Thursday, December 25, 2014

When God Gives Up

For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. (Romans 01:26-27, NKJV).

There are several forms of divine judgment described in Scripture. One of these is the punishment of abandonment; when God removes His protection and allows sin, and the deleterious effects of sin, full reign.

This is different from active judgmental intervention by God, and is in some ways more tragic, for it shows how fallen human beings really are, intrinsically. It is never pretty.

In this day and age, modern culture virtually denies that there is such a thing as sexual sin. All manner of sexual activity has been rebranded as “natural” or “normal” that in generations past was considered unthinkable and shameful. The argument that something is good because it is natural has many logical flaws. Most fatal diseases are equally “natural”, and painful death is most assuredly “normal”, but does that make these good?

When God gives humans up to their own devices and fallen impulses, chaos, destruction, and heartache are the inevitable result. It is only when He restrains these “natural” activities that peace and safety are even remotely possible.

Today, promiscuity, homosexuality, adultery and many other forms of sexual sin have been culturally normalized. This is tragic. In consequence, incalculable damage has been done to individuals, families, communities and nations. It is historical fact that when a civilization turns away from God's design for marriage – one man and one woman – the family unit is compromised, and with it, the foundation and cohesion of a nation is destroyed.

While all sin separates man from God, sexual sin is in its own special category for it is something that a man or woman does against his or her own body. It is the literal joining of one person with another, and unless done within the confines that God has ordained, it is always damaging.

This means that any sexual activity outside the boundaries of the marriage bed is sin. Conversely, anything done within those boundaries, in the love of a husband and wife for each other, is honorable and undefiled (Hebrews 13:4). This is both liberating and perfectly sensible, although the world views it as restrictive and dictatorial.

Biologically, monogamous, lifelong heterosexual relationships are conducive to healthier living than their transient homosexual or heterosexual counterparts. Statistically, traditional couples live longer, have more powerful immune systems, and less emotional and psychological stress. These are facts, documented by scientific studies over the years, but the world is increasingly unwilling to judge things based on facts. Emotion is king.

And while it is true that in times past, those guilty of sexual sin suffered terribly at the hands of society, and in some places in the world this is still horribly the case, the remedy is not rampant permissiveness, but loving instruction in the truth.

Women or men stubbornly practicing these kinds of sins, exchanging God's perfect design for their own imagined wisdom, are doing themselves and each other harm. And continuance in these practices is often a sign of God's judgment of abandonment. He gives them up to vile (shameful) passions.

And in this, modern culture is complicit and will be held accountable. Currently, in government schools in this country children are propagandized into thinking that “anything goes” sexually, and that your are “born one way or another”, and can do nothing about it. This is conditioning of the most hopeless kind, taking away all possibility of change. It is an overreaction to harsh condemnatory practices of the past, and is equally destructive. It replaces the possibility of a rewarding, god-honoring life with a prison sentence of fatalistic resignation to the supposed fate of involuntary psychological (not physical) gender identity, as if anatomy was not in the least determinative. This is the arrogant folly of those who, professing to be wise, became fools.

The Bible views all sexual sin equally. Any and all sex outside of a monogamous man-woman marriage relationship is sin. No sinful behavior is beyond God's grace.

So what is the Christian response in today's society?

It is this: immerse yourself in the truth of God. He invented sex, and marriage, and when practiced according to His perfect design, there is no more satisfying or pleasurable way to live. And while we should neither mistreat nor disrespect those who despise us and our Christian beliefs, neither should we compromise on the Bible's clear teaching on sex and marriage.

Sin is sin, and requires the sinner to seek forgiveness and repentance through faith in Jesus Christ. Then He empowers us to change – to be transformed from darkness into light. There is nothing different in that regard with respect to sexual sin. It is a serious and damaging as any other sin, and equally subject to sincere faith's transformative power.

The difference is that today, world opinion is more and more arrayed against all things Christian, especially in regard to sex and marriage. While clearly foretold in the Bible, this turn of events is no less problematic for the Christian attempting to live according to scriptural principles.

This will be harder for you than it was for me, sweet one, as society becomes increasingly godless, but remain steadfast and loving, and do not grow weary in doing good.

We know who wins in the end.

Love,


Dad.