Conversations with my Internal Nymphomaniac

“I was just wondering what your church’s stance on lying and adultery was?”

Easy A (2010)

 

It is not an especially easy thing to acquire a stock photo that implies sex without being too racy for a nice, mild-mannered blog like mine. I felt this one just about struck the balance. Thanks to imagerymajestic at freedigitalphotos.net.

Her:     Hello.

Me:     Oh. It’s you.

Her:     Charming. It’s lovely to see you too.

Me:     How are you even still alive? I’ve deliberately not been feeding you.

Her:     Ah, yes, well, I wasn’t going to mention it, but since you brought it up, are you sure it wasn’t a little over the top to completely ignore Deadpool while it was in cinemas? I mean, I bet it was really funny. And meta – you love it when things are meta. And there were probably some really cool Easter eggs and links with the rest of the MCU.¹ You really mean to tell me you’d miss out on all that just because it had the odd sex scene in it?

Me:     Yes. Exactly. Now please go away.

Her:     But come on! It’s not even as if watching a sex scene is even a sin. You know loads of Christians for whom it isn’t even an issue.

Me:     Yeah, well, maybe they just don’t have you hanging about in their brains, because for me it definitely is an issue.

Her:     You know, I don’t think you realise how well you’re already doing on the whole sexual-immorality front. Just think about all the things you could be doing that you don’t do. To then go and implement a policy on top of all of that of not watching anything you know has sex in it – well, frankly, it seems prudish in the extreme. You’re really not doing anything to combat that Christian stereotype.

Me:     That’s not the point.

Her:     Maybe not, but you still care about it, don’t you? I mean, how lame is it going to look next time you turn down an invitation to go and see a film because you know it has sex in it? I bet you crack. You’re going all squishy inside just thinking about it.

Me:     That doesn’t mean I should be. After all, my friends are better than to think ill of me for something like that. And it shouldn’t matter anyway.

Her:     Shall we get onto the real reason I’m here?

Me:     No. Go away.

Her:     Remember that sex scene in that film where –

Me:     GO AWAY.

Her:     – and you were all, ‘I didn’t even know that was a thing!’ and –

Me:     I MEAN IT. GO AWAY.

Her:     What? It’s not even really lust. You’re just curious.

Me:     Why are you still here?

Her:     Look, you might not have been feeding me much just lately, but I’ve got enough stuff here already to keep me going for ages. How about that bit in that book where –

Me:     Go away, or I’ll start praying. I will.

Her:     Only you don’t want to do that, do you? Because the more you try to shut me up by praying, the more firmly you establish those neural pathways or whatever they are, and slowly, he becomes inextricably linked with me. And as much as it shames you to have me hanging about unchecked, it shames you even more to dishonour him like that.²

Me:     Oh, you think you’ve got me all figured out, don’t you?

Her:     I have. I am you. You only section me off and pretend I’m some alien influence because you’re so ashamed to admit that everything I do is really just you.

Me:     … touché.

Her:     You used to actually like me, remember? We used to have fun.

Me:     Arguably, no, we didn’t, because arguably, that wasn’t me.

Her:     Didn’t you hear what I just said? We’re the same person. Of course it was you.

Me:     Well, arguably, it wasn’t. It wasn’t the person I am now. It was the person I was. I am not that person any more. Ergo, it wasn’t me.

Her:     Oh, stop it. You never had any road-to-Damascus-style conversion.³ You can’t point to a ‘before’ and ‘after’. This ‘old self’, ‘new self’ stuff clearly doesn’t apply to you.

Me:     Oh, but it does. Shall I prove it? *opens Bible Gateway*

Her:     What are you going to do, stick ‘old self’ into the search engine?

Me:     Yup. Problem?

Her:     Oh, nothing. Just that it’ll surely be a bit embarrassing for the lovely people who read your blog to find out that that’s how you find the Bible passages you reference. Not by just, you know, having really good Bible knowledge.

Me:     Um. Not really. I expect they already know. Fancy some Romans 6?

Her:     No.

Me:     Tough. Have some anyway. All of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death … our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing … so you also must consider yourselves dead to sin.⁴

See this? All of us who are in Christ Jesus have had our old selves crucified with him. It doesn’t matter whether I can pinpoint the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of my being born again or not. After all, my salvation was planned before the foundation of the world.⁵ The point is that now I’m in Christ, and that means considering my old self, everything about me that belongs to sin and death, to have been crucified with him.

Shall we have a look at Ephesians 4 as well?

Her:     No.

Me:     Wrong answer. Let’s start at verse 21 – you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.⁶

It’s an active thing, see? I’m told to make deliberate efforts to put off the old self and put on the new.

Her:     Not very good at that, are you? Maybe you’re not quite as in Christ as you think.

Me:     Now you’re just talking rubbish. If I weren’t in Christ, would I be bothering to try to get rid of you?⁷

Her:     What are you saying exactly?

Me:     The me that you are, the me that used to like you – that me is my old self. I’ve been told to put off and crucify her. I mean you. I mean me.

Her:     Hmm, yeah, self-crucifixion. That’s clearly a better option than what I’ve been saying.

Me:     Well, quite.

Her:     You can’t be serious. I say you can have the things you want. God says you can’t, to the extent that you should kill the parts of yourself that want them. How is that better?

Me:     You just don’t get it, do you? The only things God wants to deprive me of are the things that belong to my old self, the one who’s sinful and corrupted and slowly but surely dying every moment. Meanwhile, you tell me to indulge every desire I have for those very things, and you would deprive me of what God wants for me, namely that I grow into my new self, the one who’s righteous and holy and perfect.

Her:     And he wants you to do that by … not having sex.

Me:     Not having sex unless I end up in the right situation to do so, namely when it will properly reflect the intimacy between God and his people in a lifelong-committed relationship.⁸ You know that, unlike some people and things I could mention, God doesn’t pressure or expect me to give over anything of myself in a sexual way except to someone who has solemnly promised to love me as he loves himself and be ready to lay down his life for me?⁹ And you still question that God wants what’s best for me? I suppose the long and the short of it is that you want me to be my own god and to testify to no glory greater than my own, whereas God wants me to understand the truth that he is God and, by aligning ever more closely with his perfect ways, to testify to his infinitely greater glory.

Her:     Well, that all sounds very nice, I’m sure, but the fact of the matter is, he still says you can’t have the things you want.

Me:     I don’t want the things I want. I mean, I don’t want the things my old self wants, the things you want, the things every part of me that’s still sinful and corrupt and dying wants. It was, after all, from slavery to those sinful desires that Jesus died to rescue me. What I really want now – what he has enabled me to want – is to know and love and follow him ever more closely.

Her:     Big words. But you’re kidding yourself if you think you can get rid of my influence on you that easily. You still want the things you say you don’t.

Me:     Yes. I do. I’ll admit it. But God is teaching me to want better things, his things, instead. And I’m slowly getting there.

Her:     Oh really? In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m still very much around.

Me:     True. But you said it yourself: I used to like you. And I don’t like you any more. Because if I set what you offer me alongside what God offers me, well, there’s really no comparison, is there?

Her:     I’m not going to just die off quietly, you know.

Me:     I know. But here’s the thing: no effort I make towards killing you off will be wasted, because eventually you’re going to come to nothing, just like everything that belongs to the imperfection of this current age. Every effort you make, on the other hand, towards dragging me back into slavery to my own sinful desires, will ultimately be wasted, because my righteousness is already guaranteed.

Her:     What you’re talking about is a long way off. In the meantime, I’m not going to let up, not for a moment.

Me:     So be it. Neither am I.

Footnotes

¹ Marvel Cinematic Universe, in case you didn’t know. Fancy re-watching the latest trailer for Captain America 3: Civil War? Of course you do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKrVegVI0Us.

² Just to be clear, this is not a piece of advice on my part to the effect that it’s a bad idea to pray when facing temptation. It is, on the contrary, most definitely a very good idea to pray when facing temptation. I’m actually kind of trying to highlight the fact that I often allow myself to be put off praying for reasons like this, and that that’s not good, because I’m only going to learn to give God the fear and honour that are his due by engaging with him more, not less – but I wasn’t sure that really came across, hence this explanatory footnote.

³ Referring, of course, to Saul/Paul’s famous encounter with Jesus: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+9&version=ESVUK.

⁴ Whole chapter: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=romans+6&version=ESVUK. Go on, give it a read; there’s a lot of good stuff in that ellipsis.

⁵ The first few verses of Ephesians 1 give the details: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+1&version=ESVUK.

⁶ Again, whole chapter for your perusal: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ephesians+4&version=ESVUK.

⁷ On which point, I present to you one of my favourite Adam4d webcomics (saying a lot because Adam4d is a genius): http://adam4d.com/keep-fighting/.

⁸ There are a number of reasons I think sex does this. For instance, the Church and Christ are equated to bride and groom (an idea which I explore a bit in my post ‘Dear Future Husband (Assuming You Exist)’ in the box on the right); idolatry is frequently equated to adultery in the Bible – try Ezekiel 16, for example, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel+16&version=ESVUK; and the Hebrew word for ‘know’, ידע, also means ‘have sex with’, which means that that meaning lingers in the background whenever God talks about knowing his people. That’s not, of course, to say that we, as individuals, have a sexual relationship with God, but rather that sex in some way describes the level of intimacy of God’s relationship with his people. Which I think is really cool.

⁹ Ephesians 5: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+5&version=ESVUK. This one’s also relevant for the previous footnote, so twice as much reason to read it.

Things to Do with an Empty Notebook

“You may want to keep a commonplace book which is a notebook where you can copy parts of books you think are in code, or take notes on a series of events you may have observed that are suspicious, unfortunate, or very dull. Keep your commonplace book in a safe place, such as underneath your bed, or at a nearby dairy.”

Lemony Snicket, Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography (2002)¹

 

The notebook I keep my poetry in. It has served me well these past eight-odd years.

I love notebooks: page after page of beautiful, clean, blank paper, waiting to be filled with those wondrous little things we call words, all conveniently bound together by some kind of aesthetically delightful cover. And other people, happily, seem to have picked up on the fact that I love notebooks, because I tend to get given them as presents a lot. Exceedingly pleasing as this fact is, it does mean that I end up with rather a lot of notebooks. Not that I’m complaining even in the slightest; thinking up ways to employ these notebooks is a joy rather than a burden, and today I offer for your perusal a selection of possible uses to which one might put an empty notebook.

1)       Write creatively.

In the fifth book of the A Series of Unfortunate Events sequence, The Austere Academy, we meet Isadora Quagmire, who keeps a commonplace book in which she writes rhyming couplets: I would rather eat a bowl of vampire bats / than spend an hour with Carmelita Spats and the like.² Couplets or otherwise, creative writing is fun. It doesn’t have to be great literature or anything. Case in point, the notebook I’ve been steadily filling with the poetry I write for the past eight years or so. This one’s called ‘The Ironic Poem’:

I keep on writing poems about poetry.

I think I do it almost automatically.

And when it seems the urge might just be going going gone,

I’ve only gone and written yet another flipping one.

2)      Keep a dictionary.

This may be one of those things that I’m in a minority for considering fun, but I’ll throw it out there anyway. Every time I come across a word I don’t know – be it in an academic article, a work of fiction,  a restaurant menu, wherever – I try to look it up, or make a note of it in order to look it up later.³ Then I write down the definition and etymology (if it’s from a language I have some familiarity with) in the notebook I have set aside for this purpose. The contents so far (rearranged into alphabetical order):

abrade · accouchement · acedia · acrimony · affidavit · alacrity · allomorph · allopathy · amniocentesis · amnion · amoebean · anaphoric · anaptyxis · anepigraphic · anodyne · antichresis · antipathy · antitype · aphorism · apocope · aposiopesis · apotropaic · apropos · arraign · ascetic · autophagy · bellicose · bombastic · bruschetta · burlap · cachet · cadastre · cadence · cadre · calque · carrel · castigate · cateocic · caudate · cavalcade · cenotaph · chalcenteric/chalcenterous · choliambic · chorion · chrestomathy · code-switching · cognizance · colloquy · commensurate · comport · concatenation · connubial · conterminous · copula · correlative · corollary · coterminous · counterpose · croton · cuckold · deictic · denominative · deontology · determinism · diatribe · diffident · diglossia · diktat · diptych · docket · doctrinaire · dyad · elenctic · epenthesis · equivocate · esoteric · euphorbiaceous · exponent · expressionism · firebrand · floruit · foursquare · fenugreek · gamut · garrulous · gazetteer · giro · hackney · halberd · haplography · hermetic · hierophant · homeopathy · homily · hypallage · hypocoristic · ideogram · ignominy · immolate · inconcinnity · indolent · indigent · ingenuous · instantiate · interlard · investiture · isopsephism · isopsephy · jurisprudence · lampoon · lexeme · lintel · litany · litigious · majuscule · matryoshka · metastasise · morpheme · morphophonemics · moussaka · mystagogue · nascent · neoteric · neuralgia · notary (public) · ochlocracy · ogive · ostracon · otiose · over against · palimpsest · panacea · paraenesis · patristic · penult · penury · pericope · periegesis · peristalsis · philately · phoneme · pilaster · pleonasm · polymetry · polysemic · prate · predilection · prelate · priamel · propaedeutic · prosody · prosopography · protreptic · psychagogue · punctilious · putative · qua · querent · redact · redolent · rentier · rigatoni · rumbustious · scazon · scion · semiotics · sequacious · sinuous · sinusoid · solecism · staurogram · stentorian · stereoscope · stratigraphy · subaltern · subsume · subvention · sunder · suppletion · tamarisk · tatsama · theosophy · theriomorphic · tort · trochee · uncial · univerbation · usufruct · vertiginous · vignette · vociferous

Can I recall exactly what all of these words mean consistently all the time? No. Has my vocabulary increased as a result of keeping a dictionary? Yes. Is this actually useful in day-to-day conversation? Probably not very. But words make me happy.

3)      Take sermon notes.

Until quite recently, I didn’t usually use to take notes in sermons and at Bible studies. I’m not sure whether I really thought myself capable of retaining all those spiritual insights by memory alone, but if I did, I was severely deluded. I suppose something in me was worried that taking notes would make a sermon feel too much like a lecture, which I felt would be a Bad Thing. On the contrary, however, the advantages of taking notes in a lecture – it’s easier to stay focussed during the talk, to recall the points made afterwards, and to check where the information you recall actually comes from – are surely equally advantageous for a sermon or Bible study. Arguably, they are even more so, the Bible being kind of the Infallible Word of God, Living and Active and Able to Discern the Thoughts and Intentions of the Heart, and in its entirety Useful for Training in Righteousness.⁴ By contrast, I can’t think of a single occasion when, say, Euripides’ Helen proved able to discern the thoughts of my heart or usefully train me in righteousness, and yet I was willing to take notes on that. So taking sermon notes is a habit I would recommend getting into.

4)      Start a project.

OK, so this one’s fairly vague, but that’s because the sort of project you might feel inclined to start is likely to be fairly specific to you as an individual, O Entirely Unique Reader. Personally, I keep the following:

a scrapbook of the lyrics to Owl City songs,⁵ written out and decorated by means of various artistic media, primarily collage;

a collection of informative lists, thus far consisting of UK counties, beach safety flags, the NATO phonetic alphabet, semaphore, Morse code, monarchs of England,⁶ and flags of UN states (I’m up to Jamaica);

a verse-by-verse translation of the book of Isaiah (I’m going for the whole Old Testament and felt disinclined to start at Genesis), including lots of parsing of Hebrew words.

Even if all three of the above sound thoroughly dreadful in your opinion, dear reader, I hope I’ve given you some sense of what I mean by a ‘project’. If you’ve ever felt that it would be a worthwhile thing if a certain set of information were collated and presented in a particular way, why not be the one to collate and present it thus?

5)      Keep a commonplace book.

As per the original Lemony Snicket suggestion. Even if one is not an orphan trying to solve the mystery of the fire that killed one’s parents while evading the dastardly schemes of a Count intent on stealing one’s hereditary fortune,⁷ there would surely be some value in keeping a book about one’s person in which to jot down any interesting or significant information one happens to come across or conceive of. Like, I don’t know, ideas for blog posts, say.

Footnotes

¹ A Series of Unfortunate Events is set to become a Netflix original series at some point in the future, though nobody seems able to decide whether this rather enthralling teaser trailer, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnwnFOb0hF4, is actually anything to do with what Netflix will be producing or is completely fanmade: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/netflixs-take-on-lemony-snickets-a-series-of-unfortunate-events-already-looks-brilliant-10368031.html. Either way, I look forward to the adaptation being released and sincerely hope it’s done well.

² Thanks to the Lemony Snicket Wikia for its compilation of Isadora’s poetry: http://snicket.wikia.com/wiki/Isadora_Quagmire.

³ My first port of call tends to be the ‘British Dictionary Definitions’ section at http://www.dictionary.com/, but some specific technical vocabulary is absent therefrom and requires a little more online sleuthing.

⁴ Everyone’s favourite verses about scripture, Hebrews 4:12 and 2 Timothy 3:16. As always, they’re worth looking at in context; here’s the Hebrews to kick you off: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews+4&version=ESVUK. Point to consider: yes, the word of God very much is that famous double-edged sword, but its message does someone no good if he or she is not ‘united by faith with those who listened’ (v2).

⁵ Owl City is one of the project titles used by Adam Young, who recently started writing soundtracks for historical events. A new one comes out every month, they’re free to download, there’s some seriously gorgeous album art, and the scores themselves are genuinely absolutely beautiful – plus, it seems from the information on the website that this is something Adam Young has always really wanted to do. So do go and check this stuff out: http://www.ayoungscores.com/.

⁶ Although I decided to start from Alfred the Great in my list, I can’t pass up the opportunity to link to this legendary Horrible Histories song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqHwMloqHY4.

⁷ A rough description of the plot of the series. For a rough (and extremely hilarious) description of the character of Count Olaf, this song is just the job: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsS3reVFLJI.