Food. Sex. Pleasure. Comfort. Rest. Ruling.

Does this sound like a list of things that some preacher somewhere should preach against?  Does this blog title sound like some hedonistic reality show?

I admit that my knee-jerk reaction might be something like that. But I’m learning something entirely different.

Early this year, I began to see a new theme emerging. That all of these things come as gifts from God. He thought them up himself and then rained them down as gifts for the people he created. I don’t think it had ever really occurred to me, even though it was always right in front of me.

The unraveling started with comfort.

I thought for sure that disciples of Jesus weren’t meant to be comfortable. Isn’t it all about laying down your life? Being persecuted? Making sure your life is uncomfortable to show you’re radical for Jesus? But then a passage in 2 Corinthians, chapter 1 jumped out at me. The heading given to this passage in my NIV bible is “The God of All Comfort” and it says that God is “the God of all compassion and of all comfort”. “He comforts us in all our troubles”. Paul says to the Corinthian church that he hopes they “share in our comfort”. Hmm, interesting……

A few days later it was pleasure.

Pleasure is for hedonists right? Isn’t “guilty” always linked with the word “pleasure”? Surely God isn’t into that. I was reading Genesis, and I felt this prompting that I should look up the word Eden to see what it meant.  Guess what? Eden is the Hebrew word for pleasure. If we were to translate the word Eden from Hebrew to English, like we do for the rest of Genesis, we’d always be talking about the “garden of pleasure”. Somehow this had been lost to me. God’s original intent for humans was that they live in a GARDEN OF PLEASURE. Pleasure. A garden of it. That’s what God’s plan was. I wonder if the word “Eden” wasn’t translated to “pleasure” in most Bible translations because too many religious heads like mine would’ve exploded and made a mess.

Then came food, sex, rest, ruling, and relationship. All God’s ideas (see Genesis 1 and 2). The intent was never to create a bunch of rules to limit these. The intent was to rain them down upon us as extravagant and abundant gifts. This was the design.

But something happened and happens. Despite all these things, God’s goodness is questioned. Distrust leads to disobedience. Disobedience leads to shame and hiding and covering. Instead of an open, “receiving of gifts” posture to God, a closed, “hiding from God” posture is taken. No longer in a posture to receive, but still desiring these pleasurable gifts, we go after them in our own ways.  When God is out of the picture, what else is there to fulfill us? These seem like the next best things.  So we go after them however we can.

We settle for counterfeit versions. When rest is our fulfiller, it becomes laziness. When food is our fulfiller, it becomes gluttony. When sex is our fulfiller, it becomes lust and fornication. When relationship is our fulfiller, it becomes codependence. When ruling is our fulfiller, it becomes controlling and subjugating. What were meant for gifts, become idols and slave-masters to be served. I think this is how it got to the point that when some of us hear these words listed, guilt instead of joy is the result.

But they are good. And we don’t need to feel guilty for receiving and experiencing them. We don’t need to deflect them (I think this would be what some call the “poverty gospel”).

On the other hand, if the reason we go to God is in order to get these gifts, then it’s still actually the gifts that we are after, and they are still our hope and fulfiller (I think this would be what some call the “prosperity gospel”).

So how do we possibly receive such gifts in a healthy, life-giving way? I think we must realize that it’s not the gifts that are our hope and fulfiller, but the one who gives them. How do we realize that? We may realize it in the negative sense when we finally get what we were hoping for and find out we’re worse off than ever because that which promised to fulfill, didn’t live up to it’s promise. We realize the gifts aren’t our hope or fulfillment.

But it can’t stop there. If the gifts aren’t our hope, what is? In the positive, we realize it when we see and experience true fulfillment. A love relationship with the source of all love. True fulfillment is what God has been wanting us to see and experience and understand for a long time. How much does he want us to experience this? He wants us to experience it to the tune of leaving behind such pleasures himself, and in exchange be subjected to dishonor, shame, torture, and crucifixion to name a few. To become sin itself. So that we might see He loves us and would do anything. Pay any price. That we might change the way we think (repent). That we might come out of shame and hiding and covering. That we might trust again and become obedient. That we might resume a posture of receiving with arms wide open (which conveniently doubles as a posture of trust and not holding on to anything). Then it might be safe and healthy for us to receive such lavish gifts without being ruined by them.

I vote for that! That sounds like good news.