Our Hearts, Desperately Deceptive

"It's not about sex." That's what the john said in his interview with Diane Sawyer. He had hired a prostitute for sex, but it wasn't about sex. For my part, I believe him.

When Sawyer was with ABC's 20/20, she did an exposé on "Prostitution in America: Working Girls Speak." It was one of the saddest television programs I've ever watched. I couldn't watch everything. (Remote controls are not sacramental, but I'm convinced they are a means of grace.) What I could watch told the heart-breaking stories of several young women trapped in "the world's oldest profession." Why would beautiful and intelligent young women throw away their lives this way? "Glamour" and "money brings happiness" were prominent answers. Promises of glamour and happiness---the Devil's counterfeits for holiness and joy---lured these young women into a lifestyle of emptiness and untimely death. Most prostitutes die by the age of 34.

Reflecting on the program, I first thought of Harvie Conn, who gave the early years of his ministry to serve as an Orthodox Presbyterian missionary to Korea. There he preached the gospel to prostitutes. It was a difficult and dangerous ministry. He angered pimps, but he rescued girls. Conn rescued them from abuse and early death; Jesus rescued them from sin and guilt. Souls were saved. Lives were rebuilt. Christ was glorified. "Lord, give us more, many more Harvie Conns."

I then thought about Augustine. It wasn't his immoral lifestyle (he lived with a woman prior to his conversion) that made me think of him; it was his theft of pears. As a teenager, Augustine had crept into an orchard under the cover of darkness and stolen some pears. Why? He confessed:

It was not the pears that my unhappy soul desired. I had plenty of my own, better than those, and I only picked them so that I might steal. For no sooner had I picked them than I threw them away, and tasted nothing in them but my own sin, which I relished and enjoyed. If any part of one of those pears passed my lips, it was the sin that gave it flavor (Confessions, 2.6).

Had Diane Sawyer interviewed Augustine, his face blurred on the television screen but clear to the eyes of God, he would have said, "It's not about pears."  Continue at Rhett Dodson