Tell the Truth – October 3, 2012 (Psalm 4:2)
‘Instead of trying to avoid hardships, ask God for the grace to bear them well.’ St. Andre Bessette
The Church stands at a crossroads. Will she represent God in her body or the delusions of men?
Faithful Christians stand at a crossroads. Having been leveled by sexual sin, will we now stand for purity? Or will we hedge about, dodging the hard questions about God’s will for humanity, sexually-speaking?
Tell the truth: we serve a holy God who insists we represent Him well in these bodies. That means loving Him and your fellow humanity enough to reserve your nakedness only for the one member of the opposite gender you choose to bond with for a lifetime. Period.
Sexuality becomes holy when it is oriented towards two things: first, another’s good. You honor him/her with purity; you defile him/her when you partake of his/her choicest parts outside marriage. Secondly, you honor the Creator when in marriage you avail sexual love towards new life. Sexual love glorifies God when it unites two lives for the purpose of creating life. To separate the marital bond from the prospect of children defies the purpose of our sexuality—creating life, under the aegis of our Creator.
Tell the truth: God can never bless homosexual unions. The attempt of millions today to become one with same-gender friends is a dead end. In spite of glowing reports to the contrary, homosexuality defiles and further disorients both members. We delude ourselves when we seek to make the same gender our ‘other’. No new life results, only death.
Our next five devotions center on those who mock God’s honor by pursuing delusions. (PS 4:2)
Will we join David in lamenting such delusions? Will we tell the truth, in spite of a culture steeped in the delusion of sexual immorality?
‘The body is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.’ (1 Cor 6:13)
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Tell the Truth – October 3, 2012 (Psalm 4:2)
October 3, 2012
‘How long, O men, will you turn my glory into shame? How long will you love delusions and seek false gods?’ (Ps. 4:2)
David refers to Absalom and company who for a variety of misbegotten reasons are seeking to snuff him out. I will elevate David’s exhortation to a divine one, as if God Himself were speaking to us about our sexual immorality.
What better describes the impact of sexual immorality than turning God’s ‘glory to shame’? We represent Him in our bodily humanity, in the way that we love and honor each other with these bodies. When we reserve sexual intimacy for marriage alone, we create space and place for children to become mature lovers themselves; we also grant friends the dignity of our self-giving, without sensual distortions that mess with another’s head and heart.
We glorify Him with chastity; we shame all concerned when we break boundaries that protect the sanctity of human temples—our own, those of others too. Aquinas writes: ‘God is only offended in so far that we hurt ourselves.’ Yet in spite of our hurt, we hold fast to our delusions, the lie that I can be the sole master of my fate, sexually-speaking, and rise above the bodies left behind.
We don’t need stone figures to bow before—sexy flesh-and-blood ones are far more compelling. What we are really worshipping are our own desires that must be met at an alarming, compulsive rate. Love digresses into what we get rather than what we give.
‘The body is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord.’ (1 Cor. 6: 13)
‘Father, we confess that we have turned Your glory, and the glory You intended for us, into shame, our shameful nakedness. Cover and cleanse us; remove our shame, that we might reflect Your glory once more. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we confess our sins of cowardice and compromise. We have violated Your holy commands in regards to what we have done to our bodies and other bodies. And in our compromise we have become cowards, unwilling to stand for what we know to be true for the dignity of all. We ask that You might have mercy on Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington; uphold marriage in these states, and in our nation, as the Supreme Court prepares to rule on ‘gay marriage.’
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