High School Daze: Spiritual Leprosy

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.  (1 Corinthians 11:27-30)

By this unworthy eating, they bring judgment on themselves. For while they have no faith in Christ, yet, by receiving the sacrament, they profess to place their salvation only in him, and abjure all other confidence. Wherefore they themselves are their own accusers, they bear witness against themselves; they seal their own condemnation. Next being divided and separated by hatred and ill-will from their brethren that is, from the members of Christ, they have no part in Christ, and yet they declare that the only safety is to communicate with Christ, and be united to him.

-- John Calvin

Many do not want to examine themselves, for they know that it would not turn out well. They would then become anxious and doubt their salvation. They perhaps would not dare to go to the Lord's Supper--but what would people then say of them? Therefore they keep the lid on the pot and peacefully live on in their sins, aggravating all this by eating and drinking unworthily. Is it therefore not very necessary that everyone perceive what his condition is?

-- Wilhelmus Brakel

Sickly Stickel. That was the nickname that best described my future bride's first impression of me when she saw me at church in 2008. She describes a pale, emasculated, deeply-depressed, quiet soul that appeared to be dying of a horrendous disease, sitting by himself amidst joyful fellowship before and after the worship service, who appeared to be on the brink of death.

Truthfully, I didn't feel that bad. I did not recognize how sickly and decrepit I had become after six years of profaning the body and blood of Jesus Christ while unworthily participating in the Lord's Supper. I did not recognize that I was poisoning myself by participating in a sacrament that is supposed to renew those who taste and see that the Lord is good (Ps. 34:8). I did not recognize that I was eating and drinking judgment upon myself, even though my pastor faithfully commanded me to examine myself before eating. I knew the dangers, I heard about the judgment, but I never thought they applied to me. Or at the very least, I never wanted to consider the fact that I might not be who I said I was and that I might have no place at this table.

Throughout my three years in high school, the church played a very small role in my life. I never believed that I was a Christian merely because I attended church every Sunday. I called myself a Christian because I believed that Jesus Christ died for my sins. I believed He died for my big sins, but that the rest of my salvation was completely in my hands. I believed He gave me the ticket to heaven, but seating was limited. I believed that He made salvation possible, but I had to clothe myself in my own righteousness in order to be admitted to the Salvation Ball. Jesus, therefore, wasn't my savior but He was just the host of the party of an eternity. The invitations were free to anyone who asked, but you had to earn your passage past the bouncers and into the pearly, white gates of Heaven. I didn't need the means of grace, because I didn't need grace. Therefore, the church was more like a gallery of my competition than anything else.

Before attending a Reformed church, I grew up with the teaching that you could forfeit your salvation, and that you could disqualify your salvation by committing the unforgiveable sin. Nothing fosters more legalistic thinking than teaching young people in the church that their salvation can be lost if they don't mind their righteous p's and q's. I remember fretting over thoughts that passed through my mind. I was afraid Satan would somehow crawl into my head and make me blaspheme the Holy Spirit. I didn't know what the unforgiveable sin was, so, naturally, I worried all the more about committing it. I was terrified not only of losing my salvation but of committing a sin that rendered me eternally lost. Throughout my childhood, I thought I had an irregular relationship with the Lord as if we were dating off and on. Sometimes I knew that God loved me, but at others, I had my doubts. Puzzled, I would reminisce about what I might have done that caused me to fall out of God's good graces.

Perhaps it sounds silly, but my sentiments have been shared by others. In Sex and the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance, and Religion on America's College Campuses, author Donna Freitas interviews a student at an evangelical college named Molly Brainbridge. Freitas (2008, Oxford University Press) writes:

Early in her teen years, Molly underwent a religious conversion--she was saved. But shortly after watching a series of horror movies, her faith hit a frightening roadblock. "That was when my paranoid fears of Satan set in," she says. "I spent the next, I'd say, two or three years afraid that Satan was going to steal inside of my mind and make me do the only unforgiveable sin, which is blaspheming the Holy Spirit. I thought that Satan could somehow steal my thoughts and make me blaspheme and sever me from the Lord forever," she says, pausing to laugh and roll her eyes about her youthful angst. "I'm perfectly healthy now, but for a good three years I was a very legalistic Christian. God was all a bunch of rules, and I was breaking rules all the time, and I had promised God I would do something, but I couldn't follow through on it."

As ridiculous as the notion sounds, I fear that many young people suffer through this fearful idea that they can become un-Christian just as quickly as they became Christian. Ironically, the idea that I could lose my salvation caused me to commit myself to prayer. However, the prayer relationship I believed I had between myself and God was more along the lines of an employee and employer relationship than a father and son relationship. If I felt like I was doing a good job at being a Christian than I would ask for a raise, but if I felt like I was doing an awful job of being a Christian than I would plead that God would not fire me.

Momentary relief from the notion that I could lose my faith came when my family started attending a Reformed Presbyterian church. I quickly fell in love with the letter "P" in TULIP, and was very open to hearing all I could about the perseverance of the saints. However, the letter "P" started to press on me as I started attending high school. Instead of fearing that I could inadvertently switch sides from Jesus to Satan, I began to fear the fact that I felt like I was switching sides continually. That is to say, instead of thinking that I could turn my "Christianity" on and off like a light-switch, I began to wonder if the light was ever really on in the first place.

If I couldn't ever stop being a Christian, I had to wonder why I didn't feel like a Christian most of the time. Before high school, I was surely a Christian! I knew the order of the books of the Bible, I was a far better person than many of the kids I went on youth retreats with, I was committed to purity, I never used foul language, I told the truth all the time or I asked for forgiveness when I didn't, and I hardly ever got in trouble. But now, in high school, I'm lying all the time. People treat me like I'm a saint, as if I am pure and completely innocent, as if my lips have said nothing foul and my eyes have seen nothing defiled. However, I know that I am a man of unclean lips, and that I say foul things all the time, just never with my lips. I know that I have availed myself to the worst defilements that pornography has to offer. I know that, although they treat me like a saint, I feel like the chief of all sinners. Worst of all, I don't truly feel bad about my situation. For the longest time, I thought I had just lost my way and taken an excursion away from the narrow path for a time. However, if one cannot lose their faith, then what does that mean concerning my walk along the broad and straight path towards a foreboding, horrific glow in the distance?

It didn't take me long in high school to re-think whether or not I was truly saved from my sins and resting in Christ. In public, I was a Christian, and I prided myself with being a very good one at that. However, in private, I was a man devoid of Christ and His death on the cross. I was living in sin, and although I felt bad about looking at pornography and wanting to have a sexual relationship with someone, I was anything but repentant. I only feared the judgment and wrath of God that I was heaping upon myself. Part of me wanted to change, but most of me wanted to continue to lust after the flesh. In high school, I began to realize that I didn't belong in church, and I certainly didn't deserve to be called a Christian. Despite these feelings, I continued the hypocrisy.

My new favorite past-time was spending every available second alone viewing pornography on the internet. I was now filled with lust and worshipped the female body. The pretty girls that surrounded me in high school became my new gods, and I desired a relationship with them so that they might reveal themselves further to me. These girls were first and foremost gorgeous bodies, whose highest purpose was to be loved and appreciated. In order to reveal a girl's highest purpose you had to first flatter her mind and heart until she felt that she could share her body with you. Girls became objects and idols. Worshiping them brought me pleasure, but it also brought me great depression and pain. My fervent worship of them was never accepted, and none of them ever revealed their bodies to me.

I worshiped the women in pornography, but it was not hard to get them to reveal themselves to me. They never interacted with me, however. They never talked to me, listened to me, hugged me, or truly loved me. They undressed for me, they gave me what I came for, but they never satisfied the longing I had for a relationship. I worshipped a pantheon of gods, and I was completely and utterly oblivious to my idolatry of adultery. I worshiped the girls at school, who gave me the relationship I desired but never the bodily revelation I wanted. I worshiped the girls in pornography, who gave me complete revelation of their bodies but never gave me the relationship I desired. I worshiped and I worshiped, but women and pornography never satisfied my spiritual and physical needs. Sound familiar?

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.  (Romans 1:24-28)

In high school, I had to face the fact that there was a huge disconnect between what I said I was and who I really was. I quickly realized that I was a farce, and that my faith was completely resting in sex rather than in Christ. My life was completely consumed in viewing or pursuing sex, rather than pursuing God by faith for my salvation. I wanted communion with women more than I wanted communion with God. I truly struggled to reconcile my public and private lives. In public, I was still very concerned about putting on a Christian show for my family and friends, but in private I hardly concerned myself with trying to act like something I knew I wasn't.

I feared men more than I feared God, and it was more important to me to continue putting on a show for my friends and family than to tell them or show them the man I truly had become. I knew I had no place calling myself a Christian. I knew I had no place seating myself at the Lord's Table and unworthily eating and drinking Jesus' body and blood. However, I could not muster the strength to ruin the few meaningful relationships I still had. I told myself that if my parents and my closest friends knew who I really was, then they would no longer love me anymore. I was concerned about what my parents and my pastor would think if I stopped attending church and stopped eating and drinking the Lord's Supper, so I continued to eat and drink to my destruction. I stopped worrying about the wrath of God when I started worshiping sex, and although I believed He existed, I acted like He didn't.

I continued to attend church throughout high school, but my interactions with the saints was limited. I regularly attended the worship services, and I partook of the Lord's Supper as often as it was administered. I sat under the preaching of the Word, and I received the warning and command of self-examination before participating in the Lord's Supper, but I dismissed its curse and judgment. I had been doing this for a while now, and I still was not sick and dying. Or so I thought.

Much like Eve after she ate of the forbidden fruit, I did not immediately fall ill or die. Just as the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was not inherently poisonous as if it contained something in and of itself that corrupted mankind, so too the blessed elements of the Lord's Supper do not turn to poison in the stomach of one who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner. The death that Eve suffered was an immediate spiritual death and a prolonged physical death. God told Adam and Eve that they would die if they ate of the forbidden fruit, and they did, however their deaths were prolonged over many years physically.

In eating and drinking the Lord's Supper in an unworthy manner, the curse that Paul refers to is truly inflicted upon the sinner. Weakness, illness, and death surely do result from profaning the body and blood of Jesus Christ. It is not immediate physical weakness, illness, and death, but rather a prolonged spiritual ailment that affects one's physical strength and vigor. I had voluntarily heaped this curse upon my curse under the first Adam. I was cursed not only to death, but weakness, illness, and death on top of that. By participating in the Lord's Supper, I was exponentially exacerbating my spiritual depravity and quickening my physical demise.

I did not succumb to terrible diseases. I did not lose bone density and suffer from osteogenesis imperfecta. However, I felt like a spiritual leper through and through. I felt ugly and detestable. I felt impure and unworthy of anybody's affection. I felt defiled amidst God's people, and I felt like an outcast amidst everyone else. I grew deeply and utterly depressed. My eating habits grew steadily unhealthy, as I would go long periods without eating or drinking. When I did eat, it was never anything healthy. For a while, noodles saturated in salt, butter, and cheese became a staple, often chased with a Mountain Dew.

I would spend days wallowing in sorrow and self-pity. I began to pick at the skin of my face, trying to remove every imperfection. I believed that I was so alone because nobody could see past my blemishes and imperfections. I neglected my spiritual blemishes and imperfections, and focused entirely on my physical imperfections. My skin wasn't clear enough. My muscles were not big enough. My complexion wasn't tan enough. My mood drastically altered from day to day. After waking up, if I didn't like the person looking back at me in the mirror, if I did not think he was perfect, then I didn't let that person come out of his room the whole day.

I isolated myself from everyone and everything. Scars and scabs covered my face, and I felt completely ugly. Whenever my acne let up for a time, I would jump at the opportunity to get out of the house. I could only spend time with people that truly loved and cared about me when I felt like I was physically attractive to complete strangers. More than anything, I enjoyed going to the mall and the movies, hoping to see many pretty girls and be seen by many pretty girls. I was most uplifted when a pretty girl noticed me, and I was most depressed when I felt invisible and ignored. My whole life now revolved around my worship of superficial beauty and the flesh.

God gave me up to the lusts of my heart to impurity. I was fully engulfed in a utopia of pornography and instant sexual gratification. I was truly struggling to enjoy loving relationships, but I believed they would come in time when my acne cleared up. Surely it was the only thing holding me back from meaningful, loving relationships. The boy who turned his back on God in order to worship sex and physical beauty ironically suffers from never experiencing both. Not only that, but my fascination with and idolatry of my new gods rendered me more and more unhappy, ugly, weak, and lonely. I traded the image of God for the image of man. I traded what was truly lovely for what is truly unlovely. And I did all of this while still coming to the Lord's Table.

I could never prove that my eating and drinking the Lord's Supper has any correlation with why my wife described her first impression of me as someone suffering from cancer or another deadly disease. Perhaps my story seems a little far-fetched, and you find it difficult to believe that I was truly weak and ill merely because I was eating and drinking judgment upon myself. Truthfully, I never went to the hospital for emergency treatment for any illness, and I never suffered from physical weakness. Nevertheless, I hope you do not require immediate or substantial weakness, illness, and death in order to believe that Paul's warning to the church ought to hold some credence with those who approach the Lord's Table.

Will those who eat and drink the Lord's Supper in an unworthy manner truly suffer from weakness, illness, and even death? You will not surely die (Gen 3:4), is often our response. Perhaps not immediately, but you will grow weak, ill, and eventually die. My weakness, illness, and death seems to have been perfectly administered to the lusts of my heart. I thought I was strongest when I enjoyed unblemished skin, cleanly-cut hair, and recognition from pretty girls. I thought I was healthiest when I enjoyed meaningful and loving interaction with a beautiful girl. I thought I was most alive when a pretty girl loved me and revealed everything secret to me. Even with my own definitions of what strength, health, and life were, I was failing miserably.

Spiritually, I was weakest when I succumbed to every temptation that came my way, allowed my world to revolve around the lies and deceitfulness of my lust-driven heart, and worshiped the creature rather than the Creator. I was overcome with illness when I turned my back on God, and filled my body, mind, and soul with every defilement and impurity that I could get my hands on. I was dead as I learned to care less and less about my righteousness before a Holy God, and enjoyed to wallow in the mire of my filth, almost proud of it.

Sadly, my pastors neglect to include verse thirty of 1 Corinthians 11 when they warn the congregation before administering the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. They include verse twenty nine, but often stop at that. Undoubtedly, there are great and terrible spiritual ramifications to eating and drinking judgment upon yourself, but there are very real physical ramifications too. Perhaps we tend to leave verse thirty out because we don't actually believe that God will physically affect those who profane the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

The sacraments are physical signs that point to a spiritual reality. Tangible elements signify intangible spiritual realities. Profaning the physical, tangible elements of the Lord's Supper without looking to and delighting in the spiritual, intangible reality that they symbolize will not bring spiritual life but physical death. Think, those who eat and drink unworthily are not eating and drinking for spiritual nourishment, so, therefore, why do they eat and drink; for physical nourishment? In verse 34, Paul writes, "If anyone is hungry, let him eat at home--so that when you come together it will not be for judgment." Those who profane the body and blood of Christ by eating and drinking the elements as merely physical morsels of food and drink, stripped of their representation of the broken body and shed blood of Christ Jesus our savior, will not even benefit from physical nourishment but will suffer spiritual judgment and physical weakness, illness, and death.

Spiritual leprosy will result in physical deterioration. The idols of your heart will not satisfy you, your wicked search for their approval will cause you to contort and abuse your body in ways God never created your body to be treated, and you will place yourself in physical and emotional situations that will endanger your life. Having seen Paul talk about this in the first chapter of Romans, I think it is appropriate to let Paul further explain the effects of worshiping the creature rather than the Creator:

They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. (Romans 1:29-32) 

This perfectly describes the man I once was. Though I knew that I was a dead man, I continued in sin and continued to give approval to those who were dragging me down with them. Pornographers became my friends. Those who enjoyed sexual promiscuity and perverted love became my companions. I found myself surrounded by the faithless, and I wanted what they possessed. They didn't care about how ugly their sin was, in fact, they boasted about it.

A year before I graduated, I got my first job working at a restaurant. Sexual jokes were not only acceptable, but almost necessary to be welcomed into this culture. Drunkenness was praised over sobriety, and gossip, slander, and foolishness were necessary to have a good time. Obedience to parents was frowned upon, and enjoying the fruits of youthfulness was set upon a pedestal. Men were praised for having one-night-stands with girls, and sexual intimacy was praised and lauded as long as it was heartless and ruthless. This became the new culture I found myself in after high school. This was my introduction into a college culture that would catch me completely off-guard.