Category: Culture

Kissing – this is popular…

Silva

(11/10/10) It has been two years since I posted this bombshell.  It continues to be one of the posts that gathers the most attention.  I think that’s interesting so I thought I’d return to this post to “freshen it up…”

I recently finished reading an ugly book, “Guyland” by Michael Kimmel.  I say it’s ugly because it lays out the milieu in which our young boys and men must live and it is ugly.  Read long enough (not too long, actually) and you’ll see that there continues to be wholesale assaults on our sexuality.  This is both interesting and not surprising.  We are sexual beings and for us the inclination to live sexually is normal, even built in.  I’ve often asked folks what is the purpose of sex drive, anyway?  Beyond the obvious, it is the one thing that takes our minds off of ourselves and onto another.  Now, we pervert and misuse this built-in inclination, but it is there nonetheless.

That’s what this post is about.  Sure, it’s about kissing, but inasmuch as K-I-S-S-I-N-G represents how we live as sexual beings.  Small behaviors provide windows into larger heart issues.  PDA (premarital displays of affection) are oftentimes quite small (i.e., holding hands, frontal hugs or kissing) and so it all seems unimportant and my attention to it all the more outrageous or even offensive.

When I wrote this post, I asked for consideration of its content.  One question that I did not ask was “why not refrain from PDA?”  The energy to defeat these proposals was vigorous, why was that?  Here’s the post again in totality and I’d invite answers to these two questions.

I love kissing.  I’ve been doing it for longer than I should’ve been.  Now, that’s both bad and just a fact.  Fact is, I think men and women shouldn’t kiss until they’re married.  Now, you know what I mean: K-I-S-S-I-N-G (not just pecking; or holy kisses: Rom. 16:16, 1 Co. 16:20, 2 Co. 13:12, 1 Thess. 5:26, 1 Pet. 5:14).  In fact, I have 11 reasons why non-married, dating-or-not folks shouldn’t kiss.  See what you think:

  1. Witnessing purity will go out the window; purity means “pure” not slightly pure
  2. It is committing sexual sin: “porneia” (Greek New Testament word) = any sexual immorality at all; I think that means acting like a married person before it is time
  3. There is no biblical reason to kiss and no biblical examples of non married people being intimate
  4. You are stealing from the future
  5. It is proof of the flesh winning the battle; i.e., failure to exercise self control
  6. It will complicate everything; you won’t be able to know each other truly because you’ve known someone sexually
  7. If you have any sexual history, it will become alive again; you will be battling old temptations and practices
  8. Your significant others’ sexual history may become alive again
  9. Each time you meet, you would be fighting not to be consumed with each other physically; it will dominate your thoughts
  10. It shows that you don’t respect each other enough to save yourself
  11. You will likely be committing spiritual adultery – loving someone more than Christ; if you loved Christ, you’d treat people like sisters and brothers and not spouses

I think it is easy to say small occurrences of PDA are harmless.  Except that they aren’t really.  Every act of PDA no matter how small had its origins in our hearts.  What happens there is not small.  It’s big enough to move you to act, isn’t it?

I guess, I’d want to see good reason for kissing.  The Bible clearly tells us to treat each other like siblings and not spouses until we’re spouses.  It tells us to refrain from sexual immorality.  It tells us to stay pure.  It tells us to maintain fidelity to Jesus Christ.

Can you kiss and tell Christ?

Coronations and Considerations

Silva

I wonder how many have been watching the Democratic National Convention in Denver.  It started on the 25th and tonight will likely draw the most watchers yet (Obama is going to do his thing).  During these conventions and campaigns people start to raise expectations that bad things are about to start stopping and good things will start starting.  With new candidacies / regimes comes good things (that’s the theory).  Of course, a little digging will reveal that’s more a biennial hope than a present reality (Pew Research 1st 100 Days of Democratic Congress).

But, still, the impulse is not bad: no one likes days of affliction.  And we’re all looking for the ways to make things better.  I’ve been considering my own “affliction” and the search for change and lately been resting in how one helps me to see through to that change.

So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. (12)

Return O Lord!  How long?  Have pity on your servants! (13)

Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. (14)

Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, and for as many years as we have seen evil. (15)

Let your work be shown to your servants and your glorious power to their children. (16)

Psalm 90:12-16

Look here.  Anyone who’s lived through a regime change or two knows that things don’t change with the banging of gavels in hallowed white power halls.  It doesn’t stop us from hoping things would change, but ultimately they only slight shift.  In these Bible verses, we see a different picture.

What the folks who are so attentive to political campaigns, conventions and coronations need is to see those things through a grid informed by those verses.  It is not as if we should no longer care about the political process – now, by all means, care.  It is just that caring means thinking rightly about them…

First, start with verse 15.  Our days are difficult and full of affliction.  The verse is honest even if we’re not.  Admit it: anger, frustrations, disappointment, pain, suffering, fear, and uncertainty are what we’re swimming in.  Ignoring it only makes us look stupid.  And, in that stupidity we tend to attribute those to things we cannot understand (which is untrue).  In fact, our difficulty the writer attributes to God.  Look again.  The Bible never impugns God for this (a story for another post) but simply here attributes these things to God and His plan.  But, God doesn’t act without a reason.

So, secondly, why all of this affliction and difficulty?  Look at verse 12: we’re proud.  In that verse, the author asks God to “teach us to number our days” which is another way of saying, “teach us to think rightly and humbly about our lives.”  Without it, we are fools.  With it, we get a “heart of wisdom.”  We are afflicted because we are proud not because a Republican is President, Democrats control the Congress or Roe vs. Wade is the law.  Here is where convention watchers go astray.

You – eyes glued to MSNBC – are proud and BH Obama can’t do a thing about that.

You and I need perspective on our lives.  We are, in fact, significant yet small.  It gets tough for us when we think we’re just significant.  That was the problem the Psalm was written to address because we ARE significant but we are ALSO small.

What’s the pathway out of affliction?  It is the one to humility.  That road is paved with the work and power of God and it doesn’t go through Denver or Minneapolis.  So, thirdly, verse 16 asks God to imprint His work in our minds and His power in the minds of our children.  The author believes if we are cozy with the work of God in the Bible (and our lives), we are likely to be more prone to consider ourselves rightly.  In so doing, God will figure prominently and we will not.  That will please Him and He will restrain affliction upon us.

One thing more, though.  Verse 14 shows us that even as God is pleased with our self-awareness of smallness, He is just as pleased to satisfy us with His steadfast love which leads to great joy.  Smallness like this and joy go together.

Watch the conventions, but once they end, turn the channel to consider the majestic work of God and there is where you’ll find answers to your questions.

What will they do when they’re older?

Silva

Cruising the net a while back, I found an article that I thought was amazing. Amazing may be strong but nonetheless it stopped me cold. Students at a high school in Wilbury Connecticut will get money for passing AP exams. See for yourself: http://wcbstv.com/topstories/CT.Exam.Cash.2.700819.html. When I was a senior in high school, these AP courses were just coming out. I had AP Biology with a wonderfully demanding short-just-recovered-from-cancer-pistol-of-a-woman teacher. She was excellent and the class was brutal.

In the last few years, I’ve met kids who take multiple AP courses – torturous (and what for?). Nonetheless, what’s the deal with this school in CT? I know the article doesn’t indicate any foul play by the school (funding provided by a grant) but the concept of financial rewards for difficult jobs is so mercenary.

No doubt it will be effective as it appeals to our baser motives: avarice and accomplishment. But what it provides is a lesson in “why you should do things hard.” Of course, the short answer is “you will make money.” But what if that isn’t actually the answer most often given in life? Am I baiting my children with the promise of higher rewards (good college, a BS, nice trophy spouse, sizeable diploma, pride, big fat salary) in order to get them to do something hard? Man will that backfire.

Tell that to Justin Martyr.

Justin’s Second Apology was written soon after Marcus Aurelius became emperor in 161. In these writings, Justin tried to show that the Christian faith alone was truly rational. He taught that the Logos (Word) became incarnate to teach humanity truth and to redeem people from the power of the demons.

Four years later, Justin and his disciples were arrested for their faith. When the prefect threatened them with death, Justin said, “If we are punished for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, we hope to be saved.” They were taken out and beheaded.

(from http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/special/131christians/martyr.html )

Not too many beheading these days (at least in the West). However, when our children grow up and are asked by God, the church, or their conscience to step up to something that has no financial benefit whatsoever (but is right), will they have been trained to do it?

Now, maybe I’m being dramatic. But, at the most greatly esteemed and feared United States Military Academy (from which I graduated), they made us fold our socks so they smiled. Why? Did it matter all that much? Not in the moment. But, if I were to have been planning a combat mission, would attention to detail be important? Of course. And how would I have learned it? With my socks.