As we delight ourselves in the Lord, He reshapes the desires of our wandering hearts. As we seek Him, our appetites will be transformed, and our disordered longings will be replaced by cravings for Christ’s supremacy. The very dreams we once directed toward earthly idols get mercifully re-centered on the only reality that can truly satisfy – the glory of God. In the face of such continuous cultural brainwashing, we must shut out all of the voices jostling for our affections. Instead, we must take the offensive in disciplining our disordered desires toward godliness.

You shall have no other gods before Me. – Exodus 20:3

The Bombardment of Disordered Appetites
When we examine the landscape of our culture, we’re bombarded on every side by forces aimed at stimulating and stoking our disordered appetites. It’s not just the apparent spheres of sexuality and sensuality – our hearts are being relentlessly seduced to lust after a wide array of idols, which itself is idolatry.
Think of the incessant advertising, marketing, and social media messaging relentlessly beckoning us to crave status symbols, luxurious possessions, and the trappings of wealth and financial security as sources of identity, worth, and happiness. Consumerism cranks the idolatrous longing for more and more stuff.
In the entertainment industry, we’re fed a wholly unbiblical narrative that self-actualization, self-indulgence, self-aggrandizement, and the unrestrained pursuit of our felt needs is the path to fulfillment. The cult of individualism stokes prideful self-exaltation.
In professional spheres, the god of shallow ambition and upward mobility is ever-tempting, luring us to make work an all-consuming idol. The trappings of career success, acclaim, and social positioning can become cruel masters.
Even the domestic sphere presents snares. We’re prone to covet the picture-perfect family, making loved ones into idols that must cater to our egos’ needs. Selfish appetites distort marital and parental roles.
Our depraved hearts remain factories of insatiable, disordered lusts and desires. Greed, gluttony, sloth, the lust for power and control – there’s no end to the profusion of potential idols vying for ultimate allegiance. We’re hardwired to allow these hunger pangs to go perpetually unsatisfied by giving them what cannot profit them, seeking to quell the cravings with things that will never satisfy us.
The Biblical Answer: Cultivating Holy Desires
Thankfully, Scripture beckons us to an altogether different path—the cultivation of holy desires set on God himself. You see, the Bible does not approach desire in the same way as the world, the flesh, and the devil. Those enemies come to you… and they attempt to stoke the sinful, carnal cravings that already burn within us. But God does not join that unholy chorus vying for our disordered affections. He is not one voice among a litany of spectators competing for our attention.
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Jesus, the Creator himself become one of us, the source and giver of all that is good, giving us intimacy with God and the promise of an indestructible, unending, glorious life in a recreated universe. Everything good in this life is but a dim hint of the eternal joy promised to us in Christ. And sex? Sex is just one of those dim hints of the life to come. What about the standards that define our sexuality? They are not mere restrictions, mere arbitrary deprivations to enforce an other-worldly mindedness. They are meant to cause sexuality to mirror and display our Savior’s faithful, covenantal, lavish, and costly love for us.

Harvest USA is a ministry focused on issues of sexuality and gender. It’s not surprising, then, that people often ask us for advice on how to respond to our current culture. How do I get beyond complaints and diatribes about non-Christian ideas in the world around us? Should I engage in political action? What must I do when my neighbors and colleagues push non-Christian views? How do I raise kids in this environment? How do we keep the Church from capitulating in the area of sexuality?
These are urgent and complicated questions. I believe the beginning of an answer to them is one of perspective: It’s not really about sex.
How we address those outside the Church
Throughout the Bible, concern for sexual morality is directed inward, to God’s people, not outward to the world. It is most often associated with expressing holiness, by which is meant being set apart to belong to the LORD. It is always assumed that the people and cultures of the world will be sexually immoral, and, even when that fact is mentioned, it is usually in the context of calling Christians to self-consciously differentiate themselves in that respect. So, for instance, the lists of sexuality rules in Leviticus are framed by, “You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes” (Leviticus 18:3). Sexuality was one significant area of application of the principal of having been set apart to belong to God: “You shall be holy to me, for I the LORD am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine” (Leviticus 20:26).
This is exactly the way sexual morality is framed in the New Testament as well, but with the added expectation that even while our beliefs and practices will be radically different from those outside the Church, we will be living and working in close association with them every day. Paul writes, “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world…since then you would need to go out of the world” (1 Corinthians 5:9, 10). Peter also says, “For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry” (1 Peter 4:3). Significantly, the Church is not told to go out and scold the world, or even to try to reform their practices. Instead, we are to focus on being distinctly different.
One implication of this is that we need to be soberly realistic about the sexual practices and views of the non-Christian world we live in. I suspect that we have spent too much time and emotional energy processing shock and disappointment at every major step of cultural decline into sexual license, but this should never surprise us. In fact, in the Scriptures, the reaction of surprise is expected from the other direction: “With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you” (1 Peter 4:4). It is the world that should be shocked at what we don’t do! If moral decline in the culture around us seems like our biggest concern, we need to ask ourselves what it is we are really hoping for—a world outside the Church that approximates godliness just enough that we can comfortably and respectably partake in its benefits? That is never promised to us by our Lord; it is a counterfeit gospel.
Am I suggesting that God’s rules for sex don’t apply to unbelievers? Of course not. But God has not given us the job of being his morality enforcers. “For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside” (1 Corinthians 5:12). And listen to how Peter continues: “…but they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead” (1 Peter 4:5). Notice to whom they are to give account—“to him,” to Christ. They are not accountable to us, nor are we their judges.
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