Tonight, my daughter and I are going to a dance. She’ll look beautiful in the dress that she’s been picking out for most of the week, and I’ll look clumsy as my feet try to find some kind of rhythm on the dance floor. And when it’s over, we’ll drive home smiling, not because we were the best dancers or even because they’ll serve the best punch. We’ll smile because we were together, and dances are all about dancing with the right partner.
Today is also the highly anticipated release of the movie based on the best-selling book, “50 Shades of Grey,” and the numbers behind the book that is porn without pictures are staggering:
- Over 100 million copies have been sold (more than The Hobbit or even the C.S. Lewis classic, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe)
- It is expected to gross close to $90 million at the box office over the first 3 days (almost identical to American Sniper)
- The author, EL James, made 95 MILLION DOLLARS from sales in 2012 and still, almost 3 years later, is raking in $150,000 PER DAY
My takeaway from these numbers? In droves, people are picking the wrong dance partner. Many have done so because they have no idea what real love looks like. But for the church, for those who follow Jesus, who have seen the best example of what real love is, and who have danced with the best Father, all I keep thinking is…
What the heck are we doing?
When did so many believers allow a man like Mr. Grey to cut in on a dance with Jesus? When did the church trade real love for a counterfeit lust? When did people who may not even love Jesus start making the judgement calls about this stuff that we’re too scared to make because we don’t want to sound judgemental?
Can I gracefully remind the bride of Christ that we can’t afford to trade real love for a counterfeit lust. Love is just too valuable, and the love of God through us to the world is too powerful to risk losing it for the cheap thrill of “50 Shades.” Look at the difference between the love that God designed for us and the lust that man has used to blind us to it.
Lust takes; love gives. Lust uses; love serves.
What’s so bizarre about Christian women reading and watching this story is the fact that Mr. Grey is not the man that they would ever want to marry. He’s selfish, and only uses Miss Steele to serve HIS desires and HIS pleasures.
[Tweet “We’ve bought the lie that love looks more like The Bachelor than the cross.”]We’ve bought the lie that love looks more like The Bachelor than the cross. Love refuses to use another in order to serve its own desires, because love looks like God, and when God loves, He gives.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16, emphasis is mine)
In real life, women would kick a man like Mr. Grey to the curb because they refuse to be used up by a selfish man. Don’t be deceived just because they cast a handsome man as Mr. Grey. Cast that character with someone a lot less “hot” and a lot more “lukewarm,” and suddenly he’s a creep and a perv and you’re running for the hills.
Run anyway.
Lust sees sex as a physical act; love sees sex as a spiritual act.
I’m not gonna lie: sex is mind-blowingly fantastic and is, without a doubt, the best wedding gift God could ever give a married couple. But it isn’t great if it’s just a one-dimensional physical act.
[Tweet “If sex was just a physical act, prostitution would be the world’s most popular job.”]If sex was just a physical act, prostitution would be the world’s most popular job. But it’s not. Prostitutes are broken physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually because sex is multi-dimensional. Movies like “50 Shades of Grey” romanticize the physical act, but they miss out on the best part of sex: the spiritual intimacy and emotional security that can only come when a husband and a wife have abandoned themselves fully to one another in all the other areas of their lives that aren’t limited to a bedroom.
That’s the true love that God offers and that Mr. Grey cheapens, and the people who will be biting their lips as they fantasize about being in a book or a movie with a man like him will eventually find themselves clawing at the chains that were intended to place them in bondage all along.
Proverbs 6:27 says a man cannot put fire in his lap and not be burned, and that’s because sin entices until sin traps, and when we find ourselves enslaved by the very lusts that we thought would free us from our inhibitions, we’ll realize how much greater grace is than Grey. In fact, grace is in the gray, and in a bizarre twist of love that only God is capable of, grace is given in the gray to people who went too far and feel that they have ended up too damaged.
[Tweet “Grace allows itself to be trampled, and then extends itself to the very ones who trampled it.”]Grace allows itself to be trampled, and then extends itself to the very ones who trampled it. While we may never understand a grace like that, it is exactly that kind of grace that will draw a church racked with porn and lust back to the only shade that matters…
…the crimson blood of Jesus poured out on the cross to redeem us from countless shades of gray.
Seas of CRIMSON, the only shade that matters: