Re: Lots of interesting points
Submitted by sally on March 26 2002 15:15:28
In reply to Lots of interesting points submitted by Forgiven on March 26 2002 01:27:59
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Discuss? Oh you bet, Bubba! =0) How can I put this gently - are we not all part of the family of God? Are not all Christians in the same family? Ha ha ha... Why be gentle? I'm not going to be. Or do you think I will have a heart attack if you tell me we are in the same family? I don't know if we are or aren't. If you are covered in the blood of Christ then you are in my family no matter how many times you sin and have to repent. And I don't even want to keep you locked away in the back room of the house. But if you don't repent of sin than I have to treat you like the publican and sinners whether you are a brother or not. I expect you, my brother, to hold me to the same standard. But of course the point I was making is that God sets the lonely in families and families-- physical families-- are a big deal to him. That is, in fact, why he tells us that we are to live as if we are in one family and brothers to one another. Three New Testament examples of what look to be YFs are Jesus and John, Paul and Timothy and Barnabus and John Mark. If you want to be to grown men what Jesus was to John and what Paul was to Timothy and what Barnabus was to John Mark you will hear no objections from me. There is simply no indication that these three men ever had sexual feelings for their students. It is not a bad thing for older men to teach younger men or for older women to teach younger women. If you want to teach an adult male SS class I will not object and if you go on a missionary journey and take a young man along I won't object. And if you won't call him your boy or young friend or any other thing that will mark him as the special friend of a pedophile, I will let it lie between yourself and God whether you are serving God or your flesh on your journey. It is not that I want to crawl into your heart and find you guilty. It is that when you make statements like the one above about John, the beloved disciple, being Jesus' YF you are showing, I believe, that you read and interpret the Bible thorough your own biases. The Bible clearly shows that homosexual action is a sin. And it also clearly shows that out of the depths of the heart the actions come. And it clearly shows that to lust after a woman is sinful even if you never physically touch her. Adultery in the heart or murder in the heart is sin. Does Jesus need to go through every sin for us to get the point or can we understand that homosexual lust is as sinful as is homosexual action? If we understand that then we know that Jesus never once lusted after a man or a woman. We know then that he never had a YF. I would say that you cannot compare yourself to him or your relationships to your young friends to his relationship to John or Peter or James or any of the others. Because part of your attraction to your YFs is a sexual one, is it not? Or have I misunderstood? Have you ever had a YF that you have not felt lust for? I also don't believe that the man who said, "It is better to marry, than burn with lust," had trouble lusting after Timothy. Barnabus and John Mark I know less about but it seems a stretch for you to attribute some relationship to them based on the few words we have about them. As far as we know John Mark was to Barnabus what a seminary student might be to a professor. He was helping with the ministry and he was learning. There is every indication that all three of these young men in your examples were grown men and not boys. For you to take these examples and try to make them akin or your longing for relationships with boys, in which lust is a real problem that needs constant fighting and vigilance, indicates, I believe, a desperate attempt to justify something that you probably should just lay before God with sorrow. I suspect that many of you don't even fight the lust quite as hard as you should. I suspect that if you fight it enough to keep yourself reasonably sure you won't actually act on the lusts you think you are doing well. I suspect that you might even justify masturbation or homosexual adult unions as the lesser of two evils... I'm thinking Bach has expressed this... and called it... maybe not good... but not too bad either. I suspect these things because I'm a human who justifies her own sin all the time. We all know, or should know, that as long we stretch to justify our sin, we will be miserable but in laying them at the cross, God is truly able to make us free. He will loose the cords that bind us and we will know joy. But we don't like to do that because our sin feels good to us. We don't want to be loosed from it. I used to think I didn't want to go to heaven. I like earth. How wrongheaded is that? But earth is comfortable to me. Heaven is not as attractive. I can nod in intellectual assent that it will be better than earth but I cannot imagine in my heart it being better. Even so, my sin is comfortable. There are times when I think I will never be happy if I do not get something. What I want is not sinful for others, maybe... lets say sexual fulfillment, for instance... you and I might say, "Others are allowed to be sexually fulfilled why not me?" We don't care if God makes us fulfilled in a lawful way... we just want to be fulfilled. So I might say, "heal my husband so I can be sexually fulfilled," and Pendragon might say, "make me attracted to my wife so I can be sexually fulfilled." Niether request is sinful. The problem is that deep down what we want is to be sexually fulfilled when what we should want is to be freed from the lust. Why should we base all our happiness on this one thing? Why don't we pray, "Lord please take away my desire for sexual fulfillment and replace it with a desire for you. I don't care if I ever am fulfilled sexually, just fill me with yourself." We don't pray that way, at least at times I haven't, because I don't want to give up my RIGHT to be fulfilled like all the others get to be. Doggone it-- it is not sinful to want to be sexually fulfilled. God has made us with strong sex drives and it is not fair that we should have to give up ours. Make me love women, you might say, and make my husband able to fulfill me, I might pray, but the prayer we should have is, "Whatever, Lord, you desire, I desire. It is not too much that I suffer here... it is minuscule, in fact. You have seen fit to deny me sexual fulfillment right now. Oh well. I give up my demand for it. It is not a big sacrifice. I have learned the secret of being content in plenty or in want." I do judge you harshly here, perhaps, but no more than I judge myself. And I think I have cause to judge you. I see discussions on whether sex is damaging to children because of societal conceptions or if it is damaging because the beloved adult will be charged or blah, blah, blah... And discussions on the ethical matters and the lesser of two evils. I say a child can be taught that anything is well and good, even that he should grow up to be a suicide bomber. The question is not, "How can I get as much touch and emotional feeding from the child without his feeling damaged?" Or, "How can I relieve my lust without hurting children and without marrying as God tells me to do?" It should be, "What does God require of me? What does love require of me?" Love for God requires obedience. It doesn't require a bunch of talk and it matters not whether we understand or agree, though those things are certainly good and helpful. What matters first and foremost is that we obey. sally sally@paraklesis.com |
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