The Pleasure Trap

 

One of the great things about the Bible is that it shows us characters, heroes, and villains, in all their nobility and vice.  It shows us their glory and it shows us their humiliation.  We see their weaknesses and we see their strengths.  There is no whitewashing here.

One such character that I find myself identifying with is Samson.  Samson was a man of tremendous passions.  He followed his heart, not his head, and more often than not, his more primitive urges as well.  He had tremendous zeal for the Lord, but he let his desires lead him away from God all too often.  Samson was commissioned by God to do great things and he did accomplish some great things for the Lord, but that greatness was derailed by Samson's pursuit of pleasure.

"And Samson went down to Timnath, and saw a woman in Timnath of the daughters of the Philistines.  And he came up, and told his father and his mother, and said, I have seen a woman in Timnath of the daughters of the Philistines: now therefore get her for me to wife.  Then his father and his mother said unto him, Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy brethren, or among all my people, that thou goest to take a wife of the uncircumcised Philistines?  And Samson said unto his father, Get her for me; for she pleaseth me well."  (Judges 14:1-3, KJV)

Samson was not satisfied with the basic, run-of-the-mill Israelite girls he grew up with, no, he was drawn to the more exotic, more dangerous, pagan, Philistine women.  The verse above says that one particular woman pleased him well.  He was not concerned with following God's will or honoring his parents in this, no, his only concern was to satisfy those cravings.  He was more interested in pleasure than in his purpose.  Samson was chasing women who worshipped idols and were the avowed enemies of Israel.  Perhaps the forbidden nature of these relationships intrigued Samson and made them that much more thrilling for him.  I can resonate with that.

Like so many in our culture today, Samson pursued his sexual fulfillment at any cost.  He had no regard for God's laws, his parent's expectations, or the traditions of his culture.  He was living an alternative lifestyle before it was even cool.

He chased down is carnal passions until he landed in bed with Delilah, who deceived and betrayed him (What did he think would happen?  She was a pagan Philistine, after all.) and he ended up in bondage, shackled to a millstone with his eyes gauged out, forced to grind grain for the people he had once dominated on the battlefield.  Samson's pursuit of pleasure at any cost landed him in bondage.  I can relate with that, too.

Mainstream culture has much in common with Samson.  We are told that pursuing our sexual fulfillment at any cost is a good and right thing to do.  It is a biological imperative, our genes demand it of us, we are told.  We cannot find satisfaction and joy in this life without sex.  Not just sex, but pleasure in any form.  The sum and substance of life is to eat, drink and be merry.  The good life is a life of maximum pleasure according to many.

The primary problem is that we confuse pleasure with joy.  Or we substitute pleasure for joy.  Instead of chasing after the heart of our Heavenly Father, we chase after the pleasures of this world.  We fill our stomachs and indulge our sexual appetites.  We hunt down money, power and entertainments of all sorts and turn our backs on the infinite joy our Heavenly Father freely offers us.

All these things the world offers certainly deliver pleasure at the highest level.  The feeling of ecstasy that comes from a powerful sexual encounter is an amazing thing, but that is not nearly the same thing as the joy a mother feels when she holds her child for the first time.  Nor is the joy a mother feels the same as "the joy unspeakable and full of glory" that God wants to give through a relationship with Christ.  The pleasure of the flesh and the joy of the Lord, while both bring delight, are two very different kinds of things.  God wants us to know our sins are forgiven and that we have an eternal home with Him in heaven.  It is a joy built on the foundation of peace.  Peace that passes all understanding.  This is peace and joy that can only be found as we forsake our sinful pleasures and live in a relationship with Christ.  We are all too easily led astray by the world, the flesh, and the devil into believing that as long as we can enjoy pleasurable experiences that is good enough and we should be satisfied.

The problem with any carnal pleasure is that the more we indulge it, the less satisfying it becomes.  The glutton eats and eats and eats and with each successive meal there is less and less enjoyment.  The sixth slice of pizza is never as delicious as the first.  The avaricious works and schemes to fill his coffers, but the delight he receives from making a million is far less than the delight he had in making his first $1,000.  The tenth episode of "Cupcake Wars" we binge watch is not nearly as amusing as the first one was, and usually by that time we are completely zoned out and numb are just letting the sights and sounds wash over us mindlessly.

This was how it was for me in my addiction to pornography.  The more I watched, the more I craved.  So, I watched more, and more deviant material, but still the hungering grew and grew until I was lost, drowning.  I was seeking joy, but fell for the satanic trap of substituting it for pleasure.  If I couldn't have joy unspeakable and full of glory, at least I would feel good, well, at least for a few minutes.

It is the law of diminishing returns.  Sin can never satisfy.  It may give us a momentary thrill, but every time we indulge it that thrill wears off.  It promises the world, and for a while, it feels like it will, but it never can.  The things of this world, as enjoyable as they may be, can never satisfy.

One of the great parables Jesus told was of the rich man and Lazarus.  The rich man ends up in Hell and Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, which is a prelude to paradise.  The Bible said that the rich man in Hell was thirsty and asked Lazarus to bring just one drop of water to cool his tongue.  Of course, Lazarus was unable to satisfy that request and the rich man was left to languish in his thirst.

Some, more creative Bible interpreters, take this to mean that in Hell, all our desires and passions will be cranked up to eleven but there will be no way to find satisfaction.  We will hunger, but no bread will be given.  We will thirst but there will be nothing to drink.  We will lust and have no way to satisfy those cravings.  And so, all through eternity we will burn in our illicit passions, endlessly craving without any way to find fulfillment.  That sounds like hell to me.

In many church traditions they list seven deadly sins: envy, greed, lust, pride, sloth, gluttony, and wrath.  In the majority of these vices what we find is a tendency for us to focus on satisfying the cravings of our flesh.  We feel hungry so we overeat.  We feel sexual desire, so we fornicate.  We don't like to work so we lay around and are lazy.  This is what Satan wants us focusing on, on our pleasures, on our fleshly desires, he wants us to think that this world and its pleasures are all there is. As John Lenin put it in "Imagine,” “Imagine there's no heaven, It's easy if you try, No hell below us, Above us only sky.  Imagine all the people living for today."  The devil wants us focusing on the here and now and satisfying those cravings we feel in our bodies, no need to think or pursue any higher meaning, everything we want or need can be had in our flesh right here and right now.

Satan has blinded the minds of those in the world, and led them to believe that pleasure, and especially sexual gratification is the key to joy.  It is an easy deception to fall for.  Many are led away from Christ and into destruction by this kind of thinking.  The question we need to ask ourselves is, are we pursuing Christ with all our hearts?  Have we taken up His Cross and followed Him?  Or are we living simply to satisfy the pleasures of our flesh?

The Bible is filled with bone-chilling warnings if we ignore Christ and seek only after pleasure.  We do well to pay attention to them.  I will present just one from 1 Timothy 5.  Paul was giving Timothy instruction about how the widows in the church should be dealt with and he wrote this, "But she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth." (v. 6) There have been many days in the throes of my addiction that I felt like I was dead while I was still living.  Paul makes it abundantly clear, if we are living life to only indulge our pleasures, we are dead men walking.

But then, pleasure presents a kind of paradox in Scripture.  The pursuit of pleasure as an end in and of itself, or I should say, fleshly, sinful pleasures will only lead us into destruction, the Bible is clear on this point (See Ephesians 5:3-5).  Hell will be filled with those who chose to indulge their fleshly appetites instead of following Christ.  But God does not tell us to be miserable.  He wants to delight and enjoy all the good things He has filled the earth with.  Many of us have pursued pleasure, but we have not pursued it far enough.  We will look at that in the next post.