Between Flesh and Spirit: Lily Phillips and What it Means to Invite Christ In

If acknowledging sin was too humiliating and avoiding it too difficult then it wasn’t sin that had to change, but our understanding of it.

Many Christians are troubled by reports that Lily Phillips was Baptised recently yet still appears to profit from producing ‘adult content’. This is indeed troubling. Whilst it is right to celebrate any story of redemption, is this anything other than a publicity stunt? And how can we know? Of course we can’t know what is in Phillips’ heart, but we can consider the metaphysics which lie at the root of some of the actions that we can see.

The answer to the question “Is there more to life than money?” depends upon our answer to the question “Is there more to life than materiality?”

If our answer to the second is “no”, it seems likely that our answer to the first will be “no” also. In this world money matters!

In ‘The Prince’ Machiavelli teaches how to be successful rather than moral. Powerful rather than good. Everything he says follows logically from three assumptions.

1. Reality doesn’t include ideals – it consists only of material facts

2. Man is by nature wicked, selfish, competitive and immoral

3. There can be a formula for success because there are only 2 variables: virtu (power: the ability to compel reality to obey your will) and fortuna (luck, chance, randomness, things that cannot be controlled)

The formula for Success is the maximisation of virtu and the minimisation of fortuna. This is implicitly the metaphysics of atheism.

It is the same philosophy which underpins the actions of porn peddlers, including some parents who manage their daughter’s pornography output. What they have spotted, is an opportunity and they are not going to let ideals, or other people, get in the way of maximising that opportunity.

Why study, get into debt, spend decades slowly climbing the career ladder for nothing but a meagre income, when you can do sex videos and make millions each day? This is the logical conclusion for those who hold to Machiavellian metaphysics – whether consciously or unconsciously. If there are no ideals, only material facts and man is naturally competitive then the more of something you have, the less of it I have. If I want more than you, I must exploit the situation, reduce chance and win.

This is something that the mother of teen influencer turned Only Fans star Piper Rockelle discovered. One of the most unsettling consequences of the modern liberal project has been to see the way in which parents have been prepared to pimp their own daughters out for material gain. But we should not be surprised when a ball sent rolling down a hill, hits the bottom.

In Degenerate Moderns, E. Michael Jones paints a picture of Western society being shaped by people who sought to “soothe the troubled consciences of those who were interested in overthrowing the mores of” Western Christian Civilisation. In case after case Jones demonstrates how it was sin, often sexual sin, that drove those working in the various academic disciplines to draw global conclusions from their attempts to justify personal proclivities. If acknowledging sin was too humiliating and avoiding it too difficult then it wasn’t our sin that had to change, but our understanding of it.