The Golden Ass

Here ends my blog series on how, in our Porn Star-saturated world, we are re-membering and reenacting the ancient, traumatic story of Medusa, Poseidon, and Perseus. In Parts 1 (LINK HERE) and Part 2 (LINK HERE), I focused most on rendering the story of Medusa something other than a distant, ancient, irrelevant fantasy about gods and goddesses who don’t exist. In Part 3 (LINK HERE), I dug into how Porn shapes us into shamed monsters who objectify and humiliate women. Here, where I finish up my series, I turn the lathe of truth around how the rage of Poseidon in the story of Medusa reappears in our world where we cast and aspire to the Porn Star, who herself then returns the favor by casting us into men who are less than human, perhaps even monsters. I come to my completion by pointing to how, even in our trauma and brokenness, our weakness and faithlessness, the faithful, risen One can shine bright in our healing - if we but TURN to Him.

Again from the “Growing Up In Pornland” article (SEE LINK HERE):

"Year 7 girls ask me questions about bondage and S&M. Many of them had seen 50 Shades of Grey (which was released on Valentine's Day). They ask, if he wants to hit me, tie me up and stalk me, does that mean he loves me? Girls are putting up with demeaning and disrespectful behaviours, and thereby internalizing pornography's messages about their submissive role…"

"[I]f he wants to hit me, tie me up and stalk me, does that mean he loves me?" I suppose, to some degree, it’s a legitimate question. After all, in the above picture of the flogging of Jesus, the men are smiling. Right?

The more plausible explanation is that the calmly blowing whims of the winds of Poseidon on a sunny day are forever on verge of rising up into raging tempest on the verge of murderous rape. Perhaps, in the first place, our very phallacies are shaped by malformed desires born of stone-like paralysis and jealous rage. Sometimes, mythology actually helps us parse through the proper relationship between fantasy and reality. To being to see again what it’s like “Growing Up In Pornland”:

"In the past few years we have had a huge increase in intimate partner rape of women from 14 to 80+. The biggest common denominator is consumption of porn by the offender. With offenders not able to differentiate between fantasy and reality..."
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The authors found that "adolescents who are intentionally exposed to violent sexually explicit material were six times more likely to be sexually aggressive than those who were not exposed."
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As a recent study found:
"online mainstream pornography overwhelmingly centered on acts of violence and degradation toward women, the sexual behaviors exemplified in pornography skew away from INTIMACY AND TENDERNESS and typify patriarchal constructions of masculinity and femininity."

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With this tragic story of Medusa, Perseus, and Poseidon as our reality as we lean into our need and desire for relationships with others rather than withdrawing into a wounded and bloody cave of isolation and loneliness - which is often the nature, power, and temptation of porn - we are faced with a series of choices.

I can open myself to the other person or people in vulnerability to potential suffering, or I can perform one of the many various moves available to me as means to cover over that open vulnerability of the exposure of my true wants and desires. I can turn and walk away, paralyzingly refusing the fulfillment - or even exposure to the light of day in the first place - of my want. Porn is great at helping me do this. I could also, alternatively, violently, coercively, or controllingly force the fulfillment of my wants like a raging wind of Poseidon, while simultaneously managing to keep them hidden. Porn is great at helping me do this, as well. Wind is difficult to visualize or grasp.

In the end, during that evening of the Missio Alliance Conference (see Part 1), Matt kept returning to the question: Can we just get our wants on the Table? That Table is the ground of mutual, face to face, self-sacrifical fulfillment of divinely GIFTED urge for harmonious, faithful human relationships. It’s also, then, the altar on which the One in whom all things are (re)made appears as the figurehead of our suffering, making our transformation into his Life possible as we vulnerably submit to others in our need and thus partake of his BREAD at the Table of fellowship.

So, I believe this question – “can we just get our wants on the Table?” - fundamentally asks us to trust in the presence and work of the Spirit towards healing, loving transformation of our wants towards His ends of righteous, harmonious, faithful relationships, whether relationships of the sexual variety or order or not. As far as I know, the means, path, and posture to and for that exposure of our wants and desires on the altar of Grace is the Way of the Cross, of potential or even inevitable suffering and pain. After all, in relationships, no two parties or people hold the same desires equally. It's certainly not easy, but I don't know of another Way to love.

"Fear opens the door of death, and through fear of death, we become slaves of our own desires...When we turn creatures into gods we also seek to turn STONES INTO BREAD, rather than living by the BREAD OF LIFE (John 6: 25-59) that comes from God." - Doug Harink on 1 Peter 2: 1-3

In Kari’s stories (see Part 1), as well as the stories of the subway and the bar restaurant (see Part 2), it was as though men immediately became STONE-cold monsters – or at least something less than human - as soon as they were faced with the beauty and power, vulnerability, and openness of female sexuality. We tend to turn such overwhelming images into divine ones.

So, through fear born of false worship of false gods "made of STONE" with our own hands – images produced and directed by humans to appear on magical, transparent STONE screens - we become slaves to our own desires. In the above noted story from ABC Religion and Ethics - this occurs with and through the illusion and fantasy of control in porn. But, as we know, perfect love drives out all fear. In mutual, caring relationship in which we tend to the presence, humanity, and desires of the other: "Do unto others as you would have done unto you." Taking our fears and desires and wants to the sacrificial Table of Grace allows them to be re-ordered towards love. Here, by and in the work of the Spirit, our hearts of STONE can be made into hearts of flesh.

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Let us face one another at the Table of Grace. Let us place there, out in the open, our disordered desires: our tendencies towards the abuse, aggression, violence, and control of Poseidon. I wanted to punch him in the face (see Part 3)! Let us confess how we are stunned into weak faithlessness when faced with the power and fertility of great beauty we don’t and won’t understand. Let us place on the altar of attunement our murderous tendencies to respond with COLD DISTANCE. Let us TASTE together there, at the Table of fellowship, the BREAD of life.

Let us make ourselves known by the one who absorbed in his own flesh - which is the BREAD OF LIFE - our punishment, our shame, our guilt, and our bloodshed. Only in himself can those repeated enactments of death bring us to an open space of life and peace in his Resurrection appearances in the garden in the cool of the dawn, behind locked doors of fear, and around a sea-side, charcoal fire of shame.

So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have TASTED that the Lord is good. As you come to him, A LIVING STONE rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves LIKE LIVING STONES are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
1 Peter 2:1‭-‬5