The Value Of Less Dramatic Conversions

He's commenting on passages like Romans 16:19 and the value of avoiding evil rather than having a more dramatic conversion from sin:

"I remember David Michael used to stand up and give a testimony. He said, 'God delivered me from drugs and alcohol and sexual immorality when I was six years old.' It was a great testimony. Don't even be a beginner [in sin]." (John Piper, 13:00 here)

The Growth Of Sin In The Afterlife

"But if sin in the retrospect be the sting of death, what must sin in the prospect be? My friends, we do not often enough look at what sin is to be. We see what it is; first the seed, then the blade, then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear. It is the wish, the imagination, the desire, the sight, the taste, the deed; but what is sin in its next development? We have observed sin as it grows; we have seen it, at first, a very little thing, but expanding itself until it has swelled into a mountain. We have seen it like 'a little cloud, the size of a man's hand,' but we have beheld it gather until it covered the skies with blackness, and sent down drops of bitter rain. But what is sin to be in the next state? We have gone so far, but sin is a thing that cannot stop. We have seen whereunto it has grown, but whereunto will it grow? for it is not ripe when we die; it has to go on still; it is set going, but it has to unfold itself forever. The moment we die, the voice of justice cries, 'Seal up the fountain of blood; stop the stream of forgiveness; he that is holy, let him be holy still; he that is filthy, let him be filthy still.' And after that, the man goes on growing filthier and filthier still; his lust developes itself, his vice increases; all those evil passions blaze with tenfold more fury, and, amidst the companionship of others like himself, without the restraints of grace, without the preached word, the man becomes worse and worse; and who can tell whereunto his sin may grow?" (Charles Spurgeon)

One Of The Reasons Why People Overestimate Themselves

"People don't lie awake at night wrestling with the outrage of their indifference to God." (John Piper)

Tear Out The Evil By The Root

"But perhaps thou sayest, I am a believer, and lust does not gain the ascendant over me, even if I think upon it frequently. Knowest thou not that a root breaks even a rock by long persistence? Admit not the seed, since it will rend thy faith asunder: tear out the evil by the root before it blossom, lest from being careless at the beginning thou have afterwards to seek for axes and fire. When thine eyes begin to be diseased, get them cured in good time, lest thou become blind, and then have to seek the physician." (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, 2:3)

Mary's Sinfulness In Pre-Reformation Sources

Gavin Ortlund recently produced a video about the sinlessness of Mary. I've written a few posts over the years (here, here, and here) providing some of the many examples of references to her sinfulness among pre-Reformation sources. I've come across more over the years, but I haven't been posting all of them.

For example, earlier this year, I was looking something up in Michael O'Carroll's Theotokos (Wilmington, Delaware: Michael Glazier, Inc., 1988), and I came across a few more relevant sources unexpectedly. As I recall, I was looking up one of the entries in the "H" section. While I was there, I decided to read a few of the nearby entries. Over and over, there are references to how various pre-Reformation sources denied Mary's sinlessness in one way or another. Helinand of Froidmont, who died in the thirteenth century, is referred to as thinking that Mary "was sanctified in the womb", meaning that she wasn't immaculately conceived (169). Henry of Ghent, in the thirteenth century, held that "Mary's soul in the very moment in which it was united to the body was both contaminated by sin and sanctified" (169). Hesychius, who died in the fifth century, interprets the sword of Luke 2:35 as a reference to doubt on Mary's part, commenting that "though Mary was a virgin, she was a woman, though she was the Mother of God, she was of our stuff" (170). Those are just a few examples among so many others like that in O'Carroll's work alone. And he leaves out a lot that could have been included.

I want to make another point relevant to Luke 2:35. During the patristic era, the verse was commonly viewed as a reference to sin on Mary's part, which is likely a correct interpretation. Basil of Caesarea, one of the sources who saw a reference to sin on Mary's part in Luke 2:35, goes as far as to say that there's "no obscurity or variety of interpretation" (Letter 260:6). That's not accurate, but it does illustrate how widespread belief in Mary's sinfulness was, that Basil would go so far in describing how popular his view was at the time. And it illustrates how we need to take into account not only what sources like Basil tell us about their own views, but also what information we can gather from them about other sources.

The sinlessness of Mary isn't just denied by a few sources in the earliest centuries, but instead is widely contradicted for hundreds of years, from the first century onward, including by apostles, prominent church fathers, and Roman bishops. Rejection of her sinlessness is still found in some sources well into the medieval era, even into the second millennium.

Tim Keller's Death

Here's a discussion Gavin Ortlund had with Collin Hansen a few months ago concerning a book Collin wrote about Keller. I've had a quote from Keller's book on prayer that I hadn't gotten around to posting yet, so this is an appropriate time to post it. I'll include another good passage that I've quoted before from the same book.

"Consider the petition 'O Lord - give me a job so I won't be poor.' That is an appropriate thing to ask God for. Indeed, it is essentially the same thing as to pray, 'Give us this day our daily bread.' Yet the Proverbs [30:7-9] prayer reveals the only proper motivation beneath the request. If you just jump into prayer without recognizing the disordered nature of the heart's loves, your prayer's intention will be, 'Make me as wealthy as possible.' The Proverbs 30 prayer is different. It is to ask, 'Lord, meet my material needs, and give me wealth, yes, but only as much as I can handle without it harming my ability to put you first in life. Because ultimately I don't need status and comfort - I need you as my Lord.'" (Prayer [New York, New York: Dutton, 2014], 86)

"If you forget the costliness of sin, your prayers of confession and repentance will be shallow and trivial. They will neither honor God nor change your life….Stott argued that confessing our sins implies the forsaking of our sins. Confessing and forsaking must not be decoupled, yet most people confess - admit that what they did was wrong - without at the same time disowning the sin and turning their hearts against it in such a way that would weaken their ability to do it again. We must be inwardly grieved and appalled enough by sin - even as we frame the whole process with the knowledge of our acceptance in Christ - that it loses its hold over us." (212)

God Before Other People

"Being 'under sin' [Romans 3:9] is first and foremost a ruined relation with God. Not, first, a ruined relation with other people….Fix this firmly in your mind, sin is mainly a condition of rebellion against God, not mainly a condition of doing bad things to other people. This is why it is so sad and so pointless when people argue that they are pretty good people, and so don't need the Gospel. What they mean is that they treat other people decently: they don't steal, kill, lie much, or swear much, and they give to some charities. But that is not the main question. The main question is: Do you love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength? Do you love his Son, Jesus Christ? God is the most important person in the universe.…And it doesn't matter what we do for people; if we treat the King of the universe with such disdain, we may know that we are profoundly 'under sin.'" (John Piper)

How Much The Conclusion Of Luke 2 Contradicts Roman Catholic Mariology

Protestants typically overlook or underestimate the closing verses of Luke 2 when addressing Catholic Mariology. There are several problems for the Catholic view of Mary in those verses, and the cumulative effect is highly significant.

I've discussed these issues in Luke 2 many times, but my comments are scattered across various posts over the years. I want to gather some of those comments in one place and supplement them with some other points:

Feed The Sheep By Any Hand

Here's a good article by Greg Morse about overcoming envy and other sins in Christian work.

The High Cost Of Low Living

My post yesterday quoted some comments from J.G. Pilkington on the significance of what are often regarded as little things, including sins that we often underestimate. Adrian Rogers preached a great sermon on Samson, probably the best sermon I've ever heard from him, and it addresses this issue. You can listen to it here. The last several minutes are especially good, starting here, but I recommend listening to the whole thing.

The Subtle Power Of Little Things

"Augustin frequently alludes to the subtle power of little things. As when he says,—illustrating (Serm. cclxxviii.) by the plagues of Egypt,—tiny insects, if they be numerous enough, will be as harmful as the bite of great beasts; and (Serm. lvi.) a hill of sand, though composed of tiny grains, will crush a man as surely as the same weight of lead. Little drops (Serm. lviii.) make the river, and little leaks sink the ship; wherefore, he urges, little things must not be despised. 'Men have usually,' says Sedgwick in his Anatomy of Secret Sins, 'been first wading in lesser sins who are now swimming in great transgressions.' It is in the little things of evil that temptation has its greatest strength. The snowflake is little and not to be accounted of, but from its multitudinous accumulation results the dread power of the avalanche. Satan often seems to act as it is said Pompey did, when he could not gain entrance to a city. He persuaded the citizens to admit a few of his weak and wounded soldiers, who, when they had become strong, opened the gates to his whole army. But if little things have such subtlety in temptation, they have likewise higher ministries. The Jews, in their Talmudical writings, have many parables illustrating how God by little things tries and proves men to see if they are fitted for greater things. They say, for example, that He tried David when keeping sheep in the wilderness, to see whether he would be worthy to rule over Israel, the sheep of his inheritance." (J.G. Pilkington, in n. 766 to Augustine's Confessions, 9:8)

Shallow Confession Of Sin

"If you forget the costliness of sin, your prayers of confession and repentance will be shallow and trivial. They will neither honor God nor change your life….Stott argued that confessing our sins implies the forsaking of our sins. Confessing and forsaking must not be decoupled, yet most people confess - admit that what they did was wrong - without at the same time disowning the sin and turning their hearts against it in such a way that would weaken their ability to do it again. We must be inwardly grieved and appalled enough by sin - even as we frame the whole process with the knowledge of our acceptance in Christ - that it loses its hold over us." (Tim Keller, Prayer [New York, New York: Dutton, 2014], 212)

2020 Strikes Again...

2020 has reached epic meme status in our culture, and it’s affecting not just our secular world but even Christianity itself.  So I guess it shouldn’t surprise me too much that after spending a portion of this evening laying some careful groundwork in evangelizing a friend, that after we were finished with our conversation I would discover that Jerry Falwell, Jr. has taken an indefinite leave of absence from Liberty University. 

That’s not too unusual.  People take leaves of absences all the time and—

Wait, this was actually demanded of him by the board of trustees?  Why would they…. Oh.

Ooooooh.

Falwell posted a picture on his Instagram—a picture that I cannot repost here.  It’s not overly graphic from the world’s standards.  It would barely get a PG rating. But there’s just something distasteful enough about it that I wish I hadn’t seen it.  To provide the bare minimum explanation needed, it involved Falwell with his pants unzipped and open to show his underpants while he is standing next to a woman—who is not his wife—similarly dressed with unzipped pants.

Set aside, for the moment, the strict rules that Liberty University has for their students.  This is something that Falwell decided to publish of his own accord on his own Instagram account, thinking that it would not raise eyebrows that he is taking such a suggestive picture with a woman who, again, is not his wife.  While all of us are sinners and I can easily foresee Christians falling into bad behaviors, I cannot understand how someone of Falwell’s experience with the media could have possibly thought for even a second that this was a good idea.  Someone would almost literally have to be drunk to think tha—

What’s that?  Oh, Falwell called into a radio station and “explained” what the picture was, saying that the woman was pregnant and couldn’t snap her pants, so “in good fun” he decided to join her.  And while providing this explanation, he was slurring his words and speaking with all the mannerisms of someone three sheets to the wind.

So 2020 strikes again.  And this leaves me with the realization that a bunch of the groundwork I just laid in presenting the gospel to a friend may have been obliterated by this news story coming out.  Because one thing I’m sure of is that it will get shared to all the skeptics out there.

Now obviously Christianity is not a religion that is predicated on perfect people never sinning.  I’ve had to go through this in the past with other failures of high profile Christians, and certainly we will all have to do so anew in the future.  For all I know, it might even involve me falling in some future calamity.  There but for the grace of God go I.

But even knowing that intellectually, and knowing that this does provide an opportunity for us to point to Christ as the necessary sinlessly perfect sacrifice, I cannot deny that there is a lot about this that is disheartening.  Not because it involves Liberty University or Jerry Falwell, neither topic of which has much relevance to my own beliefs and, in fact, whom I’ve had many disagreements with before.  But rather it’s the fact of knowing that once again we are going to have to put up with the flaming slings and arrows of people who will be launching this at us again, and a large part of me just wants to throw in the towel and be done with it.  Let the flames cleanse the Earth.

But then I remember my friend.  And the groundwork that has been built.  The hope that Christ will use it to bring another soul to Himself.  And yes, maybe our next conversation is going to be uncomfortable, annoying, aggravating, and completely frustrating because I’m going to have to go through all the reasons why Jerry Falwell isn’t Christianity.  But maybe my friend will be saved because of that conversation.  Only God knows what will happen, and there’s no reason for me to give up when only God knows.

Not even 2020 can disobey the will of God.

Flattered To Death

As good as things like capitalism and democracy are, they come with some downsides. One of those is that we're often flattered by people who want our money, our vote, or both. We're surrounded by it. We swim in an ocean of it. And since this is a presidential election year in the United States, the situation is especially bad. We hear a lot about how the problem is with corrupt leaders in Washington (and wherever else), how good the American people are, what hard workers they are, how they deserve this and deserve that, are entitled to this and entitled to that, etc.

It would be simplistic to say that all of this flattery goes to people's heads. But some of it does. And that's added on top of all of the teaching of self-esteem in schools, in books, on television, and elsewhere, all of the popular sayings of a similar nature ("don't let anybody judge you", "don't let anybody put you down", "be yourself", "follow your heart", "you deserve a break today", "the customer is always right"), and so on.

For a partial antidote to all of this, see here. We should ask what we're doing to make the problem worse. Do we accept and repeat claims that most Americans are political conservatives or that most are traditional Christians, for example, despite the lack of evidence for such conclusions and the evidence to the contrary? Do we repeat common false notions of how Americans are such good people, but that a small group of political leaders (or the media, academia, Hollywood, etc.) are holding them back and bringing about most of our problems? How much of your view of America is based on wishful thinking or false notions you've accepted without subjecting them to much analysis?

Many years ago, I heard Alistair Begg tell a story from his childhood on his radio program. Listen at 17:18 here. A worker in a candy shop, apparently after hearing somebody compliment Begg about something, told him, "Sonny, flattery is like perfume. Sniff it. Don't swallow it."

Is the desire to sin sinful?

This raises some interesting issues:

http://spirited-tech.com/COG/2020/04/07/impeccability-and-temptation/

1. One issue was whether Jesus was impeccable or merely sinless. My own position is that by virtue of the hypostatic union, he was impeccable because the divine nature exerts control over the human nature. In that respect, it isn't possible for Jesus to succumb to sinful temptation.

2. However, the post is raising a different, albeit related issue. Not whether it was possible for Jesus to give into sinful temptation, but to feel sinful temptation. 

3. I'd add that we don't have to answer the question directly. We can address the question at a more generic level. As a general or universal principle, is it necessarily sinful to desire sin? The question in reference to Jesus will answer itself depending on the general principle. So we can bypass the specific application to Jesus and focus on the question of whether, in principle, it's intrinsically sinful to desire sin?

4. I'll explore that momentarily, but before doing so draw two distinctions unique to Jesus:

Whether or not it's always sinful to desire sin, certain desires are intrinsically sinful. For instance, sexual desire for prepubescent children is intrinsically sinful. You must already be morally twisted to have that kind of desire.  There has to be a prior moral derangement for some things to be desirable. So I'd say Jesus can't desire intrinsically sinful things. That doesn't follow from the stronger principle of impeccability but the weaker principle of sinlessness.

5. In addition, there are second-order desires where committing sin engenders a desire to sin that contingent on committing sin. For instance, there's a subculture of faux vampirism where people drink each other's blood. To my knowledge, humans have no natural appetite for human blood. But if you experiment, I suppose that could become an acquired taste. I don't know that for a fact. I haven't studied the issue. But it will suffice as a hypothetical illustration. 

For the same reason as (4), Jesus can't have a second-order desire to sin. That doesn't follow from the stronger principle of impeccability but the weaker principle of sinlessness.

6. Back to the main issue. It may seem like a tautology or truism or self-evident that it's necessarily sinful to desire sin. Perhaps. But I think the plausibility of that intuition relies on keeping it on an abstract plane. When, however, we consider concrete examples, it may lose plausibility. What we find intuitively compelling or plausible is often dependent on paradigm-examples; it may break down in the face of counterexamples. It's not that the examples are necessarily wrong. The fallacy is overgeneralizing from certain kinds of examples. 

7. Let's begin with a cliche example. A normal man sees a beautiful woman. That automatically triggers sexual desire. Indeed, it may trigger sexual arousal.

Since premarital and extramarital sex are sinful, it might seem self-evident that his desire is sinful. Sexual desire is shorthand for desiring to have sexual relations. 

Yet it's hard to see how that can be true. If straight men didn't have a sexual desire for women, they'd lack a sufficient motivation to get married. So you might say the illicit desire is a necessary condition to incentivize the licit outlet of marriage. You must have sexual desire when you're still single to want marriage.

It also seems implausible to think that kind of sexual desire is a result of the Fall. But I won't argue the point. 

BTW, I'm not suggesting sex is the only motivation for marriage. But realistically, and in most cases, it's a sine qua non. 

8. Let's consider cases where there's a psychological conflict between altruistic duty and self-preservation. Take a situation where your odds of survival are enhanced if you leave an ailing friend behind but diminished if you stay behind to care for him. Suppose on a camping trip he comes down with a contagious, life-threatening illness. He might die, and even if he survives, he will become incapacitated during the cycle of the disease. And he will certainly not survive if you abandon him when he's incapacitated. His only shot at survival is if you provide for his needs while he's unable to provide for himself.

But the more direct contact and prolonged contact you have with him, the greater the odds that he will infect you, so that you may die in the process. Hence, your altruistic duty is in tension with your instinctive fear of death. A part of you has a hardwired aversion to risking your own life to save his. You have an inclination to desert him. If it's sinful to desert him, is it sinful to desire to do so? 

Yet we could turn around. The fact that moral heroism may conflict with natural desire affords an opportunity or test to do the right thing when it's costly. If the sacrifice didn't cut against the grain, it would be morally cheap. So in situations like that, having a desire to sin seems to be an instrumental good. It draws forth a second-order virtue. 

So my provisional conclusion is that it's not inherently sinful to desire sin. Rather, that's context-dependent. And that in turn answers the question about Jesus. 

Revisiting the unforgivable sin

i) The unforgivable sin is much discussed in pastoral ministry. In terms of the immediate context, the nature of the sin is clear enough. 

ii) What makes it a topic of ongoing dispute is whether the particular example is just a special case of a general principle, over and above the immediate context. Can that be extrapolated to analogous cases?

iii) Other questions include whether a Christian can commit it. 

iv) Whether, if an unbeliever commits it, he is doomed. Repentance is futile. No point attempting to become a Christian once you cross that line of no return. 

v) And what makes it uniquely unforgivable? Why is it unforgivable to blaspheme the Spirit but not the Son?

The unforgivable sin is endlessly discussed because it raises a number of issues without clear-cut answers. There's no general agreement, although there are cliche responses, which may be correct. 

However, I'd like to suggest a different angle. I'm not proposing that this explanation is necessarily correct. I haven't run across it before. But given the fumbling, flailing, somewhat ad hoc explanations we usually run across, given the lack of theological consensus, it might be worth considering a fresh approach.

The unquestioned assumption is that the unforgivable sin is a damnable sin. Indeed, that's what makes it unforgivable. If it's damnable, then it's unforgivable, and if it's unforgivable, that must mean it's damnable. It will not be forgiven in this life or the afterlife (Mt 12:32). They committed an "eternal sin".

I'm simply point out that there's a possible fallacy lurking in this inference. The basic contrast between forgiveness and the alternative isn't forgiveness or damnation but forgiveness or punishment. Offenders either experience pardon or punishment, forgiveness or judgment. 

However, while damnation is punitive, the principle of punishment is not intrinsically damnatory. Many punishments, including divine punishments, fall short of damnation. Retributive punishment isn't inherently damnatory, although damnation is a type of retribution. And remedial punishment is restorative rather than damnatory (e.g. Heb 12:8). 

What makes it seem damnatory is the statement that it won't be forgiven in the afterlife. And that would be consistent with a damnatory sin. But that's equally consistent with a temporary postmortem punishment. The punishment is held over or postponed for the afterlife. But the contrast doesn't logically entail damnation. Someone who commits this sin might be punished in the afterlife, rather than forgiven in the afterlife, but that doesn't necessarily imply that the punishment is never-ending, but that the offender faces punishment or judgment rather than forgiveness regarding this particular sin. 

In general, biblical punishments don't mean you're doomed. The fact that you weren't forgiven just means you will experience judgment or punitive justice instead. But in many biblical instances, there's life after punishment. Punishment isn't always how the story ends. Sometimes punishment has a refining effect. Sometimes punishment is followed by amendment of life. 

The traditional interpretation of the unforgivable sin as damnatory may be correct. I don't rule that out. I'm proposing an original interpretation for consideration, due both to the potential fallacy of the standard inference, as well as unresolved confusion regarding the unforgivable sin. 

And I don't dent everlasting punishment. I'm not a universalist. I'm just raising questions about the interpretation of this particular transgression. 

Venial sin

One Catholic teaching almost all Protestants should easily accept: mortal and venial sin. This explains the existence of small sins we all regularly commit (venial sins, Jas. 3:2) and big sins “saved Christians” do not regularly commit like adultery or murder (mortal sins).

— Trent Horn (@Trent_Horn) October 19, 2019

i) The Bible doesn't have an exhaustive list of sins.

ii) Catholicism has made-up sins.

iii) The gravity of sin ranges along a continuum. While it's easy to spot the extremes, it's blurry in the middle. So sin doesn't neatly bifurcate into two kinds of sin: mortal and venial. 

iv) Even the same sin can vary in culpability.

v) Outside of Christ every sin is a mortal (i.e. damnable) sin. 

The anatomy of unbelief

An excerpt from Fool's Talk by Os Guinness.

---

Do we truly seek to conform our thinking to reality, or do we also seek to conform reality to our thinking? Is this clash between truth seekers and truth twisters merely a problem for intellectuals and those who enjoy the life of the mind? Or are all humans double-faced, "dissonance in human form," as Nietzsche expressed it? What does Kant's view of the "crooked timber" of our humanity mean for our thinking and understanding? And what is it that W. H. Auden glimpses when he writes that "the desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews"? Is this merely a colorful metaphor, or is there more there that we should take seriously?

Forbidden desire

Christian preachers and moralists condemn lust, but often fail to define it, or define it with precision. To his credit, John Frame offers a definition: 

Lust is specifically the desire to engage in sexual acts that are contrary to God's law  J. Frame, The Doctrine of the Christian Life (P&R 2008), 767.

A friend of mine (Kevin Vasquez) asked me a question about that definition: Are Christians guilty of lust if they have the forbidden desire? What if Christians don't wish to break his commands and yet they have those desires.

That does expose an ambiguity to the definition. It pries apart two aspects of "lust" thus defined. The object of lust is a forbidden desire. Does this mean that by having the desire, you desire to do something forbidden? That's unclear. Does that mean you want to break God's law? It might seem logical to conclude that if you want something contrary to God's law, then indirectly, your desire includes a desire to break God's law in the process. But are these separable?

We might draw a distinction between the desire to have something and the desire to do what's necessary to get it. I might desire the end-result, but I don't wish to do what it takes to get that experience. 

Suppose I'm the son of a military dictator. I'd like to sleep with the girlfriend of my best friend, and there's nothing he could do to stop me, but I refrain out of a sense of honor, or because his friendship means more to me than having a fling with his girlfriend. 

So the agent is conflicted. He has contrary desires. He wants to have it, but he doesn't want to do wrong to have it (even though he could get away with it). Is he still guilty of lust? He exercises moral self-restraint. Doing the right thing overrides wanting the wrong thing. 

I have a forbidden desire, but I have no desire to act on my forbidden desire. Indeed, I have an opposing desire not to act on my forbidden desire. A countervailing desire to resist the forbidden desire. In practice, that neutralizes the forbidden desire. 

On Frame's definition, it's possible that he's still guilty of lust, but is lust still blameworthy in that situation? Does the desire not to act on the desire mitigate or exculpate the desire? 

Alike an unbeliever, a believer is conflicted. So there's a difference. Does the contrary desire not to break God's law morally cancel out the forbidden desire? 

Of course, something that's blameworthy might still be forgivable. On Frame's definition, the desire might still be culpable but forgivable.

Light and darkness

A striking feature of life in a fallen world is how some of the same kinds of experiences range along a continuum of extremes. Some marriages are enormously fulfilling. They sustain each spouse emotionally throughout the course of life. They undergo adversity, but emerge stronger than ever. Faithful the last. Other marriages are merely functional. And still other marriages are miserable for both spouses. Better if they stayed single.

Some people have a wonderful childhood. Not only do they wax nostalgic about their youth and childhood, but all the happy memories create a lifelong momentum. They coast on their happy childhood for the rest of their lives.

Other people have a wretched childhood. They can't wait to put it behind them. And they never get out from under the oppressive shadow of their wretched childhood.

For some people, parenting is a source of renewable joy and perennial satisfaction. Gives them a sense of completion. For others, parenting is a source of heartache. Disappointment. Thankless children. Kids who become hopelessly addicted to drugs. Commit suicide. 

For some, sex is a highpoint in life. A source of elation and equilibrium. For others it becomes routine, mechanical. For others, sex is degraded or horrific (e.g. prostitution, child trafficking).

Life in a fallen world gives us a foretaste of how good things can be and how bad things can be. A foretaste of heaven and hell.