Aphrodite Rules? Word on the Week 9th November 2019.
“Our lives are destroyed by what happened to Ana”. So read Geraldine Kriegel in the victim impact statement as she recorded the effect Ana’s brutalised death on her parents. Her husband was terser. Referring to the lengthy sentencing both boys received he said “Forever is not long enough.”
Where did two 13-year-old schoolboys get the information and enact their heinous plans? Where did they get their appetite for extreme and violent pornography? How could it be possible for a youngster to have 12,500 sexual images on two devices in his bedroom? Boy A, as the court referred to him, had done his internet research which included ‘dead boy prank in abandoned haunted school’.
The internet was built on porn. It has added violence among other perversions that cause us to salivate. Our appetites, once whetted, soon become contaminated till they require yet greater extremes to satisfy them. So widespread has it become that ‘pornhub’ records over 100 million video views per annum. This amounts to 12.5 videos per person on earth!
The goddess Aphrodite, the goddess of erotic love, was once discreetly clothed as she went about her duties bringing out the complementarity between men and women. This harks back to creation itself. It is only right that erotic love should be accorded an important place in our society. But we have stripped down Aphrodite applying her seductive powers indiscriminately. In fact, the pagan Greeks who invented her would be astonished at the multitudes who blindly worship her today!
This eroticism is the pagan caricature of the God-given sexual desire. It places the ultimate value on something which was intended to be simply the dress rehearsal for the marriage feast of the Lamb in heaven (Revelation Chapter 21 verse 2). It makes fools of its devotees as they look for satisfaction in the wrong place. Jeremiah put it clearly when they deserted God in his time, “My people have committed two sins: they have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water (Chapter 2 verse 13).
Those who worship Aphrodite may sacrifice many things at her altar: time, money, deep or lasting relationships, unborn children, emotional maturity, health and even life itself. Ancient Corinth was similar but by God’s grace many heeded St Paul’s advice, “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has
righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said,
“I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore, go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.” Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God (Chapter 6 verses 14/18).