CHRISTIAN DIVORCE AND REMARRIAGE

The Mosaic Covenant had permitted divorce:

·       Deuteronomy 24:1 (ESV)  When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house.

Understandably, there had been a lot of disagreement among the rabbis regarding the phrase “some indecency in her.” Did it mean that divorce should be sanctioned for any reason? This was exactly the question they brought to Jesus, who answered:

·       Matthew 19:4-6  He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Did Jesus’ answer mean that there were absolutely no grounds for divorce? However, afterwards, He did mention an exception:

·       Matthew 19:9 (ESV) And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”

Earlier, Jesus had articulated this same exception:

·       Matthew 5:32 (ESV)  But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Some commentators suggest that “sexual immorality” also pertains to sexual sins other than adultery. Paul adds an additional exception:

·       1 Corinthians 7:15 (ESV) But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace.

It would seem that, in these cases, the divorced party is now free to remarry. These exceptions represent the understanding that, if the marriage contract has been violated in these ways, the violated party is free from any obligations to it. Why? Because covenants are not always absolutely binding! Paul illustrated this:

·       Romans 7:2-4 (ESV) For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law [covenant] of marriage. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress. Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.

Does adultery (and perhaps other forms of sexual unfaithfulness) free the violated party from his/her covenantal obligations to the marriage? Death of the spouse certainly frees the surviving party from these obligations. I tend to think that if the marriage has been violated through sexual unfaithfulness or abandonment (by the unbeliever), it means that the husband has already dissolved the marriage covenant and there remains no obligation on the part of the spouse. It seems to be like any contract. If the buyer refuses to pay for the product, the provider is not under any obligation to send it. How else are we to understand the above-mentioned “exception clauses!”

Billy Graham and “Easy-Believism”

Billy Graham insists that a new life in Christ must be a changed life:

• As I approached my 95th birthday, I was burdened to write a book that addressed the epidemic of "easy believism." There is a mindset today that if people believe in God and do good works they are going to Heaven. But there are many questions that must be answered. There are two basic needs that all people have: the need for hope and the need for salvation. It should not be surprising if people believe easily in a God who makes no demands, but this is not the God of the Bible. Satan has cleverly misled people by whispering that they can believe in Jesus Christ without being changed, but this is the Devil's lie. To those who say you can have Christ without giving anything up, Satan is deceiving you.

The Christian life must be characterized by a changed life. It is not optional:

• The man who says, "I know him," but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. (1 John 2:4)

• “You are my friends if you do what I command.” (John 15:14)

• “He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.” (John 15:2)

• "Then they [who didn’t visit me in prison] will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life." (Matthew 25:46; Also, many others - Matthew 5:20; Hebrews 12:14; James 2:18-24…)

However, many other verses assert that faith/belief is enough! Requiring any more than faith denies the central tenant of salvation – that it is a “free gift, not of works, lest any should boast” (Eph. 2:8-9)! But doesn’t this deny the various verses that insist that repentance – not just faith - is necessary to be saved:

·        "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 2:38)

·        “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that he may send the Christ, who has been appointed for you--even Jesus.” (Acts 3:19-20)

• Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. (2 Cor. 7:10)

While the great majority of verses assert that faith is the key for salvation, many other verses cite repentance. Is this a contradiction? Not if faith and repentance are essentially the same thing – opposite sides of the same coin! They certainly seem to be so! When we turn to God in faith, inherent in this same turn is a turn away from our former life (repentance). We cannot turn to God without turning from something. Embracing the new life in faith entails a rejection (repentance) of the old life of sin. They also both entail the very same change of heart.

Let’s try to illustrate the inseparability of faith and repentance in another way. If someone says to me:

• Pastor, I really believe in Jesus and want to be baptized. However, I am having an extra-marital affair and I refuse to repent of it.

I would have to answer:

• If you refuse to repent, then you don’t trust in Christ. If you did trust Christ, you would follow Him. Your faith is like the Devil’s faith. He too believes in Jesus, but His faith isn’t a saving faith (James 2:19). A saving faith is one that turns to Jesus, entrusting our lives into His hands. If I baptized you, extending to you the right hand of fellowship, I would then have to withdraw it to bring church disciplinary charges against you and eventually to expel you, if you still aren’t repentant. Don’t you see that a refusal to repent and faith are in contradiction to one another?

A real faith must entail a real willingness to follow Jesus! Of course, none of us come close to sinlessness in this life. However, this is not essential, because we can be in right standing with our Savior without sinlessness. He gives us the assurance that if we confess our sins – and of course this entails a willingness to repent – we are given the assurance that our Savior will forgive and cleanse us of all of our moral filth (1 John 1:9). However, forgiveness depends on confession/repentance – the very thing that this adulterer is unwilling to do!

The necessity of repentance is also taught by the verses that cite repentance as a prerequisite for salvation without any mention of faith:

·             He told them, "This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. (Luke 24:46-47)

·             Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord. (Acts 3:19)

·             In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. (Acts 17:30)

This suggests that faith and repentance are so inseparable that these terms can be used interchangeably! Other verses point to the equivalency of faith and repentance in another way. Both are given as a gift from God. This fact further suggests that they are merely opposite sides of the same coin:

·        Acts 5:31 God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior that he might give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel.

·        Acts 11:18 When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, "So then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life."

·        And the Lord's servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth. (2 Tim. 2:24-25)

If repentance is a gift, then it is not a meritorious work and not a basis for boasting. This is supported by the distinction between repentance and the works that arise out of a changed, repentant heart. Paul made this distinction:

• “First to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and to the Gentiles also, I preached that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds.” (Acts 26:20)

“Deeds” and “repentance” are not synonymous. Instead, deeds are the result of repentance. In the same way, faith and deeds are also distinguishable. While faith and repentance represent a change of heart, deeds represent the fruit arising from this changed heart. Therefore, because faith/repentance are together a gift of a renewed heart, they should not become the basis for boasting and arrogance.

Consequently, when we expel the unrepentant from the church, we are warning them that, without repentance, their sins are still “bound” (Mat. 16:16-19; Mat 18: 17-18; John 20:21-23) – their salvation is, at best, in question. This is a graphic reminder that repentance must accompany a true faith. If it doesn’t, that “faith” becomes questionable.

Love not the World

This essay is difficult to write. It is easier for me to take the world – the unbeliever – to task than to criticize my brethren. Besides, I want to lay bare a sin that is endemic to the church in the West – a sin that has taken control of nearly all of us. It is a sin that is so common and deeply entrenched that whoever reads this will want to attack me instead of engaging in any self-examination.

God had warned Israel against entanglements with the surrounding world:

• Make no treaty with them [the Canaanites], and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord's anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you (Deut. 7:2-4).

Anything that turns us away from following our God is of the greatest import. Israel’s entire welfare depended upon abiding in His Word. Consequently, their Redeemer trained them to keep His Word foremost:

• He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord (Deut. 8:2-3).

Israel’s neighbors would continue to seduce Israel away from abiding in God’s every Word. How? We are naturally social creatures, easily influenced by our friends and neighbors. We want to be liked and accepted and don’t want to antagonize anyone with our scandalous doctrines and judgments. We idolatrously equate our value with popularity, professional respectability and social recognition. However, as Jesus explained, the antagonism between the children of this world and the children born from above is inevitable:

• "If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember the words I spoke to you: 'No servant is greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.” (John 15:18-20; 16:1-2; 7:7)

We wrongly and naively suppose that if we can just be loving enough and partake in the same things as our neighbors, we will be loved and accepted. If we act like them, they will want to be like us. If we love the things that they love, they will love the things we love. We hide our light and restrain our saltiness and become fit for nothing but to be trodden down by men (Mat. 5:13).

However, the Bible gives no encouragement for becoming a friend to the world. Nor can we retain friendship with our Savior if we pursue friendship with the world:

• You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? (James 4:4-5; 1 John 2:15)

When we allow the world to influence us, we become compromisers and adulterers! Well, what marriage vows do we violate? Our marriage to the Lord! When we are drawn away from a strict adherence to God’s Word, we cause Him to “envy intensely.” Why? He loves us intensely and wants to see nothing infringe upon His love for us!

How do we become a friend to the world? When we become inextricably entangled with the world:

• Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?...What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: "I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people" (2 Cor. 6:14-17). 

Blessing requires us to remove ourselves from those things that will contaminate us. Therefore, we cannot become dependent upon the world. We cannot form any relationship with unbelievers from which we cannot easily unyoke ourselves.

Today, this teaching has become distasteful to believer and unbeliever alike. We think it arrogant, judgmental and chauvinistic to believe that there should be such a sharp distinction between the two groups. An entire body of the church has simply rejected this teaching. It’s just too divisive. It separates us from our colleagues, friends and family. It isolates us from the rest of humanity.

Brian McLaren, a key writer of the Emergent Church, charges that:

• Christians have been taught to see in "us vs. them" terms for centuries, and it will take time to reorient faithful people in a new direction -- "us with them," working for the common good (Huffington Post Religion Blog, 2/19/03).

In support of his indictment, McLaren cites two like-minded students:

• “People don't want to have to side with the church and against their friends who are Buddhist or Muslim or Jewish or agnostic." 

• “We can't find a church that doesn't load a bunch of extra baggage on us. We tried, but they all had this long list of people we had to be against. It's just not worth it.”

Of course, these indictments are misrepresentations. We are not “against” the world; it’s just that we cannot allow ourselves to be so closely associated with the world. To quote the old saying, “We can be in the world but not of it.”  We can even have non-Christian friends as long as we know clearly what our boundaries are.

Scripture is clear that there is a radical distinction between the two. We should love our neighbor, but we cannot get entangled in such a way that it compromises any aspect of our heavenly marriage. And we are married to Him: 

• If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. (John 15:19)

• They [Jesus’ children] are not of the world, even as I am not of it. (John 17:16)

Consequently, we are warned about the dangers of associating with the world:

• Do not be misled: "Bad company corrupts good character." (1 Cor. 15:33-34; 5:9)

While the church sends out missionaries into the world, many of us are unprepared for such up-close involvement. Knowing this full well, John warns a certain woman:

• Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take him into your house or welcome him. Anyone who welcomes him shares in his wicked work (2 John 1:9-11) 

While it is true that our Lord will keep those who are His, we mustn’t put Him to the test by attempting to navigate interpersonal waters that are too deep for us. If we truly trust Him, we will obey these warnings.

Some will say, “Well, I just trust Jesus with my involvement in secular society.” However, according to John, trusting Jesus is also a matter of avoiding negative influences if we are unprepared. Sometimes, in our arrogance, we think that we are prepared when we are not. And we are not prepared. We haven’t meditated deeply and regularly on His Word (Psalm 1). We allow ourselves to compromise Scripture in order to accommodate our new relationships or careers. 

Christian professionals with advanced degrees have done this. Theistic evolutionists have adopted an entirely unbiblical distinction to enable them to have both Darwin and Jesus. They divide the world into the physical and the spiritual, foolishly claiming that evolution is only concerned about the physical, while the Bible is only concerned about the spiritual. With this distinction, they hope to silence any contradiction between Darwin and Jesus.

However, they kill their faith in the process. The physical can no more be separated from the spiritual than the theology of the cross (spiritual) can be separated from the death of Jesus on the cross (physical). The physical and the spiritual are inseparable! To separate them is to lobotomize the mind from heart. Thus they shipwreck their faith.

When we marry ourselves to the surrounding culture, we violate our ultimate marriage. This takes many forms - material, sexual, and spiritual. We have become consumers, just like our neighbors. We encourage each other to spend lavishly on ourselves, ignoring the fact that many thousands of Christians are being made refugees and even martyrs at alarming rates. However, John warns:

• If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? (1 John 3:17)

We tolerate multiple forms of sin, claiming, “I can’t judge others,” conveniently forgetting that we are our brothers’ keepers. When a brother or sister sins, if we care about them and their eternal welfare, we will speak the truth in love.  We will not be silent or look the other way. Evangelical leader Albert Mohler described the church’s permissiveness this way:

• “Evangelicals allowed culture to trump Scripture…the church largely followed the lead of its members and accepted what might be called the ‘privatization’ of divorce.’ Churches simply allowed a secular culture to determine that divorce is no big deal, and that it is a purely private matter.” 

Pastors are often so afraid of losing members that they don’t feed the flock with nourishing food.  Instead, Scripturally weak teachings and ideas abound.  Tolerance has become the supreme virtue. However, the Spirit warned the churches against this:

• Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols (Rev. 2:20, 14). 

What’s the answer? The Church of Sardis had achieved “a reputation” by the standards of this world. However, the Spirit warned:

• Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God. Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you (Rev. 3:2-3).

The Spirit instructs us to “remember,” “obey” and “repent” from our compromises and worldly standards. Our Savior alone must be exalted above everything else:

• But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:33) 

His Word alone must predominate, and when it does, He will take care of us far better than we can.

(Evidence of the depth of our compromise with the world: http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/authors-on-the-line/porn-pride-and-praise-an-interview-with-heath-lambert-22-minutes)

Forgiving Yourself: A Virtue or a Vice?

Psychotherapists would have us learn to forgive ourselves. However, shouldn’t we instead seek forgiveness from the offended party? If you just robbed the local convenience store and beat up the clerk, self-forgiveness represents a refusal to acknowledge culpability, a denial of the obvious. Instead, you first have to be reconciled to the victim, as Jesus taught:

·        “If you are offering your gift at the altar [or are performing any spiritual exercise] and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift. (Matthew 5:23-24)

We cannot forgive ourselves until we deal with the circumstances of our guilt. Clearly, there are objective moral debts that first have to be paid. Certainly, the clerk would not be overjoyed to hear of the abuser’s self-forgiveness as long as the actual offense is ignored. In fact, the refusal to objectively deal with the offense just compounds it. It is no better than an adulterer taking a drug to assuage his guilt. Rather than silencing his conscience, he must listen to it!

This has been on my mind because I just heard a sermon ending with the benediction to “forgive yourself.” While I am sure that the pastor wasn’t talking about a self-forgiveness apart from taking responsibility for the sin, she seemed to be leaving an important ingredient from her equation.

I’m referring to God. When we transgress, we also transgress against the Law-Giver. Therefore, if self-forgiveness is both inappropriate and offensive when it ignores the offense and the offended, it also offends God.

I know that it sounds medieval, archaic and guilt-producing to suggest that God is also offended by our sins, but why shouldn’t He be? He is righteousness, and He is love. When we are victimized, we tend to look favorably upon a God who is equally disturbed by our victimization, One who suffers along with us. We want justice and also a God who promises justice in the form of punishment.

The imposition of justice brings peace and the possibility of reconciliation. I have heard of many cases where the victim lovingly reached out to the now convicted prisoner. However, I have never heard of a case where the rape victim reached out with love to the defendant who had beaten-the-rap. Instead, the victim is understandably left with the burning feeling that justice must first be done.

If we are created in the moral image of God (Eph. 4:23-24), then we shouldn’t expect that God lacks a moral compass, moral sentiments, and perhaps even a sense of moral outrage. Instead, the entire Bible confirms the fact that He is deeply offended by sin. If this is the case, what does this suggest about self-forgiveness? It suggests that exonerating ourselves without first checking in with God about our guilt-status is terribly offensive to Him.

Well, how can we first be reconciled to Him and forgiven? For one thing, we need to recognize the seriousness of the offense. A man who had an affair with a married woman cannot pay-off the aggrieved husband. Such a payment cannot compensate for the enormity of the offense. It fails to recognize its enormity and just compounds the insult.

If God loves His children more than the husband loves his wife – and He does - it is even more futile to attempt to buy-off God.  Meanwhile, forgiving yourself for the affair is an utter abomination in His eyes. No amount of self-adulation could possibly lift the weight of the offense.

On the other hand, if the aggrieved husband has also been unfaithful on several occasions, he might be easier to placate. However, God has never been unfaithful. He has birthed us, feed us, sustained us, and has planted His truths within us. He cannot be placated by any amount of gifts. (Even self-sacrifice is futile!) He made them all and is able to give Himself far greater gifts than we can.

Even our best offerings are “filthy rags,” the garments of adultery, before our perfect and all-sufficient God. In light of this, our only hope is in His mercy. Although we cannot buy-off God, He has bought-off our sins by paying the price for them on the cross. An adequate payment had to be made, and only He was able to make it.

Instead of crying out for mercy, any attempt at self-forgiveness or even restitution is a grave insult to Him and a minimization of our culpability. Instead, our God desires us to confront our guilt and to take full responsibility. And He has promised to aid us in this (Psalm 51:6).

If virtue and relational restoration are measured by an appreciation of the enormity of our sins, then Western society and secular psychotherapy have taken us in the wrong direction.

Privacy and Prince Harry in his Birthday Suit

What kind of conduct should we expect from our leaders? Evolutionist Richard Dawkins has argued that their private lives belong to them alone and that they have every right to protect them, even with lies:

• Bill Clinton was impeached not for sexual misconduct but for lying about it. But he was entitled to lie about his private life: one could even make a case that he had a positive duty to do so.

Just yesterday, nude photos of England’s Prince Harry in the embrace of a nude woman were leaked to the press. The BBC writes:

• Prince Harry was on a private break from his military duties when the pictures were taken. Pictures showing Prince Harry and a young woman naked in a Las Vegas hotel room have been published on a US website. The two photos of the 27-year-old royal, published on gossip website TMZ, were taken on a private break with friends over the weekend. The site reported that the prince was in a group playing "strip billiards"

The media has raised several issues. Perhaps the first is the privacy issue. The media argues that Harry has a right to his private life.

The second issue is the one of judgment or decorum. It seems that Harry has had a long history of doing and saying things unfit of royalty. In one prank, he donned a Nazi uniform. He has also been accused of “underage drinking and drug abuse.” In general, he has a reputation as a “partier.” In this instance, he and his handlers have been faulted for not confiscating cell phones before the nudity began. Some in the media have responded, “Good for him! He deserves to have a bit of fun!”

However, I think that there is a much more significant question at stake. “Who is Prince Harry and what governs his life?” Is it possible to separate his private from his public life? What if thoughts of sex, drugs and rock and roll govern his life? What if, as he is addressing the people of England through a national crisis, he is thinking about bedding-down the women before him?

If you are not a theist, you will probably even be incensed by this question? You’ll think what right do I have to insinuate that Harry would have these sexual thoughts when addressing the nation?

Well, I don’t mean to pick on Harry or anyone else. I just want to explore this idea that it doesn’t matter who we are in our private lives. I just want to ask if there is anything inconsistent about President Clinton talking on the phone about public policy issues as Monica Lewinsky was ministering to his manly desires. Can we separate public from private life?

You will probably answer that this is an extreme and isolated example and doesn’t shed much light on the issue of public and private. You might also respond that many American presidents have ably conducted their presidency as they were having an adulterous affirm, sometimes even several of them.

Granted, this is a difficult issue to debate. Perhaps Roosevelt ably fulfilled his role as president as he was having an affair. However, it could be just as easily argued that he could have fulfilled it even better had he not had the affair.

Certainly, we can make this case in regards to Bill Clinton. The disclosure of his affirm not only crippled his family but also his presidency. However, Richard Dawkins would argue that adultery – his private life – wasn’t the problem but rather his failure to adequately cover it up.

However, this raises additional problems. For one thing, our private lives can adversely affect our judgment. Roosevelt had made a pledge to his wife to honor and to love until death separates. However, he failed to live up to his pledge. Is there any relationship between his not keeping his pledge to his wife and failing to keep his presidential pledge? If he proved himself untrustworthy to his wife, why should he be trustworthy in regards to the presidency? The public person is a reflection of the private person.

Besides, it is hard to exercise proper judgment if we are busy contorting our mind to justify permissiveness. Perhaps, as a result, Roosevelt had been overly permissive with Joseph Stalin, against the warnings of Churchill, allowing Stalin to grab Eastern Europe?

You might think that this is a leap of logic - and perhaps it is - but it is patently obvious that our judgments and philosophy fall in line with our lives. In other words, our private lives cannot be segregated from who we are and what we think.

Another problem with this “cover-up” philosophy is simply that what is covered-up will eventually be exposed, sometimes with terrible consequences.

Lastly, to lead effectively is to inspire trust. To inspire trust requires the leader to be trustworthy. He has to be able to convince his people that he has their best interests in mind and not his next sexual encounter. Our life-script must be centered on one motivation or another, as Jesus warned:

• But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness! No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. (Matthew 6:23-24)

We cannot serve our sexual appetite and other people equally. One vision must predominate. Jesus also suggests that as we focus our eyes on the wrong things, we will think the wrong things. We will be “full of darkness.” There is no way that we can separate our hidden motives from the rest of our lives. These motives will color everything else.

This doesn’t mean that Prince Harry can never be an adequate leader. However, as long as partying trumps service, service to his nation must suffer as a result.

The Joys of Free-Sex

At least it should be joyous, according to many segments of our intelligentsia. However, it seems that another free-sex experiment has bitten the dust.

The Children of God – recently renamed The Family International (TFI) - had emerged in 1968 from the Jesus People Movement:

• Founder David Berg adopted evangelical views on many doctrines, but over time his teachings supplanted the Bible. Cult watchers criticized Berg’s teaching that female disciples should use sexual favors…to convert men to Jesus. More notoriously, the group once had an open attitude about sexual contact between adults and minors. Both practices ceased by 1987… (Christianity Today, April 2012, 14).

Happily, TFI has continued to move back into Biblical conformity. One scholar stated,

• “I don’t know of any comparable group that has changed so quickly or so fundamentally altered such a large number of its beliefs and practices.” (14)

This reversal raises an important question. Why have the many experiments in sexual libertarianism failed?  Why does a practice, which can be so pleasurable, so readily find itself in hospice care? Of the many U.S. communes that had been based on sexual permissiveness, none remain, as far as I know. What was it that these various groups encountered that had closed the door so decisively on this experiment?

Perhaps we humans weren’t endowed with a “blank slate” that can be programmed according to will, as sexual libertarianism assumes. Perhaps we have a human nature that is only amenable to a limited degree of reprogramming – a nature pre-programmed with jealousy, oxytocin, the need for commitment, dignity, honor, and sexual fidelity, and all of those other things that provide for a stable environment for children. And perhaps when this nature is violated, there are painful health, relational and psychological consequences, like when you violate the nature of a car by putting oil in the gas tank.

When we buy a car, we get an owner’s manual telling us how to care for the car. This assume that we cannot treat the car in any manner we’d like. It too has a nature - characteristics that require certain care.

We know enough about cars to know that we can’t experiment by depriving it of an oil change. We also know enough about alternative sexual lifestyles to know that experimentation comes only with a high price tag. Despite the claims of the Man-Boy-Love-Association, we know enough about the consequences of pedophilia to know that it is nothing more than child abuse. I have yet to hear a glowing testimony of someone sexualized as a five-year-old!

We also know of the ills of adultery. One psychologist sung the praises of his adulterous open-marriage to our therapy group. However, he later admitted that when he saw his wife enter their home with her sex-partner, he had to be hospitalized for two weeks. His nature could not handle his chosen lifestyle.

Why is Western society so myopic? Perhaps it wants to be. Perhaps it’s addicted to immediate gratification. Sounds juvenile? In any event, our God mercifully allows us to reap the consequences of the “pleasures” we demand:

• Since they hated knowledge and did not choose to fear the Lord, since they would not accept my advice and spurned my rebuke, they will eat the fruit of their ways and be filled with the fruit of their schemes. For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them. (Proverbs 1:29-32) 

The consequences are there. We merely have to be willing to open our eyes to them.