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Exchanged Glory V: God Meant it for Good
…it became almost impossible to trace the fetish back to the original emotions that had spawned it. …They had become candy-coated, so that they were no longer recognizable for what they truly were.
When puberty came, I found myself spending a good deal of time listening to music and fantasizing. The fantasies followed a repeated theme. I pictured myself as a woman who smoked while facing difficulties. This image brought a hormone-charged sensation that reshaped my world, restructuring my Fear, Guilt, Anger, and Sorrow.
If I understand the fantasies correctly, they were a symbolic picture of what was happening in my heart. First, why was I a woman? I don’t believe I was suffering from transgender confusion. I have never felt as if I was a girl trapped in a boy’s body, and I have never desired to wear a dress. I believe I saw myself as a woman because I perceived myself to be weak, and women in the 1960s were portrayed as weak. I was the screaming blond from horror movies. I was a helpless victim who needed to be rescued. This image was an expression of the vulnerability I had felt as I had been unable to come to grips with my emotions over the past two years.
Second, why was I facing difficulties? This also was also a projection of my experience. My world had spun out of control, and I had been able to do little to stop it. My internal thrashing and rage had left me spiritually and emotionally wounded, and I was subconsciously crying out for something to medicate those wounds. Through the fantasies, I was accepting, internalizing, and soothing myself against the pain in my heart.
Third, why was I a woman who smoked? The image of a woman who smoked was what my subconscious mind had picked to rescue me. The movies and advertising of that time portrayed this image as sexy, and it became for me the one positive that stood out in the insanity of the culture of smoking that surrounded me.
My hormones used this image to transform the screaming blond into a force of nature. She overcame victim-hood by breathing a magic poison that infused her with such captivating love and eroticism that no evil could stand before her. Her choice to throw off caution and enjoy the pleasure of smoking made her fun loving, warm, and welcoming. Her willingness to accept risks while embracing the human need for comfort and enjoyment stood out in contrast to the fear and anger that had caused me to reject smoking. She also had a tragic guilt and vulnerability about her. In her heart she knew what this habit might do to her, but it was so powerful and life affirming that she couldn’t say “no” to it. She considered the cost, looked at cancer, and blew a cloud of carcinogens in its face.
Her beauty and strength inspired a delight that quieted my pain-riddled emotions. Thinking about her made my turmoil retreat. I could love her, and in the process I could move past the storm in my soul.
Why did I picture myself as this woman? It was because I wanted what she had to be a part of me. Identifying with her allowed me to rejoin the culture of smoking that I had thrown my life into a tailspin by rejecting. That culture, even with all of its problems, was still my culture. I had emotionally internalized its images and symbols for years, and they felt right for me. Rejecting it had set me up for a life lived away from many of the pictures of meaning and significance in my world. Now, through this girl, I could leave behind my ill-fated war against it. I once again felt like I belonged to my family and those around me.
It wasn’t long before my original fantasies faded. All that remained was a fascination with smoking and a growing desire to smoke myself. My mind began to daydream about starting, and I spent hours plotting the details. As I did, I found myself acting out by myself before I knew what I was doing.
My hours of anticipation leading up to my first cigarette ended with shock and disappointment. As I took my first deep drag on the burning death, my lungs rejected it forcefully. I instantly decided that my fantasies had no basis in reality. Smoking was every bit as distasteful as I had imagined as a young child. I would give it up and never return to it.
My obsession, however, wasn’t based in an enjoyment of smoking. Instead, it was a way to restructure my emotions to avoid trauma. This compelled me to continue to fantasize, privately act out, and try smoking again and again. Still, I didn’t take to the habit quickly. My body was not eager to aggravate the asthma that had already started to affect me. God also saved me from becoming a full-fledged smoker for several years by filling me with His Spirit when I was a teenager. His Spirit within me strove with the demons that were attempting to destroy me. The compulsion finally won out, however, and I became a smoker when I was twenty-one.
Once the fetish was in place, its trigger mechanism grabbed me extremely quickly. The sight of someone smoking or the thought of me smoking almost instantly sent hormones flowing through my body. Because of this, it became almost impossible to trace the fetish back to the original emotions that had spawned it. The Fear, Guilt, Anger, and Sorrow were lost in the pleasure. They had become candy-coated, so that they were no longer recognizable for what they truly were.
As God healed me, however, my emotional responses slowed down to the point where I could examine what I was feeling. One interesting learning experience took place when I traveled to Europe in 2007. I found myself once again in a culture in which smoking was more common than where I live in the United States. (There were fewer laws to restrict smoking in Europe.)
At first the emotional turmoil associated with my mother’s smoking rose in my heart. I was annoyed by the smell, and I felt that those inflicting it on me were impolite. My conscience was also stirred, and I felt that they were being sinfully stupid for risking their lives.
Then I considered their humanity. They were struggling with addictive desires they didn’t understand, and I could certainly relate to that. Some had tried to quit but had failed. To the extent they reminded me of my mother, I knew that she might have quit if my father had supported her in her attempts to do so. I felt guilty for my judgmental feelings.
The psychology of the fetish was kicking in. It was based, in part, on two conflicting sets of emotions. First, there was my childhood fear and anger over the health effects and the smell; second, I felt compassion for those caught in this habit and wanted to accept them unconditionally. I would rather turn against myself for being critical than to think less of someone else.
After about a week, I found my sexual desires rising to “rescue” me. They offered to help me to “escape” the entire problem by turning the women I had seen into objects of such irresistible beauty that both my judgment and my sympathy would be irrelevant. My inner difficulties could be buried under a cloud of pleasure, and the remnants of my childhood trauma could be forgotten.
I, of course, refused the offer, but I was glad for the learning experience. It confirmed what I believed God had been showing me about the root issues behind the fetish. I was also happy that it had taken a week for serious temptations to kick in. Just a few short years before this, it would have happened almost instantly.
There was also a flavor of assumed authority in the fetish. I believe this stemmed from the fact that I had fought against smoking and had lost to those who justified their actions solely on nonsensical cultural standards. It didn’t matter if they were wrong; it didn’t matter if they bothered others or killed themselves; they smoked because they controlled the norms of society.
Smokers seemed different from me. With the specter of death hanging over their heads, they lit up and laughed. When others complained about the smell, they asserted their “rights” and redefined politeness to mean that everyone else should tolerate their polluted air. Their mystique and social power combined with the attractiveness of women to all but overwhelm me. To my twelve-year old mind, women smokers were like goddesses.
Though I never thought of them in religious terms, they had an effect on me that was similar to the emotional side of religion. Their presence withered my resistance and made me open to their charms. Smoking was like a “mystical ritual” that transfused them with goddess-like confidence and strength. The spontaneous erotic connection I felt with them made my difficulties fade, and I felt empowered to face the world.
One other seemingly unrelated set of events fed into the fetish. Shortly before puberty, someone had made fun of me for liking a girl. In reaction to this, my internal Parent decided to avoid future embarrassment by refusing to allow romantic feelings. I became a member of the “girl haters club” and did my best to squash my interest in female acquaintances. Perhaps as a result, the fetish, which formed during this time, had little to do with relationship or intimacy.
As puberty progressed, I quickly left the “girl hater’s club,” but my sexual desires for intimacy never really joined with the fetish. In fact, I don’t remember ever letting myself lust much after a smoker who was a friend, and certainly not a relative. Any sort of a relationship tended to hold me back from the temptation to give into its tendencies. It was almost as if I had two distinct sex drives, one based on a desire for a healthy relationship and the other based on the sickness of the fetish.
If I hadn’t become a Christian, I would have eventually combined the two drives in an unhealthy way by pursuing women who smoked. But at the age of fourteen I gave my life to Jesus, and He led me to pursue healthy relationships. Many years later I married a non-smoker, and it seemed the two drives were destined to never come together. Unfortunately, the tension between them grew into a brutal fight. I loved my wife, but the fetish ate away at my emotions and drew me in a different direction.
I wasn’t sure what to do about that. I tried to ignore it, but it clamored for attention. I tried to kill it, but it refused to die. What I really wanted to do was make the forbidden drives fit into my marriage, but they seemed too perverted for that. When all else failed, I held them down as best I could. Later in this book I will describe how that failed me (and what God did to save me from it).
As this habit took over my heart, I can imagine the devil laughing. God had sent Mrs. Gerald[19] to me so I could find His love. Instead, the devil had taken her input and manipulated events to produce an internal change that seemed impossible to reverse. For me, being around smoking was like being around pornography, and I would be surrounded by smokers for many years into the future. The hormones in my body were going to rage and implant images within my mind that would make the fetish extremely difficult to resist. It would expand within me and penetrate much of my personality.
God has designed sex to reshape a man’s or woman’s heart as a part of becoming one flesh. A husband and wife deepen and intertwine their relationship through sex over a lifetime. It becomes part of why they sacrifice for each other, why they work long hard hours, and why they rearrange their entire lives to strengthen their family. The psychological machinery of sex reshapes their inner being and expresses itself in practical everyday living.
When a twelve-year old boy finds himself sexually turned on by everyday sights, that same psychological machinery becomes a death spiral of inescapable pornography. It was just about impossible for me to avoid temptations. Any trip into public might expose me to a smell or an image that would entice me. Even worse, I didn’t even need to go into public; my mother smoked. The air in our house was enough to overwhelm me. The fetish was fusing my everyday emotions with perversion, step by step remaking me into a different person.
By the time I was an adult, it had so shaped my personality that anything which reminded me of smoking – a smokestack, burning leaves, stress – could move my mind in the wrong direction. The rearrangement of my heart was so radical, my ignorance so deep, and the lack of information so complete that it took me over thirty years of walking with God to uncover the original feelings that started it all. Only then was I able to understand what was happening, consciously work through the emotional core of the problem, and make progress against some of the deeper issues that had gripped my inner psyche.
When we turn from the true God to images like the false god of permissive-love, it shouldn’t surprise us that we fall to foolishness. We have robbed ourselves of the tools we need to handle the issues of our humanity. Questions of love, faith, guilt, worth, and security don’t disappear; they just become misunderstood. We look for answers, but we lack the wisdom and power to see what God is offering. In the resulting confusion, some of us attempt to solve our problems in ways that mislead and destroy us.
It is interesting to me that though I don’t remember ever hearing that Jesus had died to pay for my sins, I managed to create my own “suffering messiah.” She identified with all that is wrong with the world by taking on one of its most foolish expressions – smoking. In doing so, she slowly killed herself as she overcame evil by the power of her sexuality.
I also had no concept of being joined to Christ in order to share in His nature, yet I had joined myself to a fetish as a source of “god-like” inspiration and strength. It changed my world by stirring within me a hormonal rush of beauty and excitement.
I had exchanged the glory of God for images, first the false god of permissive-love and then images associated with the fetish, and my internal life was radically altered as a result. Now when my internal Parent kicked in to help me care for myself and others, my guilt and reward emotions took on a “be true to yourself” ethic. My protecting and nurturing emotions turned to the idea that love was about helping people feel good. My judgmental emotions were quieted by the thought that fun sins were too wonderful to really be a problem. My internal Child was released to indulge in pleasure – even if it slowly killed me.
I had turned from the truth of God to a lie, and my heart had fallen into foolishness. As a result, I was given over to impurity.
For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God, or give thanks; but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, that their bodies might be dishonored among them.
(Romans 1:21-24, NAS)
Bad worship (making up false gods) leads to bad actions (like sexual sin). Our deceptions sabotage our internal development, and we end up with an approach to life that leads to destructive behaviors.
Remember, however, God has a plan. When he allows us to sin (though He never causes us to), He is waiting to turn our lives around so that He can use even that sin for good. My life wasn’t over simply because I had fallen into a life altering fetish. Jesus was going to draw me by His Spirit, save me, and transform me. The process would take time, however. The next few chapters tell how I continued to struggle even after I became spiritually alive.
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