Culture pt V

Human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism are horrific to our 'justice-based' mindset, but they are products of 'power' culture. Eating the flesh of your vanquished foes is 'wrong' but what if you don't care? This is not a matter of individual misdeeds. In fact the individuals within a culture are not really accountable for their actions. This doesn't mean that what they are doing is right, but merely that the individual simply doesn't have a choice. It's like telling a fish to stop breathing water. It is at this point that I began to see the language of St. Paul applied: 'principalities and powers' are at work here. Culture is being distorted and twisted in demonic ways. Shame becomes a tool to subject entire peoples to suicidal resentment and homicidal revenge. Fear becomes a way of prompting people to engage in brutalities.

It was at precisely this point in the thought process that it dawned on me. Those same principalities and powers are probably at work in our culture as well... After all, it is not as though Western culture is somehow godly. Now I would certainly have offered critiques of Western culture, but I don't know that I would frame those critiques in the same light. But that, now, is my contention:

The revulsion we have at the injustices produced by fear or honor cultures (typified by honor-killing) should be directed at the evils in our own culture as well. We should feel just as repulsed by our Western unwillingness to care for the elderly. We should see demonic influence standing behind our individualism and the commodification of individuals.

Christian Hedonism

Click on the title link to read a wiki article on the term which was originally coined by pastor John Piper.

This is a continuation of commentary on Parker's poem 'Partial Comfort.'

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We give those devils too much credit when we let hell claim pleasure as its own invention and possession!

It is not the demons who thought up the idea of physical pleasure, nor did they craft the synapses in such a way as to make sexual touch pleasing, or fine food a fulfilling experience. God gave us the capacity to enjoy the physical, emotional, and spiritual union of sex; He granted us the ability to make fine wines; He created bodies capable of dance and song, minds capable of poetry and story.

It is not a defect in sex that causes God to condemn promiscuity, nor is it a defect in grapes that causes God to warn against drunkenness! Ask the addict, ask the porn star, they will tell you how long ago the pleasure left these activities. It is not the sober man who yearns for a life consumed with battered ex-wives, neglected children, and countless rehab and court fines; nor is it the happily married woman who longs for a life of objectification and mistrust, not to mention acyclovir and hemorrhoidectomies...

I have used my own body for pleasure in inappropriate ways, and the longer I did, the more power those activities had over my will, and the less pleasure those activities gave me.

Do you begin to now see why our Teacher calls the devil a liar, a destroyer, and a thief?

Whatever pleasures you can image, they sprang forth from the mind of God! It is evil that twists those pleasures to other ends, or grabs those pleasures at the expense of other greater pleasures, or pursues them in inappropriate times or ways; it is evil that ultimately robs those pleasurable activities of their very pleasure, leaving us instead with an addictive compulsion to an activity that we cannot do without, and yet provides us with little or no pleasure, and much pain and destruction.

Do you see now what sheer nonsense such sentiments as Parker's are? Do you see the ridiculous nature of the claim that God wants to punish us for our pleasure, while the devil wants to give us more of it? Does it not now become clear that it is God who desires us to enjoy 'pleasures forevermore!?'

More to come...