We live in an immoral time. The idea that we can be morally pure is mocked: the honest ridiculed. The teaching of Paul around sex in marriage is defined as oppression and the concept of doing your duty to your spouse is seen as a form of rape. Marriage is no longer for life, and we wonder why the number of us declines.
Paul wrote to the Corinthians in such a time. When children were an impediment. When the economy of the town turned of pleasure, and the industries it supported. When the city was a byword for corruption. And he argued against celibacy, because the times were immoral, and instead for vigorous use of the bed.
For he knew that the Christians were hated. He bore the scars of persecution on his body.
Oh, they want to have a conversation, all right. It’s a conversation about how you are going to be disarmed, disempowered, and at their mercy.
Crazy talk? No. Don’t be gaslighted. They will tell you exactly what they want for you if you give them long enough. The beauty of social media is these creeps just can’t help themselves; you just have to have the strength to listen and accept the truth no matter how unpleasant it is. Many of them want you dead – again, they will tell you outright. Others will be satisfied with you just being serfs, unable to participate in your own governance, obedient, working hard to fuel the liberal redistribution machine that pays off Democrat constituencies. To the fields, flyover drones! Grow our kale, drive the trucks carrying our cucumber-infused pale ale! We are to be the silent stagehands in the urban hipster play that is their lives.
Understand that the left doesn’t hate the NRA. The NRA stuff is a distraction. Leftists are dumb, but they understand the power of the NRA is really the power of millions of Normal Americans coming together to defend their right to protect themselves, their families, their communities and their Constitution. That’s why they fear it. That’s why they can’t abide it. They want your voices silenced.
Kurt Schlichter, Town Hall
The times are evil, and the behaviourists in charge of the madhouse are more subtle. They don’t beat us; they shame us. They micromanage us. They intrude into our relationships, bringing their power and structure theology, and demand we worship their version of progression. Do not be deluded. The state is post Christian, and against you, and they are applauded by the great and good for being so.
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.
What do we need to do? The radical puritan in me mutters return to the source. To the original teachings: without the gloss of tradition. The pragmatist in me notes that much of the traditions of the pre modern church worked. The periods of fasting and prayer were limited. Many couples refrained from sex and spent the time praying. In the Orthodox revival, many still do. But the teaching then is that apart from those periods one should be satisfying the other.
This classic teaching acknowledges the need to regulate both men and women. In other passages, Paul speaks to husbands and wives, and gives different teaching because the roles are not interchangeable.
Of course, this is deemed hate speech and the progressives would rip it out of the bible. But they hate us, even the best and most gracious of us.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a vicious bunch of atheists, agnostics and free-thinkers who are on a crusade to eradicate Christianity from the public marketplace. They typically bully small towns and school districts with threatening letters and lawsuits.
“Billy Graham believed fervently in Christianity and people listened to him. But that is not worthy of praise or a spot in the U.S. Capitol, however temporary,” the atheists wrote. “Graham in his own way sought to undo the only sure way to guarantee freedom of religion: a government free from religion. Graham is on the wrong side of history. You will be, too, if you authorize this unearned honor.”
Their letter to Ryan and McConnell was filled with ugly insinuations and outright misrepresentations – exactly what you would expect from a bunch of perpetually offended malcontents.
“Graham’s career was devoted to revivals, Christian conversions, hellfire preaching and the insertion of his brand of religion into what is supposed to be a secular government governed by a godless Constitution barring establishment of religion or governmental preference for religion,” they wrote.
Americans United for the Separation of Church and State also objected to Graham being honored by the Congress.
“Our position is that Graham should not lie in honor,” they wrote in a statement. “We don’t say this to criticize a man who has died, but because the question of who should receive this rare honor warrants public discussion.”
At least Americans United had the decency to qualify their objections. The same cannot be said of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
Their ugly attacks on America’s pastor are a sad testament to their intolerance and hatred. I’m just glad the atheists did not storm the rotunda and hurl Graham’s wooden casket down the front steps.
Oh, what would Billy Graham do if he were still here on Earth?
Well, I reckon he would look directly at those atheists and tell them without a doubt that God loves them and wants to have a relationship with them.
Todd Starnes, Townhall
There are some things we have to ignore, as surely as we avoid the red light district. There are some things we do not want to be. We do not want our children to grow up seeing a loveless and sexless marriage, and in their despair find them turning to the mass media, where the predators lurk, or joining aid agencies run by those who love to rape the underage.
We do not want our children indoctrinated into lifestyles that damage beyond mere sexual promiscuity, but leave one loveless: even the homosexuals avoid the gender fluid because they are too damaged.
And such existed in Corinth.
The old marital vows are countercultural. The old marriage contract is that you account your body as not yours — but to be used to please your spouse. The default attitude to sex is part of the contract: you consent.
This breaks the current ideology of the police, family courts, and anti violence campaigners who would force us to believe lies. But we are to obey God, not man.
For man’s building will never make a Jerusalem, bright and shining, in this green and pleasant land. It builds a tower of steel and brick in a wasteland. And that Babylon will fall.