Carnal Carnival

What separates the believer from the unbeliever? For certain it is the blood of Christ, but there is something else - something immediate in the very worldview of the believer. While the natural man pursues the desires of the flesh, the spiritual man pursues the desires of the Spirit. Paul the Apostle says it well in Romans eight:

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

St. Paul is preaching what was once thundered from a thousand pulpits - the damning effects of carnality. The word is perhaps obsolete, but no word perhaps captures better the intended meaning. The natural man - our flesh, our body, our life apart from the regeneration of the Spirit - lives its life seeking out its own pleasures. And such were we, but we have been washed; we have been sanctified! If then the Spirit lives in us, let us live spiritual lives, lives lived after the spirit, a life of growth in Godliness. Why are we then still carnal?

I am talking here of individuals, but more so of institutions. We are surrounded by an evangelical culture that is largely carnal. On one side of the road you have fundamentalism. How carefully they walk! A rule of man they apply to every situation, determined to make themselves holy unto God through physical rules. And they are carnal. For when we orient our Christian life toward physical restraints - do not touch, do not taste, do not handle - we again enslave ourselves to the flesh. For those who think otherwise, I present exhibit A: the pious Muslim cleric, who lives a life of asceticism and tithes of all that he has, prays seven times a day, and gives alms to the poor. He is doubtless a better man for it, but he is damned to hell. These are all works of the flesh, and working for the sake of works is carnal. Good works in the flesh do not a Christian make. On the other side of the road, you have the witless carnality of evangelical rock stars who peddle carnal desires in the skin of Christian teaching. But is it Christian to tell professing believers what sexual acts they may perform in their bedroom? I say that it is not. I say that all such false teaching is feeding the flesh. The spiritual man does not strive to sanctify his sexual cravings. The spiritual man strives to please his savior, to savor the Spirit of God, to bring glory to God and to serve others. Both sides of the road are carnal, and both are littered with the bodies of those who have fallen to their death off the straight and narrow.

If I sound strident it is because of the seriousness of this issue. Paul, inspired by the Spirit to guard the Roman church from damnation, says it plain. Those who live according to the flesh set their mind on the things of the flesh. Those who live according to the spirit, set their mind on the things of the spirit. Can you set your mind on sex and be living in the Spirit? Can you set your mind on clothing, or coffee, or pyrotechnics and be living in the Spirit? Paul says no, and I am obliged to agree with him. But this is no mere choice, as if some believers live lives set in the flesh, and a few saints are granted the grace to live in the spirit. Quite the contrary. Paul says that to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life. To entirely root out the possibility of misunderstanding, Paul presses on: The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God: those in the flesh cannot please God. And here Paul exhorts his readers - this should in no way characterize them, for they have been born of the Spirit, have God's spirit within them, and are pursuing spiritual things.

In like manner, I exhort my readers: do not be deceived, God is not mocked. For the one that sows to his flesh will reap corruption, but the one who sows to the spirit will reap life everlasting. Do not allow yourself to be rooted up and tossed about by your carnal desires. Neither dress code nor music standards nor sex nor worldly success can ever, ever save your soul. Don't let these carnal concerns hinder you from pressing on toward the mark of your high calling in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

Some Kind of Zombie

This just in from MSNBC: scientists are closer than ever to unlocking the secrets of eternal life. According to this article, molecular geneticist Bill Andrews is working on a way to keep telomeres (strings of DNA at the end of each chromosome) from shrinking. The shrinking of telomeres is linked to decay and aging. In theory, we may soon be able to prolong lifespans by hundreds of years. Who wouldn't want that?

But the problem with this entire enterprise is that it is based upon a false view of what humans fundamentally are. The great failing of the scientific enterprise is its reduction of humans to mere bodies in the physical realm. Humans are not mere shells of matter in motion - we are spiritual beings. This is the core of the human existence, and the center of Christian theology and hope. Man was created for eternal life, and this endless quest by science is a manifestation of the deepest spiritual knowledge and hope of man. But it is stunted.

The Christian story tells us that man was created to live forever, but lost that privilege by rebelling against God. Now, all men are born into bondage - born spiritually dead and enslaved to sin. When Adam was cast out of the garden, God placed a burning sword between man and the tree of life. Looking back in longing, man saw certain eternal life hedged up by equally certain death; looking forward man saw a painful existence of toil followed by a distant but no less certain death. The wages of sin is death.

But thanks be to God! The advent of Jesus, which Christians everywhere pause to celebrate this time of year, saw the breaking of the curse. Jesus lived a perfect, sinless life acceptable to God. He died in our place, and God vindicated his sacrifice by raising him from the dead! Now, if we approach in repentance and place our faith in Jesus' finished work, we are given his righteousness; we are accepted by God through our union with Christ. The once dead human spirit is brought to life in Christ, and a new vista of life - true life - is opened to the body of Christ on this earth. This is the doctrine of regeneration.

Unfortunately, our American evangelicalism has become almost thoroughly materialistic. The fathers spoke of the spiritual; it was understood that we are spiritual beings; discipleship was about growing in spirit as we are filled with the Holy Spirit. There are physical means appointed to God for this growth - the Word and Sacrament; giving to the poor and needy; prayer, fasting, and spiritual disciplines; loving God and neighbor - but the telos is spiritual. We are not building the physical kingdom of God. This spiritual growth is consummated in the return of Christ Jesus, when all the redeemed will inherit the earth, a new creature. And we will reign, brighter than a thousand suns, with our glorious Christ, an existence that is not merely eternal, but true life. Spiritual life, abundant life, glorious, growing, and worshipful life in perfect harmony with God and man. It is the glorious end for all found in Christ, and it is the one true eternal life that man has to look forward to.

But what has science to offer? Not eternal life at all, but eternal death. For apart from supernatural regeneration, man is already dead in spirit, and his clockwork shell ponders teetering on until it succumbs to the natural forces of decay and returns to dust. And the spirit returns to its maker. Apart from regeneration, man is but a shell, a half-man, a shade. Science offers only to prolong that agony of living death. Like Gollum we will become stretched, spread out over time like too little butter on too much toast. Some kind of zombie. And our evil natures will continue to wax worse and worse, until we cry out to the rocks and the hills to cover us. This is no salvation, it is a curse. It was a curse in Genesis three, and it remains a curse. Long life apart from a spirit growing into God stretches into hell itself, for hell is eternity apart from God.

So let us not despise our spirit or our heritage. What science strives mightily to procure has been brought to earth by the God-man Jesus, and offered up upon a cross. Let us then strive to enter the narrow gate. For upon the other side is a broad avenue. There is no darkness or night, and in the middle of the avenue runs a crystal river, upon whose banks blooms eternal the Tree of Life. Ah, yes, eternal life. That shifting chimera that barely forms the myth of science is very, very real. And it is far more abundant than any naturalistic science could imagine. This and all things are yours in Christ. Amen.

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Free eBook: Your Brain on Porn

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Inferno Royale: The Gospel of Vicarious Narcissism

If you take a life do you know what you'll give?
Odds are, you won't like what it is
When the storm arrives, would you be seen with me?
By the merciless eyes of deceit?

I've seen angels fall from blinding heights
But you yourself are nothing so divine
Just next in line…

                                      You Know My Name – Chris Cornell

Bond. James Bond. A thoroughly modern man with a license to kill. He is a role model and a hero – one who knows what he wants and takes it by force. He lies, fornicates, manipulates, indulges in all fleshly desires, and kills at the whim of his good pleasure. He is a narcissist, and he is a hero.

Bond is man playing God, a human antitype of the Divine, with every attribute twisted beyond recognition. He has the power of life and death over his foes, like God. He loves beauty and excellence, like God. He enables his own will for his own pleasure, like God. He fights for the good of his people, like God. And while he may appear to be at the mercy of villainous foes for a time, he always wins in the end. Like God.

But God is nothing like James Bond. The God of infinite power did not choose a Walther, but a cross. The beauty God pursues is his own excellent majesty, not the decaying flesh of morally loose women. When God came to earth, he came as a man. Not as a king, he came. He did not pursue his own fleshly desires and interests, but the will of the Father. He did not come driving a million dollar sports car, but on the foal of a donkey. He had no luxury flat, or five star hotel, or three hundred thread count sheets. In fact, the only thing he had of value was some pretty decent underwear. The soldiers who stole it from him while murdering him cast lots for it. He did not come to enjoy $100 a glass claret or Cuban cigars or topologically enhanced sidekicks of the female variety. He came to seek and to save that which was lost. Bond is man in the flesh trying to be God. Bond is antichrist.

But Bond is what man will always be when he pursues the glory of his own flesh. We humans are created in the image of God, and as such our true success only comes as we conform to the image in which we are made. The natural man, his divine image defaced, may still pursue the good, and that pursuit lies in selflessness and love. Such a trajectory is exactly opposite to Bond. James Bond passed a devout Buddhist on the street. They were travelling in opposite directions. And yet apart from the regeneration of the Holy Spirit, any man can only ever live in natural grace – a kind, compassionate soul, perhaps, but lost. Without a vivified spirit, no man can be like God, or be acceptable to God.

When God’s grace drowns a man, it kills him, and when he dies he is born again, through the water and the blood, and a new vista opens to him – the spiritual world of God’s endless love and grace. Thus born again, man no longer pursues glory, and while he may still buffet a flesh bent upon self-gratification and reliance, the man struggles to always be crucifying the flesh. Our way is not grand, glorious, or self-centered. Ours is the Via Dolorosa, the way of suffering – the way of the cross.

And yet, how many evangelicals still live hollow lives of modern men, pursuing the glory this world has to offer, licensed to kill all who would hold him back? We may have the appetite of man in us yet, but what does it say to the world when we fill our cravings in ways that emulate Bond more than Christ? We do not mourn, but rather celebrate. We do not fast, we feast. We dare not give up mother and father and brother and sister and houses and lands. Perhaps we prefer the houses and cars and toys and fields and fields of stubble. 

Nor can this be battled in the physical realm. Giving up our stuff does not a spiritual man make. Many pious of pagan religions live lives of giving asceticism. It is not about what we have or do not have, but about the desires of ones heart. It is about building up the inner man, the spiritual man, the gift of Grace that God has so tenderly lain upon us. Do you not know that the laws of the flesh – do not touch, do not taste, do not handle – are of no value to curbing the indulgence of the flesh? None perhaps were more rigorous in their physical devotion than the Pharisees – and none were more condemned by our Lord.

Nor can knowledge keep our hearts from charging headstrong into the abyss of self-lording. Theology, that strange construct of spiritual truth and intellectual cognition, is no saving force. Even the demons believe – and tremble. No, the reign of our King takes hold in our hearts when we vitiate the flesh, and vivify the spirit. Do not feed the cruel red goblins of fleshly indulgence, for they have a grip on hell itself. Do not let them grip your soul. Freedom is only ever found in the cool and gentle yoke of Christ, a spiritual life of regenerated spirit, affections, and desires.

Arm yourself because no-one else here will save you
The odds will betray you
And I will replace you
You can't deny the prize it may never fulfill you
It longs to kill you
Are you willing to die?

A Sad Decline

Well, it isn't exactly theology, but it does speak to so many theological ideas: John Blake blogs for CNN about the decline of love and romance in R&B music. As a lover of the classic rhythm and blues, I find this article comes with a sting of nostalgia and a longing for a time that was more, well, soulful. Read the article here.