Pastor turned stripper. . .

Now there is a headline: “I WAS A PASTOR. NOW I MAKE BANK ON ONLYFANS AND HAVE NEVER FELT MORE FULFILLED.”  I found it impossible not to click on the story even though I knew I would regret it.  What it led to was the supposedly amusing but I call disgusting story of Nikole Mitchell; a “Pastor-turned-stripper and companion” and “top OnlyFans creator”, among other things.  Along the way I found other interesting headlines.  Apparently there is a race among some women to see how many men they could have sex with in a 24 hour period, among other things.  While it is supposed to be the ultimate in liberation, it ends up being the ultimate in the trivialization of sex and love.  There is no liberty in using sex for fame or money.  What there is, however, is dehumanization of the person and of sexual activity.  

Christians are sometimes stereotyped as prudes who think sex is bad.  The reality is that Christians have a track record of esteeming sex more highly than those who take liberties with any and everyone who comes along.  Judaism before it and Christianity since have treated sex not as something trivial and meaningless but something serious, holy, and profound.When the Scriptures establish categories of cleanness and uncleanness, it is not because it promotes the idea that sex is either trivial or bad but precisely because it is good and pure and noble.  St. Paul surely has this in mind when he describes the sexual union of a man with a prostitute as a sin not simply against God but against himself and the woman.  This makes not simply logical sense but makes sense of what it means to love, be loved, and to live together in holy union as husband and wife.  Sex in the Scriptures is not some means to happiness and individual fulfillment but is the very mystery in which life is born from God through this love given and received.  It is not a throw away experience but one that has the seal of the wider culture upon it.  It is not an impulse that overcomes in a moment but the fruit of a commitment to lifelong loyalty to each other, an openness to childbearing, and the surrender of individuality to obtain the structure of the marriage (and of the family). Sex had a heavenly significance even if it was solely an earthly reality.  On the other hand, the trivialization of sex is none of this and so the sex itself is rendered trivial and meaningless.

Underneath it all, we all know this.  Onlyfans does nothing to elevate and honor sex or the people.  It is the monetization of what was meant to be aloof from money.  It is the dehumanization of that which was meant to mark our very humanity.  Porn achieves its success at the cost of our very humanity -- not simply the humanity of those who perform in it but those who watch it and whose lives are defined by what they watch.  There is something painfully cheap and ugly about this kind of thing -- especially against the backdrop of the man who leaves his mother and father and cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh.  One is poetry and the other is a crude drawing which is not even art.  Perhaps I should not be shocked by all of this but it is particularly saddening that someone who would call themselves a pastor has chosen to give up this noble calling in pursuit of an erotic life that makes cheap what love makes costly and pure.  Alas, we have not heard the last of such a tragic tale.