Unmasking the Lies of the Enemy
We could, I think, summarize the Good News of the Gospel in this way: God is the happiest of all beings, and He has fully chosen out of His great love and generosity to create us with a purpose in mind. That purpose, ultimately, is to share fully in His own happiness forever in heaven.
But while this is the Good News, Jesus speaks to us this morning in the Gospel very candidly about some sobering news. And the sobering news is this: there is an enemy. This enemy has various names, names that reveal his character. One of those names is the devil, which comes from the Greek word that means to divide, for the enemy loves to bring about division – within marriages and families, within countries, within the Church, and within ourselves. Another of the common names for the enemy is Satan, which comes from a word that means the accuser, for the enemy loves to accuse. He loves first to accuse God, to tempt us to think that God is not a loving Father but some sort of cruel tyrant or distant observer at best. And he loves to accuse us; he loves to dredge up in our memories those moments that we’re most ashamed of, tempting us to beat ourselves up and to think God will never forgive.
It’s important for us, though, in hearing Jesus deliver to us this sobering news, not to think that the enemy is some sort of rival god. He’s not. He’s a creature. God created the one who is now our enemy, and He created him good. It was by the devil’s own free choice that he chose to become evil, much like we, by our own free choices, can do evil too.
As C. S. Lewis, the great Christian writer of the 20th century once put it, the devil’s two most effective tools are to get us to think he is more powerful than he is or, to get us to doubt that he is not real. Jesus, the eternal Son of God who only speaks truth, makes it clear that the devil is very real. And He also, in various ways throughout the Gospels, makes it clear that he also has one goal. That one goal is to prevent us from reaching the happiness for which God created us and wants to share for all eternity. His desire is to destroy you and me, to mock you and me, to enslave you and me, deceive you and me, and frustrate us both now and forever.
How does he try to do that? Well, by many ways, to be sure, but Jesus tells us elsewhere in the Gospel that the devil is a liar. In many ways, often very subtle ways, he whispers lies in our ears, all with the goal of keeping us from finding happiness.
And one of the lies that has become perhaps most widely accepted and believed is his lie about sexuality. From just a casual perusing of TV shows, internet activity, movies, magazines, and so many other media outlets, it is clear that we as a culture have swallowed hook, line and sinker the lie from hell – and it is from hell – that sex is simply about pleasure, and that as long as it’s between consenting adults, anything is okay.
This particular lie comes to mind for me this week because this week is the 40th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s Encyclical Letter Humanae Vitae, or, On Human Life. This letter, which caused so much uproar, was a simple reaffirmation of what all Christians without exception for 1900 years, including Luther, Calvin and all the Reformers, thought to be true, namely, that contraception was an action that was contrary to genuine love between a husband and wife, for love, as Jesus reveals to us on the cross, the greatest act of love, is the total giving of oneself to another. And in contraception there is not a total giving since the gift of fertility, this amazing gift with which God let’s us cooperate, is withheld.
In this letter, written in 1968, Pope Paul VI predicted that if in fact we moved down the road that it looked like we were moving at that time, a road paved with widespread acceptance of contraception and a reducing of sex to being only about pleasure, four things were likely to happen. First, he warned of a general lowering of moral standards in society. Second, he predicted a rise in infidelity within marriage. Third, he predicted a coercive use of reproductive technologies by governments (think China). And fourth, he warned of a lessening of respect for women by men. It’s virtually impossible to deny any of those warnings 40 years later. With each passing day our understanding of what is moral is lowered, the divorce rate rises, and the exploitation and degradation of women, especially in pornography, increases at alarming speed. Jesus said that you judge a tree by its fruit, and the fruit of the sexual revolution of the past 40 years is simply rotten to the core. And countless ones of us here today know it first hand. I certainly do, and not from a book but from my own experience.
The enemy’s lie has been that we will be happier and freer if we throw off all those “old fashioned,” “out of touch,” “repressive” sentiments. But the truth is that because of listening to his lie millions of men and women are addicted and enslaved to their passions, marriages have been ruined, women are regarded as mere objects for pleasure, and no one’s really all that happy. According to an increasing number of OB/GYNs and adolescent psychologists, the leading STD among teenage girls is depression. The odd thing to me, anyway, about this whole situation is this: the Church would love to sit down and talk with the culture about sex but no one really wants to talk. The Church is inviting people to think about sex, but we prefer not to think about it. And, as a result, the happiness God has created us for escapes us. I’d be willing to bet that if I asked for a show of hands right now of how many of us have read Humanae Vitae, or Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, a beautiful teaching on God’s plan for us, including sexuality, less than 20 hands would go up.
I find it to be providential that, for a number of reasons, I have all four Masses here at the parish this Sunday and am able to address what I think is a word from the Lord to us all. Given the longing we all have for happiness, and the fact that listening to the lies of the enemy has only brought shame and scars for so many of us, I’d like to put forth a challenge to us as a parish. Scripture says, “Without a vision the people perish.” We need a vision, not just for sexuality but for life as a whole. I don’t know about you, but when I was young, I was often told, “Don’t do that,” but rarely if ever was I told what to do. Few people ever taught me how to be great, or why to be good, and that would have been very helpful. In short, the theology of the body gives us a vision for how to live great lives, and to reach the end for which God made us: happiness. Next week, I’m going to put in the paper next week a number of resources that are available that address the theology of the body, aware that it has brought so much healing and truth to people like me and countless others. I want to challenge us to have as a goal in these final weeks of summer to look through the list and pick one book before summer ends.
God’s Word is good news! He has made us for happiness! Let’s trust He knows what He’s talking about. Even about sex.
16th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Year A
July 20, 2008