Not Allowing

“Good” to become “God”

-an essay-

Everything God has made is good (Genesis 1:31) and every good thing is from God (James 1:17) designed for the purpose of bringing pleasure, joy, and laughter to us, His children. The enemy, however, seeks to turn the good God has made and corrupt it for evil, while at the same time growing your lust for it so the good becomes a god in your life. Because there can only be one Master over you. And so long as it is not thou Father Who Art in Heaven, Satan doesn’t much care who sits on the throne of your heart. After all, if it is anyone or anything but God on the throne it might as well be Satan himself.

It has been often said in motivational speeches that “good is the enemy of great” but I think a more convicting statement that Christians should talk about more often is how quickly good becomes a god.

Today we will see this as we explore, what I find to be, the tactic of the enemy which more men fall susceptible to than any other. We will explore this tactic through the writings of many books from all eras and periods of time, but primarily C.S Lewis’s book The Screwtape Letters. As it is through C.S Lewis’s writing of The Screwtape Letters that we are better equipped to recognize the deceptive devices of the enemy.

In his book, Lewis writes of Screwtape an older, wiser demon corresponding with and training up a younger demon, Wormwood. In Chapter 9 Screwtape warns Wormwood in the following way,

“Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all our research so far as not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which he has forbidden…. An ever-increasing craving for an ever-diminishing pleasure is the formula.” (Screwtape, Chapter 9)

There are many analogies in the Bible of God being the head of a body whose members do not work when not attatched directly to Him. However, the same is true for the members of pleasure. There is no lasting pleasure when the deed of gaining it is removed from the Source which gives it. Satan will never tempt you with a pleasure that is attatched to God. No, the demon said, “encourage the humans to take the pleasures…at times, or in ways… which He has forbidden.”

“Out at sea, out at His sea, there is pleasure, and more pleasure. He makes no secret of it; at His right hand are ‘pleasures for evermore’.  … There are things for humans to do all day long without His minding in the least – sleeping, washing, eating, drinking, making love, playing, praying, working. Everything has to be twisted before it’s any use to us. We fight under cruel disadvantages. Nothing is naturally on our side.” (Screwtape, Chapter 22)

Everything God has made is good (Genesis 1:31) and every good thing is from God (James 1:17) designed for the purpose of bringing pleasure, joy, and laughter to us, His children. The enemy, however, seeks to turn the good God has made and corrupt it for evil, while at the same time growing your lust for it so the good becomes a god in your life. Because there can only be one Master over you. And so long as it is not thou Father who Art in Heaven, Satan doesn’t much care who sits on the throne of your heart. Afterall, if it is anyone or anything but God on the throne it might as well be Satan himself.

Kyle Idleman in his book Gods at War states, “When something good becomes a god, the pleasure it brings dies in the process.”

For example, the god of sex. Sex itself is a good, beautiful, God-given gift for man to share in covenant with his wife. It brings reproduction and the blessing of children. While also being pleasurable to the flesh. God’s design with sex was for it to be a sacred ordinance between a man and his wife, two physically uniting to become one. It was not intended to be shared beyond the couple, there was no terminology of a “fling” in the sentence when God gave the decree that “A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined inseparably with his wife and the two shall become one flesh.” (Gen 2:24, Matt 19:5-6)

“Joined inseparably, man and his wife.” To have sex with someone was to make the commitment of being their partner for life. It is the literal joining of two flesh, forever. It is not meant to be indulged upon for a night and then ripped apart come morning. But that is exactly how the enemy has twisted it. With flings, one-night stands, pornography, spicy and erotic scenes in novels, all of these and more are ways that Satan has taken the good that God created and continues to corrupt it for evil.

Kyle Idleman writes that, “the god of sex specializes in taking your further than you ever intended to go.” This occurs because the enemy starts small. He knows you will never jump straight into the deep end, so he starts by sprinkling a couple of drops of water across your toes. Just a few drops, a sampling. At first, perhaps, we are disgusted and taken aback by the chill of the water. But later we become intrigued, accustomed to the temperature. We come back to it, step into the shallow end. Find satisfaction in it. Wade in a little further. And so, revisit it again and again, chasing the pleasure we are sure lies just a little deeper in that pool of temptation. But the further into the sin we swim, while our craving increases, the level of pleasure we derive from it diminishes. Because now that it has been severed from God and His design for it, the pleasure it was meant to bring has died. It is no longer attatched. Yet here we are, swimming fully submerged in the sin of (in the case of my example) adultery. Whether we have slept with another or not, Jesus tells us that “everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery in his heart.” (John 5:28)

Remaining pure and blameless while on this earth has never been an easy task, but I feel that it is even harder today as the door to every temptation lies in the handheld device we, on average, spend a minimum of 25% of the day looking at. Temptation is literally less than a click away. This is why we are called to be on guard. This is why Jesus continued in John 5 saying, “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.” (John 5:29)

“All extremes, except extreme devotion to the Enemy, are to be encouraged.” (Screwtape, Chapter 7) He will start small, but Satan seeks to take you to whatever extremes he can. And while I used the slippery slope example of sexual sin, the same can happen with any gift from God.

Family, Friends, Food. All of these are gifts that when we separate them from the gift-Giver quickly become idols. When we are not on guard, it takes less than two minutes for us to elevate the good to become a god. And, truthfully, it is these seemingly lesser of evils which we fall victim to more. Afterall, “it does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed, the safest road to Hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” (Screwtape, End of Chapter 12)

So yes, it is easy to fall into temptation and idolize good things so they become gods. But is this fact really that significant? I will leave that up to you, and quote merely this. “If you worship false gods, the ripples bring a little of hell to earth.” (Kyle Idleman, Gods at War)

So, assuming you have drawn the same conclusion as I and wish to turn a new leaf and step onto the path of purity, how do we go about preventing the good from becoming gods? We simply have to be so transfixed by the True God that there is not room for another. To have our attention so fully captured that we are not even sparing glances to the things of this world. Afterall, “Idols are not defeated by being removed but by being replaced.” (Kyle Idleman, Gods at War).

So let us be like Paul, who in his letter to the Philippians wrote, “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:12-14)

Let us be on guard against the enemy, shed the temptations of this world, and walk blameless in the statutes and virtues of God. For “the thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)

As Leo Tolstoy once said, “it is amazing how complete the deception that beauty is goodness.” Satan is beautiful, his schemes in the moment seem appealing. But we must use careful discernment to ensure that we never mistake his beauty for goodness. Furthermore, we must never make the mistake of severing the good gifts from the good-gift-Giver. We must never allow the good to become gods. We must cling to the hope of Revelation,

“Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb…He who testifies to all these things says, ‘surely I am coming soon.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 7:10b, 22:20