Why so many problems begin with frustrated desire

Every day, headlines assault us with troubling news. These recent titles from a local news website are just a small sampling:

• Two Shotgunned to Death [source]
• Joyriding Gang Member Slain; Crash Injures Family [source]
• Local Soldier Dies in Afghanistan [source]
• School Gets Tough on Commencement Outbursts [source]
• Wife Gets $184 Million in Divorce Ruling [source]

From international to household warfare, roadway to classroom outrage, and mortal to financial loss, such stories reveal our fallen, human propensity to sin.

The cause of these impulsive, sinful outbursts is no secret: When we want what we cannot get, we lash out.

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight (James 4:1-3).

Although this passage does not seem especially applicable — after all, not many of us are covetous murderers — it echoes Jesus’ words from the Beatitudes: “You have heard that it was said … ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment” (Matthew 5:21-22, emphasis added). Indeed, both these exhortations address the church, not the headline-generating unbelievers that feel comfortably distant from us.

Frustration Is the Key

But the root problem is the same for us all, believers or not: frustration.

“The source of anger is often unmet expectations or personal rights,” writes Os Hillman in his devotional on anger. “We believe we are entitled to a particular outcome to a situation. When this doesn’t happen, it triggers something in us.” This thwarted desire triggers more than mere squabbles, says Martyn Lloyd-Jones; it can even lead to international war.

But just because frustration “triggers” anger — as a physician’s tap triggers a knee jerk — it does not provoke a hardwired, truly uncontrollable response. Rather, says Hillman, “We all choose to get angry. No one else is to blame for our anger. … Anger only reveals what is inside.”

Such anger does not always express itself in physical confrontations like war. Often it is subtler, masquerading as rationalization and self-righteous criticism. Pastors know well these guises of anger, for the one behind the pulpit is familiar with the disappointment and critique resulting from a congregation’s high expectations. In “Why I Expect Conflict,” Pastor Ben Patterson describes two church members who simultaneously abandoned the congregation for opposite, rational reasons: one wished the pastor were more conservative, the other more liberal.

Simple disagreement is natural in any ministry relationship. But when competing interests cannot be resolved, frustration festers and chaos results. As Patterson explains,

Differences, even clashes, between parties in a church do not in themselves constitute conflict of a destructive kind. They can be signs of vitality. … It is when they defy peaceful resolution and become protracted and entrenched in the life of a church that they become sinful and destructive.

Dragon Droppings

The primary evidence of this sinful self-interest is a restless and inflammatory tongue. Just a few of the evils that the apostle James warns can emanate from an undisciplined tongue include blasphemy, profanity, boasting, flattery, complaining, murmuring, deceit, hypocrisy, and mockery. These myriad sins are comparable to the fiery exhalations of dragons, as Marshall Shelley aptly states in Well Intentioned Dragons:

Dragons are best known for what comes out of their mouths. At times their mouths are flame throwers; other times the heat and smoke are not apparent, but the noxious gas does the damage. Their tongues may be smooth, but they are usually forked.

Fortunately, the antidote to heated tongues — or frustrations — is fairly straightforward, though it may be difficult to swallow.

R_x: Stop Talking

The first prescription is to close our mouths. “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry,” James suggests, “for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires” (1:19-20; see also 1:26 and 3:2). Describing our typical response to maltreatment, Mike Zigarelli offers a solution to undisciplined behavior: “Injustice visited us and we threw objectivity to the wind. We responded instinctively. Quickly. Verbally. Probably improperly. Such a response is a function of the way we’re made. … The first step in responding to unfair treatment is to tighten the reigns on our tongue and initially to retreat.”

R_x: Start Praying

The second mandate is to pray. But not just any kind of praying. It must focus on the necessary and helpful rather than on the hedonistic. “You do not have, because you do not ask God,” James explains. “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures” (4:1-3).

Choosing prayer “will be the turning point,” Zigarelli promises. We should specifically ask God to “reveal the source of that anger,” Os Hillman suggests. “Ask him to heal you of any fears that may be the root of your anger. Ask God to help you take responsibility for your response to difficult situations.”

Often, however, our immediate response to difficulties is not prayer at all. “In many areas of our lives, we simply do not consult God. … He is not opposed as much as merely ignored,” Terry Muck admits in his helpful book Liberating the Leader’s Prayer Life. Muck also echoes James’s counsel on slowness to speak, applying it to speaking to God as well:

At times, our prayer requests go unanswered because they are poorly formed or presumptuous. We do not take time to discover what the true, pure desires of our hearts should be, and thus offer up incomplete, half-hearted requests that God would be a fool to answer.

R_x: Start Submitting

The third medication is to submit. A dose of repentance and humility can aid us in deciding which desires to relinquish, and which to pursue.

Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you.

Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn, and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up (James 4:7-10).

As we submit to God, we also need to submit to others. “We must develop an accountability relationship with someone who can provide grace, understanding, and tough questions,” suggests Jim Burns. And to overcome submission to the devil, we must pull out our “I-mean-business” card, as Rich Miller calls it. For resisting the devil demands serious spiritual warfare.

R_x: Start Doing

These three spiritual prescriptions, however, are useless in theory only. We must also act, as James exhorts us. “Do not merely listen to the Word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says” (1:22).

When we recognize that frustration is the root of anger, we can begin to understand the reason for the troubling headlines in our news. And we can ask God for help to control our desires, manage our tongues, and keep us out of the news!

(Your comments and thoughts are welcome!)

—

Originally published at CTLibrary on June 13, 2007
Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today International.
Used with permission.

(Note: Most of the articles linked above require paid membership at CTLibrary.com to view, but if you’re the kind of person who enjoys reading Christianity Today, Leadership, Books & Culture, or Christian History & Biography, it may well be worth it. Also, though I was once employed by Christianity Today, I do not personally benefit from any transactions through these sites.)

[tags]accountability, anger, article, Beatitudes, behavior, behaviour, Ben-Patterson, bible, blasphemy, blogrodent, boasting, Christ, christianity, christianity-today, Christianity-Today-Library, church, church-split, complaining, covet, criticism, ctlibrary, deceit, desires, evil, expectations, faith, family, fight, fighting, flattery, frustrated-desire, grace, hatred, hedonism, hypocrisy, James-1, James-4, jealousy, Jim-Burns, kill, leadership, listening, loss, Marshall-Shelley, Martyn-Lloyd-Jones, Matthew-5, Mike-Zigarelli, mockery, murder, murmuring, original-sin, Os-Hillman, outrage, pain, pastors, patience, personal-rights, prayer, profanity, published battle, quarrelling, relationships, religion, repentance, self-abnegation, self-centeredness, self-denial, self-interests, selfishness, sin, Source-of-Anger, spiritual-warfare, submission, temptation, Terry-Muck, the-tongue, theology, war, warfare, Well-Intentioned-Dragons[/tags]

My Spider-Man 3 movie-based Bible Study is here, at long last! I have permission from CTI to provide the study here on my site. Over the next few days or weeks, I’ll post the previous combo-study I wrote for Spider-Man 1 and Spider-Man 2 as well.

Warning: the following contains spoilers! Stop now and do not read below this paragraph if you hate knowing anything beyond what the trailers reveal.

Spider-Man 3
The greatest battle lies … within

The first two Spider-Man films established Peter Parker and his super-heroic alter-ego as a popular and profitable theatrical draw: Spidey is loveably unstoppable and Peter Parker is the nice boy everybody wants to see “get the girl.”

But Spider-Man 3 severs those silky threads of comfortable niceness, dumping Peter Parker and Spider-Man into a dark abyss where evil infects the heart and vengeance slakes its thirst.

This guide will help you discuss some of the spiritual themes of Spider-Man 3, focusing on pride, the struggle against sin, and forgiveness. Feel free to use this as a starting-point for discussion and explore any other themes you feel appropriate to your small group.

Movie Summary

In Spider-Man Peter Parker was an excited kid testing his boundaries and learning how to use fantastic powers responsibly and for the good of society. In Spider-Man 2, he was sick with unspoken love and the unbearable burden of using power wisely. Laying aside his suit and mask, Peter Parker became nearly impotent until Mary Jane’s life was threatened and he rediscovers his purpose through sacrifice. As that film closes, Mary Jane at last learns of Parker’s love for her, and his super-hero identity.

As the third chapter in Parker’s life opens, we fully expect to hear wedding bells. Instead, we see Parker still in love but struggling with commitment and insecurity even while a crime-free city celebrates his alter-ego, awarding Spider-Man the key to the city. Parker is trapped in a knotted skein of conceit and self-doubt.

The film starts out romantically enough, with the timeless beauty, Mary Jane, lounging in the center of Parker’s web and still the center of his life. But an ominous falling star is prelude to a venomous creature quietly attaching itself to Parker without his knowledge. The action starts When Harry Osborn, Parker’s best friend and heir to the Norman Osborn legacy (insanity included), attacks the love-struck Parker, nearly killing himself in the process. In short order Parker saves his mortal enemy’s life only to permanently disfigure him later, spurns Mary Jane with a thoughtless bit of grandstanding, learns the true identity of his uncle’s killer, is infected by the evil ooze from outer space, attempts murder himself, and faces a tremendous battle on multiple fronts, both internal and external.

If warding off Harry as the new Green Goblin isn’t enough, Spider-Man also has to face Flint Marko, his uncle’s killer, who — by way of the usual freak accident — has become a nebulous shape-shifting whirlwind of sand. When the space-borne symbiote infects Parker, he gains even more power and abilities than he previously enjoyed, but along with the power comes a compulsion to aggression and vengeance that the proud and complacent Parker is unprepared to resist.

As the film concludes, Parker has to find a way to not only resist the symbiote but also to destroy it as when its new host, Eddie Brock, joins league with the Sandman to threaten Mary Jane and destroy Spider-Man for good.

Discussing the Scenes

Select one or more of these themes to discuss:

• Pride Before the Fall
• The Battle Within
• Forgiveness and Redemption

1. Pride Before the Fall
(Proverbs 11:1-3; Proverbs 16:8; Proverbs 29:23; Psalm 10:4)

The film opens with Peter Parker introducing himself in voiceover, and it’s difficult to ignore the subtext of both pride and lingering insecurity:

“Its me, Peter Parker, ‘Your friendly neighborhood —’ you know. I’ve come a long way from being the boy who was bit by a spider. Back then nothing seemed to go right for me. But now? … People really like me! The city is safe and sound.

“I guess I’ve had something to do with that.

“My uncle Ben would be proud.”

Later, when Mary Jane is struggling over critical reviews and her own insecurities as an actress, Parker offers up less-than-helpful clichês from his own experience as Spider-Man who has — he admits with vanishing humility — “become something of an icon:”

“Listen … this is something that you’re going to have to get used to. Believe me: I know. Spider-Man gets attacked all the time. … You can’t let it bring you down. You just gotta believe in yourself, and you pull yourself together, and you get right back on the horse . …”

Parker’s ultimate fall begins as he infected by evil, surrendering to a hunger for vengeance — and becoming enslaved by it. As the dark symbiote threatens to take over not only his suit but his very soul, he revels in a new-found “bad-boy” persona. We watch the devolution of Peter Parker as he maims his best friend, struts and flirts audaciously, destroys his uncle’s murderer Flint Marko, humiliates his newspaper rival Eddie Brock, and uses his lab partner, Gwen Stacy, to crush Mary Jane’s heart.

Pride is the exaltation of one’s self above all others. As Peter’s arrogance swells, he sees Mary Jane’s plight only in light of his own conceit. And even as M.J. reaches out to him from her own pain, knowing that Parker is giving in to blood lust for Flint Marko, he rejects her help, cutting her off: “Okay. I get it. Thank you, but … I’m fine. I don’t need your help.”

The moment Parker isolates himself in misery, cutting himself off from others, that’s when the symbiote takes over.

• Have you ever found yourself rejecting help for no good reason other than pride? How did you come to recognize the pride? What did you do about it?
• Even though Peter has already wounded her, when Mary Jane learns about Marko being uncle Ben’s true killer, she reaches out to Parker and offers help. How does pride come into play when you are the victim of someone else’s ego? How do you deal with your own wounded pride?
• How does Jesus’ command to offer forgiveness “seventy times seven” times combat pride?
• How do you guard against the effects of pride when helping others who are hurting or who are bound by sinful habits?
• What is the chief danger of doing ministry of any sort with pride in your heart?
• The proud are often unaware of their condition. What proactive steps can you take to avoid and address the sin of pride that may be lurking in your heart?

2. The Battle Within
(Romans 7:14-19; Romans 8:5-17; Romans 12; Philippians 2:1-18; Philippians 4:8-9)

Immediately after learning that Flint Marko killed his uncle Ben, Peter Parker wants justice, but wants it on his terms, in his way, by his own hand. Ultimately, Parker’s desire is not for mere justice but vengeance, which Aunt May describes this way:

“It’s like a poison it can — it can take you over before you know it — turn us into something ugly.”

All sin, vengeance included, is transformative: it corrupts from within, working its way out through our words, actions, and even inaction. When caught or snared in sin, even the believer has a difficult time doing what is right. As Paul describes in Romans 7:18-19:

“I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing.”

Read Romans 12.

• If sin corrupts and is transformative, what is the antidote? What attitude and actions are necessary to reverse the corruption and to be transformed the way God wants?
• Do sinful desires themselves cause us to sin, or is there something else at work? Besides a desire or temptation to sin, what is necessary to lead to sin’s bondage?
  

  Leader’s Note: In Romans 7, the key to freedom from sin is to have our minds set on what the Spirit desires. But what does the Spirit desire? Romans 12, says that when our mind is transformed and renewed we will know God’s will — what the Spirit desires. Philippians 2 further promises that as we work out our salvation with the attitude and mind of Christ it is God himself “who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.”

• If the way we think is the key to living either in bondage to sin or as a slave to righteousness, then how should we go about changing our minds? Like Peter Parker / Spider-Man in the movie, how do we throw off the sin that entangles us?
  

  Leader’s Note: Try to guide the discussion toward repentance as a first step, which involves not only recognizing that one’s actions have been sinful, but also involves a permanent rejection of those sins. Subsequent steps would involve worship, prayer, and reading and meditating on Scripture.

Read Philippians 4:8-9.

• Regular spectator sessions in church aren’t enough to change thought-patterns or behavior. Saying a few prayers here and there aren’t enough, reading a daily Bible verse isn’t enough, and neither is hanging out with good, upright Christians. Righteousness doesn’t “rub off.” In light of this, why is Paul’s advice to the Philippians so critical, and so effective?
• How have your thought-habits changed over the years?
• How have these habitual ways of thinking changed your behavior?
• What’s been the hardest pattern to change?

3. Forgiveness and Redemption
(Matthew 6:9-13; Matthew 18:15-35; Luke 7:36-50; Luke 11:2-4; Ephesians 4:29-32)

The primary emotion driving Peter Parker / Spider-Man throughout this film is vengeance. On the surface, Spider-Man is just doing his job: helping to stop crime and fight evil. Even if he felt nothing toward Flint Marko, Spider-Man would still have had to stop the Sandman from theft and mayhem. Even if he had never seen the black, gooey parasite from space, Spider-Man would still have had to stop it in whatever form it took. And even if Parker had not been Harry Osborn’s best friend, he would have still had to deal with Harry’s madness, just as he had to deal with Norman Osborn’s insanity.

But each of these cases it gets personal. Parker has a real hatred toward Marko for having killed his uncle Ben, and he intends to make him pay with his life because “he deserved it.” And the infected Spider-Man taunts Harry with mocking words, goading him into carelessness and justifying a satisfying coup de grace. With Venom, it became personal because Parker not only opposed its new host, Eddie Brock, but he utterly humiliated him, destroying his career and reputation.

Of course, other characters also struggle with forgiveness and old grudges. Harry Osborn is being driven mad in his belief that Peter Parker as Spider-Man killed his father. Eddie Brock cannot bring himself to forgive Parker for revealing his deplorable journalistic ethics. In fact, he prays to God: “It’s Brock, sir. Edward Brock, Junior. I come before you today, humbled and humiliated to ask you for one thing — I want you to kill Peter Parker.” Mary Jane struggles with her humiliation when Spider-Man kisses Gwen Stacy in public — with their kiss! Marko’s wife cannot forgive his sin, and Marko cannot forgive himself.

While all the crossed lines of bitterness and sin don’t get resolved in the storyline, by the end of the film, Peter Parker releases Marko from his debt of guilt, Harry Osborn releases his unfounded bitterness and forgives Parker, and Mary Jane forgives Parker for his actions while under the influence of pride and the poisonous goo.

But the most stunning sequence in the film is when Parker literally tears the black ooze out of his body in the form of the black suit. It is almost a near-perfect metaphor for repentance and redemption as he crouches underneath the cross free of his stain, washed clean by rain from above.

• Much has been made in popular literature of the need to “forgive yourself” before you can forgive others. What do you think of this concept. Is it biblically valid? Why or why not?
• In Matthew, while speaking of forgiveness, Jesus describes our act of forgiveness as both binding and losing things in heaven and on earth. What do you think this means? How does forgiveness — or the withholding of forgiveness bind or release?

In Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4), Jesus gives us a model for prayer. In it, he demonstrates how we ought to pray regarding forgiveness: “Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.”

• What implications does this part of the Lord’s prayer have for us regarding forgiveness?
• What happens to our ability to pray effectively if we are knowingly harboring grudges? Why does this affect prayers?
• If we are entangled in sin ourselves, what does that do to our own ability to forgive others? What should you do if someone asks you for forgiveness for a sin you commit yourself?
• How does forgiveness provide a release? What kind of release? If someone withholds forgiveness, what doesn’t get released?
• Have you ever sought forgiveness for something and had your request rejected? How did this make you feel, what happened as a result?
• What is the hardest thing for you to imagine forgiving? Why? Is it possible for you to forgive anything, and if so, does that make you weak, or is it a sign of strength?
• Is there a difference between forgiveness and apathy? Or between forgiveness and being “a wallflower?” What’s the difference? How do you know the difference when you see it?
• How do you let go of the anger and hurt when you’ve forgiven someone?

As the Credits Roll:

• Why do the Spider-Man films resonate so much? What made first two films so popular (to the tune of $1.7 billion grossed worldwide)?
• Do you think this third film is consistent with the spiritual themes from the first two movies?
• What encourages you in this film?
• What is hard to swallow philosophically, morally, or theologically?
• What do you think the major characters in this film “learned” by the end of the story? How were they changed by events?
• What do you think about Eddie Brock’s prayer, that God “kill Peter Parker?” Was the venomous ooze depicted as an answer to prayer? Ultimately, Peter Parker was not killed, so how does the storyline change how you perceive that scene?
• At the end of the film, Peter Parker says, in voiceover:
  

  “Whatever comes our way, whatever battle we have raging inside us, we always have a choice. My friend Harry taught me that. He chose to be the best of himself. It’s the choices that make us who we are, and we can always choose to do what’s right.”

  What do you think about that? Do our choices make us who we are, or are we revealed by the kind of choices we make? What’s the difference?

Based on:

Spider-Man 3 (Columbia Pictures and Marvel Enterprises, 2007); screenplay by Sam Raimi, Ivan Raimi, and Alvin Sargent; directed by Sam Raimi; based on the Marvel comic book character, Spider-Man, created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Rated PG-13.

—Study by Rich Tatum, blogger, freelance writer,
and former CTI online media editor.

Copyright &copy 2007, Christianity Today International, all rights reserved.
Used with permission.

[tags]Alvin-Sargent, Arrogance, Bible, Bible-Study, BlogRodent, Bryce-Dallas-Howard, Christianity-Today-International, ChristianityToday.com, Columbia-Pictures, Discussion-Guide, Eddie-Brock, Evangelical, Film, Film-Review, Flint-Marko, Forgiveness, Gwen-Stacy, Harry-Osborn, Hatred, Heroes, Ivan-Raimi, James-Franco, Kirsten-Dunst, Leaders-Guide, Love, Marvel, Marvel-comic-book, Mary-Jane, Mary-Jane-Watson, May-Parker, Movie, Movie-Based-Bible-Study, New-Goblin, Peter-Parker, Pride, Rosemary-Harris, Sam-Raimi, Sandman, Scripture, Sin, Small-Groups, Spider-Man, Spider-Man-1, Spider-Man-2, Spider-Man-3, Spidey, Stan-Lee, Steve-Ditko, Super-Hero, Thomas-Haden-Church, Tobey-Maguire, Topher-Grace, Vengeance, Venom, Web-Slinger[/tags]

Update: The Spider-Man 3 study can be found here.

In early 2005 I wrote a Bible study for the Spider-Man 1 & 2 movies, currently only available via ChristianityToday.com. Last week I stopped by the offices of Christianity Today International and “volunteered” to freelance the Bible study for Spider-Man 3, as well, opening May 4 in a theater near you. (Here’s the official site. Here’s the IMDB site.)

So, this coming Tuesday, thanks to CT Movies editor, Mark Moring, I will attend a screening of Spider-Man 3 at 10 AM in downtown Chicago. Wahoo! After that, I will put on my thinking cap, review my extensive notes, think hard and start writing about the many redemptive themes from the film to weave into a Bible study useful for small group discussions and after-movie coffee binges. The Bible study I write will be truly Bible-based, pulling in not only quotes and themes from the movie, but tieing them into Biblical themes, sometimes expanding on the film’s premises, sometimes redirecting, sometimes contradicting or refuting.

Spider-Man I and II Bible Study

“With great power comes great responsibility.”

Spider-Man currently holds the Guinness Book of World Records award for the largest single-day box-office earnings ($43.6 million for its first Saturday opening) and is currently the fifth highest-grossing film in U.S. history ($403.7 million), which paved the way for an even more critically acclaimed sequel, Spider-Man 2.

This study will look at both Spider-Man movies, explore what it means to be a hero, note how choices shape our character, and examine the responsibilities that come with the gift of power.

What’s nice is the Spider-Man movie franchise has consistently provided a wealth of material to reflect on. In fact, Spidey 2 was so packed with religious themes and imagery some suspected that the director, Sam Raimi, might have been intentionally making Spidey look Messiah-like. But, no, Raimi hasn’t gone all “Jesusy” on us — it’s just hard to pull of heroism without being at least a little like Jesus, our ultimate real-life hero. Even the Wachowski brothers couldn’t avoid it with Neo in The Matrix (incidentally, I also wrote a Bible study for the three Matrix films, available at CTI as well).

More good news, according to my editor at CTI, I may be able to republish my original, unedited studies here on my blog for your delectation. I’ll keep you updated for details.

Rich

[tags]Bible, Bible-Study, BlogRodent, Christianity-Today-International, ChristianityToday.com, Marvel, Marvel-Comics, Movie-Based-Bible-Studies, Movie-Review, Movies, Spider-Man, Spider-Man-3, Spider-Man-Three, Spidey, film, movie, movies, small-group-discussion-guide, small-groups, theology[/tags]

Greed is the surprising accompaniment to almost all our sins.

We all like lists. They help create organized presentations, and they are easy to remember. Perhaps that is why God chose a list format to present some of his most well-known laws. But what if we took that list — the Ten Commandments — and reduced it to its essence? What basic sins would we identify? One hopelessly alliterative preacher condensed the Decalogue to a clever three-point quip: man’s chief temptations are “gold, girls, and glory.” Gary Downing, in his article “Accountability That Makes Sense,” agrees, calling them “the three issues with which we all struggle: money, sex, and power.”

But perhaps we could distill even further, to a sort of grand unifying sin: greed. It is the misplaced love and desire that drives broken hearts to seek joy, fulfillment, and significance in anything other than God.

That is, in fact, how Randy Rowland describes greed in his piece on the seven deadly sins. “Greed can take many forms,” he notes. It can be “the desire for money, position, power, prestige, perks … an insatiable hunger for bigger budgets, bigger buildings, and more bodies in the pews.” Greed always lurks nearby wherever sin resides. In fact, it is a surprising accompaniment to three rather familiar sins.

Greed is more than just another word for materialism; it also expresses itself in sexual sin. Why else would God command us, “You shall not covet … your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant” (Exodus 20:17, emphasis mine)? When the usual suspect, material lust, couples with sexual greed, the result is America’s porn industry, which began to flourish in 1958 with the publication of Hugh Hefner’s first Playboy. In less than half a century, one lonely man’s misplaced desire has turned our entire culture upside down. For according to Read Mercer Schuchardt in “Hugh Hefner’s Hollow Victory,” Hefner and his ilk earn over $10 billion a year capitalizing on consumers’ thwarted longing for love.

Our natural drive to love and be loved, when frustrated, suppressed, or abused, can mutate into a consuming greed for unnatural relationships or extramarital sex. In the Leadership Library book Sins of the Body, counselors Hal B. Schell and Gary Sweeten describe how their clients fall into the trap of sexual addiction. For many of them, including Don, a frequent customer of prostitutes and porn shops, Claire, a high-priced call girl addicted to prostitution, and Jan, a church musician compulsively seeking homosexual experiences, greed begins in a wounded heart. Trauma and repeated bad choices pervert natural desires for love, significance, and relationship into greedy addictions to sex, power, and abuse.

While helping these clients, Schell and Sweeten employ a team strategy for their counseling sessions in order to prevent transference and temptation. The risk of temptation is significant, as a 1988 Leadership poll on pastoral indiscretion proves. One out of every five pastors who admitted to sexual contact outside marriage indicated the encounter arose through a counseling situation. A more recent report on internet porn use among pastors suggests leaders are prone to sexual greed when they fail to nurture loving and healthy relationships. “Pastors are as vulnerable as anyone else to sexual sin,” notes therapist Harry Schaumburg. “In fact, they may be more vulnerable. Isolation and loneliness are inherent to the position. And many pastors neglect their personal relationships for the sake of ministry.”

Such obsession with work can be another manifestation of misplaced or frustrated love. In “Confessions of a Workaholic,” Ralph Milton explains how the work-addicted person attempts to become indispensable on the job, failing in the process to nurture his relationships with others. Then when his relationships sour, work becomes an escape from painful reality. In fact, Milton even suggests “dependence on overwork and dependence on overeating are psychologically very similar to drug dependence.”

And yes, greedy eating can also bear out this distorted longing for love and comfort. The Christian dieting industry, however, often avoids the terms greed or gluttony. An observation Dennis Okholm makes may explain why: “Of the seven deadly sins, gluttony seems the least culpable because it is a vice that arises from our nature. We require food to survive, and food usually brings pleasurable sensations to the palate.” But when the belly becomes a god, the proper balance between need and pleasure disappears. The evil of greedy eating is not in the food itself, nor in its accompanying pleasure. Instead, the sin lies in how we think about food and why we consume it. Gluttony “refers to a desire or a longing that seeks filling. It is an ‘exaggerated and misplaced longing.'”

Indeed, whatever the addiction or vice, each is symptomatic of unfulfilled longing, misplaced love, and debased worship.

—

Originally published at CTLibrary on February 14, 2007
Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today International.
Used with permission.

(Note: Most of the articles linked above require paid membership at CTLibrary.com to view, but if you’re the kind of person who enjoys reading Christianity Today, Leadership, Books & Culture, or Christian History & Biography, it may well be worth it. Also, though I was once employed by Christianity Today, I do not personally benefit from any transactions through these sites.)

[tags]abuse, Accountability, Addiction, adultery, Affection, BlogRodent, Christianity-Today, Christianity-Today-Library, CTLibrary, Decalogue, Dennis-Okholm, desire, dieting-industry, diets, fulfillment, Gary-Downing, Gary-Sweeten, gluttony, gold-girls-and-glory, Greed, Hal-B-Schell, Harry-Schaumburg, Hugh-Hefner, lists, longing, Love, lust, materialism, Mercer-Schuchardt, money, money-sex-and-power, over-eating, Playboy, porn, power, prostitution, Ralph-Milton, Randy-Rowland, seven-deadly-sins, sex, sex-addict, sexual-addiction, sexual-sin, significance, Ten-Commandments, vice, Workaholic, Workaholism, worship[/tags]

While things are confusing down here, we can always trust in the hope of heaven.

About an hour northeast of Indianapolis on April 26, 2006, a tractor-trailer drifted across the Interstate 69 median. In its path: ten students and staff in a Taylor University van. The tractor ripped through one side of the van, scattering wallets, purses, and debris across the dark roadway and sending five souls into eternity.

In the accident’s aftermath, one survivor was identified as Laura VanRyn, and officials contacted her family as she was airlifted from the site in a comatose state. Over the next several weeks the VanRyn family kept constant and prayerful vigil at her bedside while she struggled out of her coma.

Then came the shattering revelation: the young woman they lovingly watched over did not answer to the name Laura VanRyn. Instead, a battered and broken stranger lay in her place: fellow Taylor student and co-worker Whitney Cerak. Laura VanRyn had not survived the accident and was already buried under a headstone bearing another name.

And so, even as one family plunged from hope into confused grief, another family was delivered from mourning into sober joy. One daughter presumed to be in heaven remains on Earth, and the other thought to be alive and recuperating had long departed for eternal life.

Reading this we might wonder, How on earth could such things happen? briefly forgetting that on this side of eternity we stumble through a fallen world filled with imperfection, confusion, chaos, and randomness. The ordered illusion of our daily grind lulls us into slumber; but suddenly we are reminded: this dark highway we travel is littered with the debris of the cosmic crash of sin and paradise. A midnight collision, death, and the mystery of misidentification briefly wake us from our dreams.

But all is not chaos; we have hope. Some things remain certain and absolute, if not now, then surely in the life to come — eternity awaits. Though mere humans might mistake one departed soul for another, we trust that the Shepherd knows his sheep. And whether you have welcomed the God of eternity into your heart or you have barricaded it from within, in the end you will know and be known, without misidentification. You will enter into eternity identity intact, whether to heaven or to hell.

But what do we know about eternity? What can we profitably speculate on, and what’s mere fanciful fodder? How much of our identities will we retain in the afterlife? Will we know our children? Will our parents recognize us? If God transforms my broken body in eternity, will I recognize myself?

Many questions about eternity don’t come with easy answers — if any. Some questions come with controversy. With few exceptions, the men and women of Scripture had not seen heaven or hell, and those who did had more pressing concerns to relate. Paul the Apostle could not describe his vision (2 Corinthians 12:2-4). John, in his Revelation, focused on the endgame victory. And Jesus insisted we choose the proper destination without providing a glossy vacation guide to heaven.

Nevertheless, the Bible says much about the life that continues after death. And a quick search through the CTLibrary archives offers up a dizzying array of articles with enough insight and controversy to feed and enlighten your imagination. You could head on over and start searching immediately, but be warned: querying for heaven returns a mountainous 3,437 articles, hell presents an abysmal 1,747 hits, and the combined heaven and hell search still uncovers a daunting 737-item reading list — good for about five weeks of non-stop, eight-hour-a-day reading.

But, before launching into a prolonged click fest of eternal verities, allow us to offer a few suggestions for orientation.

A good place to start in any discussion of the afterlife is ground zero: the soul. Writing for Books & Culture in “Is Science Good for the Soul?” Matt Donnelly introduces us to the debate over the nature of the soul — whether the Bible describes the soul and body as two separate things (dualism) or as eternally inseparable (nonreductive physicalism). And why should this matter? “While talk of conscious robots or cloned humans may sound like science fiction, Christians must be prepared to engage this brave new world by articulating a vision for the future of humanity that combines scientific knowledge with biblical wisdom.”

Or you could go back in time to explore early Christian beliefs about eternity in Jeffrey Burton Russell’s article for Christian History, “Goodness, Gracious(ness), Great Balls of Fire.” Russell provides a handy roadmap covering Irenaeus, various apocryphal texts, Augustine, the Venerable Bede, Dante, Thomas Aquinas, and more. We should study these ancient texts because, as Russell notes, “the modern worldview assumes that material things are more real than spiritual things. Perhaps this is why so many people have impoverished ideas about heaven and hell — places they cannot see or touch and therefore fail to imagine.”

Writing for Christianity Today in “Afraid of Heaven,” Kenneth Kantzer offers more reasons for our impoverished eternal imagination. First, we fail to truly believe heaven exists, only grasping for heaven as death nears or suffering escalates. Then, more damningly, Kantzer suggests, “we do not yearn to be near God because we do not find sin utterly repugnant or goodness rapturously attractive. … We cannot imagine [heaven], we cannot anticipate it, and, therefore, we cannot long for it.” Thankfully, Kantzer offers hope for those prepared to submit: “By [the] regenerating and sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, we are bit by bit restored so as to become prepared for eternal life in God’s good kingdom.”

And for those who are prepared? What clues does the Bible provide? Peter Kreeft, writing for CT in “What Will Heaven Be Like?” addresses 35 popular questions about life in heaven, while Anthony Hoekema brilliantly surveys the biblical evidence in “Heaven: Not Just an Eternal Day Off.”

Regarding the unprepared, The Evangelical Alliance published a comprehensive report summarizing what can be said of hell. Fortunately, CT had Robert A. Peterson on hand to boil it down to simplicity in “Undying Worm, Unquenchable Fire.” And Tim Keller’s Leadership article, “Preaching Hell in a Tolerant Age,” outlines some persuasive reasons why we postmodern Christians must believe hell exists.

Even if we had guarantees for long and healthy lives, barring rapture, death remains certain, respecting neither power, prestige, wealth, nor identity. But an even greater certainty looms over death, nullifying its sting, providing us hope, and drying our tears: the hope of heaven.

If heaven’s been on your mind lately, we pray these articles help you grow in knowledge, wisdom, and passion for the certainty of heaven’s reward.

—

Originally published at CTLibrary on June 14, 2006
Copyright © 2006 Christianity Today International.
Used with permission.

(Note: Most of the articles linked above require paid membership at CTLibrary.com to view, but if you’re the kind of person who enjoys reading Christianity Today, Leadership, Books & Culture, or Christian History & Biography, it may well be worth it. Also, though I was once employed by Christianity Today, I do not personally benefit from any transactions through these sites.)

[tags]2-Corinthians, afterlife, Anthony-Hoekema, Augustine, Bible, BlogRodent, chaos, Christian, Christianity, Christianity-Today, Christianity-Today-Library, Church, CTLibrary, Dante, eternity, Evangelical, Evangelical-Alliance, Heaven, Hell, identity, Jeffrey-Burton-Russell, Kenneth-Kantzer, Laura-VanRyn, Matt-Donnelly, mistaken-identity, paradise, Peter-Kreeft, religion, resurrection, Robert-A-Peterson, Taylor-University, Thomas-Aquinas, Tim-Keller, VanRyn, Venerable-Bede, Whitney-Cerak[/tags]