1 Peter 2:11-12 (ESV)
Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. [12] Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evil doers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
From the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul. There are passions that wage war against your very soul. We are to abstain from these passions. By giving into these passions our soul is injured, our faith is weakened, so also our witness to others as believers in Christ.
Why is this? Paul talks of sexual sins as sins against your own body. Body and soul are not so sharply distinguished in ancient eastern thought as they are in modern western thought. And it is my gut that says this is also what Peter is talking about here. Sins sexual in nature tend to be the most degrading to a person. It is perhaps there that we see there is something very different between man and dog, and why it is so degrading to a woman to compare her to the female k9.
Oh, I have known people who have reveled in behaving like the animals they aren’t. And it tends to be destructive on their psyche. Playing Russian Roulette with std’s aside, these sins destroy a person from the inside. Even Gentiles know this instinctively, that sex should be reserved for someone you love, etc. So often though they wake up and realize they didn’t know what love was. Devastating so often to females most especially, just listen to Taylor Swift’s “Fifteen.”
And Gentiles see it. They see and notice a person with enough self respect not to engage in that sort of activity outside of marriage, male or female. They notice. They notice when you can see in another person not someone to gratify animalistic desires, but a person for whom Christ died, and thus deserves love and the respect that goes with it.
2 comments:
I was listening to a radio show yesterday on my way on CBC which was both intriguing and infuriating. the interviewer, the famous Anna Maria Tremonti, is who infuriated me.
The interview was with the author of a book "God's brain", which dealt with aspects of relgion and neurochemistry. The author was trying to be very fair and to belittle no-one, just because religion also has a neurochemical aspect, though he can't get himself to believe (he almost seemd jealous). From there, they also got into religion and sexual control.
Two things I noted: when the author (Tiger, is the last name, I think) speaks about the benefits of confession and absolution, Anna Maria asks him if this is mainly a Christian benefit, he stalled really long and hard and did not really answer (he himself has a Jewish background which he jettisoned).
Secondly, Anna Maria had to harp on "sexual freedom", and how religion gets to control it via controlling the females, which is to control the male. But somehow this "controlling" of the female is a bad thing, for her. I am guessing the female really "needs" this liberating. Have the old hippies not died out, yet? Have they learned nothing from the consequences we witness?
If only we could control the female, to protect herself.
"Have the old hippies not died out, yet? Have they learned nothing from the consequences we witness?"
No they don't seem to have died out yet. I don't know if I want them too, but I share the frustration. Don't they see it? but they don't. This sexual liberation thing is a hoax. But people want to believe it badly. I don't know so much if it is about control at all though, that is the problem. The thing is self-control, not being controlled.
Religion, at least to a Lutheran's mind, is not about controlling anyone. It certainly isn't about controlling women, though there are different roles to be played by men and women. We are not muslims. I was just reading yesterday about how concubinage was outlawed in the Roman empire 3 years after the conversion of Constantine. Now if it were about controlling women, I think concubinage would have stayed around.
But it is about freedom, freedom to control yourself, and not be controled by others, or by impulses, or anything else. And with that self control comes a bit of self respect and vice versa.
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