WORSHIPPING THE GOD OF SEX

Ancient bronze figurine of a Baal, a pagan god of sex and fertility

Bob Dylan's words also apply to a god of sex — *By Chris Hakkens*

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody,
It may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

So sang Bob Dylan in his 1979 hit song “Gotta Serve Somebody.” Dylan understood that we were made to serve and if we did not serve God, we would serve something else.

This mimics the Apostle Paul in Romans 1:22-23. We were made to worship. If we do not worship the living God, it does not mean we cease to worship. It means we worship something else. Paul states that our adoration moves to the worship of man – Pagan Humanism, or worship of nature – Pagan Animism.

These can be identified as secularism and neo-paganism. And what these have in common is a passion, a religious fervor for the god of SEX.

God had the audacity to create something passionately beautiful when he created sex. In the creation, sexuality was the intimate, face-to-face (yada in Hebrew) relationship of a man and a woman in a covenantal marriage. The union of man and woman in this intimacy was so profound that the message of the biblical narrative begins with a wedding of the first couple, Adam and Eve, and ends with the wedding for the ages of Christ and His Bride at the end of history.

In fact, Paul wrote to the Ephesians that God instituted covenantal marriage to picture the relationship between Christ and His church.

We find this thread of marriage in the picture of God–the eternal Ish (Hebrew for “husband”)–marrying His bride, Israel. When Israel breaks her wedding vows for another husband she is said to be “prostituting” herself, fornicating, or committing adultery. Why these terms? Why such striking language? These terms all deal with illicit sex, outside of a covenantal marriage.

In the case of Israel there was both a literal and a metaphorical prostitution. When Israel abandoned her Ish–“husband”–for the god Baal–the “owner”or “master”–she was metaphorically prostituting herself. When the Israelite men went to the temple of Baal to “worship” they cavorted with temple prostitutes in physical adultery.

The god of sex sells

Deprived of transcendent intimacy with God and with another in covenantal marriage, the transcendence of intimacy evaporates, leaving human beings with only base, animal sexuality. Sex becomes the new idol, the god of both Pagan Humanism (read modernism) and Pagan Animism (read postmodernism). Anyone who doubts that this is so need only watch a few movies, a little TV, listen to a stand-up comic, and watch what sells everything. It is SEX.

American essayist and novelist Mary Eberstade writes of how the worship of SEX has replaced the worship of God. In her article “The First Church of Secularism and Its Sexual Sacraments,” she writes of “the transvaluation of secularist progressivism into a religious faith grounded in theology about the sexual revolution.” In other words progressivism has morphed from a secular faith to a religious faith in which sex is worshipped.

This faith does not acknowledge itself as a faith. Eberstade observes that this “non-faith” has all the markings of religious faith, being “replete with hagiography, demonology, scholasticism, sacraments, and an absolutist certainty that those who believe otherwise deserve punishment.”

In this vein, Eberstade writes that “Consenting sex is the highest good; anything that interferes with the highest good is by definition evil.” This explains the demonizing of people who share the Judeo-Christian transcendent vision of human sexuality and the natural family.

I would add, however, that because sex is the highest good, and there is no external moral code, the concept of “consenting” will shortly be swept under the rug as archaic. We have written before about a movement toward liberalizing pedophilia, incest and bestiality. After all, SEX is god!

I have often argued that no one is an atheist for metaphysical reasons. This is so because God has revealed Himself through, and throughout, His creation. His existence and divine nature is clearly seen. People are atheists for moral reasons. They want to have sex with whomever they want whenever they want and to be free from moral guilt; they need to live in a universe without moral order to live guilt free.

In this universe where SEX is god, concepts like adultery, fornication and prostitution cease to exist. There is no such thing as sexual deviancy. The LGBT agenda sweeping the world is the new norm. Sex is god.