Have You Ever Thought About What God Teaches About Sex?

There is a great deal of safety buying into simple statements about complex issues.  Rather than make things messy and look into how things might work in certain scenarios it can be easier and more simple to just refer to a familiar catchphrase or phrase that has been recited ad nauseaum.

For example, if you recite the Ten Commandments they are relatively simple instructions for people to follow … until you get to the nitty gritty of its application.  Thou shalt not kill. Simple … until you then consider military warfare, self-defence, etc.  Thou shalt not bear false witness.  Simple … until you consider whether you should tell the truth if it puts other people’s lives in mortal danger. You can go through those Ten Commandments and what is straight forward and simple in black and white gets all complicated in daily application.  Just to cap it off, the top three talk about faith-fidelity in exclusive monotheistic worship but face it the daily challenge we have is not to worship ourselves.

Anyway, as I read this report on the cost of free sex and I was thinking about sex in the light of some what I’ve been taught about sex by brothers and sisters in Christ as well as institutional instructions on it.  Now before you go clamouring for your pastor telling him that Christopher has gone and undermined the blessed doctrine on which our church has thrived, that is not my intention at all.  Yet look at some of the great men in scripture, especially in the Old Testament and consider their sexual habits.  How many wives did Abraham, Moses, David and Solomon have in total?  Here I was thinking that this marriage business was meant to be with one for life.  Yet one of these men is hailed as after God’s own heart a commendation that you don’t hear about another figure in scripture.

Look at Jesus’ lineage.  Note the sexual dysfunction there whether it’s with ‘harlots’ or men who evidently had issues with the call to exclusive monogamous relationships.

What’s my point?  This sex business is not something to be addressed just with one-liners to be remembered and recited.  If there’s one thing that scripture teaches even in the early church is that sex can be such an overwhelmingly alluring factor that if not treated as God desired it can lead to all sorts of disturbing scenarios that some will even accept as normal – in the church! (For example in the early chapters of Revelations doesn’t Jesus have a problem with churches for doctrines and lifestyles sexually deviant in nature?  Maybe it’s just me reading it wrong.)

It’s nothing to be prudish about, neither is it something to sensationalise and glamourise.  I’ve chuckled at our efforts to make glamourous something that is patently already so enrapturing.  I know it’s a sin to seen to repress the true nature of this gift of God of expressed intimacy.  I also know it’s a sin to exploit, pervert and distort this gift so that all intimacy is lost and replaced by cheap thrills.  Those are not lessons I’ve needed to get from modern society.  Those are lessons that are told by God in His Word whether in allegory and analogy through His prophets discussing the faithlessness of Israel or in the real life episodes of some the heroes of faith.

For those struggling in this area for the myriad of reasons that should act as something of a consolation to know that it is not unique to you and it’s not something new.  It should also act as a consolation to realise that God knowing this has already made a way of escape, which is the same route that He makes to escape any sin that would ensnare us.  That route is Jesus.

That route is knowing Him intimately and understanding what He has to say about knowing others in physical intimacy.  It doesn’t have to be presented in glitzy, fast-paced and action-packed exposure style to tickle our ears.  It can be presented in its richness and depth so that when we approach the subject we realise it’s another way of approaching God Himself and so it can be done with reverent wonder and awe at the genius of God to have created and given this gift and that when we understand how and why He gave it, we can tap into that and enjoy the lasting riches to be discovered there.

That means taking a step back from simplistic doctrines as though it can be treated simplistically and embracing it for all its worth.

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

dmcd

DMCD Songs: We Are Not Ashamed – Isaac Carree feat. John P. Kee

This time last year I was looking at what it was to be ashamed of the gospel. My song reference was to one of the greatest gospel songs I’ve heard from one of the greatest gospel components I’ve ever heard.  That component is Mr. Andrae Crouch, who has hopefully been informed by his peers and those that have followed the trail he blazed what a tremendous blessing he has been to the Body of Christ.

The song is the superb soul stirrer We Are Not Ashamed.  I remember crying when I first heard it as a little boy, because it sounded awesome and as I got older and understood the words a bit more I started crying because it reminded me of what the power of the gospel did in my life and can do in the lives of others as I live it out in a manner somewhat unashamed.

Over a year ago I came across a charming version of the song arranged by Donald Lawrence and lead by Karen Clark-Sheard and Mary, Mary.  It is another great pleasure to hear two of my favourite male singers put their spin on it and further do the thing justice.  Excellent song, excellently rendered and reminding me again that such is this power of God onto salvation that I should not be ashamed of this glorious gospel of Jesus Christ.

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

dmcd

Os Guinness and the Argument of Freedom From vs. Freedom To

Randy Alcorn has done the world a favour again and encouraged us to have a look at an interview Os Guinness to the Acton Institute some years ago.  You can of course go straight to the interview.  Yet I would still encourage you to check Randy’s three-part blog covering No Freedom Without Truth in part one, The Call to Follow Christ in part two and ending with Morality, Markets and the Audience of One in part three.

Os Guiness is one of my favourite writers and thinkers.  I had the privilege of reading The Call some years ago and it has been a hugely influential book in me own spiritual development.

So go ahead read the articles and then the article itself.

I want to bring your attention to a question asked in part one about whether it’s a case of freedom from or freedom to and applaud Guinness’ reference to a paraphrase of Lord Acton.  The whole quote reads as follows:

Paraphrasing Lord Acton, “Freedom is not the permission to do what we like, it is the power to do what we ought.” The trouble is that, today, freedom is purely negative: freedom from parents, from teachers, from the police, and so on. We have lost sight of it as freedom to be that which we can be or ought to be. We need to recover the idea that, as Lord Acton stressed wisely and as the present pope has written of so well, freedom is the power to do what we ought. That assumes, however, we know the truth of who we are and what we ought to do. That is the freedom the modern secular liberal tends to forget.

The world would be a radically different place if those who upheld the value of liverty and freedom used this as their definition.  Of course the individual human autonomous independent spirit prefers the negative perspective of freedom because then it reinforces the ‘you can’t tell me what to do’ mentality that informs many people’s concept of freedom.  That’s unfortunate, but at least there is a better version of freedom that is far more informative and life enhancing.

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

dmcd

What Do You Mean ‘Christian’?

Some people have problems with labels.  It can be overly constrictive and fail to reflect some of the factors that are dominant in that which is being described.

I understand those reservations over labels and after all in most cases we are a lot more than the labels we give ourselves and some of those labels we take so much for granted that we probably don’t even know what we’re saying when we say it.

Like using the precursor descriptive word ‘Christian’.  Christian reading.  Christian books.  Christian music, etc.

What you think is obvious has in some cases been taken a hostage to the cultural sensibilities of the time.  So for example if I said I was into Christian books some of my colleagues at work who are not professing Christians themselves would think that I’m referring to something ‘religious’ (they won’t be able to define that clearly until I put words in their mouths that they’re happy to live with cos it stops them thinking).  They might think it’s referring to something that a bunch of people that meet up in specially designed buildings witter on about on Sundays.  Might have something to do with that Bible and the dude in the Christmas story.

Now I’m not hurt or offended by my colleagues working from that point of reference.  My concern is when the bunch of people who meet up in the specially designed building limit and restrict their understanding that I have a problem.

Think Christian from a Jesus perspective.

Building centred?  Really?

Time-oriented – i.e. Sunday morning? Really?  Honestly?  A man who went around and then got other men to go around getting other men to go around and making Him a vital part of their every day life would want a conception of Christian to be a static as a time-based, building-centred, monologue-centred construct?

OK so what do you mean when you use the word Christian.  (Oh and of course you’re not allowed to leave it to the obvious ‘Christ-like’ because the follow-up to that is what do you mean when you say ‘Christ-like’ which of course cannot end with the circular reasoning of being like Christ.)

Go on.  What do you mean?

I’ll give a start on what I reckon it is in a future post.

For the time being – you tell me what you mean.

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

dmcd

So What Do We Do With The Poor?

Sometimes I get the feeling I really should be up on what is happening at the moment.  Things like the news gives the impression that if you’re not up to date, you’re missing something critical.

Thankfully chiefly through a rather chilled and relaxed father, I am discovering again and again, it still pays to take your time and not be in such a rush to forget what happened yesterday for the allure of today.  Sometimes it pays to go back and see what happened and allow that to inform your present.

This acts as a precursor to coming across Frank Viola’s recent interview with N.T. Wright.  As someone who uses Google Reader and gets email updates I might have posted about this back then.  I didn’t and I don’t regret it.  Rather, it’s given me time to take in what’s been said in the conversation and then share it here for your perusal.

This is not a short interview, but it is worth reading to be enlivened by good talk again on the importance of the historicity of Jesus among other things.  As this blog title will indicate, however, what particularly peaked my interest was the part on poverty and the role of the state and the function of the church and who deserves to be considered poor enough.  One part of the interview caught my eye:

There is a real danger that in a go-getting country like the USA those who have initiative, energy, advantages of birth and education, can easily look down on those who have none of those things. It simply isn’t the case that every human starts at the same level point so that the rich are those who’ve worked for it and the poor are those who couldn’t be bothered. Throughout the Bible God seems to take special note of those trapped in poverty, and we should do the same.

To me that is as appliable in this country as it is over the pond.  It has been my privilege over the last 12 years to work with churches and Christian organisations to address areas of poverty that are stark and unrelenting.  It can be so easy to become somewhat cynical about the nature of those looking to be served and fall into that trap of because of my background expecting others to have a similar mentality and just sort themselves out.  Yet it is that very lack of a progressive mentality that is itself an indication of a poverty of mind and spirit that deserves our love and compassion.  That in itself is not easy to exercise, but then that’s where our motives and drives come into it again and we rest in the God who rescued our sin-sick state of poverty to enrich us in Christ with love, peace and a sound mind.

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

dmcd

Used or Abused

Lately someone informed me that ‘no one likes to be used’.  I know what he meant, but I’m not sure he got the words quite right.

We use things every day.  We use them without being consciously aware that we’re using them.  Take the clothes you’re currently wearing (of course I assume you are wearing clothes as you read this, if not I’m sure you can imagine wearing clothes, just as you can be sure I’m not imagining you reading this naked).  You are using those clothes.  You will use the food you consume.  You are using the air around to help sustain you.  You are always using something -  your brain, your other faculties, etc.

There is no problems with using those.

So what my friend meant was that no likes to be abused.  Yet I know the very mention of the word abuse can evoke images of extreme and graphic cases of abuse whether verbal or physical.  Undoubtedly abuse includes those depictions.  Yet if we leave it at that we won’t fully appreciate what abuse is and how many people are abused every single day.

Consider the nature of some relationships where it is based on one person being manipulated for the purposes of another.  The relationship on the surface appears perfectly fine.  Jill and Sarah appear to get on really well with each other.  Underneath appearances people do not realise that Sarah has taken advantage of Jill’s low self-worth to get a sense of superiority through subtle things.  It is almost as though she patronises her by allowing her to go for social occasions with her and bask in the radianace of her wit and whenever Sarah is short of cash she knows Jill will be too happy to give, even if she would suffer greater loss.

Now you may scratch your head and wonder who would ever let themselves fal into that kind of relationship, and my answer would be quite a large number of vulnerable people who are caught in the area of their weakness.  There is surface evidence of great care being given, but beneath that it is really subtle coercion and devious manipulation.

That doesn’t just happen on the personal scale.  In corporate and communal settings organisations, teams, groups and families are suckered into a status quo that does not make the best use of each member, but actually abuses them.  Such is the bait and switch tactic of this institutional abuse that some people do not know it, until they leave it and realise what they have been through.

It is a most sobering and saddening event to have that realisation of being abused.  It should be similar feeling to recognising what it was to be a slave to sin.  Recognising how much of you was distorted because of sin and how much of your life’s essence was completely drained from you because of sin should still send shivers down the spine.

Thank God, however, that Jesus wakes us up from this nightmare scenario and allows the light of His love to shine on the path to being liberated.  That liberation stops the abuse.  It doesn’t stop the use.  Indeed it starts the full use to its full potential of all that we are and ever could be.

When we have the eyes to see, He shows us how much we are abusing, and how much we have been abused and how we can stop it so we can truly be good stewards.  Stewards are known for the good use of their resources.  Every human being has a resource that they manage – they manage themselves (mind, body, mouth), they manage time and they manage relationships.  How we use or abuse that determines how we expereince the true liberation in Christ.  When we abuse that we are reminded again of the captivity of sin, but also of the hope we have in Jesus to walk away from that captivity with renewed minds, clean hands and pure hearts to carry out our own lives fully used and  not abused.

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

dmcd

Compelled by Compassion, Motivated by Mercy

I was thinking about divorce recently.  Not to worry, I wasn’t thinking of it in direct relation to my current marriage to my first wife (unpick the faux pas from that!)

I was thinking of it in terms of what a tragedy and a trauma it is on so many different levels.  Even in the most amicable and agreeable arrangements what is done in divorce is a fairly significant admission of failure.  Failure on arguably the most important level as it revolves around the most intimate and sacred of human agreements open to us as consenting adults.  I am still haunted at times by the thought that the best way I show what a loving caring father I am to my children is how I display what a loving husband I am to their mother.  If I don’t show that, there’s a big disconnect going on in the hearts and minds of my children.

Of course this is another element of divorce that can bring sadness, because again, however effectively it is communicated to the children, at whatever age, those children will still somehow have to work out, what went wrong.  Understandably some will blame themselves.  Worse still, however, is if the process of divorce is explained, rationalised and justified as something that is good.  As though it is acceptable.  As though it is just a part of life that adults go through from time to time when things are not going so well.  Thus embedded into the mind of the child is a loose understanding of the sanctity of marriage, the importance of commitment and intimacy in relationships and unsurprisingly a tendency to repeat a pattern set before them and thus engaging themselves in further destabilising society whilst promoting a selfish view of love.

I understand that divorce is sometimes necessary and I’m not condoning those who persist in lifeless marriages for the sake of keeping up appearances or failing to address what the real issues are in the relationship.  What is at stake though is a true understanding of the tragedy and trauma of what happens when divorce takes place.

Yet – for all that, in as much as it is important to highlight the tragic nature of the issue, it is equally tragic to then alienate and demonise those who have gone through it.  Even if they have brazenly gone through marriages and proven themselves to be hopeless at commitment and thus marriages appear cheap and cheerless, there is still no reason to castigate and condemn.

It was whilst contemplating these things that I again ran into the heart of Jesus’ ministry.  The deal is not to shame and disgrace sinners, the deal is to invite sinners to the Saviour who has died to wipe away their sins.  For that to happen two things must take place – there has to be an acknowledgement of the nature of sin.  Then there has to be a realisation of the God who forgives and cleanses.  These things happen by the Holy Spirit and our role in that is to be available to be expressions of either of those elements.

That requires us to be compelled by compassion not condemnation.  It should break our hearts and move us to reach out to people in love rather than get on the high horse and criticise, stick our noses up and generally bad-mouth the sinners around us.  After all, it’s not as though we were guilt-free before we met Jesus.  It is not as though we have lived blameless lives. If all sin is sin and Jesus breaks us free from that, the debt of gratitude should allow us to empathise with people in sin.  That empathy cannot afford to express itself in the hostile and antagonistic ways in which sadly some elements of Christianity are presented.  (By the way, this should not be construed as the ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’ argument – there are serious problems with those sentiments.  This is rather love the sinner in the hope that they will hate the sin.)

Take some of the key moral issues on which Christians take a stance – abortion and homosexuality.  It is sad and misleading to see some representations of the faith being all about blowing up clinics, pestering doctors, aggravating those who are homosexuals and raising a stink about the issues.  It is sad to read and hear some using rhetoric that in other scenarios would incite violence and hatred in a bid to claim moral superiority.

Likewise it is sad that some have capitulated on the issue partly because of the extreme responses and partly to cosy up to cultural standards and not want to appear to be out of touch, behind the times or irrelevant.

It does not have to be about a debate about right and wrong because Jesus hardly focussed His ministry on debating.  His ministry was hardly a model for people to be able to argue the toss about the moral and social implications of personal and corporate decisions.  Rather His ministry as echoed by that of those that followed Him was being light in dark situations.  Bringing healing to the sick, restoration to the lost, hope to those in despair and peace to those ridden with external and internal conflict.

Now this ministry didn’t endear Him to everyone.  Even some of those who were the recipients of His ministry were hardly grateful or truly understanding and accepting of what had been done for them.  That didn’t deter Him from what He did.  Being socially relevant wasn’t His key driver, neither was it the quest to be right in debate.  Rather, motivated by mercy, He showed that to others evidently in need of it.

Whether it’s divorce, homosexuality or abortion, whether it is the mistreatment of strangers or the betrayal of friends, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit convicts us again not to take it upon ourselves to harbour hatred and hostility.  He convicts us rather to show deep-hearted compassion – one that only God Himself can induce.

The extreme portrayals of acts that bring Christianity into disrepute will continue and there will be those only to eager to jump on it to batter those in the faith and argue how redundant and offensive it is.  Yet that should propel the believer more into moving in the light of God’s mercy on us and conveying the compassion that sent Jesus to the cross and saw Him rise triumphantly from the grave to offer those who would see and hear Him that same fullness of life.

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

dmcd

DMCD Songs: We Need To Hear From You – Andrae Crouch

Some songs send me way back.  Way back to a time when I didn’t really know God, but was aware that my parents did in as much as I had to go to church with them on the weekend.  Back in those ‘innocent’ days music played a big part of family life and I remember my Mum playing this song among others on the Finally album.  Seriously, the Finally album by Andrae Crouch is one of my favourite albums regardless of genre – it’s a masterful piece of work.

The first song I remember from the album was this one and I know it had an effect on my Mum because the copy we had taped for us had some shrieks in the background (back in the day it wasn’t straight tape to tape, it was mic’d so other things could be picked up).  Some of those shrieks would have been us children larking about, but one of them is distinctly my Mum affirming the nature of the song with a shout of praise.  Gotta say I was a bit nervous when Mum did that shout, as I often did when my Mum did shouts of praise.  Now a few decades later I too could offer up more than a few shouts in agreement with the sentiments of the song.

I find at the beginning of every day it’s best to kick off with something in the heart that’s been planted by God as a word for the day.  That does not have to be THE WORD, but it’s good to have at least a word to meditate and ponder on through the day, and maybe with the experiences that will take place that will trigger off other words, sentences, paragraphs and entire chapters of life that God would have you know.

The alternative is to go by our own word – and lets face it, if our track record is anythign to go by, we had best steer clear from our word and get the Word from above to set us straight.

Thank God for men like Andrae Crouch who so brilliantly got the word to share the word on how we need the word for there is indeed no other way that we can live.

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

dmcd

DMCD Songs: Strength – JPK & NLCC

Last week I was reflecting on the influences to which I paid careful attention and on how much the John P. Kee was a huge deal.  The song I posted last week was good – but this was the killer.  The slide is not new I know, but I know say when I saw it, I thought this was the newest revolution and revelation in all of gospel history!!!  I was sliding all over the place and would have encouraged the choir to join me in that endeavour … OK maybe I wouldn’t have even dreamed of that for the dire consequences it could have wrought!!  In any case, take a peak at what was the in thing almost 15 years ago as we remind ourselves that He gives us Strength.

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

dmcd

Where Communication Starts …

Big shout out to my brother. He pointed me to this video and I’m glad I watched it.  Just as I am glad to receive any wisdom however simple, as long as it is wisdom and effectively conveyed, and this fits that classification.  Take heed to this piece of wisdom.

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

dmcd