Wrestles with God

The issue I want to attempt to tackle is lust. Plain and simple

In my opinion this topic is all to do with DESIRES. Now that word to my mind had a bad reputation so allow me to at least speak of what I would call reasonable desires.

Nothing wrong in wanting food
Nothing wrong in smiling or being smiled at
Nothing wrong in wanting attention
Nothing wrong in keeping fit
Nothing wrong in having wine
Nothing wrong in admiring beauty
Nothing wrong in wanting to breath

From these and many more desires can be seen as not only helpful but essential to our well being. However is does also appear (to me) that when one or more of these desires takes a larger role than that appropriate, it starts to dominate and then this leads to problems.

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O.k. so that is my overall thinking on the subject but when you have a problem what do you do?

My initial thought is to take away the problem at the root. However this appears to be equivalent to chopping off a limb – fairly stupid and I don’t go in for that sort of thing!

So which way to turn, I look left and see my desires and feel overwhelmed and I look right and see a life with no desires which looks even more unappealing.

Now the subject of lust makes me feel ashamed and embarrassed of who I am which is why I decided to write this article since I believe it is still a bit of a taboo. I mean we know about sex and how it should be inside marriage but that is only one part of it. Lust is a thought which for me takes very little time and happens in the quiet secrecy of my mind. This is a much harder foe to beat, especially when the more I look to see who the culprit is the more I think it is myself.

Now I do not wish people to psycho analyze myself or anyone else but more see the problem as a whole. I can’t say for women but I am fairly certain every man on this planet has had a lustful thought. I don’t think there is a magic button for when your married either, I’m fairly positive that it is equally possible to have a lustful thought before and after your married.
This whole topic is horrifically difficult to separate from being to personal and specific (hence never making any headway into the issue itself) and to general as to do no good other than to say it is bad and you shouldn’t do it.

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SO on to the next piece of the puzzle What is a lustful thought and what is a loving thought and exactly how do those two cross?
Mix in a little friendship and romance and I’m certain I can make the line go gray. This is an area I’m deliberately leaving blank since I have not formed any definite opinions because I’m not sure you can since they appear to change depending on age and situation but I’m very willing to hear peoples views.

Just to recap
Desire – not a bad thing, except when they are out of correct proportion.
Lust a difficult topic to talk about.
What is lust?

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Moving along to the next question which is: How do you adjust the desire to the appropriate level?

I’m sure praying, fasting and reading the bible are the right answers but they seem to have what appears minimal effect for me. But this leads to a whole different topic which goes along the lines of “Deserted by God or growing in faith?”

For me my method revolves around logic and reason. This is where I try and work out logically why I am doing something and see if it is reasonable. However if you apply logic and reason to much into your life you lose that emotion which seems to make life fun and not just a program which needs to be iterated until it is the most efficient, cost effective and sacrificial life pops out.

So logic and reason seem to be inherently floored by emotion which is exactly where lust sneaks in.

So where next, I would try and be accountable to someone but this is not always possible (rarely when needed) and it is one reason why I write this article, so that I can be accountable to those that read it and hopefully give some form of hope to those that may be fellow sufferers of this most frustrating of sins.

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So I now give some more questions just in case the previous ones were not enough!
Is lust a desire – just out of proportion?
What exactly is lust?
Is giving or having one of those smiles which mean so much more good or bad?
Do you have any issues with lust?
Does it disappear after marriage?
Is masturbation sinful?
Is it o.k. to lust after your wife/future wife/girlfriend?
How do you stop a thought when your asleep?
When does emotion turn from good to bad? Or is it neutral?

All pearls of wisdom or general ranting gratefully received.
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Does it really matter if Mary was a virgin? Jews in those times always thought God had something to do with a new life…it was His will. Why should Jesus have ancestors (Matthew Ch 1 v 1) if He wasn’y really part of the family? Why did Mary refer to Joseph as Jesus’ father (Luke 2 v 48). Would it really mean anything if the virgin birth was not exactly as we thought it was?

Wherever I go I hear of the coming this or the coming that. “Read this book and know about this.” “God is going to do this with this nation or that with that one.”

No consideration taken if I am Christian or not but I often get approached by End time “prophets of doom” as a former priest used to call them.
Not that I like using that term I don’t mean it in an offensive way, if they do believe that they are doing God’s work and are there on the front line then that counts as some kind of faithful work…
However this stuff actually gets to me. Whether it is a good thing or bad thing I am still at the stage whereby I can abandon one Christian view on doctrine I have had in favour for another if it moves me to action. And this is why so-called prophets of doom’s material can get to me in a somewhat shattering fashion.
So it hits me that God’s word has something to say about Mr. Hussein’s Middle East conquest… Or that the Chernobyl nuclear blast was actually a trumpet in the Revelation of John… Or that we are approaching the final trumpets of the tribulation? Whatever the trumpets or tribulations actually are.
I have become something like a spectator just watching views and interpretations being flung about the place, and trying not to get myself too moved into action on something I feel forced to believe. What I feel lacking most of all is accountability. If something does not take place as printed by the preachers claiming “God said” then they simply resolve to some other interpretations and leave the rest behind. Well, the amount of apologies and accountability have not to my knowledge equalled the claims made that God said something about a building’s destruction.
Well here are some two comments on End Time interpretations, which I believe, represent grounds for a reasonable debate towards narrowing down ideas about the end being flung about the place:
1) Last Days or Not?
Some responses to end time prophets of doom have been that: “these days we live in have never been better.” Many people refer to the Middle Ages as “dark times.” Convincing us with phrases like “a mediaeval burning” or “a medieval torture” as something of the past which we of today who are more sensible and humane have done away with.
It has been debated that contrary to the sayings in Paul’s famous Letter to Timothy that describes the attitudes to know the Last Days we of the present age of man have actually never been better.
This statement is based on evidence from looking at the treatment of women in western society or the treatment of people from other origins. How tolerant we have become and that we are actually getting better. Things like animal rights, democracy, abolishment of capital punishment, the vote for all genders, more moderate foreign relations, multiculturalism, toleration of religions which somehow Christianity in the past was meant to deny.
2) A typical villain of End Time evil empires, Russia.
But what is behind this fear and dislike of Russia? Is it more social than religious? If we look to 50’s films or news archive about “an incoming danger” what we will come to is the Russian threat. This hasn’t worn off. We always hear of the Russian threat. From sly news casting remarks like “The Reds Attack” to sporting fears such as “Russian tycoon” to films and games like Sega’s Soviet Strike. These feelings obviously stem from the cold war communism days, which seem to suggest that Russia is the embodiment of communism or forever communists.
Looking at Russia now its seems almost impossible that anything can take place with their economic status. Perhaps there still seems to be a tinge on Soviet xenophobia. But why is it mingled with Biblical text?

They are taking over the US, and they’re coming to the UK – fundamentalists are hijacking Christianity and squeezing out people with any sense at all.

It makes me sick to think that Bush was re-elected by people claiming to believe in the same God as me, and the reason given by these people was “moral issues”.

MORAL ISSUES?

Meanwhile, I’ve had my own taste of fundamentalism back home.

Moral Issues? Presumably by that you mean ignoring any concept of right and wrong and voting on a narrow point of theology?

You know, fundamentalism ought to mean going back to the fundamentals of the Christian faith, and re-evaluating everything we do in those terms. Wouldn’t that mean providing for the poor instead of giving vast tax cuts to your super-rich friends? Wouldn’t that mean taking care of the people under your command instead of sending them on a war of personal revenge mixed with greed? Wouldn’t that mean showing an iota of concern for people? And as a president, wouldn’t it mean accepting your duty to lead wisely, allowing people to act freely instead of taking away their rights to privacy, freedom from intimidation and freedom of religion? Wouldn’t it mean showing mercy to and care for the “alien” (foreigners) in your land?

But it seems to these people that’s not what it means. What is means is not only that a previously unheard-of literalism is applied to the Bible (taking the kind of “worship the book” attitude that is taken in Islam, but which is forbidden in Christianity where we worship God and learn about him from the Bible) but also that the strange conclusions which are drawn from that literalism are taken to be more important than the basic moral laws which are infused through the whole of the Bible, not to mention explicitly stated on numerous occasions in both the old and new testaments.

Yes, strange conclusions. How many verses are used to back up the opinion that a person becomes a human on the point of conception? 2? So you vote for the hater, the greed-feeder, the alien-oppressor, because he is against abortion. How many verses do you need about taking care of the alien and the oppressed? I don’t know when a fetus becomes a person – but I do know that the leader of a country is supposed to care about the dignity of humans under his authority, instead of lying to them about how rich his tax cuts will make them (while wages in the US slip downwards) and lying to them about why they should fight and die in a weak and corrupt foreign country.

How many verses condemn homosexuality? 5? How complex is the context? Should we ban men having long hair? Should we stone people for having sex during a woman’s period? I don’t know what I think about homosexuality – I genuinely don’t know, but I do know the impression given in the Bible about how God feels about oppressing the weak and not defending the powerless.

Speaking of which, which part of “Blessed are the peacemakers,” do these people not understand? How is leaving the Israelis and Palestinians to fester a “moral issue”?

So we come to my local experience. I went to a meeting about Israel and Palestine this week, and I heard some of the violence that is being used to oppress and drive out the Palestinians from their homes. But no matter what your opinion is on this situation (and certainly the Israeli government has the right to try and protect their citizens), what really got me going was the utter idiocy of some of the people who came along.

A direct quote:

“We have to remember that God is on their [the Israelis’] side.”

WHERE DID YOU GET THAT FROM?

Even if we presuppose for a minute that Jesus’ coming and saying everything was different (remember the phrase “new covenant”?) made absolutely no difference, where did you get the idea that God has always been on the Jews’ side?

Did you forget the exile? How about when Moses had to plead with God not to wipe them all out? What about the countless times they disobeyed God and he scattered them, made their enemies defeat them, or left them to fester in their sin?

ARE YOU AN IDIOT?

The ridiculous thing about this is that there really isn’t one verse in the Bible you could twist with your idiotic literalism and come to this conclusion in the first place. Where did you get it from?

So I came closer this week to throwing in the towel than I’d like to admit. How can I say it is reasonable to believe in God, when so many of the people who say they believe in the same God are so happy to believe such stupid, stupid things?

But I remembered that there have been other heresies, and there have been other mistakes in the church, and somehow we’re still here.

And somehow I still believe in God and I still think he wants people like me to argue and persuade these people that they’ve got their priorities muddled, and they should take another look at the “fundamentals”.

But I hope he and you will forgive me for letting off steam a bit before I try.

Sometimes when I’m making a web page I want to make a link to a page just saying what a Christian is, and how to become one. I think maybe I should do that on quite a few of my web pages, because it doesn’t inconvenience anyone who isn’t interested, but it might just be useful to someone who was interested.

The problem is that I don’t trust other people. You never know what mad stuff they’ll say, or what other mad stuff will be on the other pages of their site. So I don’t want to link to other people – I want to link to you people! I trust people on Guilty Expression, and I want to hear what you think it means to be a Christian.

So I’ve made a Wiki page here:

What Is a Christian?

The idea is that I (and other people) can make a link directly pointing at this page, and anyone who is interested can find out what a Christian is, how to become one, etc.

I’ve added a bit of blurb, and some possible questions people might have, but please feel free to change anything there, add questions, re-arrange, or anthing. Let’s make this page the best of its kind on the web, with the distinctive “edge” you get on GE because you can say whatever you like here…

I’d encourage you to link to this page (when it’s a bit more finished) from comments you make on sites, or on your own blogs or web sites, wherever you think it might be useful to someone to find out more about Christianity.

If Wiki scares you, and you don’t want to learn how to edit the page directly, just click “Post Comment” on this page, and write down what you’d like to add or change, and I’ll make the changes to the real Wiki page.

Why do Christians with the knowledge of Christ still have mortal diseases?

Why don’t they naturally seek healing from those with the gifts of healing?

There seem to be Christian Saints of the past, especially Catholics, who are prayed to for healing and are looked on as “Saints”. Actually they were just as human as we are. So where are these “Saints” today?

And how can we know them?

We hear of cures and healings by the Holy Spirit in the scriptures but they all sound like they’re in the past.

Yet sometimes we hear of similar things today, in some places, done by the Saints.

So wait a second! Are these Saints the saints we pray to, the same ones we hear about today?

Where are they today?

Why don’t we meet them? Today’s saints? They sound nice don’t they?

Are we dying, crying? So why don’t we seek them for comfort and solace?

Who are they today?

Aren’t these saints actually the true ministries, churches and the like?

We like to say we love them, to say we listen to them and that they have wisdom and love, but in truth they could look at us, and our situations of today, in our little safety-zones, and say the elect, wherever they may be, haven’t reached me.

The old Saints may be just us, and we haven’t reached ourselves.

I believe St. Therese of Lisieux once wrote: “Suffering is the very best gift He (God) has to give us. He gives it only to his closest friends.” And all I get from this is that I wish I could witness alive who lives, sees and communicates these virtues in the truth of suffering.

This was going to be a well thought out article about how to “do” church better, but instead it’s a stupid article about how pointless anything like that is.

Our church is planting a congregation (note: not a church, a congregation i.e. a morning service in a different place – don’t ask…) and I’m involved in it. During a meeting we were having recently we got on to how and whether we should change our style to reflect the fact that we are hoping to attract new people, some of whom will have been put off church, and some of whom won’t have any experience of church at all.

I felt it was pretty obvious we should make some adjustments, but some others weren’t even convinced of that, thinking that we should trust the power of God’s word (and presumably his Spirit?). I think the flaw in that argument is the idea that somehow we’re speaking God’s word in the perfect way at the moment. Anyway, that’s a side rant.

So we talked about a few things e.g. changing the sermon topics from reasonably obscure bits of Moses’ life to something more directly applicable to the central Christian message (is this link a good one? Has anyone got a better one?). This is complicated because we want the two congregations to remain one church, and so the argument is that we are more unified if we both share the same sermons. Anyway, I digress again. The outcome was that we would send off a little group of people from this big meeting to discuss ways we might change our services – to be more newbie-friendly, or just to make them better. I volunteered to be in that group.

I thought I was such a dynamic independent-thinking radical figure that we couldn’t fail to have superb ideas with me there.

I forgot that the whole exercise is utterly futile.

Let’s look at some possible ideas in turn:

1. Dump church and become some kind of “cell church” or other newfangled thing.

Futile because: no-one in the church would agree to it, it’s pretty unbiblical to only meet in small groups – the church in Acts met together often and it was very important to their communication with God, small groups can go off on mad ideas very easily, some mad people would get control of groups and become megalomaniacs, throwing out established stuff and starting again is fundamentally bad because it leads to, and displays, unfounded arrogance.

2. Don’t sing in church because it’s weird for newcomers.

Futile because: no-one in the church would agree to it, it’s hard enough to worship anyway without taking away a way some people manage it, everything else we do in church is weird too – are we going to get rid of everything?

3. Replace services with “coffee mornings” every few weeks, with talks followed by discussion groups over coffee.

Futile because: some people in the church will think it’s heretical to have something not immediately recognisable as church on a Sunday morning, we’ll get out of step with the other service’s sermons, how would we persuade anyone to come, it wouldn’t offer anything to the people who are already Christians.

4. Get people up the front more often to do testimonies, songs, drama, notices about good causes etc.

Futile because: the usual suspects would still be the only people who went up the front, this wouldn’t feel any more inclusive anyway because of the jargon we all share, drama is always just plain rubbish, someone might want to do a dance.

5. Try and make sermons more accessible by explaining things and giving the central Christian message every week

Futile because: sermons are weird and intimidating no matter how understandable they are, people won’t be able to do it, twisting the sermon to mention how you become a Christian every week will be unnatural and make you sound either confused or like a salesman.

6. Explain songs before singing them

Futile because: the explanation will contain more jargon than the song, people will forget, we’ll get out of the habit in no time, people can’t explain things properly.

We ended up deciding to suggest 3, 4, 5 and 6 to the next main meeting, and I tried my best to contribute to ideas, but that’s all we could come up with between us, and as you can see by my helpful annotations I think they’re all completely futile. No-one wants anything to change, and no-one is capable of changing even if they wanted to.

So we’re going to carry on having a little version of the services we had in the other congregation, and we’re going to expect people to arrive and love it by magic. And I guess God can do that magic if he wants. We’re certainly not going to do any ourselves.

Haven’t got the imagination.

I recently heard a sermon by a man called David Pawson who defied anyone to show him where it says “God’s love is unconditional” in the bible.

Initially it was like being hit on the head when you least expect it. However after the initial shock I listened to what his points were and as far as I can see.
He said the gospel has two parts

The first is justification through Jesus’ sacrifice which allows us to approach God. (by using Jesus’ righteousness – because God can not look on sin).

Now the second part of the gospel is that you are now in a position to made righteous like him. This is the Freedom God gives.

The Freedom God talks about is not the freedom we (society) talk about. The Freedom that God talks about is where we are Free to be Holy. Notice We don’t have to be and not that you should be, but you can be Holy with God’s help.

This is the Freedom that God talks about. The Freedom from sin or the Freedom to be Holy

NOW

Ok this may not be radically new to what you have heard before but notice there is not the word love in this gospel.

The point being made is that God is Righteous and so he does what is right. Jesus did what is Right or Righteous, to save us.

Until you are covered by the righteousness of Jesus you are essentially covered in sin. Now God is righteous and he will judge rightly and bring everything to light.

So Where is the ‘love’ that so many people preach

Well God’s love is for the redeemed. He can not ‘love’ you until you are righteous. So once you have repented and follow the ways of Jesus, then you experience God’s love, but not before.

So my title of this piece is God’s love is conditional, and I think it is conditional on you being righteous.

So you can not come “just as you are” to worship God. First of all you must be righteous and then you may boldly approach His throne.

But if you are not righteous, well God has been described as many things including an all consuming fire.

So this is why in the bible you only hear people say “repent and be baptised” and not “follow God because he loves you”.

Any thoughts?

Every one of my weekends is ruined by church. From Saturday lunchtime I’m ratty, and by Saturday evening I’m very nervous, and often don’t want to go to bed because of what’s coming the next morning. On Sunday lunchtime I’m filled with a deep sense of relief, and I can get on with my life.

Why?

I honestly don’t know. I’ve always been like this. I remember having tantrums about having to go every Sunday when I was quite young. I’ve never enjoyed church, or felt neutral towards it (except for a few weeks when I was at uni when I used to meet a certain young lady on the way).

In the style of “The curious incident of the dog in the night-time,” here is a list of some things I don’t like about church:

Talking to people

Singing

The first is probably a major part of it, and the second is completely minor. But really this doesn’t explain it.

It’s always been a totally irrational thing for me. I don’t feel like I’ve got any great hurt from previous churches, and I certainly don’t have any problem with my current church. In fact we’ve started going to a new service we’ve set up recently, and almost everyone who goes I either consider a friend, or would genuinely like to know better. I really like the people, and would like to have them round for dinner (after church, of course, so I’m in a good mood).

I wonder whether it’s a “spiritual” thing, or a “psychological” thing in some way. I think my parents’ attitude to church was always quite ambivalent.

Does anyone feel like me?

What can I do about it?