Man Cannot Drive by Bread (Factories) Alone

When I was growing up, there was a bread factory in a nearby town. As soon as you entered the town, the scent of fresh-baked bread filled the air like lanterns on Chinese New Year. I used to go out of my way to drive through this town, just to get a nostril-full of the bread’s aroma. The smell of this bread would birth a longing in me to find the nearest retail store to purchase a loaf (or to fall into their bread vat).

Thing about this bread was that it actually tasted mediocre at best and might have served better as a hamster pillow than a ham-n-cheese accompaniment. But my nose was a forked-tongue devil to my mouth. This was a 99-cent loaf sold at convenience stores and had a shelf life of forever due to the cocktail of unpronounceable preservatives. But my mind tricked my stomach into thinking I was driving through Southern France’s bread district each time I passed through the town.

The licentious Christian likes to drive through this town just to smell the bread. Deep down he knows the bread is not good in taste or nutrition, but the odor is worth the detour and he wants his fix. He sincerely believes he can stop at just smelling the bread and is strong enough to resist consumption of it. He’ll share a sensual dance or two with the bread, but is confident he won’t take the bread to bed.

What the aforementioned eager tourist of this bread town doesn’t know (or chooses to ignore) is that he can smell his bread and eat it to. But I’m talking about real Bread. The kind of Bread that delivers on the promise. The kind that satisfies a cavernous hunger in the way that a 99-cent convenience store pleasure never could. Pleasures beyond comprehension have been made available to the Christian. They’re waiting.

Unfortunately, our sin nature has accustomed us to cheap pleasures. Now, remember we were made to experience pleasure. We have pleasure-receptors all over our body. These are God- designed and He takes pleasure in our pleasure (when pure and holy). Sins are deviations and perversions from these God-designed pleasures. Each sinful pleasure is a faint left-handed sketch of an original masterpiece pleasure (one designed from the pallet of God’s wildly creative mind).

Take sex for instance. Every day in every corner of Earth, Christians are involved in extra-marital sex, pornography, and a vast array of other immoral sexual experiences. Each of these contains hints of real God-designed sex but are deviant trolls under the bridge of marital love- making. They may even look genuine from a distance and feel like it for a minute, but eventually the participant will find out they were sold a counterfeit. The problem is our flesh has a ravenous appetite for pleasure. Even though we know a given pleasure is fleeting and not satisfying, we will usually go back for more because there is very little upfront cost for these bottom-shelf pleasures. The lawless person will settle for a lesser pleasure if the gratification comes quicker and easier. They believe in a future reward, but it is too far out.

We try to satisfy our hunger for true pleasure by snacking on these bottom-shelf pleasures—what some call “titillations”. Titillation is akin to grabbing a handful of junk food when no one islooking and then tossing this junk food over the fence to feed our “Sin-nature Dragon”. We assume these high-calorie heavily-processed morsels will keep the beast at bay. And if he’s placated for a while, then we don’t have feed him too much— lest anyone find out what we’ve been doing. So, we continue to feed the beast with our left hand while attempting to feed our soul with our right.

One of the (many) problems with this is that the Dragon grows as we feed it and it will never be satiated. In fact, a time will come (probably when the Dragon hits its teen years) when the beast will eat us out of house and home. So we’re left with two options. Option 1 is to maintain this Dragon-feeding schedule for the duration of our lives— feeding it (more) each day and taking it out for discreet walks at night. This option is tenable for a while (take a look around the Church for examples). But one day the leash on the Dragon will break and its next meal will be you.

Option 2: Put it to death.

Starve that beast. Because God says you can and must. Remember, He has a banquet spread from here to eternity with the choicest meats of His pleasure. It’s all yours. But you must slay the Dragon. This won’t be easy and it will take some time. Every minute will be a battle (you’re quiver better be full with the arrows of prayer, scripture memory, and godly accountability).

The Dragon’s hunger pangs will echo through the chambers of your heart, soul, and mind. But persevere, because in time the moans will become fainter. Eventually, as you dine at the table of God, you’ll discover that there is an ocean of difference between dollar-store titillations and majestic God-pleasures. You’ll realize that all along you were bent over a parking-lot puddle lapping up yesterday’s rainwater and you weren’t seeing the bottomless well of soul-quenching water God was offering.

You’re not alone. We all try to forge our own paths to pleasure—ones that eventually lead to destruction. But God is the burning bush at every intersection in our divergent journey, showing us the way back. He wants us to be consumed by the fire of His presence. He is the path back to pleasure; He is the Pleasure. David said in Psalm 16:11, “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore”.

In His presence is fullness of joy. Total inexpressible and inexhaustible joy.

Selah.

There is a vacuum of joy anywhere outside of His presence. Don’t fall for the whispers of the world, lest you see destruction (or write your own book of Ecclesiastes upon return). Our pleasure-consciousness needs to be awoken by getting back on His path, re-entering His presence, and remaining at His right hand.

C.S. Lewis said it this way: If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

Moral law is the governing mechanisms by which the world was designed to operate. God didn’t just throw out a bunch of good ideas. He wrote the script. The code was His from the beginning. He isn’t being a dictatorious big brother type. In His fatherly love He is providing us with the manufacturer’s operating manual so that we can experience a high degree of functionality and operability (i.e., joy and vivacity).

Think of a computer. The manufacturer says not to leave it running non-stop. They direct you to power it off at a certain frequency. You’re sharp, though—you know that not turning it off for a week or two won’t break the computer. But there’s a good chance that someday down the road your computer files are going to fragment, your computer is going to crash, and you’ll be left having to make the dreaded call to the IT help-desk (true story).

Even if permissible, not everything is profitable. If you are driving a mountain road at night in your motorcycle, there’s no prize for driving as fast as possible and as close to the edge as possible. There is, however, a grave penalty for driving too fast and too close. Risk is good when the reward is great. God calls us to risk sometimes in our lives, but never for vain reasons. We need to always be evaluating the risk and reward when we enter situations that could open ourselves up to temptation. Do I go to a bar to reach lost souls? Maybe. If I have a past drinking problem? Probably not. Do I go to a movie that has one explicit sex scene if the movie is otherwise redeeming? I say probably not. Perhaps you see it differently. This is the course we must navigate within the realms of our Christian freedom. And it requires significant wisdom to avoid going down roads we should not be traveling. The licentious Christian needs to be cautious of wearing grace-born permissibility like a flame-retardant suit—thinking he can safely navigate the flames of temptation. And God doesn’t want parts of your life dedicated to Him and other parts not. He doesn’t want you to give Him just 50% of your movie-going life. Or your sex life or your diet or your financial management. Your whole being belongs to the Lord. 100%.