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Becoming Whole
Relationships and sexuality are areas of life that can be beautiful or confusing, life-giving, or painful. Becoming Whole is a conversational podcast for men, women, and families seeking to draw nearer to Jesus as they navigate topics like sexual integrity, relational healing, spiritual health, and so much more.
Becoming Whole
Jesus Sees Beneath Sexy. You Can Too
What if the real issue with pornography isn't that it shows too much, but that it reveals too little?
Through the lens of Jesus' transformative encounters with Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman, we'll uncover how He calls us to step out of darkness and into the light, teaching us to see others with the same love and compassion He exemplifies.
As we wrap up our summer season (2-week break), we invite you to slow down and seek the perspective of Christ in your daily life. We can nurture genuine love and deeper compassion by asking Jesus to reveal how He sees others and ourselves. We're grateful for your support throughout this season and look forward to reconnecting at our upcoming Awaken and Sacred by Design retreats. Thank you for being a part of this journey, and we wish you all grace and peace until we meet again.
Awaken Mens' Retreat - Are you ready to take your recovery to the next level? Regeneration is Excited to announce our First-Ever Awaken Men’s Retreat. We have crafted a two-day retreat at the beautiful Bon Secours Retreat and Conference Center in Marriottsville, Maryland from Saturday, September 28 to Sunday, September 29. Secure your spot today! We are currently offering an early-bird sale price and this event is open to just 20 attendees. For more information and to register click here.
Wives Betrayal Basics Webinar - For more information and to register.
Sacred By Design Women's Retreat - Are you a woman who loves Jesus & and you're doing the hard work to break free from unwanted sexual behaviors?
We would be honored for you to join us for our first Sacred by Design Retreat to be held on Saturday, November 2, 2024. This special time has been crafted for you to receive and relax, to create and connect. We pray you’ll join us as we slow down long enough to be caught up by our Creator.
Only 10 spots are available. For more information and to register click here.
Hey everyone, it's James Craig, Spiritual Coach and Awaken Coordinator here at Regeneration. This is actually the last week of our summer podcast season, so we'll be taking a break next week and we'll be back in two weeks. This week, Josh is going to conclude the season with an exhortation, a beautiful call to see the way Jesus sees. He's going to take us through a few Bible passages and ultimately invite us to be discipled so that we're seeing ourselves and others as Jesus sees us. Let's listen in.
Speaker 2:One of my favorite quotes of all time comes from John Paul II, the late Pope John Paul II, who wrote or said actually, I don't even know where the original source of this is, I've only heard it quoted by him, so but he says the problem with pornography is not that it shows too much, but rather that it shows too little. The problem with pornography is not that it shows too much, but that it shows too little. So I want to talk about the implications of what he's saying there, as it relates to you and me in our struggles against lust, whether that lust exhibits itself in viewing pornography or lusting after people around us or people on the beach, whether your lust is directed towards men or towards women or towards both, how does what John Paul II was getting at, how does what he was getting at, impact you? What does it have to do with us in our journey away from lust? So, to start, the initial answer is, I think, evident in his quote, which is that, in order to overcome lust, what we need to cultivate in ourselves is a heart that can, a mind that can, eyes that can see more than what lust sees, more than what lust sees, more than what pornography is showing more than what the sexualized media is showing, more sometimes than even sexualized media is showing, more sometimes than even a person may be trying to show about themselves. Pornography does not want you to see the more that Jesus sees. Sexualized media does not want you to see the more that Jesus sees. And some men and women do not want you to see the more that Jesus sees.
Speaker 2:Much like Adam and Eve covered themselves with the leaves in the garden and then went and hid among the trees of the garden to hide themselves from one another and from God, there are many in our culture who try to hide themselves, and the irony is, in a sexualized culture like ours, oftentimes people can try to hide themselves even behind their nakedness, can try to hide themselves behind their physique, their sexual desirability, their seductiveness, their shape, their form. Behind that, behind what they're projecting, is something deeply important that Jesus sees. So that's part one. In order to move beyond lust, we have got to cultivate in ourselves and allow the Spirit of God to cultivate in us, in our hearts, minds and our eyes, an ability to see more than what is being shown, what it seems to be evident in front of us, to see what Jesus sees. Part two is that that sight, that ability to see that Jesus has, is fueled by, backed up by moving by love, not lust, but love. So Jesus saw the more behind the image, the more hidden beneath what was being projected, and he loved the person he saw. He loved what he saw. It moved him to compassion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, john shares two or three stories in his gospel that I think are really apropos to what we're talking about John 3, john 4, john 8, each share stories of someone wrestling with sight. John 3 is the story of Nicodemus, where Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night, presumably under cover of night, so as not to be kind of outed as being curious about Jesus, about being compelled toward Jesus by fellow Pharisees. And Jesus sees this. Jesus notices the more that is going on with Nicodemus, he notices the context that Nicodemus has come at night, and so part of how he responds to Nicodemus is by talking about the light, talking about our propensity toward darkness and encouraging charging, stating plainly for Nicodemus the importance of becoming a person who loves to come into the light. Now, perhaps the most common part of that interchange with Nicodemus is Jesus saying that he must be born again. Jesus saying that God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life. But there is this whole section of Jesus talking about the light. So, starting in verse 19, jesus says to Nicodemus this is the verdict Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God. So there's this strong invitation from Jesus to Nicodemus to come into the light.
Speaker 2:Now, interestingly, one of the next stories, and there's a little bit about John the Baptist there. But then, beginning in chapter four, john shares the story of Jesus' interaction with the woman at the well, the Samaritan woman at the well, which is to juxtapose those two stories. Nicodemus comes at night to Jesus and then chapter four Jesus goes to where the Samaritan woman will be in the middle of the day, in the middle of the daylight, when the sun is the highest and brightest. You see a difference in the movement of these two men. John is contrasting. You can see, nicodemus is one who, for whatever reason, is kind of holding on to the secrecy of night.
Speaker 2:He does not want his deeds to be shown. Jesus is not afraid to have his deeds shown and he comes to the woman at the well in the middle of the day, he goes after her and the exchange between them in a metaphorical way brings her deeds to the light. So he is addressing her in the middle of the day and calling her out in the middle of the day, bringing her hiddenness to light. So this is interesting. And this goes back to what I was saying before about how, if lust shows too little, jesus sees the more that is hidden. And he does so with a heart of love so beautifully expressed in his interchange with the woman at the well who he asks for a drink. He's humble in that scenario.
Speaker 2:She is a little bit snarky with him about him being a Jewish man, asking her, a Samaritan, for a drink, and that doesn't work well in their relational paradigm. And Jesus lets her know that he has living water to give and she wants that because then she wouldn't have to come into the light in the middle of the day to get the water to be exposed in her shame. She doesn't say all that, but it becomes evident in that. Then Jesus says to her he says go get your husband. And this is this key moment where he's not trying to shame her or expose her out of ridicule or condemnation. Rather, he is exposing the fact that she has a need that runs deep. She has sin that runs deep. She has hurt that runs deep. She maybe has abuse that runs deep, rejection, that runs deep. And Jesus sees it. So I'm going to kind of riff here a little bit.
Speaker 2:But it's possible, given her history and given what we know about the culture of the time, that, as she was with others in her Samaritan town, there may have been some who, when they saw her, just saw her deeds, the negative things she had done, and judged her. There may have been others. It's, I think, likely there were others who just saw her deeds and lusted after her, objectified her, and the evidence for that is simply that she's had five husbands. Who were these men? Where did they come from? What were their intentions toward her? And that she was living with a man who was not her husband. What was his deal? What was his intention toward her? What did he see? Jesus saw it all and spoke to her with humility, gentleness and love.
Speaker 2:Then in John 8, we're going to skip forward here a little bit there's the woman who's caught in adultery. So Jesus has had an interchange with the Pharisees. He goes away to the Mount of Olives, presumably to pray and to be alone with God. And then in the beginning of chapter eight, verse one there's actually I think eight one is is says that Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. And then verse two there's this interchange where Jesus is in the temple and this group of Pharisees bring to him this woman who's caught in adultery in the very act. They say so much we could get into about how that happened and whether this was entrapment or what the Pharisees knew or didn't know, and where's the guy that she was having adultery with, et cetera, et cetera. But nonetheless they bring her, they throw her down in front of Jesus and they try to trap Jesus. And this is another one of these key moments where we're thinking about how Jesus saw things. So they see a sinful woman, a sexually sinful woman, an adulteress, and they're bringing this adulteress to Jesus and they've got their own ideas about what they see in Jesus.
Speaker 2:Jesus' focus here, I believe, is primarily on this woman. He's not distracted by their trying to trap him. He's not distracted by their legal, religiously legal, question and trying to prove them right or prove himself right in their eyes. I think he's really primarily concerned with protecting this vulnerable woman, is really primarily concerned with protecting this vulnerable woman. And he draws in the sand and they wait and he says okay, look the one among you. Without any sin, you cast the first stone.
Speaker 2:That's been misapplied in all sorts of ways in our culture, but the point is there's something in that moment where the men in the crowd are convicted of their own sins and they drop their stones. And then Jesus, as he's alone with this woman, he turns to her and again I think he sees something in her more than just what they could see. He doesn't see her as an object to be sexualized. He doesn't just see her as an adulteress. He says where are your accusers? Where are those who condemn you? There's no one left to condemn me, she says. He said neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more. That's all we get in this story, but there's obviously more going on at the surface and more that Jesus understands happening in that moment than just what everybody else in the room sees.
Speaker 2:And I share these three anecdotes with you, really to highlight those first two points. One, that in order to move away from lust, we want the Spirit of God to quicken in us and enliven us and we want to cultivate in ourselves capacity to see with our eyes, our hearts and our minds more than what is being projected on the screens or even in the real life people in front of us. We want to see more deeply than that. Secondly, we want that to be spurred by, driven by, fueled by and manifest in love. We want that to express itself in love. We don't want to see someone's vulnerability, someone's shame, someone's sexual history to take advantage of them, to judge them, but rather to love them, to free them, to help them.
Speaker 2:The Samaritan woman we have good reason to believe after that was freed from her shame and that she ran back to the town that she had been townspeople that she'd been avoiding by going to the well at midday and said to them plainly come see a man that told me everything I ever did. She no longer seems like a snarky woman trying to cover up her shame. Now we know nothing about the woman who was caught in adultery and how she responded to Jesus's charge to go and sin no more and his beautiful, gracious statement that I don't condemn you either, but hopefully, hopefully, she responded also by receiving his grace, by receiving his compassion, his love for her and his charge for her to not sin anymore as a statement made in love for her, as one who saw the true her, the deeper parts of her, the deeper wounds, the deeper sins, and cared about her there. Now let me just pause here to say I don't know about you. But Now let me just pause here to say I don't know about you, but to me, that vision of becoming a man, becoming a person who can see more deeply than the images that are projected after them, to become a man, a person like Jesus who could see like that and bring life to someone rather than consume them to try to get life for myself, that compels me. I'm drawn to that and I think that's one of the reasons I love John Paul II's statement, which is really, I think, an invitation both to those who would create pornography and those who would create pornography and those who would consume it to become people who see more, to become people who behold more.
Speaker 2:So, whenever you're listening to this podcast, if it's this summer or another time, I want to invite you to enter into a journey of prayer, a journey of interaction with Jesus in the places where you're tempted to lust in relationship with the people you're tempted to lust after, whether it's sitting in front of your screen and viewing pornography, because the truth is, you're not viewing pornography, you're viewing people. You're not using porn, you're using people. And whatever they're projecting, whatever the persona they're projecting, whatever the caricature they're projecting, there is an actual person, there are actual people. And might you, instead of just avoiding porn, just trying to steer clear of it, just using filters, just doing what you can to break free from the compulsion yourself and do those things for sure, do what you need to do to break free from those compulsions, avoid pornography by all means.
Speaker 2:And yet, when you find yourself drawn, instead of just trying to avert your eyes, might you also open your eyes to Jesus and say Jesus, help me to see what you see? You get a million images in your head of porn you've seen already, of sexualized media images, and you're going to encounter them again because we live in such a sexualized culture, or when you're at the beach, you're going to encounter men and women who are dressed scantily, who are trying to draw attention to themselves, whether they see themselves as sexually enticing and seducing people, or whether they just feel good about their bodies and want people to look to gain, to feel even better about themselves. Whatever their reasons are, I'm not saying any of that in judgment, but rather, whatever the projection of togetherness or beauty or sexiness or strength, whatever they're projecting, might you open your eyes, your heart, your mind and say, jesus, there's more there. These are people that you have come to seek and to save.
Speaker 2:Show me who you see, show me what you see, give me eyes to see, and what I'm inviting you into, and what I believe that the spirit of Christ is inviting you into, includes slowing down in those moments, usually when we're lusting, our brains are going a million miles an hour. We're not in our, especially those of us who who see lust, pornography, use, sexually acting out as sinful, and we were trying and unwanted, and we were trying to get away from the unwanted behaviors and wanted leering the unwanted lust. When we're in that space of lusting, our prefrontal cortex is not lit up. We're not in our thinking brain, we're not in the space in our brain that is responsible for willpower. We're in our lower brain, our reptilian brain. We're just kind of going really, really quickly. And so I'm inviting you, and I think the spirit of Christ is inviting us, to slow down In order to see people, in order to love people. We can't just be on the surface. We have to slow down, we have to go deeper. Breathe, jesus. What do you see? Jesus, show me what you see.
Speaker 2:Maybe you close your eyes, you don't just keep looking at the person. Maybe you look at their face. Maybe you look at their eyes. Maybe you notice who they're with. If you have a sensitivity to emotions, you may notice even something in their face, their expression. If they're dressed very provocatively, you might ponder what might they be trying to do, what might they be seeking in showing themselves that way, and what might they be trying to hide that they're carrying inside? And open yourself to the Spirit of the Lord. The Spirit of the Lord knows, knows that person completely. So I'm inviting you to slow down.
Speaker 2:I think the Spirit of Christ is inviting you to slow down and ask the question Jesus, show me what you see and as you do that, maybe even before you do that or while you do that, I want to invite you to do the same exercise in a different context. I want to invite you to do the same because I think the Spirit of Christ is inviting you in the same context, in the same context, to ask the same question in relationship to you, to yourself, because how we see ourselves, how we understand ourselves, how we understand and embrace and hold the way that Jesus sees us impacts the way that we see others, impacts our ability to see and love others. We love God because he first loved us. We love others because God first loved us. We are able to comfort others with the comfort that we ourselves have received from God.
Speaker 2:If you are struggling with lust and that's trumping love in your life if you find yourself crippled in your ability to love people because lust is in your life, what you find yourself crippled in your ability to love people because lust is in your life what you need is the love of Christ, and so I invite you I think the Spirit of Christ would invite you begin with that exercise. Lord, when you look at me, what do you see when you look at my life, what do you see, friends? He sees more deeply than you know. He doesn't just see your righteous behavior, your outward behavior. He doesn't just see the righteous face you put on in front of others. He doesn't just see your sinful behavior. He doesn't just see the wrongs that you've done. He sees deeply into you. He sees who God has made you to be, and he loves you.
Speaker 2:Okay, so to review, john Paul II said the problem with pornography is not that it shows too much, but that it shows too little. To become like Christ, to love like Christ, we want to see more than pornography sexualized media and people in our culture are trying to show us. We want to do so fueled by and for the sake of love, and the way we get there is by engaging with Jesus, slowing ourselves down to ask the question and to be discipled by him. Show me what you see in other people and, jesus, show me what you see when you look at me. Lord, jesus, make it. So here we are.
Speaker 1:Amen. May we be men and women who see as Jesus does. Thank you for listening. This marks the end of our summer season. Again, we will be back in two weeks and we're looking forward to seeing a handful of the men at the Awaken retreat in a week and a half, and the Sacred by Design retreat should still be open for registration. More information can be found in the show notes. Thanks again for listening. Grace and peace to you all.
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