Dragon Slaying VI
Fornication, Lust, and the Unleashing of the Nuclear Fires of Sexual Desire
“Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is indeed incalculable…” — Emperor Hirohito
In December 1938, after decades of cumulative scientific labor, German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann split the uranium atom in Berlin. With that discovery, something hidden in ordinary matter for millennia was suddenly unleashed. Nuclear fission moved quickly from laboratory curiosity to weapon.
On July 16, 1945, in the New Mexico desert, the Trinity test detonated the first atomic bomb. The scientific director of the Manhattan Project, J. Robert Oppenheimer, later recalled his reaction by quoting the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
Weeks later, Hiroshima and Nagasaki became the only two cities in human history to have nuclear weapons used against them in war. On August 6, 1945, “Little Boy” killed roughly 70–80,000 people instantly, with total deaths reaching around 140,000 by year’s end. Three days later, “Fat Man” struck Nagasaki, killing about 40,000 immediately and tens of thousands more from burns and radiation.
And yet the story of nuclear fission is not all buried in ash.
Thirteen years after the atom was first split, on December 20, 1951, the Experimental Breeder Reactor-I in Idaho generated electricity for the first time, enough to light four light bulbs.
In 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower stood before the United Nations and declared that atomic power must be “consecrated to life.” By the mid-1950s, nuclear plants were supplying public grids. By the 1980s, hundreds of reactors were operating worldwide. Today, nuclear power provides roughly 10% of global electricity.
The same reaction that leveled cities can also warm and light them.
Uncontained, misused energy annihilates.
Contained, properly used energy animates.
Nuclear energy is neither angel nor demon in the human story. It is power, created by God, to be used according to His purposes for flourishing, or misused for destruction.
Sexual desire is nuclear.
Blowing Ourselves Up
We are living inside an uncontrolled reaction. A catastrophic meltdown of immeasurable proportions.
Ours is a libertarian-progressive moment that defines freedom as the absence of constraint. No limits. No boundaries. No inherited moral guardrails. If desire is felt, it must be expressed. If it is restrained, it is oppression.
That story is killing us.
One might say, “Here we go again. Another religious prude railing against social progress and sexual revolution. I’m sexually active right now and I’m fine.”
The thing with uncontained nuclear energy is not only the explosive power but the lingering radiation. The slow burning of cells due to exposure creates a creeping death.
With sexual energy and behavior, most of us feel fine in the moment but in the unseen realms things are cancerous.
Every culture has had sexual excess. But ours has something historically unprecedented: infinite access. Pornography on demand. Bodies commodified at scale. Violence eroticized. A billion-dollar global sex trade sustained by private clicks and public indifference.
We have baptized nearly every sexual impulse as “authentic,” “natural,” or “beautiful,” even where Scripture names them destructive. We call cauterization maturity. We call numbness liberation.
Most consider sex nothing more than mere adult play based on mutual consent. No one’s hurting anyone. But the fire we’re “playing” with is devouring the soul.
We are burning each other alive and insisting it’s all good and liberating.
Sex and its energies are not casual, they are catastrophic on a cosmic scale.
Why Is Sex So Powerful?
Part of our cultural numbness comes from losing a sacramental vision of the body.
In historic Christianity, the body is not a shell. It is not disposable. It is not a vehicle for private pleasure.
The body is revelatory.
What we do in our bodies reverberates beyond the visible world. Flesh and spirit are not rivals; they are interwoven. The Incarnation ends any cheap view of physicality.
When two bodies join, something more than friction occurs.
Sex is not merely contact. It is covenantal knowledge, the act entails recognition, vulnerability, and union. It opens boundaries and exposes the deepest self.
It feels like more than a moment because it is.
In a sacramental imagination, physical acts participate in invisible realities. Bodies become conduits of spiritual exchange. Affection, memory, attachment, identity, these are not metaphors. They are neurological, emotional, and spiritual realities braided together.
Sex is physiologically binding and spiritually mysterious because it is integrative beyond biology.
It pulls body and soul into a single movement.
Sex joins two souls, and the God who created them, all into one essence.
This is mystery.
Which is why sex can bless so deeply, or fracture so painfully.
Sarah Coakley, in The New Asceticism, describes sex as a signpost.
The longing of two sexually differentiated and separate persons to become one mirrors the relational life of God Himself. Three different persons yet one essence as the theologians have put it. This interpenetrated union of the Godhead reverberates throughout creation and is the truest impulse of sexual hunger in a human being.
Sexual desire is Trinitarian.
It is cosmic in scope and eternally reflective of realities beyond time and space as we experience it in our physical bodies. Father, Son, and Spirit are eternally self-giving love. Our sexual longing is an embodied echo of that infinite exchange.
Beneath the heat of lust lies a deeper hunger. Behind warped lust and pornography is the eternal longing to be seen, to belong, and to experience intimate love.
Sexual desires are not merely biological; they are theological.
And that is precisely why it becomes ground zero for distortion in the flesh and by the enemy of God.
If you were intent on disfiguring the image of God in humanity, where would you strike? You would target the place where covenant, vulnerability, creativity, and communion converge. You would attack union itself. You would dismantle bodies from souls. You would detach desire from worship.
This means our fight is not merely against fleshy behavior. It is against powers and principalities and ultimately against a false transcendence.
Porn promises ecstasy without covenant. Hookup culture promises intimacy without surrender. Autonomy promises freedom without communion.
Yet, at root, we want, no, we need to be exposed and seen and loved, unconditionally. The faux nature of modern sexual behavior will always leave us not only dissatisfied, but plagued with a soul sickness unto death.
Regardless of how much we try to convince ourselves otherwise, in our innermost being, all of our sexual desire apart from Jesus Christ and obedience to him leaves us covered in shame.
How We Cover
Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed, until the fall. They beheld one another in the presence of God without fear or anxiety. They looked upon each other in unconditional love, held in the gaze of their Father. Sex was blessed, beautiful, holy, worshipful. It was selfless and sacrificial with the emphasis on the other.
After the fall, the Hebrew text tells us they covered themselves with fig leaves. Sexual energies deformed, emphasizing earthly personal pleasures above spiritual treasures.
We experience this warping as shame in our bodies.
Humanity has been stitching coverings ever since and we are ingenious in the ways we hide.
In the history of Christianity, two primary postures of covering have emerged: Prudish Religious Purity and Cauterized Rebellious Perversion.
Prudish Religious Purity
This first covering is familiar.
We sense the shame of our naked bodies and the volatility of sexual desire, so we attempt to correct it with brutal safeguards and impossible denials. We try to crush desire into submission.
Cassian writes in The Institutes of monks who placed heavy weights on their genitalia to prevent the “shameful emissions of the night” from escaping their uncontrollable bodies.
One must be careful with Cassian in regards to such extreme descriptions. He was not prescribing such behavior for his monks but merely describing their excess. Cassian, again, would call for a gentle moderation when addressing the sexual appetites of the body.
Suffice it to say, from chastity belts to the stern excesses of modern purity culture, Christians have often assumed sexual energy can be subdued through self-inflicted punishment.
It cannot.
And the attempt has only inflicted deeper wounds.
Cauterized Rebellious Perversion
The second form of covering may seem like the opposite, but it is another strategy of hiding.
In an effort to overcome shame, we cauterize ourselves. We silence conviction. We cast off constraints and pursue sexual excess in the name of freedom.
Yet in doing so, we slowly burn our truest selves. What feels like liberation becomes a grave, warping desire, consuming holiness, dulling the soul.
What we are see in our sex obsessed culture is a futile attempt to cauterize any sense of healthy shame and we are in a melt-down because of it.
Neither prudery nor perversion can reorder sexual desire.
Neither repression nor rebellion can heal it.
We must allow the Spirit to remove our fig leaves for the sake of erotic transformation.
Jesus and Erotic Transformation
The path forward is not self punishment nor unchecked perversity. We must define our desires, not to deny them, but allow them to be transfigured.
Jesus did not begin behavior.
He began with the heart.
He said,
“Blessed are the pure in heart.”
and warned:
“...out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality…”
Sexual disorder is not merely an external act. It is an internal misdirection. Jesus addressed the interior world as much as he did external behaviors.
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
Jesus relocated the external act of adultery to the internal imagination.
He wasn’t being hyper prudish.
As the Good Shepherd, He was setting in safeguards and protection for His people when it came the nuclear fires of sexual desire. Because He knew the power of this energy, He spoke in bracing language:
“If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out… If your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off…”
Jesus was not advocating mutilation, he was underscoring the magnitude of intensity we ought to approach our own sexual imaginations with.
For Jesus, radical containment was not extremism, it was wisdom.
His severity should sober us.
Healing the Shamed and the Numb
The way of containment and channeling sexual energy is neither impossible suppression or desensitized rebellion. It is the way of honesty and transparency with the one who knows our bodies and understands.
The great miracle and mystery of the incarnation is that God understands our embodied drives and is not embarrassed or surprised by them. He equally understands the way that sin, society, and Satan twist and deform sexual desire, and intends to heal it.
For those wounded by purity culture, healing comes not by suppressing desire, but by acknowledging it, embracing its reality, and processing it honestly before God.
In a conversation with students at Western Seminary, we were discussing how lust might be addressed. The usual prescriptions surfaced: fasting, avoiding the second glance, sheer willpower.
All helpful, but incomplete.
What has revolutionized my own prayer life is this: putting language and detail to desire before the Lord.
Naming it in all its awkward and ugly clarity.
Describing it in embarrassing detail, out loud.
Putting words out into the air that detail what I am fantasizing about, and then asking Him to meet me there and reveal the deeper desire underneath.
As the conversation unfolded, one student said, wide-eyed, having a mini-epiphany as he realized Jesus already knew his thoughts in detail, “This is like graphic prayer.”
Exactly.
Graphically pray your desires.
NOTE: Not to embellish fantasy in God’s presence, but to bring into the light what is already in the heart.
To say aloud what is hidden and receive mercy there.
To pray graphically is to see our perversity clearly while admitting that our desire is real. It cannot be ignored. It must be confessed.
I have found it both embarrassing and sobering to say out loud, in detail, the thoughts I have had—and at the same time to feel a sure sense of security in the love of God.
Hearing the false and deformed self’s desires spoken aloud somehow gives the Spirit-enabled new creation within authority over the body’s unchecked desires. The new Dan, pure and holy, becomes the adult in the room with the Spirit, acknowledging the corruption and perversity, and then moving into joyful obedience in both behavior and thought.
Again, with graphic prayer we do not linger there. We do not ruminate. We turn our eyes and our temptations toward God in the act of forsaking them. We confess the imagery in detail and then wait for illumination.
The Spirit intends to take us to the desires underneath the sexual desire.
He’ll ask what is the deeper hunger? To be seen? To be powerful? To be wanted? To escape loneliness?
Processing this type of prayer is sometimes best done with a seasoned saint, someone who has walked through the fires and carries mature vision. Not a peer equally inflamed, but a wise guide who can see through the smoke. Maybe a therapist, spiritual director, or trusted pastor.
For the Cauterized Heart
If the heart has become numb, pray for the gift of tears, as the ancients called it.
If sexual deviance of body and mind no longer troubles you, begin by asking God for mercy and for the conviction of His Spirit.
This was the foundation of John Cassian’s prescriptions for purity among his monks. Conferencing with Abba Chaeremon, Cassian summarized his learning: “No one can acquire or preserve chastity by his own efforts or watchfulness, unless he has first laid the foundations of true humility. For it is humility that guards and protects chastity.”
Humility, i.e., acknowledging that we have stood over and against God’s will for sexual desire is the beginning of purity.
We tend to think guilt or shame should be avoided at all costs. But in the realm of erotic transformation, those uncomfortable sensations are the only pathways to true healing.
As with graphic prayer, the goal is not to linger in shame and guilt, but to let them guide you into repentance, and there to receive grace and mercy in your time of need.
Erotic Saints and Concrete Sexual Containment
Next week I will offer a second, extended post detailing theological, psychological, and even physiological means of containing sexual desire in a healthy and holy way. One that creates real passion and joy, whether single or married.
For this week, invite the Holy Spirit to help you explore how you have thought about sexual desire. Has purity culture punished you to the point that desire must be suppressed at all costs? Does even the word erotic make you squirm?
Bring this to Jesus in open, honest prayer as best you can. Allow the Spirit to speak to what He has placed within you—healthy sexual desires He intends to guide.
Maybe this week a graphic prayer might be the beginnings of freedom from the hidden perversity all of our hearts are filled with. Say the things out loud and when that sense of embarrassment or shame surfaces, thank Jesus that He’s not embarrassed or ashamed.
He knew those thoughts were there and loves you perfectly.
Receive that love.
On the other end of the spectrum, if you have covered that sense of shame in your heart by cauterizing any sensitivity to sexual rebellion, the gift of tears is sweet and cleansing.
You may not recognize shame as the primary driver, but if rebellion and a laissez-faire attitude toward sex has been your story, shame is operating behind the scenes.
Humble yourself before the Lord.
Let the bracing clarity of Jesus’ vision of sexual purity, both in outward behavior and inward imagination, sober your perspective.
Ask the Spirit for compunction of heart and conviction of soul.
These temporary discomforts are the beginnings of purity and the containment of sexual power that truly brings life rather than destroying it.
Finally, trust Him.
Dear Christian, we are “in Christ.”
This means that all our energies, imaginations, lusts, and longings are contained within His perfection and purity.
Cling to Christ and to that truth.
In Him, regardless of our sexual stories, we are holy and loved. From within Christ we learn to channel our sexual energies so that, instead of eroding the soul, they multiply life, flourishing, and joy until His return.
Until next week, I pray your sexual fires burn hotter than ever—yet burn clean, warming and lighting your soul and those near you.
I pray you come to know yourself as an “erotic saint”: one whose sexual energies are interpreted in light of sacrament and eternity; one unafraid to confess perversity and receive purity in its place.
May you meet your Triune God in the mystery, and learn to let those energies become creativity, service, and love poured out for the life of the world.