SE021410
IT’S ALL GREEK TO ME
2. Eros
Now, we all know our work EROTIC comes from the Greek word EROS and so when I say EROS, most of you will think of it in strictly in sexual terms. You’ll conjure up images of white hot passion.
Like this story I read about an old husband and wife who are having coffee at a tavern, when the husband leans in to ask his wife a question:
"Do you remember over fifty years ago when I lead you behind this very tavern and you leaned against the back fence and we, you know.. "
Yes, she says a little embarrassed, "I remember it."
"Well, how about we take a stroll around there again and… one for old time's sake?"
"Oh Charlie, you old devil!" she said. Now it just so happened that a police officer was sitting in the next booth and overheard their conversation. He chuckled to himself, but then thought,
"I've got to see these two old-timers doing it against a fence. He felt like a voyeur, but he told himself, just to keep an eye on them, so there's no trouble." So he followed them at a distance.
The elderly couple walks slowly along, with canes, and finally they get to the back of the tavern and make their way to the fence. As she leans against the fence, the old man made his move.
But then, suddenly they erupt into the most furious and animated copulation that the policeman had ever seen. This goes on for about ten minutes complete with loud noises and moaning and screaming. Finally, they both collapse, panting on the ground.
The policeman is amazed. He thinks, I just learned something about old age I never knew!” After giving the couple a while to recover and compose themselves, the policeman can’t help himself, he’s so amazed he just has to ask them what their secret is. As the couple passes, he says to them,
"Excuse me, but I saw that… and I have to say, you must've had a fantastic sex life together. What is your secret?"
Shaking, the old man replied, "Fifty years ago, that wasn't an electric fence."
Maybe that’s not the image you equate with EROTIC… but still, culture trains us to think of EROS and SEX as synonymous. But as we’ll find out today, EROS and SEX are separate, though related things.
The best way to describe EROS LOVE in modern parlance is that EROS is the love that is the “STATE BEING IN LOVE”.
Now, I’m not sure how you’re conditioned to think about BEING IN LOVE. In our culture two voices tend to speak about BEING IN LOVE (*song).
- One thinks being in love is EVERYTHING,
- the other thinks BEING IN LOVE amounts to almost NOTHING.
ROMANTIC VIEW OF EROS
The first view is put forward in all Romantic TV shows and MOVIES, where the moral of the story is: find someone to love and you will find happiness. Romantic love = fulfillment. It’s the implication of movies like Sleepless in Seattle, Love Actually, You’ve Got Mail, Jerry Maguire:
- being in love COMPLETES you.
- Conversely, there is nothing so pathetic as a human alone.
MESSAGE?: do what you have to do, cheat who you have to cheat, leave who you have to leave, risk what you have to risk, but whatever you do, FIND A LOVER to love you, or you are a nobody.
SCIENTIFIC VIEW OF EROS
That’s the voice of most pop culture. But then there’s the voice of Science. The voice of science sees being in love as a pure chemical reaction in the brain and body. Psychologists who study the phenomena of being IN LOVE would describe it like this:
…a temporary collapse of ego boundaries in response to sexual stimuli, to increase the probability of sexual pairing to enhance the survival of the species.
You might not think of Tina Turner as much of a scientist, but she certainly had the scientific take on BEING IN LOVE when she sang these words, back when I was in high school:
- You must understand, That the touch of your hand
- Makes my pulse react, That it's only the thrill
- Of boy meeting girl, Opposites attract
- It's physical, Only logical
- You must try to ignore, That it means more than that…
o Oh what’s love got to do, got to do with it
o What's love but a sweet old fashioned notion?
Kind of takes the wind out of Valentine’s Day, doesn’t she?
But somewhere in the middle of those extremes, God speaks through the timeless wisdom of Scripture. What’s the Bible’s attitude toward EROS? We have to search the whole Bible to get the full picture.
- In the beginning, God mates the first two humans and we have EROS captured in Adam’s response to seeing Eve for the first time:
o Gen 2:23-25 "At last!" Adam exclaimed. "She is part of my own flesh and bone! She will be called 'woman,' because she was taken out of a man." This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one. Now, although Adam and his wife were both naked, neither of them felt any shame.
o The idea here is oneness – God wired men and women to experience a powerful joining. They become one flesh. Whoa - man! Their nudity is mentioned because sex is the physical consummation of the spiritual reality – they are one. So they are shameless in their sexual intimacy, because they are perfectly safe together, perfectly WANTED.
- Later, we read in Solomon’s song of romantic love, a young woman offers this picture of Eros:
o Song 8:6-7 Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away. If one were to give all the wealth of his house for love, it would be utterly scorned.
o So the Bible celebrates EROS… and in the rest of the SONG it celebrates the sexual consummation of EROS…
this unconditional commitment,
this burning desire that cannot be quenched,
this thing so powerful you couldn’t sell it for all the money in the world.
o The Bible says jealousy attaches to EROS… a sort of righteous possessiveness… you are for me and I am for you. There’s a sort of unyielding, strong, almost unreasonable devotion that attaches to EROS which leads to the promises of marriage, which are simply this:
I don’t know what tomorrow brings, but this I promise: no matter what happens, what changes, I will be there with you and for you.
You think marriage promise is artificial, like the invention of clerics – No, invention of POETS! LOVERS! That’s why God made EROS – to lead to permanent bonds.
- Then in the most amazing twist friends, we turn to the prophets and find out that all this EROS that God made between human lovers, he himself feels FOR US!:
o Isa 62:5 as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.
o And just like that Scripture unashamedly and often attaches the word JEALOUS to express how God feels for us. We are his and we rightly belong to him and he to us. So that leads to another set of scripture that shows how EROS affects you when that passionate devotion is violated by unfaithfulness:
Jer 3:20-4:2 But you have betrayed me, you people of Israel! You have been like a faithless wife who leaves her husband," says the LORD. 4:1 "O Israel, come back to me"
Can you hear God pining, heartbroken, lovesick? It’s all over scripture friends! And I’ve read you the very tame parts. God, like a jilted lover often gets very explicit about spiritual adultery, using the most graphic sexual imagery imaginable to describe his broken heart.
You might say, “seriously, God feels this way? Isn’t God above feeling something as base and visceral as EROS?” Apparently not. Not the God who incarnated himself in Jesus to show us his passion! It’s not for no reason that the suffering of Jesus is called the PASSION – because that was God, the jilted lover, storming the gates of hell to rescue his beloved! (*Communion)
I mean, he’s crazy nuts in love with you! He feels loads of EROS for you and everything that EROS means:
- He feels the passion
- He feels desire to BE with you
- He is zealously devoted to you.
- He is totally committed to you, regardless of His own personal happiness
- He wants to consummate his passion by being IN you through his Holy Spirit.
o If you listen to the prayers of the early Christian mystics, their language of union with God is positively pornographic – but it’s not wrong! It flows naturally from the language God uses to describe his own love for us.
o Song of Solomon – allegory.
So on one hand the bible’s portrait of EROS is powerful and good.
- Not only as a gift God gives to men and women as the foundation of life long unions,
- but also as an expression of God’s own love for us.
But the Bible is realistic about EROS. It has a fickle nature. It makes promises of life long fidelity and then no sooner, it’s wanting to consume the beloved. Have you ever heard two love birds talk baby talk with each other? * “I just want to…” and they struggle for words until they finally say… “I just want to eat you up!” It’s a little scary! It’s shades of the dark side.
THE DARK SIDE
In the Bible the story is told of man head over heals in EROS. You couldn’t get a more textbook definition of EROS than to simply read this verse:
2 Sam 13:1-2 David's son Absalom had a beautiful sister named Tamar. And Amnon, her half brother, fell desperately in love with her. 2 Amnon became so obsessed with Tamar that he became ill. She was a virgin, and it seemed impossible that he could ever fulfill his love for her.
Here’s EROS. Desire. Total obsession with the beloved. Lovesick, literally in this case. Leading to sexual desire for complete union. But here’s also where EROS turns sour if not controlled by something Higher than itself: Amnon’s obsession turns dark and he tricks her into visiting him alone in his bedroom.
He tried to seduce her there, but she resists. But by now his desire for union, his EROS, had run so far out of control, had so overpowered him, that he overpowered her and raped her. And then we read the most amazing thing. The Bible says:
2 Sam 13:15-17 Then suddenly Amnon's love turned to hate, and he hated her even more than he had loved her. "Get out of here!" he snarled at her. "Throw this woman out, and lock the door behind her!"
Only EROS can turn on a dime like that! If you think this is rare and only twisted deviants experience it – remember high school! Spurned by your first major crush, you found delicious ways to enact revenge, didn’t you?
Just this week, in London, Ms Singh stood trail for the murder of Mr Cheema. What were they, embittered neighbors? Work rivals? Infighting family members? Nope. Lovers for 16 years. EROS was powerful – but it was also EROS that sent Ms Singh into a deep depression when Mr Cheema’s Indian parents arranged a marriage for him.
Just days before the wedding, Ms Singh snuck into Mr Cheema’s apartment, and poured poison into his curry, a poison that attacks the nervous system causing uncontrolled vomiting, heart palpitations, heart failure and death. That’s EROS, friends. God knows both sides of it.
God knows the grandeur of EROS which
- would forgo happiness for companionship,
- it transcends self interest for loyalty to one other,
- it’s total commitment, total desire for complete union
- enveloping, jealous passion.
But God also knows the danger of EROS
- it’s the love that leads to suicide pacts (Romeo and Juliet)
- crimes of passion
- co-dependant unions where two vampires can’t live with each other and can’t live without each other,
- forever destined to live out some kind of weird scene out of Dante’s inferno, where they’re chained together by choice, and hating every minute of it. Forever trying to suck some Life out of the beloved that the beloved can never supply.
o Like two ticks and no dog.
EROS AND SEX
Now let’s talk about the relationship between EROS and SEX. When it’s working right, EROS may lead to sex, but sex itself is NOT Eros.
- Without EROS, sex is just biological need.
- With EROS, sex is the consummation of a larger desire for union that runs across the physical AND emotional AND spiritual plains.
That’s why God consistently in the Bible seeks to contain sexual expression in marriage. So the Bible says:
Heb 13:4 Give honor to marriage, and remain faithful to one another in marriage. God will surely judge people who are immoral and those who commit adultery.
So EROS leads to the FULL commitment, mind, body and emotion – permanence.
- In our world EROTIC has come to mean wanting sex itself.
- TRULY EROTIC means wanting the beloved.
So, it’s really a tragic misnomer when we look at a man prowling the internet for pornography or some website to arrange an easy hook up and we say, “he’s looking for a woman.” Friends, a woman is exactly what he’s NOT looking for! He’s looking for a pleasure for which a woman is the necessary tool.
But if he was looking for an actual WOMAN, he would let God move his desire under God’s TRULY erotic law of love – and he would seek full devotion to a beloved, a COMPLETE union, complete with a promise of fidelity and care.
EROS BECOMES A GOD
Now some of you are ready to accept part of this, but not go all the way. You’ll admit that sex shouldn’t be this raw, animal thing. It should always be connected with EROS. But then our culture has made a simplistic formula that actually flies in the face of God’s sex wisdom:
- The formulas is this: sex is ALWAYS right if there is EROS – IE if you’re in love. So some parents of teenagers actually find themselves saying, “sweetheart, sex is a wonderful thing, but you want to make sure you never do it unless you’re feeling very much in love.”
But then by this same logic, the opposite premise must also be true:
- that sex is always WRONG when it’s not done in the midst of heated passionate desire.
Is that true? Many people think it is. But live as if this is true and it will lead to what we’re seeing: serial monogamy, going from relationship to relationship – why?
Because the EROS, which so passionately took us over, fades away… (it’s fickle). So now, without it, we think, it would be wrong to carry on without it.
Maybe you’re going from relationship to relationship, hurt, broken, wounded and confused – and you actually feel justified, you feel this is RIGHT because it would somehow be wrong to be in a relationship where the EROS had cooled off.
But didn’t we just learn how fickle EROS is? EROS is not the answer, it’s only part of the answer. The true thing we ought to be shooting for, is not BEING IN LOVE, as wonderful as it is, its God himself, who IS love.
And what about the opposite problem? If sex is WRONG unless it’s enveloped in EROTIC passion at all times, it has lead some of you in marriage to reject sex unless the stars align. And you feel justified in being sexually unavailable, and increasingly cool as the years go on because, well, unless there’s EROS, sex is somehow wrong.
In direct opposition to this “common sense” here’s God’s way :
- sex is often WRONG when EROS is raging.
- sex is often RIGHT when EROS is wanting. How so?
o When in a marriage, a husband and wife often go to the act with nothing but simple need – no fireworks, just the duty and pleasure of sexual union. The Bible applauds such self giving as loving simply because we need sex and God has given us our marriage partner for sex. There is no other place for them to go. If you need it and they give it, this is not wrong, it is beautifully right!
o And conversely sex is wrong, even when EROS is raging – when? Well, there has never been a case of adultery when EROS wasn’t at a fever pitch. It runs high in a passionate affair of the heart, it’s raging when marriages and hearts break.
This is EROS becoming a God. That we would actually justify all such things – for the sake of love proves it! We reveal in such acts that we’re ready to sacrifice all for it. With pride! What greater sacrifice can you offer to a god than to sacrifice your integrity?
And many of us today stand ready to do just that, to so worship EROS that we would
- neglect parents,
- abandon our children,
- divorce spouses,
- refuse to reconcile broken relationships,
- commit adultery
- break our promises –
o all for the sake of EROS!
EROS, not only makes us so addicted to love we compromise truth, it also makes us blind. A poet once said:
People in love cannot be moved by kindness, and opposition makes them feel like martyrs…
Can I tell you how many people I’ve seen fall into insensible unions, unions without any forethought, unions where there’s been premature sexual activity, unions where the courtship has been too short, or where they thought they could practice marriage by cohabitating*… and I have tried at times to offer some counsel. And the attitude I get back is often best described as martyrdom! How dare I besmirch love? All we need is love! Love is a many splendored thing! The couple actually feels persecuted!
Why? They have turned EROS into a God and just like in religion, if something else challenges your full devotion, that thing feels like heresy, like apostasy – it must be resisted. And they resist it… but friends, when you follow a God that is not really God, you’re following an idol. And an idol is fundamentally a lie. And living by a lie, will always destroy you in the long run, even if it feels good in the short run.
PRAYER.
