Catacomb Resident Blog

Desire versus Desire

25 August 2022

This is posted the night before; I'll be nowhere near a computer in the morning when I normally post.

I suppose I was waiting for more to come to the surface before I responded in full. There was a small controversy on Jack's blog about whether women are capable of learning to sexually desire what God wants for them in marriage. A woman had written Jack an email about something she considered close to the spiritual ideal. She made claims that irked one of the regulars because he felt the word choice carried the wrong message.

So, this fellow wrote a guest post to explain his objections. Since then, I suppose most people realize that what he describes is the effects of our fleshly nature on things that our flesh does. As long as we are talking on that plane, there is no doubt that women cannot learn to enjoy what is righteous. A woman in her fleshly nature will always be sexually turned on by a limited range of what men can be. She may well learn how to get on in life without that perfection of manhood, but her fleshly desires will never let her go.

But I don't think that addresses what Jack's correspondent was trying to say. Granted, her choice of words didn't differentiate. But the truth is that women need not be constrained to what their flesh can do. Yes, a woman who remains in the flesh will never escape her lusts, and will never find sexual fulfillment outside that certain narrow selection of apex sexual men. The issue this lady was trying to raise is that there is something beyond the flesh.

And that something doesn't mean a woman settling for what she can get. This is why I keep raising the issue of living in your heart instead of in your head. The mind is flesh; the spiritual nature is found only in your heart. It's not a simple theological question of being born-again; the heart works the way it does regardless of spiritual birth. If a woman can be exposed to a heart-borne moral atmosphere, she can find a level of moral fulfillment that eclipses the fleshly lusts. It's the same for men, for sure.

This is part of my complaints against the Red Pill men's movement, and the Christian branch in particular. Since the vast majority of those claiming to be Christians do not understand the heart-borne nature of Hebrew culture in the Bible, they misread what Scripture actually says, and they come up with a lot of trashy westernized cultural notions about how the sex and marriage markets work. They do seem to understand the fleshly side of things, and are trying to find a spiritual and moral element, but they don't have the conceptual framework for how those work.

Thus, we have an awful lot of mythology the ends up trying to sanctify the flesh, and it cannot work out. And the frustration is palpable on the "Christian" Red Pill forums. I'm not saying Jack's blog is like that, but that some of the discussion there does seem to bog down on that issue. Jack does very much believe in the heart-born path and is doing his best to absorb what it requires of him. He does walk in his convictions and wants to belong fully to the Covenant. However, you could find plenty of comment there that betrays ignorance of that understanding.

Let's restate this clearly: If you move into the heart-borne life of Covenant and conviction, you can develop an attachment to the moral truth of things that offers a level of fulfillment in sex and marriage that the fleshly nature cannot comprehend. It's a whole different level of existence, and it offers things the fleshly people cannot possibly believe exist. So you can marry someone who isn't a total sexual turn-on to your flesh, and still come out way ahead because you married someone for whom God made you specially compatible. That's what walking in fulfillment of your convictions can do.

Furthermore, it is wholly possible to turn away from your lusts. I can testify that I'm not alone in this: Back in middle age I got so sensitive to moral truth that I was literally embarrassed and turned away when I saw an attractive lass wearing too little. You don't have to be mesmerized by that stuff. If you can listen to your convictions and start turning away when you should, the good impulse gets stronger and stronger. The dog you feed is the one that wins the fight.

Just so, if you feed the beast, you will be as disabled as the one fellow suggested. But women can be led to a spiritual path that grows the strength of conviction, and they can ignore their fleshly nature. If their spiritual nature is fed correctly and they make the transition to the heart-borne life, they can ignore the signals of the flesh enough to honestly desire a godly man who isn't her fleshly ideal. So Jack comes back around to that position in his latest post.

I didn't see stars when I met my wife. There were other women more attractive to me by a significant margin, and they were available, but they were morally unsuitable. Given time and contemplation, I chose my wife as the best match in my world at that time. It turned out so very well that I simply don't have the words to tell you. She's the greatest treasure in my life. I am honestly convinced that she feels the same way about me.


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