Читать книгу The Complete Rob Bell: His Seven Bestselling Books, All in One Place - Rob Bell - Страница 24

CHAPTER FOUR Leather, Whips and Fruit

If the Bible were made into a movie, there are lots of parts I wouldn’t watch.

Too graphic, too much detail, excessive violence. You’d think God would have gone for a more family-friendly rating, something Christians could recommend that their friends go see, but instead we have a book crammed full of shocking stories about people doing unbelievably destructive things.

Genocide, polygamy, incest, cutting people up into pieces and mailing the chunks to different parts of the country—and that’s just the first few books. I find one scene in particular almost unreadable. It’s in Second Samuel, a history book that records the reign of King David. One of David’s sons, Amnon, falls in love with his sister Tamar.

And that’s just the first verse of the chapter.

The text says that Amnon became “so obsessed with his sister Tamar that he made himself ill.”1 Amnon’s advisor notices his steadily declining mood, and after hearing of his frustration, the advisor proposes a plan. The plan involves Amnon telling his father, David, that he’s sick and wants Tamar to bring him food.

When Tamar comes in, Amnon orders his servants out of the room and tells Tamar to come to bed with him. She resists, begging him not to harm her. The text reads, “But he refused to listen to her, and since he was stronger than she, he raped her.”

Now we could spend hours discussing the evils of what happens when a man uses his strength to harm, threaten, or coerce a woman. We could reflect on the horrors of abuse and incest, the tragedy that family members are able to inflict on each other.2 The silence of King David. The list goes on.

But notice the next verse: “Then Amnon hated her with intense hatred. In fact, he hated her more than he had loved her.”

What an odd thing for the writer to tell us. The last thing you would expect to hear is how Amnon is feeling, let alone that he feels hatred. We understand her repulsion, but his?

What is it about rape that provokes such disgust in him?

“He hated her more than he had loved her.”

What is it that makes Amnon go from one extreme to the other?

He gets what he wants and it makes him . . . angry? What is it that turns him so fast?

What is it about that line “more than he had loved her” that doesn’t ring true?

It’s lust.

Lust can drive us to do frightening things. It can own us, it can take up massive amounts of head space, and it can make us miserable.

And once in a while, lust may even have something to do with sex.

A Tree with a Long Name

In the beginning, in the opening pages of the Bible, we find God creating all sorts of trees.3 They’re good for food and pleasing to the eye, and God wants them to be enjoyed. God creates this garden and places people in the middle of it because God wants these people to enjoy it. The word God uses for this is “good.” It’s all good from God’s perspective.

But for it truly to be good, it can’t be forced upon these first people. That wouldn’t be good. It has to be their choice. And so there’s a tree in the middle of the garden called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

A bit long for the name of a tree, but the idea is that there is another way for these people to live, outside of how God designed things. And if they eat the fruit of this particular tree, they’ll see what that other way is like, a way separated from the life of God.

And so we have a man and a woman in a garden, eating a piece of fruit. The text puts it like this: “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye . . . she took some and ate it.”4

We’re told that the fruit engages her senses:

she sees

she notices

she appreciates

she takes

she eats

Her sight, her touch, her senses of smell and taste are all involved.

Our senses are incredibly strong.

Maybe it’s her perfume

or the feel of that fabric

or how these have a particular shape and form

or what it feels like to open a package of those.

Smoking isn’t just about nicotine, is it? It’s about opening a new pack, the feel of the paper, the smell of the cigarette. Fishing isn’t just about fish. It’s about the rocking of the boat and the morning air and what’s in the cooler. Shopping isn’t just about new clothes. It’s about the tags and the fabrics and the sound of the hangers sliding on the rack.

We are sensory creatures.

My brother just got a new Apple computer. Several of us were there when he opened it, and we were so into it that we were actually handing the various parts around the room. If you have taken part in this particular ritual, then you know that Apple ships everything in white and silver bags and liners that would make dirt look attractive. We were even passing the power cord around the room, admiring its design.

Were we losing our minds? The power cord?

The designers at Apple understand something significant about what it means to be human: we are hardwired to appreciate sensory experience.5

Texture, shape, color, feel, aroma.

The things God creates in Genesis are “pleasing to the eye.” We have an ingrained sense of appreciation for how things look and feel and smell because God has an appreciation for how things look and feel and smell. We bear the image of our maker.

The problem for Adam and Eve isn’t the food. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the food. The food is good. This is what Eve notices about it, that it’s “good for food.” It’s created by God for the enjoyment of people. The same goes for most of the things and people we lust for. In most cases, there’s nothing wrong with them inherently—

her body,

that product,

this food.

The problem for Adam and Eve is what the fruit has come to represent. Rebellion against God. Rejection of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Another way.

This is really about that.

If I Just Had . . .

The appeal to Eve’s senses comes with a promise that the fruit will deliver something it can’t—specifically, a better reality than the one God has made. The problem isn’t the fruit. It’s what is promised through the fruit—that she won’t die if she eats it. The problem is that she’s told, “When you eat of it . . .” and then she’s told things that aren’t true. Promises are made to her that the temptation can’t come through on. It’s a lie.

Lust promises what it can’t deliver.

By giving in to the temptation, Adam and Eve are essentially claiming that God isn’t good. They’re giving in to the deception that good is possible apart from God, the source of all good. The scriptures call this being separated from “the life of God.”6 When these first people eat the fruit, it isn’t about the fruit, it’s about their dissatisfaction with the world God has placed them in.

Creation isn’t good enough for them.

From their perspective, their place in the midst of it isn’t good enough. And so they eat the fruit and everything falls apart. They’re tempted with something that promises what it can’t deliver, and they live with the consequences.

Lust comes from a deep lack of satisfaction with life. This is why we have to slow down and reflect on our lives before we’ll ever begin to sort out the significance of this. Lust often starts with a thought somewhere in our head or heart: “If I had that/him/her/it, then I’d be . . .”

When we’re not at peace, when we aren’t content, when we aren’t in a good place, our radar gets turned on. We’re looking. Searching. And we’re sensory creatures, so it won’t be long before something, or somebody, catches our attention.

And it always revolves around the “if,” doesn’t it?

If I just . . .

The idea creeps into our head and heart that we are lacking, that we are incomplete, that this craving in front of us is the answer.

The “if” means we have become attached to the idea that we are missing something and that we can be satisfied by whatever it is we have in our sights.7 There’s a hole, a space, a gap, and we’re on the search. And we may not even realize it. When we are in the right place, the right space—content and at peace—we aren’t on the search, and our radar gets turned off.

Adam and Eve fixate on this one piece of fruit from this one tree when God has given them endless trees with infinite varieties of fruit to enjoy. Which is often our problem. There’s so much to enjoy, and yet we fixate on something we don’t have.

This is why gratitude is so central to the life God made us for. Until we can center ourselves on what we do have, on what God has given us, on the life we do get to live, we’ll constantly be looking for another life. That is why the word remember occurs again and again in the Bible.8 God commands his people to remember who they are, where they’ve been, what they’ve seen, what’s been done for them. If we stop remembering, we may forget. And that’s when the trouble comes.

Head Space

Lust is always built on a lie. And so for you and me to be free from lust, we have to begin by understanding the lie and where it comes from and why it can be so alluring.

The word lust in the Greek language is the word epithumia. It’s actually two words in Greek: the word epi, which means “in,” and the word thumos, which refers to “the mind.”

In the mind.

Think about the head space we give to things and people we want. It’s easy for our thoughts to be dominated by a craving. We’re in a meeting, we’re taking a walk, we’re studying, we’re doing jobs around the house, and the whole time our brain is miles away, trying to figure out how to get it.

It takes ahold of us.

We are not free.

Lust is slavery.

If I want something to the point that I can’t conceive of being content without it, then it owns me.

One writer in the scriptures puts it like this: “ ‘I have the right to do anything’—but I will not be mastered by anything.”9

That last part is great, isn’t it? “I will not be mastered by anything.”

We are free to do anything we want. But because I can doesn’t mean I should. There is a massive distance between “can” and “best.”

We’re addictive creatures. We try things, we experiment, we explore, and certain things hook us. They get their tentacles in us, and we can’t get away from them. What started out as freedom can quickly become slavery. Often freedom is seen as the ability to do whatever you want. But freedom isn’t being able to have whatever we crave. Freedom is going without whatever we crave and being fine with it.

Where It Leads

In the book of Ephesians, the writer claims that we get enslaved to lust because we become “darkened” in our understanding. The passage explains that we’re separated from the life of God because of ignorance due to the hardening of our hearts.10

It isn’t just what lust does, it’s where lust leads. God made us to appreciate aesthetics: taste, smell, touch, hearing, sight. Shape, texture, consistency, color. It all flows from the endless creativity at the center of the universe, and we were created to enjoy it. But when lust has us in its grip, one of the first things to suffer is our appreciation for whatever it is we’re fixated on.

The scriptures call this “having lost all sensitivity.”11

The word insensitivity is the Greek word apalgeo. It comes from the root word algeo, which means “to feel pain,” and apo, which means “lacking or going without.” It’s the condition of being void of or past feeling. We could translate the phrase in Ephesians as “having lost the ability to feel things like they used to.”

Addictions often rob people of their appreciation of things.

An alcoholic may have once enjoyed the taste, but now he is using drinking to numb and escape and avoid, and the last thing he’s reflecting on is the quality of the brew or the vintage of the grapes.

And she used to appreciate food—the spices and the aromas and the art of cooking—but now her taste buds have dulled. She no longer savors every bite. She has lost her enjoyment of food as a gift from God that comes from the earth for our pleasure and sustenance. Her addiction, her turning to food for what it can’t deliver, has caused her to have contempt for food, and so she’s losing sensitivity.

There’s a progression here. The loss of sensitivity and enjoyment often leads to what the scriptures call being given over to sensuality.12 The Greek word for sensuality is aselgeia. It’s the absence of restraint, an insatiable desire for pleasure. When our lusts get the best of us, they trap us. Whether it’s food, sex, shopping, whatever, what was supposed to fill the hole within us didn’t. It betrayed us. It owns us. And it always leaves us wanting more.

And so we’re

emptier

lonelier

hungrier

more depressed.

“He hated her more than he had loved her.”

And so we go to the refrigerator and eat the whole box.

We go to the website and watch every clip.

We buy one in every color.

We take another.

And then we’re right back where we started. We’re momentarily satisfied, and then we experience letdown because it didn’t deliver what it promised.

Which of course leaves us wanting more. The passage in Ephesians calls it “greed”—the word pleion in Greek, which means “more,” combined with the word echo, which means “to have.”

We have to have more.

But when we get more, it leads to . . . more.

Lust does not operate on a flat line, as if we can give in and stay at the same level of consumption indefinitely. People who are not aware of what they’re dealing with will keep insisting that they’re fine and that they can stop at any time. But they’re “darkened in their understanding.” They’re operating under the assumption that lust can plateau at a certain level and simply stay there. But lust always wants more.

Which is why lust, over time, will always lead to despair. Which will always lead to anger.

Lust always leads to anger.

Sometimes it isn’t expressed on the outside because it turns inward. That’s depression. When it goes outward, it will often affect what a person indulges in—darker and darker expressions of unfulfilled desire mixed with contempt. Is that how someone ends up at leather and whips?13

Food or clothes or position or approval or power or sex—it grabbed us and said, “You are missing out until you have me.” And it was a lie. It promised us something. It claimed to be the answer.

But it wasn’t.

Lust says to us, “If you just had this, everything would be fine.”

But it’s not true. We wouldn’t be okay, and we have closets full of clothes to prove this. We thought that shirt and those pants would change the way we feel about our bodies, about how others perceive us, about how comfortable we are in our own skin. And then we got them and nothing changed, except the size of our bills.

Lust promises what it can’t deliver.14

Dark to Light

To be free from lust, we have to move from being darkened in our understanding to being enlightened in our understanding. And to be enlightened, we have to ask lots of questions about the things we crave:

What is this craving promising?

Can it deliver?

Is this lust about something else?

What is the lie here?

Where is the good in this person or thing?

Where is the good that has been distorted?

What good thing has God made here that has been hijacked?

Have I been tempted like this before?

Have I given in before?

What was it like?

Did it work?

Was I more satisfied or more empty?

What will the moment, the morning, or the week after be like?

Is there a pattern here?

Maybe the most powerful thing we can do is simply to pray, “God, give me eyes to see the lie here.”

Perhaps you can relate to this progression and the lie and the ways we get hooked. Maybe you know exactly what I’m talking about because you’re in the middle of it right now. Something has got its tentacles wrapped around you, and you are having an impossible time getting free.

Happens all the time.

And so it feels like it’s you versus the craving. You against the addiction. Your brain and heart against your flesh.

I often meet people who say, “My battle against . . .” and then they name something that has them in its grip.

To be honest, if it’s us against the craving, we will often lose. It’s too hard. And what happens most of the time is we see ourselves fighting all alone against some temptation that is so strong it wins. Maybe we will win here or there, but those become the exceptions. And when we give in, it can start to feel pointless. Why resist today if tomorrow we won’t be able to?

There’s Something Else Going on Here

There’s a passage in the book of Ephesians where it’s written, “Those who have been stealing must steal no longer.”15

Which is quite straightforward—don’t steal. But the passage doesn’t end there. It continues: “but must work, doing something useful with their own hands.”

But it doesn’t there. It ends with: “that they may have something to share with those in need.”

On first read, the instructions seem as basic as it gets. But there is much going on here just below the surface.

First, the command doesn’t stop with the “don’t” part. The writer understands that that kind of instruction rarely helps. When we’re told not to do something, how often are we truly compelled not to do it, especially if we enjoy it? If it’s just me against the lust, the odds are already against me.

But there’s something else going on here.

Stealing involves large amounts of adrenaline. The rush of planning, pulling it off, not getting caught, getting something for nothing. And then there’s the expectation of next time. If we got something this significant for free, could we steal something even more valuable? What if we raised the stakes, hit a store with a better security system, tested ourselves? Stealing involves the senses, the intellect, a person’s fear threshold. It even has a powerful social dynamic. Stealing with someone creates powerful bonds between people. When our adrenaline is pumping, that’s a physiological phenomenon. It feels good because things are happening with the chemicals in our bodies, with our nerves and brain and bloodstream. If we do that enough, our bodies get used to it.

We could use the word addicted. A person gets addicted to it.

If you tell the person who’s stealing not to, and you leave it at that, you’ve taken something away, but you haven’t replaced it with anything. That’s why the instructions in Ephesians are so brilliant. The urging to stop stealing is followed by the command to have the person do “something useful with their own hands.” The word useful is the Greek word agathos, which is also translated “good” and “benevolent.”

Why does the writer mention the hands?

Because you steal with your hands. Stealing is a sensory experience, an adrenaline rush involving the hands. The command is to replace one adrenaline rush with another, a better one, one that’s good. But it doesn’t stop there. The command ends with the person who was stealing learning to do something good with their hands so that they can take care of the needs of someone else. Stealing is about taking from someone. This passage is about giving to someone who has less because you have more.

Stealing is the ultimate in being selfish.

Making something and giving it away is the ultimate in being generous.

This passage is about something central to what it means to be human: it’s about desire. It’s about the thief finding something they’ll desire more than stealing.

“You thought taking things for free was a rush? Try giving free food to someone who’s starving.”

The writer of Ephesians understands that to tell the thief not to steal and leave it at that doesn’t have a very high chance of being helpful. The thief will be left with a battle on their hands that will pit them against their craving.

Whatever it is that has its hooks in you, you will never be free from it until you find something you want more. It’s not about getting rid of desire. It’s about giving ourselves to bigger and better and more powerful desires.

What are you channeling your energies into?16 Because they will go somewhere.

If they don’t go into a few, select, disciplined pursuits that you are passionate about and are willing to give your life to, then they’ll dissipate into all sorts of urges and cravings that won’t even begin to bring the joy that the “one thing” could.

You are crammed full of the “madness of the gods.” And you will end up giving the force of your being to something.

Maybe it’s as simple as asking God to show it to you, to give it to you, to make you aware of it.

There was a story all over the news about a television star whose boyfriend videotaped the two of them having sex and then put it on the internet. Apparently lots of people were watching it, and she was crushed. Which is sad. But what’s tragic is that she was known for having sex and shopping. It kind of became her schtick—she was making a career out of being shallow. Now, of course, she was all over the media, and she was making lots of money, so she was clearly much smarter than she let on, but she was made for so much more than this.

Her life force was tremendous. But the problem was she hadn’t channeled it into something, or a few things, that were good and true and beautiful. She hadn’t focused all of that God-given sexual energy into the ongoing creation of a better and better world. And so she fell for all of these temptations that robbed her of the joy she was made for.

The last thing she needed to do is tone down those energies.

She simply needed to redirect them.

What is it you’ve given your life to?

Life is not about toning down and repressing your God-given life force. It’s about channeling it and focusing it and turning it loose on something beautiful, something pure and true and good, something that connects you with God, with others, with the world.

What do you want more?

How can you make your life about that so that you won’t be tempted to give in to this?