Matt sent me this silly interview yesterday, as I was casting about for something to distract my anxious mind, and then this morning he was the first to alert me to the death of Hugh Hefner. That’s true love in marriage–always being there for each other, or, in my case, him always being there for me in the form of a constant stream of ridiculous articles. If you ever see us standing in the same room texting, just know that we are texting Each Other.
I don’t really have any snark for this dark moment. I think it is devastating to watch a man live and then to die completely outside the knowledge and love of God. In the ridiculously long article I linked, whoever was trying to string all the tweets and biographical tidbits together kept returning to Mr. Hefner admitting, in the 90s, that he had “looked for love in all the wrong places.” Never a truer word was spoken by a man appointed once to die.
And there he was, at the end, a wizened old grandfather, surrounded by caricatures of women, supposedly at the pinnacle of human achievement, when all he had wrought was the objectification of everyone. Of course he was lonely. Of course the whole picture is bleak and depressing. He, in his lifetime, missed the richness of God’s mercy, the depth and breadth of the female person, having always cookie cutter-ed and be-spoiled the female form. And women, who needed love also, looked to him for affection and care, believing the lie that if their shapes were exaggerated they themselves would be lovable.
But sadness turns to irritation for me when I look at the foolishness of a so-called Christian who tries to pin all these lies onto God, who looks at the Trinity, the incarnation, the amazing love of God for his people, and tries to say that it is, of all things, sexual. He is just as confused, though not nearly so charming, and I hope that not a soul will be taken in.
All these are like the poor Israelites, grumbling at the bottom of the mountain, unable to see God and so concluding that he isn’t there and doesn’t love them, taking off all their jewelry and throwing it in the fire, dancing around the dumb, lifeless calf, and then ‘rising up to play.’ But the play is dark and ultimately in the morning they awake not to satisfaction and joy, but to loss, darkness, loneliness, regret and judgement.
When you reduce everything to sex you don’t end up even getting to have that. When you reduce the human form to any one dimension, and make that it’s essential component of identity and worship, you end up with handfuls of dust when it’s finally all over.
The love of God can’t be reduced to such a paltry, foolish, silly game. You don’t have to make yourself into something that other broken humans can recognize. You don’t have to reduce yourself down to your sexuality. You don’t have to ‘play and play and play’ in order to be satisfied. The only thing you need to be covered over by the mercy and love of God is to turn to him, to acknowledge that he is God and you are not, that you are sorry for your sins, for ruining and wrecking the humanity of yourself and others. And then he will forgive you. He will take away the stain, the dross, the vacant desert of loneliness.
And yes, it is singular. That’s why faithful lifelong marriage is such a vibrant picture of it. God will rescue and preserve you all the way to eternal life, if you turn to him and face him. And he will join you to the corporate body of the church. But that body isn’t objectified, used, cast aside when another younger version comes along. The Son and the Bride live together forever. You can be swept up into that singular, capacious love, by turning to God, by ceasing to worship yourself and your own desires. The more you turn away from him the more the pitiful lump of love that you had is scattered and ruined. He is the only one who can preserve and keep and satisfy your soul.
And now back to prayer for me.
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