The final topic I'd like to cover in
this series is the one that many of you may have thought would be the
one that would come up first – pornography.
This article is primarily directed at
men who are trying to be faithful followers of Jesus Christ. Some of
you who may not be familiar with Jesus' teaching may find these
thoughts unusual in light of the culture we live in today where
virtually anything goes. As Christians we believe that the Bible is
God's word to man, and a Christian man who is trying to be faithful
to his Lord will try to govern his life according to God's will as
given in the Bible.
The purpose of this series of articles
has been to examine the relationship between technology and the
Christian. However, I think that in order to explain the sexual
implications of technology I need to lay the groundwork of a few
principles from the Bible that I'm assuming in this discussion. Each
of these ideas could generate a full chapter on their own, but I will
just summarize them here.
The first thing we need to remember is
that God created sex and sexuality. Sex in itself is not a dirty or
vulgar thing. It is a God-given gift. Next we need to remember that
God has told us in Scripture that sex is to be enjoyed, but that
enjoyment is to be within the relationship of marriage between a man
and a woman. All through the Bible the rightful sexual relationship
within marriage is praised and held up as a joyful thing.
After Adam sinned, man's nature became
sinful in all areas of his being and strong desires, which the Bible
calls lusts, began to have a dominant force in a person's life. The
Bible says that the strong desires of the body (or the flesh
as the Bible describes it), the strong desires coming through
our vision, and the pride of life are not from God the Father, but
are part of the world system. (I John 2:16) These strong desires
are very difficult to overcome and without the Spirit of God at work,
it's almost impossible.
When a person comes to Christ, God
gives him His Spirit and divine power to enable him to overcome these
desires and to live a life that pleases God. We need to recognize
that God has given us commands and directives because He is the one
who created us and He knows best what is good for our well-being. We
should never look at the commandments of God as though they were
meant to spoil our fun. When we buy a product, a manufacturer will
often enclose a list of instructions that shows the proper way to use
the device. For example, we are perhaps not supposed to use the
device in the water. It may cause damage to the device or injury to
us. These are rules written by the ones who know best how things are
supposed to work. The same is true of God's rules for us.
Tomorrow we'll look at the ways that
the Bible describes various sexual sins.
Part 19 available once it's published here.
PDF version of the entire series
Part 19 available once it's published here.
PDF version of the entire series
1 comment:
Jumping into the middle of this and some time behind where you are at, it seems to me that human sexuality was a very special and sacred gift of God. It is the means by which human life is perpetuated. I think that is why the devil has come against human beings in so many, powerful and deceiving ways, trying to corrupt this very sacred gift. And he has succeeded as we see in the world around us and even among us in the Church. We need to be alert to the schemes of the evil one.
Thanks for your efforts with these posts, Roger, You write very well.
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