I am at present blogging on things I do not like and things I do not want to think about. There are areas where I am broken, and I see the church broken. We look at the notorious sinners out there and we think we are righteous. I talk about the need for righteousness and the temptation comes back.

For marriage, in part, is a bulwark against sin. And the sinner we are talking about is not that notorious pervert, playa or stripper, but us.

The rot is already obvious to everyone. Why do you think so many millennials are leaving? It isn’t because millennials want to sin without consequence (the most common accusation). Its because (as many studies have already revealed) of the hypocrisy. Lack of honest leadership. Sermons that blatantly go against the scripture, and cause confusion (I think I’ve had more Christians who’ve encouraged me to sin, than non-Christians…)

…The sad thing is, it often feels like, well, there’s not much one can do about the issue. I mean, not many Christians like when you call out their hypocrisy, or when tell them they are professing false doctrine. Whenever I tried to confront people who profess false doctrine (for example, saying early marriage is sinful) nicely, I would be given the whole “he without sin throw the first stone” speech and condemned as a mean judgmental byoch.

Concerning gays in the church – it often feels like they’re used as a scapegoat, when other, more pressing issues are brought up. Prominent cheated on his wife with his wife? Hey, look over there, there’s a gay Christian! Its not different from the Politicians who bring up the gay marriage debate, to distract voters from political corruption.

Yes, the broken ones are easier to help than the ones (like me) who learned to shuffle dirt under the rug. :p (We have ex-sex workers at CCO, and enough ex-addicts to have a ministry devoted to them).
Does this make you want to beg Jesus to come back and set us in order as it does me? :p

Now, I want to continue with Corinthians, because the second quote was around a discussion on what should happen next, and was driven by an observation I have made clinically. I’ve had more than a handful of strippers, prostitutes and other sex workers (of varying orientations and genders) as patients over the years. And the ones I saw at work — this is when I was not an academic, or running an inpatient service, but a community psychiatrist — were broken. When you said to them that what they were doing was hurting them — they agreed. And they found changing their life incredibly hard.

In Corinthians Paul is writing to church that is tolerating sexual sin in a sexually corrupt society: the practices of the most kinky San Franciscan would have been seen as small beer — and in a town where people went to party. Corinth made Vegas look  tame.  And to that church, living in a sewer, and smelling like one, Paul wrote.

1 Corinthians 7:1-9

¹Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is well for a man not to touch a woman.” ²But because of cases of sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. ³The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. ⁴For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. ⁵Do not deprive one another except perhaps by agreement for a set time, to devote yourselves to prayer, and then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. ⁶This I say by way of concession, not of command. ⁷I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has a particular gift from God, one having one kind and another a different kind.

⁸To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am. ⁹But if they are not practicing self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion.

Paul says that the cure for our corruption is that we either become celibate or we marry. And this is why I approved heartily when one of the commentators above married a year or so ago — just out of college. It is why I am happy to hear that other women and men in the tradosphere have gone down the aisle and married.

For the single in this time has great temptation. Marriage is not something to enter into hastily — you will have to deal (I am male) with the testing of your wife, and lead (if you do not, chumpdom and contempt await you). Your wife can remove your life, your property and your honour, by divorcing you at will.

This is where Paul goes very pragmatic, and in the church we have found difficulty. Firstly, and most controversially, he encourages young widows to remarry, lest they break the rules of the nunnery or the widow’s house. Secondly, he tells us to stay married to our unbelieving spouses — for we may save them. But if they leave, he says we are free.

As I think of these words, I can see him thinking of cases. There was no stigma on divorce in the ancient times: there would have been divorced believers. The strong marriage for life and live with it rules that came down were around making some rules that allowed for a modicum of peace for those of us who do have difficulties with self control.

And that leads me to the final part of this. Sex is more than fun. There is a theology of the body, and a theology of this: Kristor, who I linked to a couple of days ago, wrote well about this. If you have married, young man, you have agreed to satisfying her sexual desires, even if you are exhausted. If you have married, young woman, you agreed to dealing with his wants as well. You are healthy, in love, and young. do not deprive yourself — except by agreement, so you can pray. Like food, you can fast, but you cannot starve.

This is not about the other party being worthy of your love, You can safely assume that they are not worthy, but you are not worthy either. No wife or husband would deliberately withold healthy food from their beloved — in fact, most wives want to improve their husband’s diet.

Paul’s solution was love, care, provision… and marriage. The Chrisitans shared everything but their wives. Now we share nothing. Now we insist that the other court us, woo us, as if we had made no commitment — but that is not what Paul is talking about. Marriage is a bulwark against the corruption of our greater society — and not just for us, but for our children. We need to ignore the feminists, who seem to think that ordinary sex is some kind of oppressive violence, and rediscover the fun that the bed can be.

Apart from those, who like me, are dealing with a broken marriage, and have remained single for a season, for our children need our attention. But, even then, we need to keep out of our culture, and the tendency to have serial lovers, bringing risk into the family. It may be that Paul suggests that the divorced can remarry (which is the reformed position). But we need to stop tolerating living in sin: among the sexually broken, be they gay, divorced, or dealing with ten years of sleeping with those found on the streets or clubs.

The homosexual affinity of the subject, and its connection to patting ourselves on the back about how loving we are, are very real. This is not about getting the jackbooted thugs to stop patrolling the Communion line. It is about having unrepentant adulterers come strutting “out of the closet”, which is not good for anyone, and which is especially and acutely cruel to those who are struggling to do the right thing.

A man struggling with homosexual tendencies or an ‘irregular’ couple struggling to do the right thing and live “as brother and sister” are already in an isolated Hell in modern society, clinging to the rock that is Church doctrine and the sacraments to keep from falling. This sort of proposed ‘pastoral exception’ yanks the rug out from under those very people, the ones most in need of the Church’s love and support, and subjects them to vicious and cruel torment unless and until they give in to evil.

It is positively diabolical.

Those of us who are broken need the prayers and support of those who are strong in this area: we can pray for your area of weakness — as a simple example, gambling bores me and I don’t like being intoxicated, but women….

For we need to reform ourselves, and stop living like the world, thinking that men and women are basically the same thing apart from the plumbing. We are not. We are gloriously different — and the consequences of ignoring our vulnerabilities is we have half the congregation, if not more, with scars on their souls and people who they recall with guilt and shame.

This should not be. We need to rediscover holy matrimony. Given how far we have fallen, this will be incredibly painful and difficult. It is far easier to rant about Femen, or the ignorance and frank evil of the elite. But that is not the issue in the church at present. Instead, the issue is us.
.