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.