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Exchanged Glory: A Vision of Freedom
If the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy one is understanding, what have we done when we replace the fear and knowledge of God with an image? We have destroyed the foundation for wisdom! We have removed the groundwork from under an important inner boundary that God uses to hold us back from unrighteousness!
Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, that their bodies might be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. (emphasis added)
(Romans 1:24-27, NAS)
Ungodliness leads to sexual sin. My false god of permissive-love created in me the conditions necessary for me to fall into the unusual desires I described in Chapter One, “The Growing Struggle.” Through this process, God gave me over in the lusts of my heart to impurity.
Even after I became a Christian, it was only after I gave up my false god that I was able to tap into the power of the true God to overcome. Until then, God continued to give me over, for I had exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature (my image) rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever.[17]
Before you reject me as a heretic who believes God makes people sin, please let me explain. This scriptural truth is central to all that I will say in this series of books, so I need to devote several pages to it in an attempt to make it clear.
Romans 1 describes how we get into sexual sin and, in doing so, also describes how we can get out. If we were given over because of ungodliness, then the key to finding freedom is godliness. Replace the bad worship with good worship, and we will find the power to overcome.
First, I need to make a distinction between “given over” and “given up on.” Some people read Romans 1:24-27 as if it says that God gives up on some individuals. They conclude that the ones who end up in stubborn sexual sins have no hope of escape, for who can resist His will? Those who deal with long term sexual deviations, like myself, are especially tempted to think like this, because it can take many years to fully find freedom from our chains.
If we look at these verses in context, we see that there is no need to lose hope. In the book of Romans, Paul is describing the gospel (which means good news).
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes…
In order to present this good news, Paul first gives the bad news, which is that all of us have sinned and fallen away from being the people God intended us to be.
… For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin.
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
Romans 1:18-32 is where Paul is making the charge that everyone is under sin. He is giving a brief description of some principles from which we can conclude that we all miss God’s heart for us.
These verses show an outline of the progression of sin in our lives. It starts with a wrong attitude toward God (ungodliness) and progresses from there to wrong actions (unrighteousness). This makes perfect sense. When we reject God and His understanding of the world, we become deceived and hard hearted. As a result, we act in the wrong way.
Romans 1:18-32 isn’t limited to a few bad sinners; everyone does it. That’s why verses 28-29 say that God gives us over to all sorts of sins, not just sexual.
… God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers …
We wouldn’t say that whisperers (gossips) or the covetous are hopeless. We know that God saves those sorts of people all the time. So Romans 1:24-27 doesn’t mean that God gives up on anyone.
When the Bible says that God gives someone over, it means that He allows that person to follow the foolish intentions of their own heart. He is quite capable of arranging the circumstances of their life in a way that would keep them from certain sins, but He chooses not to. He doesn’t hold them back from rebelling and hurting themselves.
In doing this, God is, of course, not giving anyone permission to sin. He continues to be the Judge of the earth who will punish them for their disobedience, but He lets them have the freedom to disobey.
When He offers a choice to those who He knows will choose sin, He in a very real sense gives them over to sin.
It is important to know where misled sexual desires come from. One misconception is that Romans 1:24-27 tells us that God in some way pushes people toward immorality. A current view of homosexuality, even among some Christians, can lead to this conclusion. Many feel that homosexuals are born that way (God made them that way), or that societal influences have forced them to be that way (God allowed circumstances beyond their control to make them that way). In both cases, the person given over is assumed not to be responsible for actions they do that express the resulting inner condition.
The Bible makes it clear that we end up in a particular sin because our desires take us there.
Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am tempted by God"; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed.
The problem is in us. We are responsible. All of us follow our desires into sin of one kind or another.
What then? Are we better than they? Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. As it is written: "There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; they have together become unprofitable; there is none who does good, no, not one.”
This doesn’t mean that we aren’t influenced toward evil by the events God allows in our lives, but the source of our problem is our tendency to disobey rather than the circumstances that push us from the outside.
To understand this, consider a friend or enemy who knows how to bring out the worst in us. We say that this person knows how to “push our buttons.” They speak and act in ways that lead us to lose our temper or do what we shouldn’t. The person doesn’t put the sinful traits into us; they simply bring them out. If the foolishness wasn’t in us ahead of time, we would have no buttons to push.
If God allowed people and circumstances to fully push our buttons, we would be horrified by what we would see in ourselves. The potential for all sorts of evil lies dormant in our souls.
When we replace God with images, the internal and external protective walls come down, so that our desires rise up to take us to forbidden and dangerous places.[18] Our buttons become “pushable,” and circumstances can take us in any of a number of sinful directions. Some of us find ourselves dealing with sinful sexual lusts that seem normal to us, and we struggle to make sense of it.
This happens because the inclination of our hearts apart from the grace of God is toward evil.
… Truly the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil; madness is in their hearts …
We shouldn’t think that bad influences push us into sin, but that good influences hold us back from it. Using myself as an example, it is obvious that circumstances played a part in my fall into a smoking fetish, but I shouldn’t blame my choices on them. My desires led me astray, and if my heart had been set on serving Jesus during early puberty, I could have recognized the problem and dealt with it by God’s grace. Instead, I was blithely ignoring the truth, which made me vulnerable to confusing events that played on my lusts and deceived me. Better circumstances could have kept me from the fetish, but clearly I had set myself up for the fall!
I need to go a little farther into this idea of being given over. Wisdom is a protective wall that God has given so we can avoid the traps of sexual sin.
Say to wisdom, "You are my sister," and call understanding your nearest kin, that they may keep you from the immoral woman, from the seductress who flatters with her words. (emphasis added)
For the commandment is a lamp, and the law a light; reproofs of instruction are the way of life, to keep you from the evil woman, from the flattering tongue of a seductress. (emphasis added)
We see from these verses that wisdom protects us from being seduced. Now ask yourself what the foundation of wisdom is. Where does it start, and what is at its heart?
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy one is understanding.
If the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy one is understanding, what have we done when we replace the fear and knowledge of God with an image? We have destroyed the foundation for wisdom! We have removed the groundwork from under an important inner boundary that God uses to hold us back from unrighteousness!
With the foundation destroyed, is it any surprise that our hearts go after impurity? We have made ourselves too dull to know better. God gives us over by through a predictable process in which our hearts are blinded by an image of our own choosing, and this false god makes us too foolish to guard ourselves from our own lusts.
Now we need to ask some questions so we can go one step deeper into understanding this. Is wisdom in our conscious mind only? Aren’t our subconscious thoughts and feelings also affected by wisdom? David says:
Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
Our heart often has thoughts and feelings that we aren’t aware of. There are wicked ways in us that we don’t understand until God opens our eyes to see them. When we miss them, they bring unexpected trouble into our life. David prays that God will search him, show him his errors, and lead him in a better way.
Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom.
David realized that it is not enough to know God’s ways only in our conscious mind. Wisdom has to penetrate to our hidden part. When it doesn’t reach us there, we can have a difficult time consistently living well.
Unrecognized wicked ways can lead to sexual sins. They rise up and warp our thinking without us understanding what is happening. As they do, any sort of desire might feel entirely natural to us, but it is only natural in the sense that it is an expression of the deep foolishness brought on by ungodliness. Deception makes all sorts of actions feel normal.
There is an argument in our culture over whether homosexuals choose their sexual orientation. Some argue that it is always a choice, while others say that it can sometimes be genetic. While I don’t believe it is ever genetic in the sense that many claim,[19] I think that the whole argument doesn’t take into account the complexity of our hearts. We oversimplify the problem.
When we speak about choices, we tend to mean conscious choices. I believe that homosexual desires often spring out of our subconscious. It’s hard for me to believe that all gay people consciously choose an orientation that up until recently caused them social embarrassment. It seems much more true to experience to say that the decision springs from the confusion brought on by ungodliness. That doesn’t excuse the sin, but it does describe it in a more helpful way.
For those homosexuals who seem to have been that way since early puberty, the conscious choice is probably more the decision to worship and serve the wrong god than to be gay. When someone finds at puberty that they are attracted to the same sex rather than the opposite, they have been making decisions for years in the futile imaginations of their foolish and darkened hearts. It is those choices which have led, often in unexpected ways, to homosexuality.
One relationship that can particularly affect our subconscious view of sex is our relationship with our human father. It seems that adolescent development is in some way tied to a father’s involvement in a young person’s life. Absence or abuse by him – whether it is neglect, abandonment, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, or sexual abuse – potentially causes great damage.
Some of the reasons for this are well understood. Most of us grow up best in an environment of love and support, where wise parents help us to understand life. When this is missing, it makes sense that our hearts tend to wander into unhealthy areas.
In addition, loving parents are a model for the kind of relationship in which God intended sex to be practiced. When our parents fail to show what family is supposed to be, our imaginations can carry our hormones into trouble.
A great deal of what I will write in these books is aimed at describing how I came to know God as my loving Heavenly Father. My relationship with Him overcame what I had missed in my life and played a key role in my recovery.
At this point, however, I am focusing on the wrath and mercy of God. I believe it is helpful to shed some light on how an absent or abusive father can distort our understanding of the fear of the Lord. Though it is an emotionally charged subject, it is one that many of us must face if we want to learn the truth.
Then you will discern the fear of the LORD, and discover the knowledge of God.
(Proverbs 2:5, NAS)
The fear of the Lord must be discerned, and absent and abusive fathers make that difficult to do. They suppress the knowledge of God, leaving the neglected or abused person without the tools to understand healthy fear.
When we suffer mistreatment from someone who should care for us, we tend to learn an irrational dread. The world feels like an inescapable place of rejection and pain, where no matter what we do we are unloved. We look for acceptance and safety, but we seem to be assaulted on every side. Insecurity and anger take hold, injuring the way we view life.
It is only natural that our human father-child relationship will color our Heavenly Father-child relationship. When God’s wrath is felt, we will remember our human father’s mistreatment and impose his image onto our Heavenly Father. We will feel rejection and fear that God is too dangerous to be around. Our relationship with Him will become distorted with negative emotions.
When I encourage people to grow in the fear of the Lord, I don’t want to be insensitive to the unhealthy fear this might stir in them. I know that the feelings involved can be extremely intense. I would rather not write words that will stir them in my readers, but we need to shine God’s light on this problem if we want to find freedom. Unfortunately, when our emotions remain buried in secret, they tend to fester and twist. Allowing God’s word to help us understand our misconceptions gives us a chance to change. It is the truth that makes us free (John 8:32).
No matter how much it hurts to learn a proper fear of the Lord, we can’t live without it. It is the foundation for wisdom, and it is necessary for our recovery. At some point, the neglected or abused person must make their way past the image of their unjust human father, so they can see the glory of their just Heavenly Father.
I realize that doing so is difficult, and I don’t pretend that the little I have written in this book can solve the entire problem. But I want to help us to understand the battle. If we can see what we are fighting, we can begin to deal with it and move forward.
In spite of what an earthly father may have done to us, it is possible to both fear God and love Him at the same time. He wants to teach us how to live in this reality. It is as much our lack of a healthy fear of Him that leads to sexual sins as it is our lack of a healthy love for Him.
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