Living the Answer Blog

From the moment of the Fall, when the forbidden fruit promised an earlier and easier entrance into bliss, growth, and knowledge, one of Satan’s favorite strategies has been to take some promised good and offer his own version; easier, simpler, and always, in retrospect, somehow diminished and corrupted. The golden calf offered Israel a safer, less demanding God. As Abraham waited for the promised son, Hagar seemed a simple solution to his wife’s infertility. Even Jesus himself was offered a far easier path to dominion if he would only bow before the evil one.

It’s not that “easy” is necessarily or even usually bad; merely that the appeal of the easy is a powerful lure into danger. One of the best ways to draw us off the straight and narrow path is with a shortcut.

I bring this up because this feeling of an easier path to a lesser good is a theme of many of the problems and potential problems in our interactions with modern technology. The whole appeal of technology lies in its ability to make things easier, whether in communication, calculation, learning, shopping, or transportation. Of course, as I said above, easier isn’t necessarily bad. In fact, it’s often good, allowing us to be wise stewards of our resources by saving time and money for other uses. (I certainly appreciate being able to type these observations on the keyboard of a handy laptop, rather than pounding away on a typewriter or scribbling with a pen.) With technology as with the rest of life, the danger lies in the appeal of the easier path to draw us away from the better.

Take television, for example. It’s hard to imagine a means of entertainment easier than simply flipping on the TV after a long day–and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. But what are we losing when the ease of TV watching makes it our habitual answer to moments of quiet? What about the reading and talking and walking and drawing and dancing and simply watching the fire or the rain or the stars that used to occupy a much more prominent place in our lives? The most dangerous thing about the television is not the programming that flows across the screen, but the fact that the programming flows across a screen that sits comfortably close to the couch.

What television does for leisure, video games do for achievement. For most of human history, a young man driven by the urge to achieve, to overcome obstacles and enjoy the satisfaction of hard-won gains, would have to actually do something. He could start a farm or a business, or a nation; he might lead men into battle, study medicine or the law, or simply carve out a good life for a wife and children in a world where mere everyday life has more than its share of challenges. But regardless of what he did, it would be hard.

Video games changed that dynamic. They offer a truly unprecedented opportunity to feel a real sense of achievement from doing… nothing at all. Increasingly realistic virtual worlds are populated with challenges and dangers tailored to generate a feeling of real struggle and genuine victory, creating a triumphant haze of energy and endorphins to obscure the reality that nothing is actually happening. Watching the guns-blazing trailer for the most recent Call of Duty game, the implicit message of the “There’s a soldier in all of us” slogan is clear: It’s easy to be a hero. As a soft-looking Jonah Hill charges into a hail of gunfire in the video’s finale, expertly wielding rifle, knife, and grenade against oncoming attackers, it’s easy to see why the lure of virtual valor is intoxicating. When we wonder aloud where all the good men have gone, at least part of the answer is simple–they’re busy playing Call of Duty, where, thanks to the marvels of modern computing, it’s easy to be a hero.

Even more than video gaming, perhaps the best examples of the sometimes-deceptive shortcuts offered by technology lie in the field of social media. Television makes leisure easy and video games make achievement easy, but Facebook makes relationships easy. It’s convenient, immediate, organized, and thoroughly controllable; always right there, omnipresent yet unobtrusive, providing a neat little window into our friends’ lives and offering them a window into ours.

In many ways, social networks even manage to convey a sense of greater intimacy than we feel in most face-to-face relationships. Our much-satirized tendency to overshare the mundane details of our lives actually makes perfect sense psychologically: what better indicator is there of the closeness between two people than the extent to which they know the boring minutia of each other’s existence? Nearly everyone knows I’m a teacher. Barely anyone knows how I like my eggs cooked. If I know what you had for breakfast this morning, a part of me smiles with companionable pleasure; and when I “like” your status update letting the world know that your hangnail is feeling better, you know that I really care. Sure, it’s not quite the same as actually seeing you, actually talking to you, but at least it’s something in the midst of a busy day. At least Facebook makes it easy to stay in touch.

But what if staying in touch has become so easy that it’s keeping us apart? What if the very ease of superficial connection dulls the desire for something more? Granted, very few people are going to give up an active, meaningful community life in order to become a hermit with a Facebook account, but in a world where we’re all moving too quickly to just stop and actually know someone else, surely there’s a temptation to sustain our need for human connection and companionship on a fast-food diet of mouse clicks and keystrokes.

Every need or desire given to us by God draws us toward some corresponding good. Whether we’re talking about the need for food and water or our hunger for ultimate meaning, mankind was created with a set of desires that match what we most need. The counterintuitive danger posed by technology is that, by too easily fulfilling certain needs on a superficial level, we lose the drive to pursue a deeper good.

But what are we to do about it? Certainly, much technology has eased our lives in entirely unobjectionable ways. (One finds few who rail against the evils of refrigeration, anesthesia, or indoor plumbing.) The answer isn’t to simply reject technology or blame it for failings that ultimately arise from the human heart. Instead, we need a way to accept the good in modern advances without losing anything better in the process.

While that’s a topic far too broad to be adequately considered here, and one which requires different answers for different situations, there is one generally-applicable and foundational principle. This is the rule that the best protection against desire for counterfeit goods is love of the true. Returning to the very beginning of human history, the answer to the serpent’s temptation in the Garden was not a carefully-cultivated distaste for fruit; nor, more seriously, a disdainful attitude toward the wisdom and knowledge which the serpent offered. The only thing that would have saved Adam and Eve was a desire for God so strong that even the genuine good of greater knowledge shone dim in comparison. And when the second Adam rejected Satan’s offers and passed the test which the first had failed, it was by holding fast to the words, “You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.” As creatures created in the image of the God who is love, even false love is too powerful to be defeated by anything but a better love.

How is this relevant to the right use of technology? Simply in this: that our best protection against losing the good in the easy is to so carefully cultivate a love for what is genuinely good that we instinctively recognize and reject its diminution. If we learn to use our time well and to love the good that results, we are relatively inoculated against the danger of TV. If we cultivate a taste for actual work and true achievement, the virtual triumphs of video games will seem so diminished by comparison that we can safely enjoy them for what they are. When we know the joy of true fellowship, Facebook ceases to be an enemy and may even be transformed into a pleasant eddy in the flow of our real relationships. And if we do find ourselves losing something worthwhile in our use of these or other fruits of technology, a healthy love of what is better will make it easier to find a new balance without being drawn away by the lure of the easy.

Simeon and Levi are brothers;
Their swords are implements of violence.
Let my soul not enter into their council;
Let not my glory be united with their assembly;
Because in their anger they slew men,
And in their self-will they lamed oxen.
Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce;
And their wrath, for it is cruel.
I will disperse them in Jacob,
And scatter them in Israel. (Genesis 49:5-7)

With these words, Jacob cursed his sons for their treacherous assault on the Canaanite city of Shechem in revenge for the rape of their sister Dinah. When the rapist, Shechem, prince of the city, requested her hand in marriage, Levi and Simeon insisted that all inhabitants of Shechem must first be circumcised. Convinced, the citizens of Shechem submitted to the procedure and then, “on the third day, when they were in pain… two of Jacob’s sons, Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brothers, each took his sword and came upon the city unawares, and killed every male” (Genesis 34).

And Jacob cursed Simeon and Levi for their wrath, for it was cruel.

It came about, as soon as Moses came near the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing; and Moses’ anger burned, and he threw the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain. He took the calf which they had made and burned it with fire, and ground it to powder, and scattered it over the surface of the water and made the sons of Israel drink it. [...]

Now when Moses saw that the people were out of control—for Aaron had let them get out of control to be a derision among their enemies—then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me!” And all the sons of Levi gathered together to him. He said to them, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Every man of you put his sword upon his thigh, and go back and forth from gate to gate in the camp, and kill every man his brother, and every man his friend, and every man his neighbor.’” So the sons of Levi did as Moses instructed, and about three thousand men of the people fell that day. Then Moses said, “Dedicate yourselves today to the Lord—for every man has been against his son and against his brother—in order that He may bestow a blessing upon you today.” (Exodus 32:19-20, 25-29)

And God blessed Levi for their wrath, for it was righteous.

It appears the Levites were a people prone to wrath. The two major scenes in which Levi (as a man and then as a tribe) plays a starring role both feature massacres in response to evil. In both situations, Levi takes the initiative, stepping forward from the crowd–from among his brothers to avenge their sister, from among the other tribes to avenge their God–to deal violence as punishment for heinous wrongdoing. Not everyone has the courage, the strength, and the fierceness for such a role. In fact, most don’t. Levi did.

In Genesis, Levi earns a curse by responding to evil with an unjust and cruel violence, a violence few others would have dared. In Exodus, Levi’s curse is transformed to blessing by responding to evil with a righteous, obedient violence, a violence few others would have dared. Both the sin and the resulting curse, and the virtue and the resulting blessing, were the fruit of a unique personality trait: a willingness, even an inclination, to respond to evil with violence–a trait which was in itself neither virtuous nor vicious. When driven by sinful human motivations, it turned to sin. When submitted to divine authority, it turned to righteousness.

The story of Levi reminded me of Dr. Wendy Mogel’s observation in The Blessing of a Skinned Knee,

I begin by telling these audiences, “Think of your child’s worst trait. The little habit or attitude that really gets on your nerves. Or bring the medium-sized habit that your child’s teacher keeps bringing up at parent conferences. Or the really big one that wakes you up at three in the morning with frightening visions of your little guy all grown up and living alone in an apartment in West Hollywood, plotting a shooting spree at the post office…

Good. Now you’re one step of ahead of where you were a moment ago, because now you know your child’s greatest strength. It’s hidden in his worst quality, just waiting to be let out.”

Dr. Mogel’s point is that a child’s strongest traits provide the raw material for his or her greatest virtues–if properly tended. The parent’s job is to patiently work to transform bossiness into leadership, recklessness into courage, nosiness into concern for others, hyperactivity into creativity, talkativeness into eloquence, quietness into a listening ear. Of course, the talkative child also needs to learn to be quiet when appropriate, the quiet child needs encouragement to speak up at the right time, and so on, but wise parents learn the shape of their child’s soul and work with the grain, not against it. The answer to a Levi’s strength is not to hope for atrophy, but to teach him to put on the full armor of God before going to war.

So it is for each of us. No matter our condition, all we can do at any given moment is take our whole selves and lay them before the Father, ready at that moment to be used in whatever way He sees fit. Like Levi, our only concern is that, when the call is raised “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me,” we come, yielding whatever may be in us to be used by the One who does all things well. Whatever past sin might have flowed from a particular facet of our personality, only one question matters now: Whose is it? So long as it is utterly submitted to God, to be used, cultivated, changed, or even destroyed, as He sees fit, no evil can result; and perhaps great good, unexpected good, a blessing bestowed in place of a curse.

I recently had an interesting conversation with a friend on Facebook who posted a quote which said that self-protection ought to be avoided because it was a form of self-love, the assumption being that self-love is itself wrong. Of course, the point of the quote was simply to argue against a selfish fixation on our own wellbeing above that of others, but I disagreed with the premise that self-love is morally wrong. The discussion that followed made me decide to post something on the topic here as well.

We can certainly begin by acknowledging that self-love is at the root of a deadly collection of sins. Ever since the time of the Fall, when Adam sinned by desiring to raise himself to equality with God, no idol has been worshiped with greater fervor than man has lavished upon himself.

This leads rather naturally to the assumption that self-love is itself sinful. However, such an assumption is unjustified. The mere fact that a thing may be corrupted does not prove that it is bad. (Before the Fall, all of creation was corruptible but good.) The question, then, is whether self-love is inherently bad or becomes bad under certain circumstances.

One starting point for considering this question can be found in the fact that God loves himself, thus proving that not all self-love is wrong. Furthermore, God loves human beings, which means that humans ought to be loved. (Note that this is not the same as saying human beings deserve to be loved.) Jesus makes this explicit when he commands, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (John 13).

Now, it would be logically possible for a human to be obliged to love all human beings except himself. However, if self-love is not inherently evil, as is proven by God’s self-love, and if humans qua humans are to be loved as a general principle, such a position would be hard to justify without explicit scriptural backing, which is lacking. In fact, when we turn to Scripture we find Christ suggesting the opposite when he commands, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (emphasis added). At first glance one might conclude this was merely a concession to the unavoidable fact of human self-love, but can anyone seriously argue that the One who commanded “Be ye perfect” would have shied away from declaring “You shall love your neighbor and not yourself,” if that were in fact the right course?

How, then, does self-love become sin? When we begin to love ourselves above our God or our neighbor. Returning to Mark 12, Jesus declares, “The foremost [commandment] is, ‘Hear O Israel! The Lord your God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” God first, God most, always; our fellow man next, for he is created in God’s image. When this order is disrupted, and only then, self-love becomes sin.

Of course, leaving the theoretical for the practical, in our daily walk self-love does require constant control because it is so insistent on pride of place in our lives. Why not treat it as actually bad, since it is so inclined in that direction? Two reasons: First, because if in fact human beings ought to be loved, and if there is no scriptural exception for the particular human whom one happens to be, then failure to love oneself properly would actually be sin! Virtuous self-love dictates that we ought to always seek what is truly best for ourselves, provided always that it does not interfere with our duty to love God first and neighbor next.

Secondly, treating self-love as inherently sinful often leads to a dangerous misdirection of effort as we strive for virtue. When we believe that the existence of self-love stands between ourselves and God, we will naturally attempt to eradicate it. This leads to a difficult and ultimately harmful struggle to uproot a thing which is not actually bad; while at the same time, every ounce of effort devoted to this attack on self-love will not be devoted to our proper goal of seeking God’s grace to learn to love him and his human creation better.

I just finished reading Just Do Something by Kevin DeYoung, an argument against the semi-mystical attempts to discern God’s specific “will for your life” that are popular today in Christian circles. DeYoung lays out a clear case against the idea that God has some hidden plan that we have to ferret out before it’s safe to make any significant decisions. Yes, God has a sovereign plan, but it’s not our job to know each step before we take it.

As James reminds us, “You do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.  Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.’” Our lack of foreknowledge creates room for faith. Imagine Joseph’s story, or Daniel’s, if they had been granted the sort of detailed plan for the future that it is so tempting to demand from God.

Instead, DeYoung says God’s revealed will for us is very simple: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.”

He doesn’t call on us to seek a divine word before scheduling another semester of classes or deciding between bowling or putt-putt golf. He calls us to run hard after Him, His commands, and His glory. The decision to be in God’s will is not the choice between Memphis or Fargo or engineering or art; it’s the daily decision we face to seek God’s kingdom or ours, submit to His lordship or not, live according to His rules or our own. The question God cares about most is not “Where should I live?” but “Do I love the Lord will all my heart, soul, strength, and mind, and do I love my neighbor as myself?”…

So go marry someone, provided you’re equally yoked and actually like being with each other. Go get a job, providing it’s not wicked. Go live somewhere in something with somebody or nobody. But put aside the passivity and the quest for complete fulfillment and the perfectionism and the preoccupation with the future, and for God’s sake start making some decisions in your life. Don’t wait for the liver-shiver. If you are seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, you will be in God’s will, so just go out and do something.

I strongly agree with DeYoung’s overall point, but I wish he had been less dismissive toward what he calls “nonmoral decisions” (i.e. decisions between two or more options, neither of which are sinful). He writes, “God doesn’t care where you go to school or where you live or what job you take,” and though he acknowledges that he’s using hyperbole to make a point, one still gets the sense that DeYoung wouldn’t much mind if we made most of our “nonmoral decisions” on the basis of a coin toss. On the one hand, that might actually be a better option than a frantic, paralyzing search for a specific, hidden Plan, but on the other it seems to reduce the importance of wisdom in the Christian’s life.

Some nonmoral options are better than others. As a teacher, I have to choose the cities where I’ll offer classes. It wouldn’t be sinful for me to teach in Wilmington while living near Charlotte, but it certainly would be foolish, because it would be a huge drive that would significantly reduce my time for other, more productive work. It wouldn’t be sinful for me to marry a godly girl who hated reading or the outdoors, or who I didn’t find attractive, but it would be pretty foolish.

Of course, one could say both of those are moral decisions, the first because it would affect my ability to serve God in other ways and the second because it would decrease the likelihood of a happy marriage. I would actually agree. However, if we adopt this view of decision-making we’ve essentially defined “nonmoral decisions” out of existence. If I have to choose between eating out at Taco Bell or Chick-fil-a, the decision has implications for my financial wellbeing, my personal pleasure, and my likelihood of becoming violently ill from food poisoning – each of which is a moral issue. It’s hard to imagine any decision which is utterly lacking in moral significance, if traced back far enough.

At this point, one can feel a hint of panic at the prospect of dozens and dozens of decisions to be made daily, each of which matters in one way or another. But frankly, that’s silly. We all know that even small decisions matter. Every morning, I choose to brush my teeth. The decision matters: My body is the temple of God, so I have a responsibility to maintain it. I don’t agonize over the decision though, or even think about it very much. I just brush my teeth.

Some decisions are easier than others, but either way we are commanded to be wise in our decision-making. Jesus instructed his disciples to “be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.” Proverbs declares, “Take my instruction and not silver, and knowledge rather than choicest gold. For wisdom is better than jewels; and all desirable things cannot compare with her.” And, having given the command, God also offers the means: “But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.”

Wisdom is certainly needed for momentous decisions, but it is also a very everyday, practical thing. The Book of Proverbs promises instruction in wisdom, then offers such observations as, “He who gathers in summer is a son who acts wisely,” “In abundance of counselors there is victory,” “He who is guarantor for a stranger will surely suffer for it,” and “Where no oxen are, the manger is clean, but much revenue comes by the strength of the ox.” One gets the sense that only an accident of chronology prevents Solomon from reminding us to change our oil every 3,000 miles.

So how should we make decisions, whether large or small? First, ask for wisdom. Not merely for a specific decision, but in general. We ought not merely desire to make this or that decision wisely, but to be wise. Second, we must seek to be in right relationship with God, as DeYoung emphasizes. Peter warns his male readers to honor their wives, “so that your prayers will not be hindered.” The Christian who is rebelling against God in some area of his life is setting himself up to make foolish decisions. Third, know the Scriptures and seek wise counsel. And finally, consider the options and make a decision, confidently and in faith.

Sometimes we will make decisions based on the counsel of others. Sometimes we will ignore advice because we are sure some other course is better. Sometimes our decisions will be coldly rational, and sometimes we will “go with our gut.” Sometimes we’ll make mistakes, and that’s okay, because our sovereign God can alchemize even our mistakes into good. To quote from a faintly cheesy but wise Keith Green song, heard years ago, “Just keep doing your best, and pray that it’s blessed, and Jesus takes care of the rest.”

There is no secret, hidden plan for us to find, but we are called to be wise. So let us seek wisdom and incline our hearts to understanding, then just do something, trusting God to take care of the rest.

The great classical thinkers assumed that true virtue lay in loving the true, the good, and the beautiful; that the virtuous man would center his affection on this triumvirate of excellence, and that such attention would itself foster growth in virtue. During this morning’s sermon Pastor Phillips explained how love of what is true, good, and beautiful is also central to the Christian walk, and, this being a topic dear to my own heart, I was inspired to write something of my own on the subject.

As Christians, we have many compelling reasons to intentionally cultivate a love for all that is true and good and beautiful. To begin with, all such excellences ultimately originate with God. Some directly, such as a rainbow, the song of a thrush, or the sweep of constellations in a night sky, and some indirectly, like good music, a well-made meal, pleasant comradeship, or a thought-provoking book. Whether God created the good or created the creator of the good, ultimately all goods are His gifts. “Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.”

No one who considers the impractically extravagant beauty of a butterfly, or the utterly unnecessary pleasure produced by certain combinations of sound, can doubt that God takes pleasure in His creativity. And what creator does not delight in the delight of others? God did not invent flame so that it could be put under a basket, but so that it might dance upon the lampstand and give light to all who are in the house, that they might see it and glorify their Father who is in heaven.

When we delight in what is true, and good, and beautiful, we worship God. “The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.” Furthermore, such appreciation actually shapes us to love Him more and better.

Our every choice, our every affection, shapes us in some way. We become what we do; we become what we love. This is why Paul tells us, “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.” As our love of God shapes us to love what is good, so also our love of what is good shapes us to love God, the author of these goods, more and more fully.

This is a point that is perhaps most easily seen in the negative. Most would agree that a man who shuts himself up in a dank apartment, reading twisted novels and listening to dark music, is cultivating a spirit that is less open to the Father of lights. If our loves can draw us away from God, surely they can also draw us nearer, when we love those created goods through which “His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature” are revealed.

It is important to add a caveat here. Whenever one speaks of loving created things, there is a natural shrinking away on the part of the Christian: “Idolatry!” In fact, Augustine famously defined sin as nothing other than loving what is less above what is greater. Clearly, disordered affection – love of creation over Creator – is a deadly error. Yet, Augustine himself notes that the sin lies “in deserting what [is] better,” rather than in the love of created things themselves.

The error here lies in deficiency rather than excess of love. If a woman buys her husband a new car, then complains a few months later, “You love that car more than you love me!” it is unlikely that promising to love the car less will really address the heart of the problem. We want our gifts to be loved, and to be loved for themselves. In a healthy relationship, there is no fear that even the most wonderful gift will overwhelm the recipient’s love for the giver – on the contrary, such gifts illustrate and reinforce that love.

If we find that our love of created things, whether food, nature, or family, has come to exceed our love of God, trying to tamp down those loves is approaching the problem from the wrong direction. One cannot treat the disease by attacking symptoms. Instead, we must choose to love God first, to restore Him to His proper place in our lives. When we call upon Him, the God who once taught us to love Him is always ready to go over the lesson again. And once He is restored to pride of place, all our other lesser loves fall naturally into their appropriate positions as well. So long as we do not allow love of God’s gifts to distract us from love of the Giver, there is no reason to fear that they will separate us from Him. In fact, a proper love of what is true and good and beautiful may help us avoid those things which threaten our relationship with God.

There is much that is bad and unhealthy without being outright evil. Many books, movies, conversations, images, and thoughts sit just outside the boundaries of objective, clear “wrongness,” just far enough away that we feel justified in partaking. We don’t have to touch what is unclean, but we get used to the smell.

It’s hard to draw clear boundary lines in such cases. When we try, too often we swerve too far in the other direction and become legalists. Like the Pharisees, we “weigh men down with burdens hard to bear,” taking it upon ourselves to remedy the deficiencies in God’s commands. Some movies are bad, so we don’t watch movies. Drinking may lead to drunkenness, so drinking is banned. Dress may be provocative, so women should be unkempt for Christ.

Torn between two negative extremes, how much better to have something excellent for which to aim. I observed earlier that we become what we love; it is worth noting that we also love what we love. And the more we love what is good, the more we hate what is not. When God commands us in Amos, “Hate evil, love good,” He’s actually just repeating Himself. This is why a God of love can also hate, and hate passionately; in fact, a God of love must hate if He truly loves.

Better one love than a hundred laws. A man can try to avoid being drawn into pornography by carefully deciding exactly how many square inches of exposed skin and how provocative a pose it takes to make an image unacceptable – or he can teach himself to love purity and beauty. A woman can draw a flowchart to determine when conversation turns to gossip – or she can cultivate a fierce love for her neighbor. A parent can diagram exactly which words and chords makes music out-of-bounds for his teen – or he can teach him to love music that is good and beautiful. (This is not to suggest that rules are unnecessary. Objective boundaries are often valuable and helpful as we seek to grow in virtue, but without an organic foundation of love we will always end up spilling over into either corruption or legalism.)

It may seem odd to suggest that cultivating a love of botany or astronomy would help a man resist pornography, but that is in fact exactly what I am suggesting. Beauty is beauty and goodness is goodness, whatever form it takes. The more our very soul embraces what is truly beautiful, the more naturally we will respond with revulsion to what is filthy and perverted. Love of one good translates to all others. Show me a man who has cultivated a love of true womanhood, of purity, and of beauty, and I’ll show you a man who will find it far easier to resist the lure of pornography or other sexual impurity.

As Christians, we have every reason to cultivate a love of all that is true, all that is good, and all that is beautiful, for our good God gave us these gifts for our delight and to teach of His nature. This is the world which the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

As I glanced through one of evangelical Christianity’s best-selling books on male sexual purity this afternoon, I was struck anew by the fact that there is something deeply wrong with the way that this most-important of topics is usually addressed. The book’s central message (illustrated with creepily-gratuitous anecdotes of sexual sin), could be summarized, “To be male is to be inevitably drawn to sexual perversity and misconduct by the almost-irresistible force of your masculine sexual energy. Your job as a Christian is to spend the rest of your life holding back the force of this tide, while using your wife to funnel off as much sexual energy as possible to ease the arduous task of maintaining sexual purity.”

Faced with so overwhelming a task, and one so apparently at odds with one’s most basic nature, it is small wonder so many young men don’t bother to try at all; or, if they do try, end up struggling and exhausted by a task made impossibly strenuous by their misunderstanding.

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Any discussion of sexual purity ought to begin, not with sex, but with morality generally. And any discussion of morality must begin with the self, and the effects of our choices and behavior on our self.

By “the self,” I mean that part of me which I most truly and deeply am; that part which is immortal, who I am now and ever will be, eternity without end. It’s a rather sobering thought, this realization that I cannot escape my self. If you mess up your first car, or your first marriage, it is at least possible to get a new one; not so one’s self.

And “mess up” we can, for the self is in a continual state of transition. In fact, the self changes its own nature, by its own choices, like a block of granite come alive to sculpt itself. Every choice I make shapes my self just a little bit, making me not quite what I was before: piling on something new, stripping off something old, changing the shape of what I am by perhaps imperceptible degrees.

Both good and evil become easier with practice, not merely through habituation, but because the doer is making himself more and more the sort of person for whom such acts come naturally. (And “naturally” is exactly the right word, for it is his very nature which is being shaped by his choices.) The man who beats his children, the boy who pulls the wings off butterflies, and the girl who passes along cruel gossip are all following the same blueprint in their self-transformation; the difference is merely one of degree, rather than kind. We cannot help but be shaped by what we do.

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The tragedy of fallen mankind is the downward spiral in which corrupt choices shape corrupted selves whose further choices can only continue the hopeless pattern. Christian morality offers escape from this pattern, holding out the blueprint for right choices – for the choices that will lead to true joy and meaning in right relationship with God and with our fellow humans – while divine grace makes possible those right choices which would otherwise be impossible for our broken selves.

And because right choices, like evil, shape the self, this divinely-enabled right conduct will inevitably result in selves for whom goodness is increasingly pleasant. The man who loves his neighbor because he ought soon finds himself loving his neighbor merely because he does!

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And this brings us back to where we started, on the topic of sexual purity. The divine rule as regards sex is fairly simple: It is a good which is to be enjoyed within the bounds of a marriage between a man and a woman.

In other words, when humans were invented as sexual beings, that was how sex was supposed to work; what it is designed to be. For a properly-functioning human creature – either male or female – this is what is best. What is natural. What offers highest joy and highest pleasure, in the fullest sense of the words. Anything else can only be corruption and diminution, because that is all that evil can offer.

Of course, this means that sexual purity would be terribly easy, if only we were properly-functioning human creatures. Unfortunately, even after turning towards Christ, the process by which we are straightened and restored is a slow and at-times-painful one. In the meantime, in sex as in the rest of our lives, we find ourselves in love with what is lesser, meaner, and lower. The desire is no less real for being unnatural and deathly. Like a falcon that has been taught to seek only rotting carrion, our own corrupted desires betray us.

This is where so many Christians, with the best intentions, fail to make a crucial distinction. When a man views pornography, for example, he is not acting out of a natural masculinity that must be suppressed for the sake of righteousness. Rather, he is dining on rotten, maggoty carrion unawares. And so long as he gluts on what is lower, he is ingraining ever deeper in himself a distaste for what is truly good and an appetite for what is death to him. This is why the excuse, “I’ll stop viewing pornography once I’m married” would be laughable if it were not so tragic. Oh no, he won’t stop, not for long, for he has just spent years making himself exactly the sort of person who needs pornography. Marriage will not – can not – make him a different person than what he has himself created.

However, there is a flip side that offers tremendous hope to those who struggle with sexual sin. For just as choosing what is corrupt cannot help but cultivate one’s appetite for what is lower, so also, choosing – by the grace of God – what is higher will create a love for what is higher and better. (A love which grows more naturally and swiftly because of the goodness of its object.) The man who chooses not to view pornography, or have extramarital sex, or sin sexually in some other way, is not only not sinning at the moment of his choice, but is inexorably making himself the sort of man who loves what is actually good and so will make the right choice tomorrow as well.

None of this is to say that it is easy to be sexually virtuous. Far from it. The choices to which I just so casually referred are agonizingly difficult, particularly in a culture in which most young men are exposed to sexual perversion so early that they have developed a taste for it before they really even understand what it is. “Oh, but God will help me.” Yes, He will. That doesn’t mean the choice will be easy – it means what would otherwise be impossible will be possible. Barely.

It’s a choice that must be made daily, again and again, and one which is particularly difficult initially, as the grooves and pits worn in the self by unnatural appetites are destroyed. However, those who try can know two things: The change is possible, by the grace of God, if we will only choose it. And when the choice is made, it will result in the sort of man who loves what is good; what is natural; what is real.

A recent discussion in one of my classes regarding video games inspired me to summarize my thoughts on the topic here. There are two issues that must be considered when evaluating if and to what extent a video game is acceptable.

The first area to be evaluated relates to the content of the game itself. Any game in which a player is rewarded for behavior which would be wrong in real life should not be tolerated. Grand Theft Auto, in which players are encouraged to shoot police officers and prostitutes, is an obvious example of this sort of game. Some might argue that the rules are different in virtual reality – after all, you aren’t actually shooting anybody, and a computer pixel is just a computer pixel. Nobody is actually hurt when you beat up the prostitute or line up your sights on the back of the police officer’s head.

And that’s true. The problem, though, is not what you are doing to the policeman; rather, what shooting the policeman is doing to you. Every choice we make inexorably changes who we are on a fundamental level. We create our character by the choices we make, and no choice is without consequence. Every time I look away when someone is in trouble, I become a little more of a coward; every time I ignore the bank error in my favor, I become a little more of a cheat; every time I kick the dog, a little more cruel. Our choices make us. Hoping otherwise is like wishing that gravity would relent.

How does this apply to video games? Because video games make us choose as well. We must choose to beat the prostitute or shoot the policeman. Of course, doing so in virtual reality is less-worse than doing so in real life, but it’s merely a question of degree. American soldiers train with video-game-style simulators because experience in virtual reality transfers so easily to real life.

Beating the prostitute draws you a little closer to being the sort of man who beats women. Shooting the cop makes you value innocent life a little bit less. Obviously, this does not mean that everyone who plays GTA will becoming a cop-killing woman-beater. However, their soul has been nudged a bit farther in that direction. It is simply impossible to choose evil – even virtually – without effect. Do we really want to make the argument, “Well, yes, my soul is becoming more and more the soul of a man who would beat a woman, but I wouldn’t ever actually beat women, so it’s okay”?

It should be noted that the foregoing is not intended to be an argument against all violent video games. After all, violence is not inherently evil. Who would not want a man to be ready to defend those in need, or fight against an invading enemy, or perhaps braid a scourge of cords and clear the Temple courts? Now, I’m not suggesting that video games are the best training for such acts of appropriate violence, but a game in which players battle a legitimate enemy while following specified rules of engagement (like many war games, for example), would at least not carry the same inherent moral danger as a game in which the violence is unequivocally immoral. On the other hand, there are other concerns to be raised against even a game with unobjectionable content, which brings us to the second issue that must be considered in a discussion of the value of video games.

In a nutshell, the interactive, immersive quality of video gaming (one that will only increase) creates the possibility of its serving as a sort of “life placebo.” Why bother with the challenges, struggles, and hard-bitten victories of real life when you can pull up a game and experience the same feelings of triumph without the trouble and with the added benefit of a “reset” button if things get out of hand? In Boys Adrift, Dr. Leonard Sax writes,

It’s not hard to see how boys motivated by the will to power might have been successful in earlier generations. They might have grown up to be successful entrepreneurs, daring innovators, explorers, politicians, or soldiers. They could readily create a productive niche for themselves. [...]

If these men were reborn today, it is less likely that they would undertake a meaningful career. I suspect that a boy born today with the DNA of General Patton or Howard Hughes would more likely become a video game addict. He might have a job, but there’s a real risk that his drive and his energy would be directed into the video games rather than into his career. [...]

Football coach Greg Sullivan, Mr. Welsh’s colleague, says that he sees fewer and fewer boys playing outside when he drives around northern Virginia. “They are inside playing video games,” he says. “More kids are finding real sports too demanding.”

I’ve talked with other football coaches who describe, with amazement, teenage boys who think that because they can win at Madden NFL, they therefore know something about playing the real-life game of football. “These guys are five-minute wonders,” one coach told me. “They get out on the field, run around for a few minutes, and then they’re done. They have no endurance. They’re in pathetic shape. And they don’t want to do the work that they would have to do, to train the way they would have to train, to get in shape.”

Virtual success is much easier than real life, and no less satisfying if one doesn’t think about it too much. The flood of endorphins from a virtual touchdown or a virtual military victory is just as real, even if the accomplishment itself is not. Because video games so effectively mimic the rewards that once could only be achieved by actually living, they can divert the drive that pushes a young man toward lasting and meaningful accomplishment. If a boy has been too busy developing his skills in virtual reality to learn how to grit his teeth, dig his heels in, and do something real, when will he ever learn?

Of course, a few hours of Halo aren’t going to destroy a boy’s life, and most boys who play video games are able to do so in moderation. Picking up a joystick doesn’t immediately condemn you to a life in which your greatest accomplishment is saved on a hard drive. However, video games should be approached with the cautious awareness that they offer a powerful draw to invest too much of ourselves into struggles which are ultimately without meaning. As Plutarch observes in his Lives, “He who busies himself in mean occupations produces, in the very pains he takes about things of little or no use, an evidence against himself of his negligence and indisposition to what is really good.”

Via FuturePundit, an interesting look at the influence of genetic factors on human behavior. New Scientist reports a new study of twins that suggests genetic factors affect the age of first intercourse.

“It’s not like there’s a gene for having a sex at a certain date,” says Nancy Segal, a psychologist at California State University in Fullerton who led the new study. Instead, heritable behavioural traits such as impulsivity could help determine when people first have sex, she says.

As genetic determinism goes, the new findings are modest. Segal’s team found that genes explain a third of the differences in participants’ age at first intercourse – which was, on average, a little over 19 years old. By comparison, roughly 80% of variations in height across a population can be explained by genes alone.

The study nicely illustrates a larger point about the relationship between our genetic makeup and our behavior. Contrary to what some Christians have argued (particularly in regards to homosexuality), our genes indisputably shape our personalities and lives in powerful ways. However, this does not mean, as others argue, that we are simply the sum of our genetic predispositions.

Rather, our genetic makeup provides us with traits, tendencies, and predispositions that influence but do not determine our behavior. As Dr. Segal explains in the quote above, personality traits such as impulsivity are genetically-linked, and such traits certainly affect the likelihood that one will lose one’s virginity at an earlier age. If we picture an axis ranging from Strong Self Control on one end to Significant Impulsivity on the other, our genetic makeup contributes to where we fall on that axis; and where we fall on the axis is certainly relevant to the question of how easily sexual temptations will be resisted.

However, genetic predisposition does not equal necessity, a point that the study also makes. “On the other hand, conservative social mores might delay a teen’s first sexual experience… Indeed, Segal’s team noticed a less pronounced genetic effect among twins born before 1948, compared with those who came of age in the 1960s or later.” As FuturePundit’s Randall Parker explains, “This supports an argument I’ve made here previously: the breakdown of old cultural constraints on behavior frees up people to follow genetically driven desires and impulses. We become more genetically driven as external constraints weaken.” Or, looking at the flip side, the stronger our internalized moral code, the more likely it is to overcome genetic predispositions towards illicit behavior.

Our genetic makeup matters. It creates the set of traits, tendencies, and predispositions – the “raw material” – that we have to work with, and different people have different raw material. What we make of what we are, though, is ultimately up to us.

“A focus on effort—not on intelligence or ability—is key to success in school and in life,” according to an article in Scientific American.

Our society worships talent, and many people assume that possessing superior intelligence or ability—along with confidence in that ability—is a recipe for success. In fact, however, more than 30 years of scientific investigation suggests that an overemphasis on intellect or talent leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unwilling to remedy their shortcomings.

The result plays out in children like Jonathan, who coast through the early grades under the dangerous notion that no-effort academic achievement defines them as smart or gifted. Such children hold an implicit belief that intelligence is innate and fixed, making striving to learn seem far less important than being (or looking) smart. This belief also makes them see challenges, mistakes and even the need to exert effort as threats to their ego rather than as opportunities to improve. And it causes them to lose confidence and motivation when the work is no longer easy for them.

Praising children’s innate abilities, as Jonathan’s parents did, reinforces this mind-set, which can also prevent young athletes or people in the workforce and even marriages from living up to their potential. On the other hand, our studies show that teaching people to have a “growth mind-set,” which encourages a focus on effort rather than on intelligence or talent, helps make them into high achievers in school and in life. [...]

Confronted by a setback such as a disappointing test grade, students with a growth mind-set said they would study harder or try a different strategy for mastering the material.

The students who held a fixed mind-set, however, were concerned about looking smart with little regard for learning. They had negative views of effort, believing that having to work hard at something was a sign of low ability. They thought that a person with talent or intelligence did not need to work hard to do well. Attributing a bad grade to their own lack of ability, those with a fixed mind-set said that they would study less in the future, try never to take that subject again and consider cheating on future tests.

This discussion of the primacy of effort reminded me of a fascinating anecdote in Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell. (The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study [TIMSS], is used to compare the academic ability of students from different countries.)

When students sit down to take the TIMSS exam, they also have to fill out a questionnaire. It asks them all kinds of things, such as what their parents’ level of education is, and what their views about math are, and what their friends are like. It’s not a trivial exercise. It’s about 120 questions long. In fact, it is so tedious and demanding that many students leave as many as ten or twenty questions blank.

Now, here’s the interesting part. As it turns out, the average number of items answered on that questionnaire varies from country to country. It is possible, in fact, to rank all the participating countries according to how many items their students answer on the questionnaire. Now, what do you think happens if you compare the questionnaire rankings with the math rankings on the TIMSS. They are exactly the same. In other words, countries whose students are willing to concentrate and sit still long enough and focus on answering every single question in an endless questionnaire are the same countries whose students do the best job of solving math problems.

On the radio today, an ad cheerfully inquired, “What if there was a pill that you could take that would make you have a good day?” The pill in question was a dubious homeopathic “positive mood formula,” but it is a precursor to more powerful options. In Our Posthuman Future, Francis Fukuyama writes that advances in neuropharmacology (the use of drugs to affect the nervous system) mean that “we don’t have to await the arrival of human genetic engineering to foresee a time when we will be able to enhance intelligence, memory, emotional sensitivity, and sexuality, as well as reduce aggressiveness and manipulate behavior in a host of other ways.”

As increasingly powerful drugs enable more precisely-targeted behavior modification with fewer side effects, a whole host of new ethical questions will arise. In the not-too-distant future, science may offer a pill that does make every day a good day. Happy. Cooperative. Friendly. Stress-free. Most dystopian prophecies of chemically-controlled personality assume the existence of a malevolent controller, but what if the reality is a future in which individuals freely and gladly use affect-enhancing drugs?

From a Christian perspective, one potential problem with such a “Good-Day Drug” is its impact on character development. Paul writes, “we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope” (Romans 5:3-4). Character is developed through difficult choices made well. Courage could not exist without fear, nor self-control without temptation, nor patience without trials. In a very real way, our choices make us, for better or worse.

If every choice shapes us to be either more or less like Christ, then drug-induced goodness would be an abdication of choice, leaving the part of us that chooses and wills – that actually matters in a long-term sense – as an undeveloped, infantile nullity. Withhold the daily tablet of virtue, and imagine the effect of a minor misfortune or a passing quarrel on a man whose rose-colored glasses have been suddenly removed, calling for reserves of fortitude or patience that never had a chance to develop. Stripped of artificial virtue, there is little else beneath.

It is this potential for stunting personal character that should make us leary of any pharmaceutical quick-fixes. There is a legitimate and important place for drugs that help correct chemical imbalances or treat genuine pathologies. Such drugs may allow the patient to function normally, breaking through a neurochemical fog that had been preventing right choices, or perhaps any choices at all. However, when pharmacology transitions from offering normalcy to offering morality, from making right choices possible to making right conduct easy, we would do well to remember the danger of an endless succession of Good Days.