Spiritual Prostitution?

Have you ever encountered a spiritual prostitute?

In his book Creative Ministry, Henri Nouwen tells of a friend who dropped out of the ministry and became a bartender in Amsterdam. Henri’s friend said to him, "I don’t want to be called pastor because I have seen too many so-called pastors who are spiritual prostitutes selling their love under the condition of change. If my relationship with a person is affected by the subtle pressure that change certain behaviors, then I am still not really with that person but my own preoccupation, value system and expectations, and have made myself a prostitute and degraded my fellow human by making him a victim of my spiritual manipulations."

I meet people everyday that have been propositioned by a spiritual prostitute at some point in their life. That is, they have met people who would love them in the name of God if they would change and accept their value systems and expectations of what a spiritual person looks like.

This only degrades a person.

And really has nothing to do with the message brought to us by Jesus. It isn’t the Gospel and it has nothing to do with love and if it is not about love, it is not about God.

Be careful not to confuse "sex" with love.
Love can't be bought
and God's love is not for sale.

How many folks who are hungry for the loving, accepting embrace of God and another human being are met with spiritual prostitutes and the pimping of a pseudo-gospel? It seems to be more about how many johns the prostitute meet that day. All too often it has really nothing to do with loving others as much as it does the pay-off for the pimp.

In the end, the prostitute ends up broken, burned-out and feeling used as well and in the need for real love. Consider the burnout rate for clergy in America. When it comes to pimping a pseudo-gospel and spiritual prostitution, no one wins.

Sex with a prostitute may possibly meet one’s short-term need for human touch and sex, but I suspect that over the long-term one could never be fulfilled by paying for sex-- and mistaking it for love. The same can be said for religion and spirituality.

Henri concludes, "God did not offer us a contract but a covenant, and challenges those who want to make His covenant visible in this world never to make human success a criterion of their love for man."