"And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns." Philippians 1:6 New Living Translation (©2007)
We are used to tumors and other medical ailments being excised within hours, leaving us to heal, with scars, but at least to heal. I am constantly amazed at God's timing in my life in continuing the surgery he started on me at age 13.
I proposed the other day that Rush Limbaugh was right in his attempt to satirize, through hyperbole, the demand of Georgetown Law student, Sandra Fluke, that all U.S. citizens ought to pay for her $3,000 per year birth control bill while she attends school. (HERE is a Malkin column on the controversy that developed, if you've been in sub-space orbit for the past two weeks.) It is not my desire here to rehash the entire issue in support of Rush, but I do wish to explain why I agree still...and why such a bold confrontation with these issues can both open up old wounds AND permit God's continued, steady, surgical approach to completing the work in us that only He can do.
First, let me just point out that we are all "sluts," "whoremongers" and "whores" by definition. No, just because you saved yourself until marriage doesn't mean that you have escaped the definition, and yes, even one extra-marital (pre-marital or other) sexual encounter draws the term to you. Jesus defined lust in our hearts as the genesis of the sin of adultery, not the act itself (Matt. 5:27-29), therefore we cannot even escape if we have remained physically pure - and I have yet to meet the person who has never once struggled with sexual desire.
We don't like this definition. We wrestle with it. The easy out is to justify ourselves based on our good intentions and carefully define those words just so, that we are conveniently excluded from being tagged with them. It's like legislatures gerrymandering, carving up their legislative districts to include only those voters that support them, ensuring the next election is favorable toward them. These often leave oddly placed pockets of contrary neighborhoods in the middle of their district, just as we leave events and truths about us uncomfortably settled within the newly defined "purity" to which we are able to attain (if you just ignore the islands of impurity).
This leads to the second topic I wanted to cover. An old girlfriend from high school was on my post and was certain that I would go against Rush on this. She expressed deep pain at my permission and support of the term "slut" that Rush used. She even defriended me based on my post. And while I still stand solidly for defining things just as I have delineated above, a felt a deep pain at the very pain she expressed. She further explained that her pain came from an old wound - one that I inflicted in the time we had dated. This drove my own pain even deeper. I succumb, as anyone, to the sometimes-error of living in the present and forgetting where I have come from. Thus, having to return to a time that I thought I had reconciled with years ago caused me to have to face anew my own depravity. It seems that I had not come to terms with the depth of my depravity and dysfunction. In my ignorance - partly because the relationship had ended with no chance to reconcile the pain we had caused one another - I had left off the relationship with an unclear perspective of how I had acted therein, without a full knowledge of how and why I had caused pain for her.
Not to be self-congratulatory, but I have forgiven her fully years gone by now, which I must admit has been an act of God's grace, not of my will. But her forgiveness has been hard fought and perhaps still needing completion. And I think this was a God-thing, this Facebook confrontation, for it has led to dialogue about wounds left festering for over 25 years. But this idea that I had hurt someone so much more deeply than I had at that time known was, while not new, an awakening for me. It awakened me to the fact that I know only the surface level of destruction I have left in my path in life, a path that time and forgetfulness has allowed me to recall with more joy and peace than is sometimes true of how the path was truly trod.
Part of that path requires something of all of us. We must come to terms with how truly lost we were. No matter how we define our youth, whether as victims or as aggressors, angry or hurtful, we have hurt people along the way - and by "youth" I mean any age younger than we currently are. Sometimes the wounds are deep and lasting. Perhaps we have been able to forgive those who have trespassed against us. But our level of forgiveness does not define how far away we've been able to escape our own trespasses, and a return to the path, seen in the light of those we have injured, is sometimes necessary for us to see clearly how much we also need forgiveness. To dwell long believing our own virtue because God has planted forgiveness in our heart is to refuse to recognize the depth of our own sin, and thus our understanding and appreciation of God's grace in our lives is necessarily reduced to a shallowness that callously tosses dust covers over the wrecked furniture in old, locked rooms in the mansions of our lives. Such an experience as this dialogue has brought about has forced me back into that old room, with furniture uncovered, to see the damage clearly for what it is.
But just as it is for me, it is for her. God's grace is on the other side of a realistic look at our past. Realism demands proper definition. And aren't we all sluts and whores? Scripture uses our sexual sin as an analogy to describe Israel's prostitution and unfaithfulness toward other gods. The ugly terms "whore" and "whoremonger" are applied repeatedly. Metaphors for sexual impurity and wanton lusts are repeatedly used to show how they turned away from their one, true love again and again. And we are as individuals as Israel was as a nation. We all turn from the marital plans God has for us, and we all therefore turn also from the God who has made those plans for us. If we cannot own the fullness of the definition of our sinfulness, can we know fully the grace He has lavished upon us in His Son? And our societal desire to see ourselves as much more virtuous than we are impels us to be much more kind in our assessments of one another, even when that assessment is about someone who openly shares the depth of their sexual sin before Congress and demands funding of those sins at the taxpayer's expense. But more personally, it is we who demand, at the expense of truth, that the sins of our past not be called for exactly what they are - as filthy rags before the Glory of God and His Christ.
And I thank God for this encounter, even if it came about in the midst of strife. In fact, I will argue that without the strife that occurred in the discussion, no positive thing would've come about - certainly the conversation that ensued between myself and my friend would not have ensued otherwise. For it is in our bumping into one another that we open up opportunities for healing, just as it is in our bumping into one another that injury occurs. When we are too clinical with our lives, avoiding all conflict and confrontation, we often miss the lessons that can only come forth within such conflict and confrontation. For it is in honest confrontation that I have now learned not only how depraved I once was, but also how far God has brought me, and the unsparing depths from which he rescued me.
And his scalpel has excised another tumor, leaving my body even more healthy now. Thank you, my God, for not leaving me in the morass of my own misconceptions and dirt. "Restore unto me the joy of my salvation - and renew unto me a clean spirit."
"I once was (unfathomably) lost, but now am (gloriously) found; Was (deaf, dumb and) blind, but now I see (clearly)."
"But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8
"When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross." Col. 2:13-15
New International Version (©1984)
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