Advice For Lovers Everywhere

Have you ever, in a passionate moment, had your ear gently kissed by the lips of your lover? The sensation of tenderly soft and warm skin brushed up against the lobe of your ear, or even a light flicker of the tip of the tongue anywhere on the ear is to many, sensuously delightful, and highly erotic.

For some, it’s enough to send shivers down your spine! Your entire body quivers with passionate delight!

Of course, such a moment is nothing like being slobbered over by an affectionate Bassett Hound, or even suffering an inarticulate tongue being gouged in your ear canal… neither of which are even remotely romantic.

The experience is brief, only momentary, and is enticing… and results in you – your whole body – wanting more. In a sense, it’s like crystal meth, a drug that when in the bloodstream, causes a massive chemical dump of dopamine – the hormone made by our body that intensifies pleasant feelings, with accompanying side effects of dilated pupils, an increased heart and breathing rate, a reduced appetite and an increased sex drive.

The time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine. Instead of following the peacefully kind, loving, compassionate, self-sacrificing and gentle ways of Heaven, they will follow their own self-centered desires and surround themselves with false and misleading spiritual teachers who will tell them what they want to hear.
2 Timothy 4:3

It’s much the same way with those who “will not tolerate sound doctrine,” because “they will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear.”

And the problem with not tolerating sound doctrine is just as pernicious as crystal meth. After the pleasant effects wear off 24 hours later, the euphoric, even erotic, heightened senses are then less than empty, and the user will feel flat, depressed, jittery, anxious, and utterly exhausted.

In that low “recovery” period, they will experience difficulty making decisions, and suffer poor concentration, headaches, blurred vision and hunger, all which are common after using crystal meth. And some will experience irritability, even mild psychotic symptoms like paranoia and hallucinations which are similarly not uncommon in the aftermath of crystal meth’s high.

Our nation, as my friend Anthony Velez has written, is a “culture that is drunk in a myriad of ways.” We neither tolerate sound doctrine, nor pragmatic advice. We reject the idea of interdependence, crave personal liberty at all costs, deny the state of community in which we all live, and like drowning sailors on a sinking ship exclaim “every man for himself!,” then like a bowl of Frosted Luck Charms, imagine everything will somehow turn out “magically delicious.”

It doesn’t.

Furthermore, it never has, and never will.