, Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics http://www.guernicamag.com/features/ciuraru_6_15_11/

[5] “The Story of the Story of O,” Carmela Ciuraru, Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics  http://www.guernicamag.com/features/ciuraru_6_15_11/

[7] “The Story of the Story of O,” Carmela Ciuraru, Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics http://www.guernicamag.com/features/ciuraru_6_15_11/

[8] “The Story of the Story of O,” Carmela Ciuraru, Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics http://www.guernicamag.com/features/ciuraru_6_15_11/

[10] 1 Corinthians 10:5-8 (NET)

[12] “The Sacred Fire, the story of sex in religion”, B.Z. Goldberg, (1930) Book II, Chapter I, p. 145  http://www.sacred-texts.com/sex/tsf/tsf08.htm

[13] “The Sacred Fire, the story of sex in religion”, B.Z. Goldberg, (1930) Book II, Chapter I, p. 144  http://www.sacred-texts.com/sex/tsf/tsf08.htm

[14] “The Sacred Fire, the story of sex in religion”, B.Z. Goldberg, (1930) Book II, Chapter I, p. 145  http://www.sacred-texts.com/sex/tsf/tsf08.htm

[15] “The Sacred Fire, the story of sex in religion”, B.Z. Goldberg, (1930) Book II, Chapter I, p. 147  http://www.sacred-texts.com/sex/tsf/tsf08.htm

[16] “The Sacred Fire, the story of sex in religion”, B.Z. Goldberg, (1930) Book II, Chapter IV, p. 158  http://www.sacred-texts.com/sex/tsf/tsf08.htm

[18] “The Sacred Fire, the story of sex in religion”, B.Z. Goldberg, (1930) Book II, Chapter III, p. 152  http://www.sacred-texts.com/sex/tsf/tsf08.htm

[19] “The Sacred Fire, the story of sex in religion”, B.Z. Goldberg, (1930) Book II, Chapter IV, p. 154  http://www.sacred-texts.com/sex/tsf/tsf08.htm

[20] Exodus 32:25 (KJV)

[21] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEGe8EzygwM  In this YouTube clip a preacher condemned Darby to hell “according to the Bible” for modern biblical scholarship (deleting or changing words from the KJV).  The verses cited in his sermon (1 John 5:7; Acts 8:37; Luke 2:33; Colossians 1:14) are annotated in the NET.  Anyone can decide whether the arguments are valid or not.  I’m only concerned when changes are made without including the argument in a footnote.  I suppose my point here is that Darby and the translators of the KJV were in closer agreement with each other than with the translators of the NET.

[22] Exodus 32:25 (DNT)

[23] Exodus 20:26 (NET)

[24] Exodus 28:42 (NET)

[25] Romans 1:18 (NET)

[26] Romans 1:23 (NET)

[27] Romans 1:24 (NET) Table

[28] Hebrews 4:12, 13 (NET)

My Reasons and My Reason, Part 1

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Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?  Do not be deceived!  The sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, passive homosexual partners, practicing homosexuals, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, the verbally abusive, and swindlers will not inherit the kingdom of God.[1]

In an earlier essay I wrote that I didn’t want my quotation of Paul’s listing of the unrighteous (ἄδικοι, a form of ἄδικος)[2] “to come down disproportionately hard on those who favor the ‘Side A’ position discussed on the Gay Christian Network website.[3]  My reasons can wait for another essay.”  This is that essay, or more likely the beginning of a series of essays.  As I think about it now I see my personal reasons falling under two distinct yet related headings: 1) my attempt to find some meaning for πορνεία apart from the “whatever you want” imprecision of sexual immorality; and, 2) I am a masochist.

I’ve already written some about πορνεία, so I’ll begin here with what I mean by masochism.  I didn’t use the term sado-masochism deliberately, though my earliest thoughts on the subject started there.  I thought Sadism and Masochism were a continuum associated with dominance and submission respectively (fig. 1).

fig. 1

fig. 1

In college I read the commentary included in an edition of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s “Venus in Furs.”[4]  It was a while ago, my notes are gone, so I can’t credit the woman (I think it was a woman) who wrote the commentary.  One thing she said resonated with me, something to the effect that a sadist would never be satisfied with a willing masochist.  She began to distinguish Sadism from Masochism as she included dominance and submission within both categories.  My graphical representation changed immediately (fig. 2).

fig. 2

fig. 2

I’ve stuck with this graphical representation as I tried to figure out what was on the other axis, what distinguished sadism from masochism.  What I came up with is still a bit elusive even to me.  I call it Self and Other, but I don’t necessarily mean selfishness and altruism (fig. 3).

fig. 3

fig. 3

Lisa, the dominatrix in “Exit to Eden,”[5] as she mused on the airplane about slaves in a slave market was totally wrapped up in the experience of the submissive.  Her mission in life was to give them the submissive experience they craved.  It excited her.  She was a masochist as I understand it, a dominant masochist.

“I am in awe of the courage that it must take to submit with willingness and grace,” wrote Lady N in an essay[6] posted online titled Why I Love Male Submissives.  “It inspires me to strive for greatness within myself, so that I may remain completely worthy of such a gift.  Simultaneously humbled and enobled by pain and passion, he becomes a rare and beautiful creature that defies any simple description.”  She, too, is a dominant masochist.

Conversely, the “pain slut”[7] who latches on to a dominant and berates and humiliates them in order to provoke them to the level of desired violence is a submissive sadist in my opinion.  And a second look at even the opening reverie of “Venus in Furs” causes me to suspect that Severin,[8] Sacher-Masoch’s alter-ego, was never a masochist at all, but a submissive sadist who became in the end a dominant one.  But this makes the terms submissive and dominant seem too masochist-centric to be of much use in describing Sadism.  Perhaps I should close the loop and describe the “pain slut” as a bottom who tongue-lashes a top to incite the top to lash the bottom’s bottom harder and faster (fig. 4).

fig. 4

fig. 4

Sexuality to the non-Sadist and non-Masochist is about pleasure and honor.  They assume that a “sado-masochist” likes pain and humiliation instead of, or confuses them for, pleasure and honor.  I’ve read things online from both dominants/tops and submissives/bottoms that seem to support that point of view.  But I don’t have any difficulty distinguishing between pleasure, pain, honor and humiliation.  I would say (in theory at least) that they are interesting and unique flavors that are enjoyable to combine in different recipes with one’s spouse, willing spouse, that is (I am a masochist).

It is apparent to me that what I call masochism may be nothing more than something called sado-masochism filtered through the fruit of the Holy Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control).[9]  But I’m going to continue as if my masochism has its own existence, something like I have been describing.  I must face then that it may be nothing more than the fruit of being one of those given over in the desires of their hearts to impurity, to dishonor their bodies among themselves.[10]  Consider Lady N’s ode to male submissives again:

He is John Barleycorn, consort and sacrifice.  He is brutally degraded and taken for the most profane of uses, and thus a god worthy of worship and reverence.  Crucified in leather, his flesh is violated and sanctified, celebrated and decorated by the bright blood roses of our passion.  His body is the altar at which I worship.  It is the sacred paradox, and it is the deepest truth and the greatest beauty that I can know in this life.

I am the respectful penitent and the savage goddess, and the scourge rises and falls to glorify as much as to humble.  I am as deeply reverent as I am merciless to the sacrifice.  Dea gratias[11] [“thanks be to God (Deo) Goddess (Dea)”], forever and ever, amen.

The sheer intensity of taking a consenting submissive and making him hurt and cry and suffer for me, the power and passion that is as hot and raw as the living hearts the Aztecs once tore from the chest of a willing sacrifice, that is what feeds me and fuels the flames of my desire.

Lady N’s reference to John Barleycorn probably has less to do with Jack London’s novel[12] than it does with this quote from Raven Kaldera on Pagan BDSM:[13] “There’s one other point to make that is uniquely pagan in worldview.  Each spirit that gets called into a man-made object is a tiny reflection, a snapshot, a splinter, an avatar of a much greater spirit…When someone takes on the archetype of the Owned Slave, they allow into themselves a piece of the greater spirit that is All That Is Sacrificed That We May Live. This Spirit has many faces and names — the Sacred King, John Barleycorn, Iphigenia, Persephone, the Sacrificed Maiden, the Prey Animal, the Bull God and Goat God, Lugh, Baldur, the Corn Dollie, the Wicker Man, and so forth.”  Here my masochism and my understanding of πορνεία seem to intersect.

The shape of my masochism was pretty much established by about nine or ten years of age, the fourth grade.  I truly don’t remember what I was thinking, believing or doing that might have made me a fool in God’s eyes who exchanged the glory of the immortal God for an image resembling mortal human beings or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.[14]  And the idea—that the wrath of God [was] revealed from heaven against all [the] ungodliness and unrighteousness[15] of the nine-year-old (or younger) boy that I was—causes me to recoil some.  And that recoil has made it difficult for me to fully embrace my masochism as God’s wrath: Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity, to dishonor their bodies among themselves.[16]

It gives me some cause, however, beyond the fruit of Christ’s Spirit, to be patient with those whose homosexual desires are so deeply rooted in their childhoods that it seems like an integral part of who they are as human beings.

[1] 1 Corinthians 6:9, 10 (NET) Table

[9] Galatians 5:22, 23 (NET)

[10] Romans 1:24 (NET)

[14] Romans 1:23 (NET)

[15] Romans 1:18 (NET)

[16] Romans 1:24 (NET) Table