Attraction and glorification

Jack has a post on the Attraction of Glorification that mentioned me, so figured I’d post my general response as it’s long enough for a post.

The Red Pill lore has given us an obscenely vivid understanding of the biological, carnal, and evo-psyche aspects of attraction, but we do not yet have a conceptual framework for the moral, metaphysical, and spiritual components of how attraction works. As it currently stands, the Red Pill lore about attraction hasn’t really established a compelling argument that attraction is anything other than the flesh. This post continues to investigate whether there is more to it than this.

Yeah we do?

A Christian understanding of attraction, and the role it plays in marriage Part 3

I think part of our difficulty in this is that our education and belief system is based on Greek philosophy, so it’s harder for us to understand that the Bible is generally talking holistically rather than referring to separate components like the Greeks did. Jesus on the loving God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength is supposed to be holistic and not breaking it down into individual parts.

For instance, we know that God created our sex drives and we know that we can use it to our advantage to marry and bring glory to God through that marriage. An example of this would be the Christ:Church analogy, children, headship-submission, love-respect, and so on. Same thing with understanding and acting on improving physical attractiveness or beauty or things like that.

How good of an example it be to the world if all Christian marriages would strive to practice excellence in everything especially bodily health and appearance as well as in the Biblical roles and responsibilities of marriage.

This framework is crucially important in helping Christian men identify which women are likely to provide a Spirit-filled relationship “in the Lord” (c.f 1st Corinthians 7:39) as opposed to one centered around the fleshly appetites which are bound to fail

You can pretty much summarize things up with the Proverbs verses:

Proverbs 14:1 A wise woman builds her home, but a foolish woman tears it down with her own hands.

Proverbs 31:30 Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.

I think a lot of Christians, though maybe not the men and women here, tend to think these verses are about putting down charm and beauty but they aren’t. Just like 1 Peter 3 many Christians think about it saying don’t wear jewelry or beautiful clothes. Not at all.

It’s mainly saying look past the physical to the heart. Do they actually want to obey God. Are they following His commands? It helps take off the blinders and goggles.

We can be reasonably confident that Jesus had charisma and was charming. He had a lot of women followers as well as men, and interactions like the woman at the well seem to tell the same story. Paul had to make light of the fact that his stature and in-person speaking wasn’t that great, and that he had to come across better in letters.

2 Corinthians 10:7 You are judging by appearances. If anyone is confident that they belong to Christ, they should consider again that we belong to Christ just as much as they do. 8 So even if I boast somewhat freely about the authority the Lord gave us for building you up rather than tearing you down, I will not be ashamed of it. 9 I do not want to seem to be trying to frighten you with my letters. 10 For some say, “His letters are weighty and forceful, but in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing.” 11 Such people should realize that what we are in our letters when we are absent, we will be in our actions when we are present.

Thus, we can understand that it is helpful to have charm or beauty, but in the case of those with charm and beauty with a devoid and wicked heart those things can be deceptive or fleeting and lead to ruin if you follow them without wisdom.

We all know men who have fallen for charm and beauty to their detriment in relationships and marriages.

In response to my post on this topic, Only Hunky Monks can find a Sanctified Marriage (2022/8/26), DS said I had mischaracterized his arguments. While I was reading some of his older posts and reflecting on the causes of the disjoint between DS and I, I had the idea that maybe DS is describing glorification as attractive. I don’t think he has ever labeled it as such, but this interpretation would explain why he thinks enhancing one’s attraction by developing PSALM traits is not fleshly in nature.

Several thoughts on this.

• Most of the secular proponents of “lifestyle” game or whatever it’s called have got the concept right in the sense that most of the PSALM and masculine traits can be built by pursuing mission.

This is precisely what the Christians are saying about pursuing God’s mission and being excellent in everything. Focus on the mission and everything comes together. This causes you to work hard in the Church and usually eventually lead various things, hard at your job, be in excellent shape, be responsible with all you have, and these things naturally build up PSALM and masculinity over time.

I believe ideally that this is the way all things should be done. This is a convergence and congruence of God’s mandate to man about dominion. The spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical aspects are cannot be separated into their individual constituents as they all lead to a greater whole.

• Secondly, no, I think a lot of what both male and female find attractive is supposed to be fleshly in nature. Marriage and attraction is supposed to satisfy all of the components above — spiritual, mental, emotional, physical, etc — because they are not supposed to be separated into individuals components.

That’s not a bad thing. See my above points about how God created attraction and marriage.

• Also, however, in regard to 2, these things can be warped if:

~ One focuses too fully on physical appearance or beauty that it becomes a facade or idol
~ One uses these things for nefarious purposes such as pornography
~ One’s heart is not right with God in the intent and purpose.We need to make sure we are discerning and wise with things that tend to trip our attraction triggers because of the fact that we tend to bias things in favor of attractiveness.

The same is true of James’ warning against favoritism over money, status, and material things.