Prostituted Love...

My sister just caught her boyfriend soliciting a local prostitute online.

Now don’t go judging me – she gave me permission to write this; her vengeance becoming my socio-theological goldmine! But all joking aside, how far has common morality slipped? Is the Internet Age to blame? Has easy access to e-smut pushed us further and further toward the brink of
depravity? Was the world always this bad or is Original Sin merely as American as hot apple pie?

What I’m trying to communicate, however crassly, is that common ethics appear to be on the decline just as personal spirituality is exploding into everyday life. The 21st Century looks to offer more potential for Christian evangelism than, perhaps, any period in the last two hundred years. Today, even vocal anti-Christians believe in God and respect Jesus, but such spiritual openness hasn’t translated to the kind of Kingdom Jesus came to
establish.

This is the central challenge posed to postmodern Christianity: how does one introduce a higher ethic, an absolute Truth, in the midst of exalted relativism? We approach this question when we talk about “relevance” or “emergent Christianity,” but too often the relevant issues at hand are lost in theological rhetoric and pop-philosophy that has little to do with practical living. My
views of hell and creation may be changing (and they certainly are thanks to postmodern literature) but if my love doesn’t grow then my Christianity is just as stale and marginalized as it’s always been.

Conclusion: theology, per se, isn’t the solution.

So if intellectuals can’t save Selfish Me or my spurned sister or her philandering ex, where do we go from here? How does Christianity redeem a world where Christian virtues are trivial to the point of social incompatibility?

The Apostle Paul boiled it down to this: “and if there is any other commandment, all are summed up in this saying, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Romans 13:9) Jesus lived and breathed this kind of self- negating, rights-surrendering, community-altering agape. It got Him killed.

If we are to embrace a brand of Christianity that truly alters our lives and the world in which we inhabit, it will require more from us than throwing out our secular music and wearing kitschy t-shirts bearing memorable Jesus-ized slogans.

First, we have to rediscover the unsexy unselfishness inherent in Biblical ideas of love. We have to remind the world (and ourselves) that love involves sacrifice. Somewhere along the way we lost the “otherness” that love demands. In a generation where self-gratification reaches new levels through erotic mass media and a dangerously casual dating culture, the idea of abstaining from indulgence sounds almost puritanical. Yet such an attitude is completely contrary to a 1 Corinthians 13-kind of love that is defined, not by feelings or emotions or sensuality, but by matters of will, of choice and of sacrifice.

It doesn’t sound very erotic, but it may be the only prescription for healthy, transcendent relationships.

Next, we have to expose and defy the capitalist attitude that blindly tells us, “More is better – even relationally.” This lie convinces my frat brothers back in college that quantity is better than quality – that bedding four women in a week is perfectly acceptable – that there is plenty of time to settle down and be domestic later on. Years later, this lie convinces a man that his wife may have been adequate when his salary was 40K a year, but now that he’s reached Junior Vice-President, it’s time to think about image.

“More” has been defined as a certain shape of body and a certain social inclination; a plastic replica of happy living. After all, how could something so pedestrian as love survive the rigors of corporate appearance?

Finally, love must be removed – with a scalpel, if necessary – from the romantic entanglements lauded by pop-culture’s generic TV-archetypes. Ironically, this aspect of false love may be the most difficult to rid ourselves of. Because it is seemingly benign (almost adorably innocent) it escapes the critical lens of truth. Who could deny the life-changing love that grew and blossomed between Justin and Brittany? Brad and Angelina? …Kevin Arnold and Winnie Cooper?

Who would want to?

The truth nobody likes to admit (but everyone knows deep-down) is that love can be quite unimpressive, even boring: my parents have watched British comedies every Saturday night for fifteen years! Before that, they square danced. God save us from such fates…

Or perhaps: God redeem us through such simplicity.

I live next-door to a woman with schizophrenia. Her husband left her last month – tired of the sickness, I would imagine. For the last four nights, she has danced to blaring country music in her driveway, silhouetted by the empty glow of her parked pickup’s headlights. She’s out there as I write this paragraph, lost in some blurred reality that few will take the time to care about. I wonder what facets of love are lacking in her life. I wonder which parts of “ever after” fell by the wayside as her husband walked away for the last time.

Love is a lot of work - gut wrenching at times - which means that Christianity is inevitably hard, no matter what the televangelists say.

In cautious reflection, I guess there must be a rush in making e-mail contact with a real life prostitute – the adrenaline of “what if” must excite the baser instincts in a man. Perhaps my sister’s ex isn’t so vile. I suppose I can almost see how something so empty and meaningless could provide a tempting escape from the responsibilities of a real, deep, give-and-take
relationship…

But prostituted love isn’t real. Neither is empty, self-help Christianity, which promises far more than any religion could deliver: the simple life, the good life, the American Pie.

I don’t really think the world is getting worse. I think we’ve always been a mess. What’s different, at least in America, is that today’s Christianity offers to do more than redeem lives and communities. It has offered to provide the same sexy highs that the world desperately runs after.

The church, in many ways, has sold itself to a lurid fantasy; an accessible community prostitute, promising quick and easy thrills with no strings attached.

I must confess, I called that church once… I was lonely one Sunday morning, not relishing another ho-hum sermon… but I hung up when they asked for my credit card number.