Secret Sins

[Jesus said,] "You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:28-29)


Throughout His ministry Jesus used the Law of Moses in the way I believe God intended it to be used, to demonstrate to us how incapable we are of fulfilling its demands. We humans want rules when it comes to a relationship with God; if we can obey all of them we can feel sure of earning our salvation by our own merits. If we can comply with every jot and tittle of the Law we can stand and pray with ourselves, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men” (Luke 18:10). But God’s ways are not our ways.

We humans spend a lot of time thinking about sex. After the need for food and sleep it is our most powerful biological need. To exacerbate the situation for us we are bombarded with sex information and sexually arousing images from television, film, print media, the Internet. So how do we avoid “lusting after” someone and committing adultery in our hearts?

There are two answers to this. The first is that I believe, when Jesus said this, he was speaking about something more than that instantaneous sexual attraction, that little physical “zing” we sometimes experience toward another person. If it was this that Jesus was speaking about we are truly all without hope. But I don’t believe this is what Jesus meant. When He says “lusting after” I believe He means thinking about that other person in a sexual way, fantasizing – even pursuing. This sort of “lusting after” requires an act of the will, which the other does not.

The other answer is, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” God, through the agency of the Holy Spirit, the Christ-life within us, can transform our hearts and bar our way into this kind of self-destructive and disobedient behavior. When we are “transformed by the renewing of [our] mind[s],” (Romans 12:2) we will fulfill the “good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (ibid.).

Preachers down through the ages have used Matthew 5:28-29 to try and keep a rein on their congregations’ impulses toward sexual dalliance. In much the same way as my father, when he saw I was considering some act of obedience, would warn me “Don’t even think about it!” pastors have urged their parishioners to steer clear of the whole topic of sexual immorality altogether. But surely this laudable and good effort was doomed to failure, and the history of the Church is replete with examples that it did fail, among communicants and clergy alike. Why? Because we, in our own strength, cannot fulfill the Law.

So far, so good. We now understand that “unless God builds the house, they labor in vain that build it”, that God alone is capable of creating holiness within us. “But so what?” we might answer. “I don’t lust in my heart after anybody, and I certainly don’t commit adultery.” But as I read this passage this morning it seemed to me that Jesus was talking about more than just sexual sin. We focus on sexual sin because, well, it’s what we do. Some of us have gotten the idea that sexual sin is the worst type of sin. Others like to go on about sexual sin because they’re not vulnerable to it, so they can enjoy feeling superior to those of us who are.

Jesus’ point in Matthew 5 is twofold. First, it’s not enough to appear to be holy. Doing things that God approves, and not doing things that He condemns, will not justify you in His eyes. We must have holy hearts. Second, we don’t have the ability, absent the Holy Spirit, to conform our hearts to God’s law. Look again at what Jesus says in Matthew 5. He equates what we would characterize as a harmless sexual fantasy with adultery. Earlier, He equated calling your brother a fool with murder.

If such common little human impulses are on a par with murder and adultery, what hope do any of us have? Only one. “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). We must die to all those little human, i.e. anti-God, impulses, and be resurrected in the life of Christ.

God bless,

- Chad

Lobsters and Babies

A while ago my son e-mailed me an article about some research done by Norwegian scientists. The study indicates that lobsters don’t have sufficiently complex nervous systems to feel pain while they’re being cooked. I forwarded the article to a vegetarian friend of mine, just to rag her a bit. (We have that kind of relationship around this topic.) She responded, quite correctly, by pointing out that the study was funded by the Maine lobstering industry, which might cast a doubt on its impartiality. Nevertheless, I do not believe lobsters have very well developed pain receptors.


Anybody who knows me knows that I believe we have a God-imposed responsibility to treat animals, whom St. Francis of Assisi called "our little brothers and sisters", humanely. Even when we kill them for food it should be done with as little suffering as possible. It's axiomatic that those who would inflict needless suffering on animals are as likely to do so to humans. The time-honored practice of killing a lobster quickly before boiling was developed by good-hearted people to minimize potential suffering, “just in case”. Those who oppose boiling lobsters do so because they hate the idea of imposing suffering on a defenseless creature. It’s a laudable sentiment and I respect it.

As I thought about this it occurred to me to wonder why some people concern themselves with whatever suffering a lobster might experience when it's boiled, but give much less thought to the suffering a human fetus experiences as it's aborted from its mother's uterus. Many of the same people who loudly declaim "Fur is murder!" are comfortable with the term "partial birth abortion" (which I see as an intellectually dishonest term; I prefer “infanticide”. Please click here, http://www.abortioninfo.net/facts/pba.shtml, for a description of the procedure. While the site is anti-abortion, the information is nonetheless accurate.)

[I should also note that by “abortion” I mean elective abortion, to end an unplanned or inconvenient pregnancy. There are abortions performed when necessary to save the life of the mother. I have a friend who was recently faced with this painful choice; there is no easy way to resolve it.]


Plenty of scientific data exist to show that human fetuses' nervous systems develop early in the first trimester (http://www.wprc.org/trimester1.phtml), yet “pro-choice” advocates don’t seem to spend a lot of time discussing that. Why would they? They are people, too, and the idea of subjecting a human fetus to an agonizing death is too horrific to think about. I think many “pro-choice” people prefer to think of a fetus as a mass of inchoate tissue, especially in the first trimester; that denial of the facts makes the choice to abort easier.


I don't have any anti-abortion stickers on my car; I'm not going to try to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. If their hearts were hard enough to render that decision in the first place, they're not going to be dissuaded by me now. If the sea-change in our attitude toward abortion is to come, it must come from us, not the government. So I guess I'm just asking us to offer at least as much consideration to human fetuses as we do to lobsters.

God bless,

- Chad

More Info

Yesterday I promised an epistle on abortion. That can wait, actually; it occurred to me that some might ask, "Who is this Chad guy, and what kind of megalomaniac is he to think that anything he says is of interest to anybody?" So, a little more background:

I was raised in an evangelical Protestant church. Though I went to Sunday School, learned Bible verses, etc., I date my actual "conversion" or spiritual rebirth in Christ to when I was 15. That's when it started to be real to me. I went to a divinity school after high school, but didn't really fit in and was asked to leave after my first year. In retrospect that looks like a blessing, though it was a big disappointment at the time.

I married at age 20, and my wife and I had two beautiful sons. The marriage had problems, however, and I, being immature and naive, didn't handle them well. In 1981 we separated, eventually to divorce. In the wake of that divorce I got some pretty rough handling from some Christian brethren which precipitated a "crisis of faith" in me; I wondered how followers of Christ could behave that way, and if they could, was Christianity really valid?

For the next 12 or 14 years I “went prodigal”, staying away from church and pretty much anything to do with Christ. The fruits of that dark time of doubt were two more failed marriages, drug and alcohol abuse – the same old sad story. Eventually I understood that there would be no adequate substitute for the “God-shaped hole” within me, and re-surrendered to the Lordship of Christ, this time for good.

Though I turned again to Christ in 1993, it was four more years before I ventured back to church, fearing more of the same kind of abuse that had driven me away to begin with. Gradually though, I realized that I couldn’t expect anybody in church to be any holier than I, and I knew how holy I wasn’t. I went back to church expecting occasional friction or conflict, and haven’t been disappointed!

Which brings me to my point: If there were no difference between Christ and us, we wouldn’t need Christ! “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast” [Ephesians 2:7-9]. This is how God does things, in a way that we humans would least expect. Most of the world’s other “major religions” stress good works as the path to salvation. God has “leveled the playing field” by requiring that we all come to Him the same way, by the Blood of Christ.

As far as this blog is concerned, God gives us gifts and mine is apparently one of gab. Down through the years I’ve often felt led/inspired/impressed to share with others what I’ve learned from Scripture. This is a perfect way to do it, while sparing the reader the sometimes troubling aspects of my personal history! I pray that it blesses you.

You’ll notice that I don’t offer the opportunity to respond on the blog. We’re all aware of what kinds of unpleasant content the World Wide Web can facilitate! and I’d like this place to be a haven from that kind of stuff. I do welcome your comments at cftIII@gmail.com. Until next time.

God bless,

- Chad

Introduction

Hello, everybody! My name is Chad and this is my brand new blog. I'm a Protestant Christian, and since Protestants hold that all believers are saints, rather than a select few, I'm St. Chad! (I mention this for the sake of those [Catholics, some Anglicans, and Eastern Orthodox] who view saints as a discrete few; I, as a Protestant, consider all believers to be saints, rather than holding myself out as one of the select few.)
There was an actual St. Chad in the 600s in England - see more about him here, http://www.saintchads.org.uk/stchad.htm . I just learned about him last week and since Anglicans, who are Protestant, revere him as an example of Christ-like life, I feel o.k. about thinking of him the same way.

A note about all this Protestant/Roman Catholic thing: I was raised in Protestantism, so it's my heritage. However, I've rejected an early conditioning to an anti-Catholic bias; the Bible says "if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus Christ and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved"[Romans 10:9 ]. So I hold that all who believe in Jesus as their Lord and Savior are Christians, even though on other ancillary doctrinal points I, or anybody else, can be mistaken. Thank God for His grace, His mercy, and His love! His requirements for salvation are few and simply comprehended. If it were up to us the requirements would be long, complicated and only include the people who agree with us in every particular. A short list, to be sure.

Next, some thoughts on abortion. Hint: I'm against it. See you next time.

God bless,

- Chad