The Heirloom
Imagine inheriting a precious gift from your father or mother: a completely restored 1963 GMC ½-Ton pickup. It’s a fine American truck, with its new-for-1963 front coil spring suspension and a hefty, new 292 cubic-inch straight-six engine (six in a row, ready to tow). Out back is an optional log axle and leaf spring setup, standard on the big-boy 1-ton GMC and Chevy C/K trucks.
The truck is ready to cruise, show, or work, just as your dear parent would have intended. So how should you use it?
This is the question God wants his people to ask about the gifts he has given as an inheritance: love, sex, marriage, personhood, and relationships of all kinds. God, the essence and being of love, is also the creator of love, inventor of sex, and author of marriage. He is like the benevolent parent who has gifted you a flawless 1963 truck – an object that could usher joy into your life or could wind up busted, rusted, and leaking oil onto your driveway.
Understanding proper care and enjoyment of an heirloom truck is a great way toward understanding the gift of sex. You could respond to the gift of a 1963 GMC truck in any of the following ways:
“Yes!” you say, enamored with the thrill of it, and proceed to invite anyone you meet to drive it whenever they want, wherever they want, with whomever they want. Yet your parent intended your use of the truck to bring joy when it’s used carefully, privately, and with restraint.
“Wow!” you say, upon seeing those sturdy leaf springs, and proceed to take the truck to its limits, bouncing off rocky trails and running the engine against its rev limiter. Yet your parent wanted you to nurture and cherish the gift.
“Oh dear,” you say, mindful of the gravity of the gift, and refuse to use it, think about it, talk about it, or enjoy it. Yet your parent designed every part of it to bring you joy and reveal something about their personality and provision.
“That’s certainly interesting,” you say out loud, pretending you don’t care about it and don’t want to talk about it when privately it consumes your thoughts and fills your hopes. Yet your parent wants you to talk with people about this gift, to understand how to use it as intended.
Desire pushes the heart toward behaviors that flow against God’s desire for his people. Desire motivates all human behavior, for better or for worse. While God wants to see human desire shaped and pruned by his word, many times it can be influenced by just about anything else. Neil Getzlow, writer and author of “Unmasked,” describes his wayward desire like this:
“I was tempted to follow along with a worldview that focused on sex, pride, idolatry, and all the trappings that the man-made universe offers. I think back to all those MTV videos I watched as a teen, those R-rated movies that I had direct access to thanks to cable TV, the constant barrage of sex and violence… For the first forty-nine years of my life, I was completely content to go along with it. Frankly, I wasn’t just content with today’s culture, I reveled in it and glorified it. Celebrated it. It was my culture. The only way I was going to break free from the addiction of my culture and join God’s culture was through divine intervention. That’s exactly what happened.”
Getzlow eventually hit rock-bottom and decided to turn his desires over to God and a caring community. If you’re ready to do the same, you can learn God’s design for the gifts of love, sex, and marriage. A great place to start is Ephesians 4-6, where God speaks through Paul about selflessly “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ” (5:21). In particular, spouses should love one another just as:
“…Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” (Ephesians 5:25-27)
Redemption and restoration through God is the starting point of figuring out desire. God designed desire too, and the ultimate satisfaction thereof: him (as the Psalmist says, “You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.” Psalm 16:11). Begin, as they say, with the end in mind. Suddenly, sex isn’t means for personal satisfaction, but God’s. Marriage becomes interplay of reciprocal reverence, respect, and admiration. Keeping everything working together is love, something so tangible yet so mystical that your heart longs to find ways to share it.
Heirlooms, including the automotive kind, are best appreciated when the restorer’s work can be seen, through pictures, stories, or receipts. You can just picture the effort and care behind every stitch weld and packed bearing. This is called empathy, and it can motivate a person to submit their greatest desires to an even greater design.
John V16 is the intersection of God and cars. Please support our work and donate a V16-powered 1940 Cadillac Series 90 Sixteen to John V16. Or share this article with a friend.
