Every sane and healthy person is capable of giving up this or that temptation if they so desire. Some with particularly strong personalities succeed through mere will power. Others use the opportunity to draw closer to the Lord and with a lot of faith, along with truth, guidance, and encouragement, are successful in letting go of the pesky thing, and so ask the Lord for more light and knowledge and move on to the next shortcoming they are shown.
The best way to be rid of wayward desires is to truly love God more than the temptation and purposely give it up to Christ in a deeply selfless and spiritual way, repeatedly if need be. (After the initial change of heart, if it rears its ugly head again, it becomes easier each time to reject it.) If an individual or group, representing themselves as sane and healthy, is saying that they have tried but can’t give up a particular temptation, such as the popular vice of the day, same-sex attraction, it’s because they don’t really want to. They are in love with this weakness or temptation because they are getting something pleasurable out of it. (Sexual temptation is different than, say, alcohol, coffee, or cigarette addiction because, without any physical acting out, sexual lusts can produce highly arousing images and fantasies and corresponding physical chemical sensations. Indeed, sex addiction is commonly compared to drug addiction without the external substances!)
Incredibly, people who proclaim their out-of-bounds sexual lusts are being praised and held up as experts and examples to follow. They have fooled others into thinking they can’t overcome these lusts, when the truth is they don’t want to. (We wonder why they insist that God will someday take their temptations away, if, as they also seem to insist, the temptations alone are not bad.) They have fooled others into the false notion that wickedness can be happiness, joy, and fulfillment. As a result, they are being given a voice. Their books are published. They are asked to speak and be on panels. And yet they are not repentant. They have nothing good to offer. Celibate or not, they are pro-homosex. In fact, they use cunning subtleties to justify their pleasurable lusts and spread and encourage homosexuality.
The right thing to do is to refuse to give such people a platform. The kindest thing we can do for them is to publish and emphasize only the truth, that wayward sexual attractions can and should be overcome. The best thing we can do for them is testify continually that they need Christ as their Savior and can be forgiven and washed clean, just as everybody else can.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
God and Liberty, Satan and Tyranny
As we’ve studied up on political philosophies lately, we’ve found correlations between God and liberty, and Satan and tyranny. It occurs to us that people who fully embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ (God’s plan) are the same thoughtful people who are all for the classical liberty of America’s inspired Founders. Such liberty necessarily requires virtue, more self-government than societal government, and encourages individuals to strive for their full potential. It also occurs to us that people who resist or water down the gospel of Jesus Christ, tend to shy away from personal responsibility and potential, wishing to save themselves or others from the fearsome risks and consequences that come with free will. They don’t mind giving up their independence to those who have the power to govern them, such as leaders and politicians, in order to mitigate what they see as suffering or endless striving. These thoughtless, cult-like followers allow others to think for them and thus tend toward tyranny rather than liberty.
It’s incredibly important that people see the timeless true principles that are in play. The first worldview mirrors God’s plan by which we are free to choose and learn and progress beyond our wildest dreams because of Christ. The second reflects Satan’s plan and the works of his minions, the anti-Christs, whose design of safety and coercion constricts, stunts, and impoverishes human souls now and forever. The war between these two views was waged in heaven and continues here on earth. This conflict is apparent is every aspect of our existence, as we choose our thoughts, our loyalties, our beliefs, our actions, and the people we elect to represent us in government.
Which side are you on? The one about hard, true principles, about risk, reliance on Christ as Savior of our eternal souls, and the potential of unlimited progression, the one which encourages and makes possible personal development and economic prosperity even now? Or the one based on the philosophies of men (Plato, Thomas More, Thomas Hobbes, Marx, and others), all about safety, conformity, radical equality, and dependence on the arm of the flesh, on government run by whatever human beings happen to be in power?
If we as a country truly follow Christ we will prosper in the land in every way, increasing in posterity, wealth, knowledge, and godliness. If we follow Satan we forfeit our agency and will become enslaved by some means or another, decreasing in number and further declining in every way, spiritually, intellectually, economically.
May we recommend Mark Levin’s insightful books: Liberty and Tyranny and Ameritopia?
It’s incredibly important that people see the timeless true principles that are in play. The first worldview mirrors God’s plan by which we are free to choose and learn and progress beyond our wildest dreams because of Christ. The second reflects Satan’s plan and the works of his minions, the anti-Christs, whose design of safety and coercion constricts, stunts, and impoverishes human souls now and forever. The war between these two views was waged in heaven and continues here on earth. This conflict is apparent is every aspect of our existence, as we choose our thoughts, our loyalties, our beliefs, our actions, and the people we elect to represent us in government.
Which side are you on? The one about hard, true principles, about risk, reliance on Christ as Savior of our eternal souls, and the potential of unlimited progression, the one which encourages and makes possible personal development and economic prosperity even now? Or the one based on the philosophies of men (Plato, Thomas More, Thomas Hobbes, Marx, and others), all about safety, conformity, radical equality, and dependence on the arm of the flesh, on government run by whatever human beings happen to be in power?
If we as a country truly follow Christ we will prosper in the land in every way, increasing in posterity, wealth, knowledge, and godliness. If we follow Satan we forfeit our agency and will become enslaved by some means or another, decreasing in number and further declining in every way, spiritually, intellectually, economically.
May we recommend Mark Levin’s insightful books: Liberty and Tyranny and Ameritopia?
Safety and Sex
Searching the online thesaurus on WordPerfect (yes, some of us at SoL still use WP) for synonyms of the word safety, we happened upon this surprisingly short and narrow list:
refuge
guard
base hit
prophylactic
rubber
condom
safe
Wait a sec, so our culture (or the software producers who presume to represent the culture) has come to equate the general, everyday word, safety, with the trendy notion of “safe sex?” Almost half of the synonyms provided, and the only specific words, are about sex. This is really goofy for a number of reasons. First, if our software writers were about specifics, why didn’t they include fence, railing, seat belt, air bag, helmet, goggles, reflectors, and a zillion other safety items? Out of the whole world of accident prevention, why do their safety objects only refer to sex? Second, sex, however you engage in it, is serious business, prophylactic or no prophylactic. If you don’t treat it properly, rubber or no rubber, someone gets hurt in some way, that is, it isn’t safe at all when misused. Third, there is only one perfectly safe condition for sex, condom or no condom. That one condition is when it occurs between healthy, faithful, married, loving, respectful husband and wife. Fourth, there is more to sex than so-called safety. The false doctrine of safe sex promotes sex as a casual leisure activity, effectively separating it from love, marriage, family, morality, and the health and well-being of the whole person, heart, mind, and soul. Fifth, condoms aren’t even safe the way they mean it, that is in totally preventing pregnancy or sexually-transmitted diseases! What we should be talking about when it comes to safety and sex is God and His laws for morality—right vs. wrong, good vs. evil, responsibility vs. promiscuity—rather than this red herring of so-called safe sex.
This is just another of many evidences that dangerous and false notions have crept into our culture’s psyche and established themselves as conventional wisdom.
By the way, Microsoft Word’s thesaurus does not include any sex references under the word safety. Open Office does include several sex references under the word safety, even more than WordPerfect.
refuge
guard
base hit
prophylactic
rubber
condom
safe
Wait a sec, so our culture (or the software producers who presume to represent the culture) has come to equate the general, everyday word, safety, with the trendy notion of “safe sex?” Almost half of the synonyms provided, and the only specific words, are about sex. This is really goofy for a number of reasons. First, if our software writers were about specifics, why didn’t they include fence, railing, seat belt, air bag, helmet, goggles, reflectors, and a zillion other safety items? Out of the whole world of accident prevention, why do their safety objects only refer to sex? Second, sex, however you engage in it, is serious business, prophylactic or no prophylactic. If you don’t treat it properly, rubber or no rubber, someone gets hurt in some way, that is, it isn’t safe at all when misused. Third, there is only one perfectly safe condition for sex, condom or no condom. That one condition is when it occurs between healthy, faithful, married, loving, respectful husband and wife. Fourth, there is more to sex than so-called safety. The false doctrine of safe sex promotes sex as a casual leisure activity, effectively separating it from love, marriage, family, morality, and the health and well-being of the whole person, heart, mind, and soul. Fifth, condoms aren’t even safe the way they mean it, that is in totally preventing pregnancy or sexually-transmitted diseases! What we should be talking about when it comes to safety and sex is God and His laws for morality—right vs. wrong, good vs. evil, responsibility vs. promiscuity—rather than this red herring of so-called safe sex.
This is just another of many evidences that dangerous and false notions have crept into our culture’s psyche and established themselves as conventional wisdom.
By the way, Microsoft Word’s thesaurus does not include any sex references under the word safety. Open Office does include several sex references under the word safety, even more than WordPerfect.
The Gaytape Letters
To borrow from C. S. Lewis, if you were a devil-in-training, and it was your assignment to win people over to celebrating homosexuality, how would you get an individual or a family or an entire God and morality-based church to change their opinion of it?
Of course you wouldn’t dump it on your “patients” all at once; they would reject it. No, you’d introduce the concept subtly, gradually, step by step, systematically, implementing a careful strategy. You’d first gain access by exploiting some of their very own, those among them who for whatever reason experience homosexual tendencies, tempting them with ego and arming them with sophistries.
When they had become proud and public with their homosexuality, you'd let them do all the work. They would become your spokesmen. You’d teach them to charm people, to lead them gently up the garden path. You’d make them the poster boys and girls for homosexual lust, presenting it as innocent, wholesome, and harmless. You’d have them use flattery to swell the people’s pride. You’d mix in plenty of truth with your many lies to make the lies more palatable and believable. You’d appeal to the emotions. You’d focus on human relations. You’d have the people be convinced that, unlike everybody else who must fight sexual impurity, those who experience same-sex sexual lust can’t help “who they are.” You’d foment a fear of catastrophe, such as the fear that somebody will commit suicide unless their homosexuality is celebrated. You’d present great spirituality and nobility of character as compatible with affirming homosexuality as a gift from God. You’d stir people up into a knee-jerk pity, steering them away from reason and real, far-reaching compassion. You’d have your servants shame, intimidate, and spread lies about anyone who wished to expose your tactics. Once a phony, foundationless "compassion" was firmly rooted in the general population or church, you’d instigate more flattery and "dialogue"to further swell their pride in what the people have come to believe is their own open-minded goodness.
All the while, you’d make sure your patients think this kinder, gentler, more inclusive outreach to the same-sex sexually attracted in their midst is not your idea but theirs. You’d go so far as to get the proudest, most deceived, and most influential among them, the very elect, believe they are called of God to help self-proclaimed permanent homosexuals feel more comfortable within the church. You’d take them even farther by suggesting in their minds that there need be no moral or spiritual conflict between God and homosexuality, that homosexuals can live lives of faith and joy and fulfillment within the church.
As the foolish, duped souls play into your servants' hands with untiring efforts to close the gap, to come together, to make peace, to accommodate public, unrepentant homosexuals in their hearts and minds and in the church, you’ll secretly plan your next move. Now it doesn’t take much effort at all on your part to take things to the next level. And then the next, until homosexuality, along with the behaviors it comprises and the "rights" it demands, are firmly established, excused, and celebrated in most every soul’s circle of family, friends, associates, and fellow worshipers. Congratulations, you have rebuilt the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. The people have forgotten God, denied Christ, and become a law unto themselves.
The I’m-gay-and-okay movement in America’s churches is more about apostasy than homosexuality, acted on or not. It’s just one of many, many ways the devil gets his foot in the door of our churches and our souls.
Of course you wouldn’t dump it on your “patients” all at once; they would reject it. No, you’d introduce the concept subtly, gradually, step by step, systematically, implementing a careful strategy. You’d first gain access by exploiting some of their very own, those among them who for whatever reason experience homosexual tendencies, tempting them with ego and arming them with sophistries.
When they had become proud and public with their homosexuality, you'd let them do all the work. They would become your spokesmen. You’d teach them to charm people, to lead them gently up the garden path. You’d make them the poster boys and girls for homosexual lust, presenting it as innocent, wholesome, and harmless. You’d have them use flattery to swell the people’s pride. You’d mix in plenty of truth with your many lies to make the lies more palatable and believable. You’d appeal to the emotions. You’d focus on human relations. You’d have the people be convinced that, unlike everybody else who must fight sexual impurity, those who experience same-sex sexual lust can’t help “who they are.” You’d foment a fear of catastrophe, such as the fear that somebody will commit suicide unless their homosexuality is celebrated. You’d present great spirituality and nobility of character as compatible with affirming homosexuality as a gift from God. You’d stir people up into a knee-jerk pity, steering them away from reason and real, far-reaching compassion. You’d have your servants shame, intimidate, and spread lies about anyone who wished to expose your tactics. Once a phony, foundationless "compassion" was firmly rooted in the general population or church, you’d instigate more flattery and "dialogue"to further swell their pride in what the people have come to believe is their own open-minded goodness.
All the while, you’d make sure your patients think this kinder, gentler, more inclusive outreach to the same-sex sexually attracted in their midst is not your idea but theirs. You’d go so far as to get the proudest, most deceived, and most influential among them, the very elect, believe they are called of God to help self-proclaimed permanent homosexuals feel more comfortable within the church. You’d take them even farther by suggesting in their minds that there need be no moral or spiritual conflict between God and homosexuality, that homosexuals can live lives of faith and joy and fulfillment within the church.
As the foolish, duped souls play into your servants' hands with untiring efforts to close the gap, to come together, to make peace, to accommodate public, unrepentant homosexuals in their hearts and minds and in the church, you’ll secretly plan your next move. Now it doesn’t take much effort at all on your part to take things to the next level. And then the next, until homosexuality, along with the behaviors it comprises and the "rights" it demands, are firmly established, excused, and celebrated in most every soul’s circle of family, friends, associates, and fellow worshipers. Congratulations, you have rebuilt the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. The people have forgotten God, denied Christ, and become a law unto themselves.
The I’m-gay-and-okay movement in America’s churches is more about apostasy than homosexuality, acted on or not. It’s just one of many, many ways the devil gets his foot in the door of our churches and our souls.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
The Church of Christ Without Christ?
Here at SoL we are a Christ-based group. This means our convictions are based on Jesus Christ and his truth. But it has come to our attention that we have a different understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ than many who profess to be fellow followers.
This is our basic understanding: The gospel of Jesus Christ concerns the immortal souls of God's children; the reality of good and evil, law, sin, and punishment; man's fallen state and agency here on earth so we can learn, choose, and be tested; the inevitability of God's divine justice and the offer of redemption through the grace of Christ by repentance; and the opportunity to be taught, led, and changed by the Holy Spirit of Christ in order to be fit for the eternal presence of God.Whatever else the gospel entails is based on those fundamentals.
If we become lax regarding these fundamentals and emphasize something else in their place, what we have is not the gospel of Jesus Christ, but something entirely different.
At best, a so-called Christ-based church that has little or no understanding of the above inevitably turns into nothing more than a sort of community ethics series or civic club. Its pastors have "no very lofty aims, no theological enthusiasm," and "feel no serious alarms about the souls" of their parishioners. Its members have "certain dim but strong emotions" concerning "family affections and neighbourly duties," and are "fonder of church history than divinity. " Outward customs and rituals are more important than the doctrines behind them. (Quotes from Adam Bede by George Eliot).
At worst, a so-called Christ-based church that abandons and replaces those basic theological principles actually comes to resist and deny Christ. Flannery O'Connor wrote about such resistance and denial in her novel, Wise Blood. Her protagonist, Hazel Motes (lost in a haze, motes in his eye), who is descended from a family of Christian evangelists, attempts to start just such a church, the Church of Christ Without Christ, enthusiastically preaching there is no sin and no need for repentance or divine redemption. Needless to say, poor Haze is in for a very rough personal spiritual journey.
There are stunning examples of several similar anti-Christs in The Book of Mormon. Whatever the anti-Christs' various gimmicks, the one talking point they have in common, along with Hazel Motes, is the blasphemous heresy that there is no need for repentance, that even the worst kinds of sins---sins of the soul---if they exist at all, are nothing to be concerned about.
Whatever the condition of the current culture, true followers of Christ (who must always be primarily concerned with the welfare of immortal souls) cannot afford to abandon first principles no matter how enticing it is to be popular in the world. If they do abandon them and yet profess still to be Christians, this is what Jesus denounced as hypocrisy, when men are like white-washed sepulchers on the outside but inside full of of dead-end meaninglessness and corruption.
C. S. Lewis said that every good institution involved with human beings is in danger of ending up doing exactly the opposite of what was first intended, as in O'Connor's fictional Church of Christ Without Christ. The only way Christ-based churches can retain their integrity is by sticking to and emphasizing those fundamentals, continually turning back to God through the grace of Christ and listening to the Spirit of the Lord, come what may.
This is our basic understanding: The gospel of Jesus Christ concerns the immortal souls of God's children; the reality of good and evil, law, sin, and punishment; man's fallen state and agency here on earth so we can learn, choose, and be tested; the inevitability of God's divine justice and the offer of redemption through the grace of Christ by repentance; and the opportunity to be taught, led, and changed by the Holy Spirit of Christ in order to be fit for the eternal presence of God.Whatever else the gospel entails is based on those fundamentals.
If we become lax regarding these fundamentals and emphasize something else in their place, what we have is not the gospel of Jesus Christ, but something entirely different.
At best, a so-called Christ-based church that has little or no understanding of the above inevitably turns into nothing more than a sort of community ethics series or civic club. Its pastors have "no very lofty aims, no theological enthusiasm," and "feel no serious alarms about the souls" of their parishioners. Its members have "certain dim but strong emotions" concerning "family affections and neighbourly duties," and are "fonder of church history than divinity. " Outward customs and rituals are more important than the doctrines behind them. (Quotes from Adam Bede by George Eliot).
At worst, a so-called Christ-based church that abandons and replaces those basic theological principles actually comes to resist and deny Christ. Flannery O'Connor wrote about such resistance and denial in her novel, Wise Blood. Her protagonist, Hazel Motes (lost in a haze, motes in his eye), who is descended from a family of Christian evangelists, attempts to start just such a church, the Church of Christ Without Christ, enthusiastically preaching there is no sin and no need for repentance or divine redemption. Needless to say, poor Haze is in for a very rough personal spiritual journey.
There are stunning examples of several similar anti-Christs in The Book of Mormon. Whatever the anti-Christs' various gimmicks, the one talking point they have in common, along with Hazel Motes, is the blasphemous heresy that there is no need for repentance, that even the worst kinds of sins---sins of the soul---if they exist at all, are nothing to be concerned about.
Whatever the condition of the current culture, true followers of Christ (who must always be primarily concerned with the welfare of immortal souls) cannot afford to abandon first principles no matter how enticing it is to be popular in the world. If they do abandon them and yet profess still to be Christians, this is what Jesus denounced as hypocrisy, when men are like white-washed sepulchers on the outside but inside full of of dead-end meaninglessness and corruption.
C. S. Lewis said that every good institution involved with human beings is in danger of ending up doing exactly the opposite of what was first intended, as in O'Connor's fictional Church of Christ Without Christ. The only way Christ-based churches can retain their integrity is by sticking to and emphasizing those fundamentals, continually turning back to God through the grace of Christ and listening to the Spirit of the Lord, come what may.
Friday, July 6, 2012
True Blueprint
by Janice Graham
I remember my first crush. I was 12 ½. It was summer, 1967, and I was going to a new sort of activity, a church youth picnic at a beautiful park in the Bay Area, California. I even remember what I wore: a sky-blue shorts outfit with buttoned pockets on the shirt and epaulets on the shoulders. The event promised to be magical for one reason. Amazingly, I had been told that a boy liked me, the boy with the brown eyes who smiled shyly and stared at me in Sunday School, and chances were he was going to be at the picnic. When I saw him my heart leaped; the picnic was suddenly very interesting. An older boy had the brand new hit song, Light My Fire by the Doors, blasting from his truck. We ran relay races. I suppose we ate something. I don’t think the boy with the brown eyes actually spoke to me the entire day, but it was enough that he was always nearby, within sight, snatching glances, smiling his shy smile.
Today people would call this being opposite-sex attracted or heterosexual. But those terms didn't exist in those days. They weren’t needed. Everyone took for granted the orderly way of things. In a society that does things right, when a young person first begins noticing someone of the opposite sex, it doesn't seem to be sexual at all. Innocent young people who have been protected and influenced properly and who are just beginning to awaken to how they fit in the one appropriately idealized male-female pattern of life certainly aren’t thinking about an entire group of people they are attracted to or about ultimate mating, the act of sex. They are only thinking about the person they are attracted to, how cute they are, how they smile, if they are nice, what they think.
Yes, on that day, at that picnic, I wasn’t thinking about the entire male group. I was thinking about one boy. All the other boys weren’t particularly interesting to me; I wasn’t attracted to them. Rather than labeling me opposite-sex attracted, it would be much more accurate to say I was specially attracted to one opposite-sex person. In my youth, this singling out of one special opposite-sex person perfectly imitated the male-female coupling pattern being depicted all around me, by my parents and all others, and by such things as art, stories, scriptures, stories, books, TV shows, and movies. I feel blessed that this was the single blueprint that was drawn for me in my early years on which I built my life.
Today young people are abundantly provided with a variety of blueprints labeled gay, straight, LGBT, LGBTQI, S&M, SSA, SGA, homosexual, heterosexual, transexual, transgender, fluid, man-boy love, pansexual, etc., etc., etc.! Mainstream society didn’t need this alphabet soup until recently. Why do we need all these terms now? Because we have ever-multiplying new patterns being modeled and dignified and idealized in mainstream society as equally valuable or even preferable alternatives to natural biological moral human sexuality. These proliferating terms are constructed to advertise and legitimize new patterns. Is it any wonder that in today's oversexed culture, young people, often bored, self-centered, experimental, rebellious in nature, objectified, pornographied, and sexually abused, are drawn to this or that trendy and fashionable blueprint? What a shame that innocence and proper sexual development are now being circumvented on a culture-wide scale.
It is easy to see how human sexuality is now being expanded to preposterous excess. But there is also something very narrow about these new patterns. Traditionally, the one right blueprint for male and female coupling did not begin and end with sex. It was about so much more, about the future, about cherished shared interests and values in connection with God, marriage, children, a secure family life, about generation after generation of posterity. Contrarily, these new labels and patterns seem to be based first and foremost on individual sexual pleasure, on what sort of sexual activities are available. The sexual revolution is about big groups of strangers seen as purely sexual beings instead of about finding one certain proper person with whom one can build a full and multi-faceted life in order to contribute to the security and prosperity of the human race.
Who can deny that this narrow, depraved new world is obsessed with sex and that people often treat each other more like erotic eye candy and sex toys than human beings? We have come so low that many outwardly pious church-goers actually think it is perfectly chaste to indulge in adulterous, pornographic, or homosexual mental activities. (We wonder if they think incestuous and pedophillic fantasies are chaste as well. Why not?)
Today we are being fed the false notions that sexuality is all-encompassing and that alternative sexual desires are harmless, innate, and unalterable. But of course they are the opposite: harmful, learned, and alterable. To paraphrase George Orwell, for its own safety and survival society should promote fairly strict rules and stigmas for human sexuality--- including only one legitimatized blueprint for the two human sexes: two opposite-sex adults singling each other out for life. They decide to be faithful and therefore decide not to think sexually about anybody but each other, and that properly. (It is natural for faithful spouses to notice the beauty,charm, or attractiveness of others of either sex, but they do not sexualize them or fantasize about them.)
In my lifetime, the true blueprint for human sexuality has gone from being the only one around to actually being prohibited. For instance, in California, a movement is in motion to legally ban reorientation therapy for unwanted homosexuality. In other words, many damaged, confused, and miserable young people will not be able to find a professional to help them root out their unwanted, unhealthy sexual thought patterns and behaviors so they can reorient them in the one proper and healthy direction. They will only be able to find professionals who will encourage sexual deviancy. Indeed, this has already happened. In fact, harmful blueprints for human sexuality are now being forced on the public through every conceivable social institution.
There's a great science fiction book called A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter Miller, 1960, in which the whole world has long ago been blown up. The initial survivors in charge immediately destroyed all vestiges of art and learning, blaming the accumulation of knowledge for the devastating apocalypse. Thousands of years later, some monks in a primitive secret monastery in the desert are still trying to collect and protect what cultural relics they can. One monk finds what he thinks is a transcendent work of beauty and spends his life copying it in gold leaf. He doesn't know it's only a blueprint of a common thermostat. The same sort of thing is happening today when it comes to the truth about human sexuality and purpose. Phony, sterile, worthless, even harmful templates for human sexuality are being emphasized and encouraged and celebrated today. Do we really want such gross ignorance, depravity, and degradation mistaken for progress and enlightenment by future generations, that is if there are any?
Of course there is only one true blueprint for human sexuality, and it's a terrible shame young people today are being confused and taken in by worthless counterfeits.
I remember my first crush. I was 12 ½. It was summer, 1967, and I was going to a new sort of activity, a church youth picnic at a beautiful park in the Bay Area, California. I even remember what I wore: a sky-blue shorts outfit with buttoned pockets on the shirt and epaulets on the shoulders. The event promised to be magical for one reason. Amazingly, I had been told that a boy liked me, the boy with the brown eyes who smiled shyly and stared at me in Sunday School, and chances were he was going to be at the picnic. When I saw him my heart leaped; the picnic was suddenly very interesting. An older boy had the brand new hit song, Light My Fire by the Doors, blasting from his truck. We ran relay races. I suppose we ate something. I don’t think the boy with the brown eyes actually spoke to me the entire day, but it was enough that he was always nearby, within sight, snatching glances, smiling his shy smile.
Today people would call this being opposite-sex attracted or heterosexual. But those terms didn't exist in those days. They weren’t needed. Everyone took for granted the orderly way of things. In a society that does things right, when a young person first begins noticing someone of the opposite sex, it doesn't seem to be sexual at all. Innocent young people who have been protected and influenced properly and who are just beginning to awaken to how they fit in the one appropriately idealized male-female pattern of life certainly aren’t thinking about an entire group of people they are attracted to or about ultimate mating, the act of sex. They are only thinking about the person they are attracted to, how cute they are, how they smile, if they are nice, what they think.
Yes, on that day, at that picnic, I wasn’t thinking about the entire male group. I was thinking about one boy. All the other boys weren’t particularly interesting to me; I wasn’t attracted to them. Rather than labeling me opposite-sex attracted, it would be much more accurate to say I was specially attracted to one opposite-sex person. In my youth, this singling out of one special opposite-sex person perfectly imitated the male-female coupling pattern being depicted all around me, by my parents and all others, and by such things as art, stories, scriptures, stories, books, TV shows, and movies. I feel blessed that this was the single blueprint that was drawn for me in my early years on which I built my life.
Today young people are abundantly provided with a variety of blueprints labeled gay, straight, LGBT, LGBTQI, S&M, SSA, SGA, homosexual, heterosexual, transexual, transgender, fluid, man-boy love, pansexual, etc., etc., etc.! Mainstream society didn’t need this alphabet soup until recently. Why do we need all these terms now? Because we have ever-multiplying new patterns being modeled and dignified and idealized in mainstream society as equally valuable or even preferable alternatives to natural biological moral human sexuality. These proliferating terms are constructed to advertise and legitimize new patterns. Is it any wonder that in today's oversexed culture, young people, often bored, self-centered, experimental, rebellious in nature, objectified, pornographied, and sexually abused, are drawn to this or that trendy and fashionable blueprint? What a shame that innocence and proper sexual development are now being circumvented on a culture-wide scale.
It is easy to see how human sexuality is now being expanded to preposterous excess. But there is also something very narrow about these new patterns. Traditionally, the one right blueprint for male and female coupling did not begin and end with sex. It was about so much more, about the future, about cherished shared interests and values in connection with God, marriage, children, a secure family life, about generation after generation of posterity. Contrarily, these new labels and patterns seem to be based first and foremost on individual sexual pleasure, on what sort of sexual activities are available. The sexual revolution is about big groups of strangers seen as purely sexual beings instead of about finding one certain proper person with whom one can build a full and multi-faceted life in order to contribute to the security and prosperity of the human race.
Who can deny that this narrow, depraved new world is obsessed with sex and that people often treat each other more like erotic eye candy and sex toys than human beings? We have come so low that many outwardly pious church-goers actually think it is perfectly chaste to indulge in adulterous, pornographic, or homosexual mental activities. (We wonder if they think incestuous and pedophillic fantasies are chaste as well. Why not?)
Today we are being fed the false notions that sexuality is all-encompassing and that alternative sexual desires are harmless, innate, and unalterable. But of course they are the opposite: harmful, learned, and alterable. To paraphrase George Orwell, for its own safety and survival society should promote fairly strict rules and stigmas for human sexuality--- including only one legitimatized blueprint for the two human sexes: two opposite-sex adults singling each other out for life. They decide to be faithful and therefore decide not to think sexually about anybody but each other, and that properly. (It is natural for faithful spouses to notice the beauty,charm, or attractiveness of others of either sex, but they do not sexualize them or fantasize about them.)
In my lifetime, the true blueprint for human sexuality has gone from being the only one around to actually being prohibited. For instance, in California, a movement is in motion to legally ban reorientation therapy for unwanted homosexuality. In other words, many damaged, confused, and miserable young people will not be able to find a professional to help them root out their unwanted, unhealthy sexual thought patterns and behaviors so they can reorient them in the one proper and healthy direction. They will only be able to find professionals who will encourage sexual deviancy. Indeed, this has already happened. In fact, harmful blueprints for human sexuality are now being forced on the public through every conceivable social institution.
There's a great science fiction book called A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter Miller, 1960, in which the whole world has long ago been blown up. The initial survivors in charge immediately destroyed all vestiges of art and learning, blaming the accumulation of knowledge for the devastating apocalypse. Thousands of years later, some monks in a primitive secret monastery in the desert are still trying to collect and protect what cultural relics they can. One monk finds what he thinks is a transcendent work of beauty and spends his life copying it in gold leaf. He doesn't know it's only a blueprint of a common thermostat. The same sort of thing is happening today when it comes to the truth about human sexuality and purpose. Phony, sterile, worthless, even harmful templates for human sexuality are being emphasized and encouraged and celebrated today. Do we really want such gross ignorance, depravity, and degradation mistaken for progress and enlightenment by future generations, that is if there are any?
Of course there is only one true blueprint for human sexuality, and it's a terrible shame young people today are being confused and taken in by worthless counterfeits.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Some Common Errors
We learn a lot from some of the negative emails we receive. Aside from the highly emotional appeals, threats, and insults, we also see some serious wrong-headedness, mostly appearing to come from the rising generation. The following errors are some of what we have gleaned from the comments of some well-meaning but unthinking members of the Church.
Some rely on Church leaders to make sure everything is as it should be. They don't realize that Church leaders are human and make mistakes, always have and always will. Our leaders are having their earthly test like everyone else and need our prayers that they will resist the world, stay humble, and follow the Spirit. People who put their reliance on human beings are the same people who lose their faith in God when they find a Church leader making a mistake. We shouldn't live on borrowed light no matter what. It's the three members of the Godhead we should put our faith in.
Some think if somebody's an active member of the Church, he is resisting sin. As such, they have come to think that "out," gay LDS, because they are LDS (served missions, hold callings, go to the temple, etc.) are of course essentially fighting against their temptations like the rest of us have to fight against ours. But this may not be so at all. Indeed, why should they resist SGA if they have been taught there is nothing wrong with it? Indeed, is there any proof that their feelings are unwanted? Are they repentant in any way? Are they getting help? Or have they given in? Are they seeking accommodation for their embraced alternative sexual identity as we see in the recent BYU video? Yes, we should all be resisting sin, but for some reason, some outspoken people with SGA don't feel this necessity.
Some think the problem of same-sex attraction is the same as problems with opposite-sex attraction. It's true that sexual feelings are just sexual feelings and can take any number of wrong directions. It's also true that all kinds of sins lead us away from God and need to be forsaken. But there is a great difference between homosexuality and heterosexuality that is being overlooked. Homosexuality is never right, while heterosexuality is very right under the right conditions.Therefore, we mustn't accept same-sex attraction as natural or right under any circumstances, but educate, help ,and encourage people to resist and conquer it.
Some fail to make an essential distinction. This is the distinction between a person struggling against unwanted sexual tendencies who wants to get help, get well, and develop normal healthy sexuality, and a person who has embraced today's take on homosexuality as their identity and therefore has no desire to give up their homosexual thought patterns or school their feelings. They don't make the distinction between a person who is repentant and one who is holding on to their sin. The former type of person is necessarily quite private about his problem and seeks help from a few trusted sources. The latter may be rebellious (in more ways than this one), argumentative, defensive, demanding. He may seek to change others' timeless and deeply-held beliefs in order to feel justified in his choices and may be very clever, patient, manipulative, and deceptive in his methods.
Some think homosexuality is no big deal. (After all, people with SGA aren't thinking about sex ALL the time.) This is a sorry excuse for sin. Just because we aren't thinking bad thoughts all the time, they should be excused? No, we should acknowledge and confess our sinfulness and turn back to the Lord every time. If we rationalize pettiness, vindictiveness, selfishness, or lust, those bad qualities proliferate and we don't learn, grow, or increase in spirituality. No unclean thing can dwell in God's presence. Sounds like a pretty big deal to us.
Some are mistaking religion for social work. They think church is for spreading "love," for making everybody feel good, for giving comfort mostly through human relationships. This may happen in a church setting, but it is not religion, or more specifically Christianity, and it is not reliable. Christ is about the purest form of love, about giving us the chance to give up our Selves, to change from the inside out, to do the right things for the right reasons, to become holy, like him, to fit us for the presence of God. Religion is certainly not morally neutral, nor is it nonjudgmental when it comes to sin. Christ cannot save us in our sins, only from them.
Monday, May 7, 2012
Some Basic Truths
Ethnicity and homosexuality are not the same. One of the erroneous arguments in favor of the Mormon Church changing to embrace homosexuality uses the comparison of blacks being forbidden and then allowed to hold the priesthood. This argument is a non sequitur because a person's ethnicity is not connected to a behavior. You don't have to think or do anything to be the ethnicity you were born. It just is. It is not dependent on any behavior, choice, or mentality. Your ethnicity stays the same no matter what you think or feel or do about it or anything else. Homosexuality is about one main behavior: sex. At its core homosexuality consists of doing something: sexualizing those of one's same gender, whatever form it takes. Everyone faced with, embracing, or encouraging homosexuality, no matter what you call it, (SGA, SSA, gay, LGBT) needs to know that it is about sex. Otherwise it's just pretend, like wearing the latest trendy Halloween costume. To be truly same-sex sexually attracted you have to think, feel, do sexual things involving your same sex. It follows that while our ethnicity cannot be changed, our thoughts, feelings, and outward behaviors can certainly be changed. People change what they think, feel, and do all the time. Sexual thoughts, feelings, and acts are among those changeable behaviors.
Heterosexuality is mating. Homosexuality is not mating. Another erroneous argument in favor of embracing homosexuality concerns instances of ancient or modern polygamy allowed by God. The line is, if God has eased up on His rules about sex and marriage in times past, why not homosexuality? For one thing, homosexuality in any form has never been sanctioned by God, quite the opposite. For another thing, this argument is a non sequitur because the two behaviors are like apples and oranges. Yes, they both involve the sexual appetite, like apples and oranges are both fruit, but polygamy always involves sexuality between opposite sexes while homosexuality always involves sexuality between same sexes. Heterosexual acts are what is called mating, that is, biologically natural behaviors that can lead to reproduction, and this is why societies find it in their best interest to support opposite-sex marriage. This is one of many good reasons why societies need not invent or support "same-sex marriage."
Marriage is not a right. The language of entitlement is all around us today. In place of personal responsibility, motivation, and choice, "rights" are being invented willy-nilly. Without any effort or merit on their part, people think they are owed groceries, a house, a job, sexual freedom, even marriage. Once such arbitrary demands are embraced as rights, the floodgates to tyranny and slavery are wide open.
Freedom comes with risks and responsibilities. Marriage occurs between free, individual, separate people. Some people never have the opportunity to be married, or choose against it. Marriage is an opportunity, a privilege, a choice, a decision, a responsibility, a breathtaking act of faith, and a solemn promise between two opposite-sex adults who propose to do the one thing that makes babies whether children come of it or not. The gay movement has falsely characterized marriage as a right in order to force official societal approval of the false idea that homosexual behavior is equal to heterosexual behavior (see above) and change the societal order (see below).
Gay marriage is not about marriage. The gay marriage agenda is not about the so-called right to be married. Gays have the same opportunity as anyone else to be married in the traditional sense. It's about intimidation, fear, and misinformation, about changing laws and destroying the institutions that protect and give order to human society. Even those same-sex couples who have unwittingly jumped on this band wagon need to know they are part of the destruction.
Marriage is instituted primarily for the well-being of children, not adults. One fact that has been swept under the carpet is that governments have traditionally supported marriage because of the security and benefit to the rising generation it offers. Mating often results in children, and children need their mother and father to grow up to be good citizens. Yes, studies prove that traditional marriage is also beneficial to the adults involved. But somehow, the primary purpose of this institution, the well-being of human posterity, has been forgotten in favor of the trumped-up rights, needs, desires, and whatever else, of adults only. Governments have no vested interest in random adult relationships that don't produce children.
Heterosexuality is mating. Homosexuality is not mating. Another erroneous argument in favor of embracing homosexuality concerns instances of ancient or modern polygamy allowed by God. The line is, if God has eased up on His rules about sex and marriage in times past, why not homosexuality? For one thing, homosexuality in any form has never been sanctioned by God, quite the opposite. For another thing, this argument is a non sequitur because the two behaviors are like apples and oranges. Yes, they both involve the sexual appetite, like apples and oranges are both fruit, but polygamy always involves sexuality between opposite sexes while homosexuality always involves sexuality between same sexes. Heterosexual acts are what is called mating, that is, biologically natural behaviors that can lead to reproduction, and this is why societies find it in their best interest to support opposite-sex marriage. This is one of many good reasons why societies need not invent or support "same-sex marriage."
Marriage is not a right. The language of entitlement is all around us today. In place of personal responsibility, motivation, and choice, "rights" are being invented willy-nilly. Without any effort or merit on their part, people think they are owed groceries, a house, a job, sexual freedom, even marriage. Once such arbitrary demands are embraced as rights, the floodgates to tyranny and slavery are wide open.
Freedom comes with risks and responsibilities. Marriage occurs between free, individual, separate people. Some people never have the opportunity to be married, or choose against it. Marriage is an opportunity, a privilege, a choice, a decision, a responsibility, a breathtaking act of faith, and a solemn promise between two opposite-sex adults who propose to do the one thing that makes babies whether children come of it or not. The gay movement has falsely characterized marriage as a right in order to force official societal approval of the false idea that homosexual behavior is equal to heterosexual behavior (see above) and change the societal order (see below).
Gay marriage is not about marriage. The gay marriage agenda is not about the so-called right to be married. Gays have the same opportunity as anyone else to be married in the traditional sense. It's about intimidation, fear, and misinformation, about changing laws and destroying the institutions that protect and give order to human society. Even those same-sex couples who have unwittingly jumped on this band wagon need to know they are part of the destruction.
Marriage is instituted primarily for the well-being of children, not adults. One fact that has been swept under the carpet is that governments have traditionally supported marriage because of the security and benefit to the rising generation it offers. Mating often results in children, and children need their mother and father to grow up to be good citizens. Yes, studies prove that traditional marriage is also beneficial to the adults involved. But somehow, the primary purpose of this institution, the well-being of human posterity, has been forgotten in favor of the trumped-up rights, needs, desires, and whatever else, of adults only. Governments have no vested interest in random adult relationships that don't produce children.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
More Mormon Homosexualists Speak Out
Here's another Mormon-made video urging the LDS Church and its members to "change," to compromise their most basic and deeply-held doctrines and beliefs to include the homosexualism that has been embraced by mainstream society. The concern seems to be that if we don't accept their self-identified alternative sexuality, young people will feel rejected and/or commit suicide.
Despite the apparent sincerity, concern, and good intentions of the interviewees, there are many things wrong with the sentiments expressed on this video, already watched by 20,000 viewers. Please note that sentiments, opinions, views, just because someone expresses them, may not be valid or valuable. Some are totally mistaken, even harmful. Each of us must choose for ourselves to discern between truth and error.
We have listed some the the problems we found in the video, voiced or implied.
1. People do not commit suicide just because other people don't commend their romantic sexual desires. For example, do we think of unmarried teen couples who get pregnant as inordinately suicidal? No, and yet LDS doctrine and culture do not approve of what they have done. There are a number of reasons for suicidality, including mental and emotional illness, impulsiveness, lack of confidence, immaturity, dependence on others, lack of faith, inner conflict, addictions and total self-centeredness. These are the opposite of mental and emotional health, patience, confidence, maturity, reliance on Christ, faith in God, inner peace, spiritual-centeredness and humility, all of which would make us good stewards of our physical bodies. These latter qualities are the ones we need to teach and emphasize. We believe this video is doing more to emphasize the former and is therefore encouraging rather than preventing suicidality.
2. Gayness is not innate. If it were all identical twins of gay people would be gay too and they aren't. Making it a pop-culture victimized minority identity is part of the carefully documented, planned, and carried out gay agenda. Pardon our bluntness, but the people in this video are drinking the trendy Koolaid flavor of the day. It's presented in a flashy new package, but in reality this sin is older than Sodom and Gomorrah.
3. God does not love anybody for being gay ("who you are") as this video suggests. He loves us all apart from our desires, real or self-determined identities, good or bad traits, weaknesses, sins, talents, or accomplishments. He loves us because we are His children, period. He has given us a plan to overcome the world, to be in it but not of it.
4. Being "gay" doesn't make people more perfect or special than others. We're all in the same boat when it comes to being human. There is no scientific proof that gayness is one of those things you can't change, quite the opposite. Thousands have reoriented to heterosexuality. See Exodus, JONAH, PFOX. People will argue for proof that so many have changed, but of course even one person who changes is a threat to the gay mindset.
5. We don't help anybody by giving in to their weakness; we actually harm them. Would you make a video like this urging everyone to celebrate any other such mindset leading to sinful and harmful behavior?
6. No one on this video addresses what gayness means. This is not surprising. Roger Scruton points out that the gay movement, with its fast and loose accusations of homophobia, has stifled many issues of pressing public concern. As George Orwell said, "So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot" ("Inside the Whale," A Collection of Essays). Gayness is about wrongly sexualizing people of one's same sex, out-of-bounds sexual thoughts, feelings, and acts which are harmful. Sexual abuse, pornography, sexual addiction, explicit gay internet chat rooms, phone sex, initiation by predators, sex experimentation, promiscuity, cruising, bath houses, drug use, and more, often play a part. We have our doubts that these highly emotion-based people have educated themselves or sat down with their loved ones and talked about the causes and dangers of homosexuality. In the midst of all the arguments we receive defending same-sex attraction, we at SoL find it interesting that we hear practically zero denial that the above-mentioned involvements are part of the lifestyle. Everyone needs to hear one honest man's heartfelt confession/plea we heard at a Sunstone symposium and read the book, Captain of My Soul, among tons of other sad but true info on our web site.
7. The people on this video seem to feel morally superior to the majority of the Church membership because they "love" gays. But all they are doing is going right along with the downward popular culture of the world at this particular time. In doing so they have developed an Oprah-like, pretend spirituality that worships whatever human feelings, desires, and relations are before us rather than God who doesn't change.
8. This video, in its deceptive disguise, injures the religiosity and insults the morals of others. It is anathema to any Christ-based religion in its true, unadulterated form. We sinners must adapt ourselves to the Church, not expect the Church to adapt itself to our sins. Like the indoctrinated young people on the BYU video, the people on this video, in order to avoid hypocrisy, must reject basic tenets of their purported religion.
9. George Orwell reminds us that "all societies, as the price of survival, have to insist on a fairly high standard of sexual morality" ("The Art of Donald McGill"). And of course babies are not born knowing the proper standards and attitudes. They have to be taught as they grow and develop. That used to be easy since everyone and everything was modeling proper sexuality in mainstream society. Now it is no longer easy. For example, this video is saying that young people have total permission to make up their own arbitrary rules about sexuality and that the rest of us should adopt them -- a recipe for disaster.
10. This video, ostensibly a plea to "love" homosexuals, displays only a symptom of much a bigger problem. C. S. Lewis relates that sins of the flesh are "mere fleabites" compared to the sin of pride, that is, putting anything else before God, rebelling against Him and becoming a law unto ourselves.
Despite the apparent sincerity, concern, and good intentions of the interviewees, there are many things wrong with the sentiments expressed on this video, already watched by 20,000 viewers. Please note that sentiments, opinions, views, just because someone expresses them, may not be valid or valuable. Some are totally mistaken, even harmful. Each of us must choose for ourselves to discern between truth and error.
We have listed some the the problems we found in the video, voiced or implied.
1. People do not commit suicide just because other people don't commend their romantic sexual desires. For example, do we think of unmarried teen couples who get pregnant as inordinately suicidal? No, and yet LDS doctrine and culture do not approve of what they have done. There are a number of reasons for suicidality, including mental and emotional illness, impulsiveness, lack of confidence, immaturity, dependence on others, lack of faith, inner conflict, addictions and total self-centeredness. These are the opposite of mental and emotional health, patience, confidence, maturity, reliance on Christ, faith in God, inner peace, spiritual-centeredness and humility, all of which would make us good stewards of our physical bodies. These latter qualities are the ones we need to teach and emphasize. We believe this video is doing more to emphasize the former and is therefore encouraging rather than preventing suicidality.
2. Gayness is not innate. If it were all identical twins of gay people would be gay too and they aren't. Making it a pop-culture victimized minority identity is part of the carefully documented, planned, and carried out gay agenda. Pardon our bluntness, but the people in this video are drinking the trendy Koolaid flavor of the day. It's presented in a flashy new package, but in reality this sin is older than Sodom and Gomorrah.
3. God does not love anybody for being gay ("who you are") as this video suggests. He loves us all apart from our desires, real or self-determined identities, good or bad traits, weaknesses, sins, talents, or accomplishments. He loves us because we are His children, period. He has given us a plan to overcome the world, to be in it but not of it.
4. Being "gay" doesn't make people more perfect or special than others. We're all in the same boat when it comes to being human. There is no scientific proof that gayness is one of those things you can't change, quite the opposite. Thousands have reoriented to heterosexuality. See Exodus, JONAH, PFOX. People will argue for proof that so many have changed, but of course even one person who changes is a threat to the gay mindset.
5. We don't help anybody by giving in to their weakness; we actually harm them. Would you make a video like this urging everyone to celebrate any other such mindset leading to sinful and harmful behavior?
6. No one on this video addresses what gayness means. This is not surprising. Roger Scruton points out that the gay movement, with its fast and loose accusations of homophobia, has stifled many issues of pressing public concern. As George Orwell said, "So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot" ("Inside the Whale," A Collection of Essays). Gayness is about wrongly sexualizing people of one's same sex, out-of-bounds sexual thoughts, feelings, and acts which are harmful. Sexual abuse, pornography, sexual addiction, explicit gay internet chat rooms, phone sex, initiation by predators, sex experimentation, promiscuity, cruising, bath houses, drug use, and more, often play a part. We have our doubts that these highly emotion-based people have educated themselves or sat down with their loved ones and talked about the causes and dangers of homosexuality. In the midst of all the arguments we receive defending same-sex attraction, we at SoL find it interesting that we hear practically zero denial that the above-mentioned involvements are part of the lifestyle. Everyone needs to hear one honest man's heartfelt confession/plea we heard at a Sunstone symposium and read the book, Captain of My Soul, among tons of other sad but true info on our web site.
7. The people on this video seem to feel morally superior to the majority of the Church membership because they "love" gays. But all they are doing is going right along with the downward popular culture of the world at this particular time. In doing so they have developed an Oprah-like, pretend spirituality that worships whatever human feelings, desires, and relations are before us rather than God who doesn't change.
8. This video, in its deceptive disguise, injures the religiosity and insults the morals of others. It is anathema to any Christ-based religion in its true, unadulterated form. We sinners must adapt ourselves to the Church, not expect the Church to adapt itself to our sins. Like the indoctrinated young people on the BYU video, the people on this video, in order to avoid hypocrisy, must reject basic tenets of their purported religion.
9. George Orwell reminds us that "all societies, as the price of survival, have to insist on a fairly high standard of sexual morality" ("The Art of Donald McGill"). And of course babies are not born knowing the proper standards and attitudes. They have to be taught as they grow and develop. That used to be easy since everyone and everything was modeling proper sexuality in mainstream society. Now it is no longer easy. For example, this video is saying that young people have total permission to make up their own arbitrary rules about sexuality and that the rest of us should adopt them -- a recipe for disaster.
10. This video, ostensibly a plea to "love" homosexuals, displays only a symptom of much a bigger problem. C. S. Lewis relates that sins of the flesh are "mere fleabites" compared to the sin of pride, that is, putting anything else before God, rebelling against Him and becoming a law unto ourselves.
Anybody Can Be, Nobody Has to Be
A standard argument in favor of embracing the gay identity is that it is not chosen. We agree that under certain conditions, anybody can be tempted towards same sex sexual attraction. But let's think this through. If a desire or temptation corresponds with wrong or harmful acts, whether we choose it or not doesn't really matter. What matters is if we realize it for what it is and choose to conquer it.
Do we choose a craving for chocolate? Or a feeling of anger? Or a wicked unkind thought? It seems like we don't. It's just our human nature. The more important and relevant question is, what do we do with these passions? Do we proclaim ourselves hopeless chocolate gluttons? Raging lunatics? Devils? Is that just who we are? Is it okay, even special? Of course not.
If we're serious about health, order, and goodness, what we do is regulate ourselves. If we're religious that means we turn to God. We work at getting our hearts changed. It's humbling and may be hard work, but we keep at it. If we're serious about God, health, order, and goodness, there is no giving up or giving in to the weakness.
What's missing in the LDS gay argument we see being swallowed by and emboldening so many these days, is this question:
If this condition or identity, whatever you want to call it, is so difficult, if it upsets family and conflicts with one's religious beliefs and prohibits a normal life, if these things are as important to them as they let on, whether a person felt they chose it or not, wouldn't they try to get help? Instead of clinging to trendy poilitically-charged notions about human sexuality and seeking validation through pornography and gay-affirming individuals and groups, wouldn't they choose to educate themselves from all sides, seek out the best professional help available that fits their religious views, turn to God for motivation, courage, and faith, and never give up? Wouldn't their families support them in conquering their problem?
That's what is so exciting about God's gift of agency. Whatever life deals us, we're free. We're free in our minds and hearts, no matter what. We can choose what we want, and if we truly desire to overcome this or that temptation, if we truly give it up to the Lord, we can be free of it. Because we are weak human beings, it may take time, it may creep up on us, we might get discouraged, it may cause us annoyance, regret, or sorrow, but if we keep truly striving and keep putting the Lord first, a current temptation can become ancient history, freeing us to make improvements in other areas.
Problems arise when people don't really want to give up their unrighteous passions. Sin, even in our minds and hearts, is pleasurable. We get something out of sin or we wouldn't make it a part of us. As foreign as it may sound to those who have been trained toward healthy heterosexuality, same sex lust is pleasurable to those who have learned and continually nourish such thought patterns.
Claiming the gay identity has a great deal of power and support these days. It gets a person a lot of attention and opens up all kinds of passes and possibilities, especially if one is proud, unrepentant, and completely ignores the above truths. In fact, the gay movement has done a great job of stifling discussion on important life issues such as the possibility of overcoming homosexual tendencies. It has done such a good job that ex-gays are denigrated and dismissed. Yes, one can self-identify as gay to rousing applause, but if one self-identifies as ex-gay, here come the tomatoes.
We at SoL are here to present an opposing view to the world's current opinion, that is, that the gay identity is unnatural, disorderly, and harmful. Homosexuality is taught and spread, usually to unwitting young people. We submit that sexual feelings are just feelings, and feelings can be suggested, nurtured or rejected, and can change directions all the time. Whether you feel as if you chose the feelings and desires or not, you can choose to resist and reorient them toward rightness and an orderly, normal life.
Anybody can be, nobody has to be.
Do we choose a craving for chocolate? Or a feeling of anger? Or a wicked unkind thought? It seems like we don't. It's just our human nature. The more important and relevant question is, what do we do with these passions? Do we proclaim ourselves hopeless chocolate gluttons? Raging lunatics? Devils? Is that just who we are? Is it okay, even special? Of course not.
If we're serious about health, order, and goodness, what we do is regulate ourselves. If we're religious that means we turn to God. We work at getting our hearts changed. It's humbling and may be hard work, but we keep at it. If we're serious about God, health, order, and goodness, there is no giving up or giving in to the weakness.
What's missing in the LDS gay argument we see being swallowed by and emboldening so many these days, is this question:
If this condition or identity, whatever you want to call it, is so difficult, if it upsets family and conflicts with one's religious beliefs and prohibits a normal life, if these things are as important to them as they let on, whether a person felt they chose it or not, wouldn't they try to get help? Instead of clinging to trendy poilitically-charged notions about human sexuality and seeking validation through pornography and gay-affirming individuals and groups, wouldn't they choose to educate themselves from all sides, seek out the best professional help available that fits their religious views, turn to God for motivation, courage, and faith, and never give up? Wouldn't their families support them in conquering their problem?
That's what is so exciting about God's gift of agency. Whatever life deals us, we're free. We're free in our minds and hearts, no matter what. We can choose what we want, and if we truly desire to overcome this or that temptation, if we truly give it up to the Lord, we can be free of it. Because we are weak human beings, it may take time, it may creep up on us, we might get discouraged, it may cause us annoyance, regret, or sorrow, but if we keep truly striving and keep putting the Lord first, a current temptation can become ancient history, freeing us to make improvements in other areas.
Problems arise when people don't really want to give up their unrighteous passions. Sin, even in our minds and hearts, is pleasurable. We get something out of sin or we wouldn't make it a part of us. As foreign as it may sound to those who have been trained toward healthy heterosexuality, same sex lust is pleasurable to those who have learned and continually nourish such thought patterns.
Claiming the gay identity has a great deal of power and support these days. It gets a person a lot of attention and opens up all kinds of passes and possibilities, especially if one is proud, unrepentant, and completely ignores the above truths. In fact, the gay movement has done a great job of stifling discussion on important life issues such as the possibility of overcoming homosexual tendencies. It has done such a good job that ex-gays are denigrated and dismissed. Yes, one can self-identify as gay to rousing applause, but if one self-identifies as ex-gay, here come the tomatoes.
We at SoL are here to present an opposing view to the world's current opinion, that is, that the gay identity is unnatural, disorderly, and harmful. Homosexuality is taught and spread, usually to unwitting young people. We submit that sexual feelings are just feelings, and feelings can be suggested, nurtured or rejected, and can change directions all the time. Whether you feel as if you chose the feelings and desires or not, you can choose to resist and reorient them toward rightness and an orderly, normal life.
Anybody can be, nobody has to be.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
It Gets Better at BYU?
Some students made a video about being gay at BYU. Click here to watch it.
So let's get this straight. BYU students are getting away with making gay propaganda. It includes unverified information such as, "There are over 1,800 LGBT students attending Brigham Young University." It's a technically well-made montage of 20-something-year-old BYU-clad students accompanied by sad, somber music. These students confess self-determination as some sexual identity other than heterosexual: gay, lesbian, bisexual. But it doesn't stop there. Students testify that it's all perfectly okay with God. There is no talk of chastity, sexual purity, or repentance. Is there any doubt that they desire permission to act out (as if they aren't already to some degree), and they are telling the world that BYU and their Church, although still oppressive, is coming right along?
Here we have some obviously damaged, rebellious, confused, misguided young people on the mere brink of real living, of adult human relationships, of responsible adult experiences, of life's biggest decisions. And they believe they have lived enough to have figured everything out about themselves and about human sexuality, including unnatural, scripturally-condemned types of it that prohibit true marriage and pro-creation, inordinately cause chronic ill-heath conditions, and spread horrible life-threatening diseases?
Young Latter-day Saints need to know that in order to champion homosexualism (in oneself or others), one needs to abandon truth, reality, science (no gay gene), biology (there only 2 human sexes), proper gender roles (that ensure pro-creation), and core tenets of their religion. They must reject the Atonement of Jesus Christ, scriptures, prophets and apostles from all dispensations, temple covenants (yes, we are all supposed to keep even our passions and desires within the Lord's boundaries), the Family Proclamation, and countless conference talks, books, manuals, and hymns (#336 School Thy Feelings for instance). If they ever had a witness of the Holy Ghost concerning the truth of all these things, they have to deny that, too. They have to ignore the knowledge and wisdom of the ages (which they are supposed to be learning at BYU) and invent an entirely new worldview and culture for themselves.
We have some outspoken young people willing to do this for many reasons, perhaps as a form of youthful rebellion, or just to feel involved in a popular cause, or to feel superior, enlightened, comfortable with their current lusts or with friends, and popular in the eyes of the world. Do they realize what they are doing? Is championing various unnatural sexual feelings worth giving up everything else? Really? All this that is happening -- it's all in the scriptures. One wonders, have these kids read their scriptures? If they have, they don't understand them, as Nephi put it.
To the precious, misguided young people on the video, we say: You live in an upside-down world where youth and a godless trendy culture have been unwisely put on a pedestal and God's timeless goodness and wisdom are derided and disregarded. It reminds us of the silly 60's movie, Wild in the Streets, where the 20-something hippies put all the adults over 30 in camps and kept them drugged so they could run the world however they felt like running it, that is until teenagers decided to take over! Youth is by nature a rash, rebellious, emotional, ignorant, prideful time of life. And the truth is, as the LDS scholar Hugh Nibley, who himself knew 20 languages, put it, none of us are very pure or brave or good or wise, even in adulthood. That's why we need God from whom we get our timeless general standards and values.That's why we all need a Savior who offers essential divine redemption for our many weaknesses and sins and errors. That's why we need the Spirit to constantly humble, teach, and correct us.
We didn't note much discussion of the true purposes of the Godhead on the video, rather it was all about the students' purposes, their feelings, desires, sufferings, and comforts and how they conveniently have come to know that God has changed His plan to include their particular proclivities. It's true that God loves us all no matter what, a bit like a good parent unconditionally loves a naughty child, but our feelings, thoughts, motives, and actions often require purifying, changing, and improving. Not on the video.
That's why no one should give this video any credence. These are culturally-indoctrinated and emboldened young people who have, in their inexperienced youth, rashly and wholeheartedly embraced politicized, pop-culture sexual identities despite God's boundaries for sexuality in heart, mind, and body. One should wonder how and where they got these ideas cemented; one girl on the video admitted she turned to the internet where her wayward sexual feelings were validated and welcomed. The internet. Not the scriptures. Not the Spirit. The internet. Enough said. These young people need to know they have rejected the accumulated wisdom of the ages and summarily dismissed the spiritually-demanding Atonement of Jesus Christ. They have ignored and disparaged the availability of cutting-edge, professional, gospel-based therapy and the possibility of reorienting to heterosexuality and a normal life. They also obviously reject their agency, stewardship, and obligation to strive against sinfulness in all its forms to the end of mortality. They are so far conditioned into today's worldly ways that the above glorious gifts are things which they seem to know and care nothing about.
Has anybody heard the term LUG? It stands for lesbian until graduation. Let's face it. These are young people acting up. They don't know much at all and seem to be running the place. And nobody is giving them any proper guidance. It's as if all the adults are drugged senseless.
Think about it. Boundaries. Wisdom. Christ. Hope. Help. Health. Normalcy. Agency. Obligation. Stewardship. Progression. Nope, nobody's interested.
It gets better at BYU? We wonder if on these critical and essential topics it could get any worse.
So let's get this straight. BYU students are getting away with making gay propaganda. It includes unverified information such as, "There are over 1,800 LGBT students attending Brigham Young University." It's a technically well-made montage of 20-something-year-old BYU-clad students accompanied by sad, somber music. These students confess self-determination as some sexual identity other than heterosexual: gay, lesbian, bisexual. But it doesn't stop there. Students testify that it's all perfectly okay with God. There is no talk of chastity, sexual purity, or repentance. Is there any doubt that they desire permission to act out (as if they aren't already to some degree), and they are telling the world that BYU and their Church, although still oppressive, is coming right along?
Here we have some obviously damaged, rebellious, confused, misguided young people on the mere brink of real living, of adult human relationships, of responsible adult experiences, of life's biggest decisions. And they believe they have lived enough to have figured everything out about themselves and about human sexuality, including unnatural, scripturally-condemned types of it that prohibit true marriage and pro-creation, inordinately cause chronic ill-heath conditions, and spread horrible life-threatening diseases?
Young Latter-day Saints need to know that in order to champion homosexualism (in oneself or others), one needs to abandon truth, reality, science (no gay gene), biology (there only 2 human sexes), proper gender roles (that ensure pro-creation), and core tenets of their religion. They must reject the Atonement of Jesus Christ, scriptures, prophets and apostles from all dispensations, temple covenants (yes, we are all supposed to keep even our passions and desires within the Lord's boundaries), the Family Proclamation, and countless conference talks, books, manuals, and hymns (#336 School Thy Feelings for instance). If they ever had a witness of the Holy Ghost concerning the truth of all these things, they have to deny that, too. They have to ignore the knowledge and wisdom of the ages (which they are supposed to be learning at BYU) and invent an entirely new worldview and culture for themselves.
We have some outspoken young people willing to do this for many reasons, perhaps as a form of youthful rebellion, or just to feel involved in a popular cause, or to feel superior, enlightened, comfortable with their current lusts or with friends, and popular in the eyes of the world. Do they realize what they are doing? Is championing various unnatural sexual feelings worth giving up everything else? Really? All this that is happening -- it's all in the scriptures. One wonders, have these kids read their scriptures? If they have, they don't understand them, as Nephi put it.
To the precious, misguided young people on the video, we say: You live in an upside-down world where youth and a godless trendy culture have been unwisely put on a pedestal and God's timeless goodness and wisdom are derided and disregarded. It reminds us of the silly 60's movie, Wild in the Streets, where the 20-something hippies put all the adults over 30 in camps and kept them drugged so they could run the world however they felt like running it, that is until teenagers decided to take over! Youth is by nature a rash, rebellious, emotional, ignorant, prideful time of life. And the truth is, as the LDS scholar Hugh Nibley, who himself knew 20 languages, put it, none of us are very pure or brave or good or wise, even in adulthood. That's why we need God from whom we get our timeless general standards and values.That's why we all need a Savior who offers essential divine redemption for our many weaknesses and sins and errors. That's why we need the Spirit to constantly humble, teach, and correct us.
We didn't note much discussion of the true purposes of the Godhead on the video, rather it was all about the students' purposes, their feelings, desires, sufferings, and comforts and how they conveniently have come to know that God has changed His plan to include their particular proclivities. It's true that God loves us all no matter what, a bit like a good parent unconditionally loves a naughty child, but our feelings, thoughts, motives, and actions often require purifying, changing, and improving. Not on the video.
That's why no one should give this video any credence. These are culturally-indoctrinated and emboldened young people who have, in their inexperienced youth, rashly and wholeheartedly embraced politicized, pop-culture sexual identities despite God's boundaries for sexuality in heart, mind, and body. One should wonder how and where they got these ideas cemented; one girl on the video admitted she turned to the internet where her wayward sexual feelings were validated and welcomed. The internet. Not the scriptures. Not the Spirit. The internet. Enough said. These young people need to know they have rejected the accumulated wisdom of the ages and summarily dismissed the spiritually-demanding Atonement of Jesus Christ. They have ignored and disparaged the availability of cutting-edge, professional, gospel-based therapy and the possibility of reorienting to heterosexuality and a normal life. They also obviously reject their agency, stewardship, and obligation to strive against sinfulness in all its forms to the end of mortality. They are so far conditioned into today's worldly ways that the above glorious gifts are things which they seem to know and care nothing about.
Has anybody heard the term LUG? It stands for lesbian until graduation. Let's face it. These are young people acting up. They don't know much at all and seem to be running the place. And nobody is giving them any proper guidance. It's as if all the adults are drugged senseless.
Think about it. Boundaries. Wisdom. Christ. Hope. Help. Health. Normalcy. Agency. Obligation. Stewardship. Progression. Nope, nobody's interested.
It gets better at BYU? We wonder if on these critical and essential topics it could get any worse.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Turning Kids into Artful Dodgers
Like Charles Dickens's youth-corrupting character Fagin in his novel Oliver Twist, Utah's governor has "reviewed the situation" as the movie Oliver put it. In doing so he has vetoed a bill that would have required that public schools confine sex education to teaching abstinence before marriage, in other words, no teaching about methods or means of contraception. While the bill passed both the house and senate, the governor seems to have ignored what our elected officials spent months studying out, discussing, and voting on, and has taken his marching orders from some loud, wrong-thinking, self-serving groups including Planned Parenthood and the PTA. Does he forget our country is a representative republic, that policy-making is not up to noisy mobs?
Schools teaching minors about contraception is wrong from every angle. It's authority figures saying to teenagers: You shouldn't have sex but we know you're going to, so here's how to do it without getting pregnant or sick. Besides the fact that kids don't plan ahead, think such things won't happen to them, and won't use contraception anyway, the unseen emotional, psychological, spiritual, and far-reaching familial and generational damage pre-marital, promiscuous sexual relations can have on young people is being completely ignored.
It is the same as teaching kids: Shoplifting is wrong, but since you are going to do it anyway, go ahead and enjoy the thrill of the act and the jewelry and clothes you have no right to. In fact, we are going to encourage you to shoplift by educating you on the various shoplifting skills you'll need to avoid being caught, stopped, arrested, fined, jailed, or having any immediate negative consequences whatsoever. Like Fagin did, we'll make everything nice and cozy for you here in school so you "consider yourself at home, part of the family," comfortable learning about and discussing all manner of thievery no matter what your parents have taught you about honesty and virtue and all those silly old moral values.
Dickens nailed it when he named Fagin's star pupil the Artful Dodger, a mere child who in turn trained other children in the art of pickpocketing. Are the "educated" students who artfully help themselves to illicit sex while dodging STDs and pregnancy the ones who will get the pats on the back, the extra credit, the A's in sex ed class? And will they in turn train other students?
It's a great comparison. Premarital sex is always wrong. Shoplifting is always wrong. Teaching kids how to do either of these things in ways that promise to keep them safe from negative consequences is immoral any way you look at it. Even if kids used contraception, even if it always worked, what about their attitudes, their principles, their future relationships, and their eternal souls? We honestly wonder if some proponents of contraception for kids really want them to use it successfully at all. Planned Parenthood would certainly lose abortion customers. Don't be fooled. What they really want is for kids to have sex.
Opponents of abstinence-only sex ed say they are all about the more information you give kids the better decisions they'll make. The problem occurs when childhood is disrespected, human nature is ignored, and the wrong values, attitudes, and information are taught. Our schools should be accountable to uphold traditional moral values, which values encourage youth to become strong, virtuous, upstanding citizens. Instead, they are allowed to teach minors how to avoid consequences for wrong-doing, which encourages them to become weak-willed, underhanded sneaks.
Fagin was not a good guy. He exploited children, training them to be clever pickpockets in order to pad his own pockets by fencing their ill-gotten gains. Somebody is getting something out of giving in to the licentious environment and training kids in artful licentiousness.
Schools teaching minors about contraception is wrong from every angle. It's authority figures saying to teenagers: You shouldn't have sex but we know you're going to, so here's how to do it without getting pregnant or sick. Besides the fact that kids don't plan ahead, think such things won't happen to them, and won't use contraception anyway, the unseen emotional, psychological, spiritual, and far-reaching familial and generational damage pre-marital, promiscuous sexual relations can have on young people is being completely ignored.
It is the same as teaching kids: Shoplifting is wrong, but since you are going to do it anyway, go ahead and enjoy the thrill of the act and the jewelry and clothes you have no right to. In fact, we are going to encourage you to shoplift by educating you on the various shoplifting skills you'll need to avoid being caught, stopped, arrested, fined, jailed, or having any immediate negative consequences whatsoever. Like Fagin did, we'll make everything nice and cozy for you here in school so you "consider yourself at home, part of the family," comfortable learning about and discussing all manner of thievery no matter what your parents have taught you about honesty and virtue and all those silly old moral values.
Dickens nailed it when he named Fagin's star pupil the Artful Dodger, a mere child who in turn trained other children in the art of pickpocketing. Are the "educated" students who artfully help themselves to illicit sex while dodging STDs and pregnancy the ones who will get the pats on the back, the extra credit, the A's in sex ed class? And will they in turn train other students?
It's a great comparison. Premarital sex is always wrong. Shoplifting is always wrong. Teaching kids how to do either of these things in ways that promise to keep them safe from negative consequences is immoral any way you look at it. Even if kids used contraception, even if it always worked, what about their attitudes, their principles, their future relationships, and their eternal souls? We honestly wonder if some proponents of contraception for kids really want them to use it successfully at all. Planned Parenthood would certainly lose abortion customers. Don't be fooled. What they really want is for kids to have sex.
Opponents of abstinence-only sex ed say they are all about the more information you give kids the better decisions they'll make. The problem occurs when childhood is disrespected, human nature is ignored, and the wrong values, attitudes, and information are taught. Our schools should be accountable to uphold traditional moral values, which values encourage youth to become strong, virtuous, upstanding citizens. Instead, they are allowed to teach minors how to avoid consequences for wrong-doing, which encourages them to become weak-willed, underhanded sneaks.
Fagin was not a good guy. He exploited children, training them to be clever pickpockets in order to pad his own pockets by fencing their ill-gotten gains. Somebody is getting something out of giving in to the licentious environment and training kids in artful licentiousness.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Fundamental Truths
The following is a comment we received (we'll leave off the name) and our response. Make of it what you will. We quote:
I would just like to point out a couple of things, not to argue but to give contrast as I generally agree with you and you past e-mails.
Most every human being has the ability to within a second to determine the gender of an individual on the street, so likewise can one with a few seconds determine if a man is effeminate.
The following Apostles and Prophet are Effeminent:
[We will spare you this list of names, six of whom our reader claims are effeminate and seven masculine!]
There is a spectrum of sexuality, everyone falls on a different place. Only seventeen percent of men are %100 heterosexual, the rest can be turned to bi-sexuality. Ask Jan Shipps Mormons seem to trust her, she was a sexologist for decades... lol
In my stake we had a stake president who ruthlessley persued bi-sexual and homosexuals members for decades, it recently came out that he is bi-sexual which makes sense because he could not reconcile his own sexuality so he hunted and persecuted others in an twisted psychological attempt to reconcile his own issues, what he knew was not right in himself he took out on others.
My point is that this is a complex issue, trying to keep it black and white is fundamentalist and anti-intellectual.
SoL response:
Thanks for your comments.
Sane people can control their thoughts and desires. The scriptures are clear. There are absolute truths and there is right and wrong on important things. Sex and sexuality are important; if they are abused people get hurt. Calling people who stand for basic, unchangeable truths trendy epithets like "fundamentalist" does not change the fact that there are fundamental truths. People's outward mannerisms which you perceive as masculine or feminine are greatly subjective according to cultural trends (as in, what some perceive as effeminate now was considered gentlemanly fifty years ago) and do not necessarily have anything at all to do with their sexuality. Men whom you say are effeminate actually have everything it takes to be manly in all the important ways. One problem with our world today is people making such outrageous superficial presumptions, sexualizing and oversexualizing people, including children, such as the obsessed pervert/pedophile Alfred Kinsey did with his "spectrum" you appear to mention. Sexuality is taught, and the world today is teaching all manner of false, vain, extreme, harmful,and foolish notions. (Learn more about Kinsey in Kinsey:Crimes and Consequences by Judith Reisman.)
We recommend you read our book Chased by an Elephant, The Gospel Truth About Today's Stampeding Sexuality, and Me Tarzan, You Jane, the text of which is available free by clicking on our web site's front page. Lord bless.
I would just like to point out a couple of things, not to argue but to give contrast as I generally agree with you and you past e-mails.
Most every human being has the ability to within a second to determine the gender of an individual on the street, so likewise can one with a few seconds determine if a man is effeminate.
The following Apostles and Prophet are Effeminent:
[We will spare you this list of names, six of whom our reader claims are effeminate and seven masculine!]
There is a spectrum of sexuality, everyone falls on a different place. Only seventeen percent of men are %100 heterosexual, the rest can be turned to bi-sexuality. Ask Jan Shipps Mormons seem to trust her, she was a sexologist for decades... lol
In my stake we had a stake president who ruthlessley persued bi-sexual and homosexuals members for decades, it recently came out that he is bi-sexual which makes sense because he could not reconcile his own sexuality so he hunted and persecuted others in an twisted psychological attempt to reconcile his own issues, what he knew was not right in himself he took out on others.
My point is that this is a complex issue, trying to keep it black and white is fundamentalist and anti-intellectual.
SoL response:
Thanks for your comments.
Sane people can control their thoughts and desires. The scriptures are clear. There are absolute truths and there is right and wrong on important things. Sex and sexuality are important; if they are abused people get hurt. Calling people who stand for basic, unchangeable truths trendy epithets like "fundamentalist" does not change the fact that there are fundamental truths. People's outward mannerisms which you perceive as masculine or feminine are greatly subjective according to cultural trends (as in, what some perceive as effeminate now was considered gentlemanly fifty years ago) and do not necessarily have anything at all to do with their sexuality. Men whom you say are effeminate actually have everything it takes to be manly in all the important ways. One problem with our world today is people making such outrageous superficial presumptions, sexualizing and oversexualizing people, including children, such as the obsessed pervert/pedophile Alfred Kinsey did with his "spectrum" you appear to mention. Sexuality is taught, and the world today is teaching all manner of false, vain, extreme, harmful,and foolish notions. (Learn more about Kinsey in Kinsey:Crimes and Consequences by Judith Reisman.)
We recommend you read our book Chased by an Elephant, The Gospel Truth About Today's Stampeding Sexuality, and Me Tarzan, You Jane, the text of which is available free by clicking on our web site's front page. Lord bless.
Friday, January 6, 2012
If You See Your Brother Falling By the Way
There's an old Glen Campbell song called, "Try a Little Kindness." In the song we're encouraged to tell people they are on the wrong path. After all, it isn't kind to to turn away as a brother stumbles willy-nilly toward his own destruction. The kindest thing is to put aside our own feelings, such as fear of displeasing or upsetting the person, and let him know he's heading toward a cliff.
Unfortunately, political correctness and a corrupting of Christianity has edged many of us church-goers toward a dangerous cliff ourselves. We're on a path of pseudo-kindness and false compassion, a path paved with man-made philosophies embodied in such cliches as: just spread the 'love,' build your self-esteem, err on the side of 'kindness,' believe in yourself. These catch-phrases are not gospel-based, they are more indicative of the preachings of the anti-Christs in scripture who insisted there was no such thing as sin and no need for repentance, that God saves us all without repentance, that our eternal future is dependent on our own merits rather than the merits of Christ, that there is no Savior. Of course true followers of Christ know that the way to salvation is through Christ the Redeemer alone, through turning back to God continually, through seeking the Holy Ghost for truth and guidance and learning, all of which is possible only because of Christ's Atonement.
The anti-Christs preached delusions about the self, about ease, about temporal feelings, about our own merits, about getting self-esteem from ourselves, each other and our deeds, whereas Christ is all about reality, God's perfect love apart from our deeds, our fallen state, letting go of our selfishness and pride, giving all credit to God for any good we do, killing off the natural man and replacing him with humble spiritual reliance on Christ. To those who resist this doctrine, here is the litmus test. Which way would fit us for God's holy presence: the self-serving, self-congratulatory, self-centered way or the humble, grateful, submissive Christ-centered way? The truth is, the Christ-centered way is the only way to learn all those magnificent godly traits God wants to bestow on us---humility, long-suffering, unselfish love, the riches of eternity---while the self-centered way stops one's progress toward those traits like a brick wall.
Here at SoL we receive a certain amount of hate mail. It's interesting that most of those who hurl the most angry attacks also call us unChristlike in the same breath, as if to use Christianity as a weapon against us. But if these people were truly followers of Christ who sincerely believed we were wrong, the truth is they would react in a completely different way. They would show a firm and constant kindness rather than wish us dead. They would intelligently try to persuade us back onto the right path rather than cast dispersions, call us terrible names, or condemn us to hell.
Please note that we at SoL do not engage in personal attacks. We see our detractors as on a wrong path. To them we stop and kindly say, here's the right one. While standing for God's unchanging and objective standard of reality, truth, and righteousness, we wish the best for our enemies, now and forever. That's Christianity, and kindness, in its solid true form.
Unfortunately, political correctness and a corrupting of Christianity has edged many of us church-goers toward a dangerous cliff ourselves. We're on a path of pseudo-kindness and false compassion, a path paved with man-made philosophies embodied in such cliches as: just spread the 'love,' build your self-esteem, err on the side of 'kindness,' believe in yourself. These catch-phrases are not gospel-based, they are more indicative of the preachings of the anti-Christs in scripture who insisted there was no such thing as sin and no need for repentance, that God saves us all without repentance, that our eternal future is dependent on our own merits rather than the merits of Christ, that there is no Savior. Of course true followers of Christ know that the way to salvation is through Christ the Redeemer alone, through turning back to God continually, through seeking the Holy Ghost for truth and guidance and learning, all of which is possible only because of Christ's Atonement.
The anti-Christs preached delusions about the self, about ease, about temporal feelings, about our own merits, about getting self-esteem from ourselves, each other and our deeds, whereas Christ is all about reality, God's perfect love apart from our deeds, our fallen state, letting go of our selfishness and pride, giving all credit to God for any good we do, killing off the natural man and replacing him with humble spiritual reliance on Christ. To those who resist this doctrine, here is the litmus test. Which way would fit us for God's holy presence: the self-serving, self-congratulatory, self-centered way or the humble, grateful, submissive Christ-centered way? The truth is, the Christ-centered way is the only way to learn all those magnificent godly traits God wants to bestow on us---humility, long-suffering, unselfish love, the riches of eternity---while the self-centered way stops one's progress toward those traits like a brick wall.
Here at SoL we receive a certain amount of hate mail. It's interesting that most of those who hurl the most angry attacks also call us unChristlike in the same breath, as if to use Christianity as a weapon against us. But if these people were truly followers of Christ who sincerely believed we were wrong, the truth is they would react in a completely different way. They would show a firm and constant kindness rather than wish us dead. They would intelligently try to persuade us back onto the right path rather than cast dispersions, call us terrible names, or condemn us to hell.
Please note that we at SoL do not engage in personal attacks. We see our detractors as on a wrong path. To them we stop and kindly say, here's the right one. While standing for God's unchanging and objective standard of reality, truth, and righteousness, we wish the best for our enemies, now and forever. That's Christianity, and kindness, in its solid true form.