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Scrupulosity Worried about Salvation Blasphemous Thoughts Severe Guilt Feelings The Help You Need       The following is desperately needed by two types of Christians:   1.     Everyone plagued by blasphemous thoughts 2.   Or those who, despite repeated assurances, keep worrying that God might not have forgiven them. If you fall into either category, your friends, loved ones, counselors and spiritual advisors will end up not only distressingly perplexed and frustrated but unable to give you the assurance you crave. The condition affecting you is so rarely understood that the people who care about you need these webpages almost as much as you do. I strongly recommend that you not only read all of the following but that you encourage these people to read it as well. (I consider this so important that I have gone to the effort of providing a version of this webpage just for those who care about you:  Tormented by an Over-Sensitive Conscience . The main difference is simply that I have slightly lessened some of the detail in case they are busy or less motivated to read it all than you are.)   If you suffer from uncontrollable blasphemous thoughts, the following is best understood after reading the previous page:  When a Christian Can’t Stop Thinking Blasphemous Thoughts .   Worrying that God has not forgiven them and suffering unstoppable blasphemous thoughts might seem distinctly different but at the root of both dilemmas is devout Christians being plagued by the very thing they most fear. And it turns out that there is a common cause. Such fear has no biblical or spiritual basis and yet it persists and to their minds it seems fully justified, no matter how much reassurance they receive from spiritual advisors and even from God himself.   Starting at  Feeling Condemned? There’s Hope!  and continuing for almost sixty webpages, I have assembled a ludicrously vast amount of biblical and theological information and testimonies proving that no matter how gross a person’s sins or how often the sins were repeated before or after salvation, there is not a person on the planet who cannot be fully forgiven by God by simply looking to Jesus for forgiveness.   My store of information has grown so enormous because, even after poring over all the proof and careful reasoning I had amassed, people kept writing to me, year after year, tormented by the irrational fear that they could somehow be the sole exception to God’s promises or somehow disqualify themselves or that they had managed to find some sort of loophole in God’s clear promises. They seemed unaware that they were going to almost insane lengths trying to justify their needless worries.   Moved by the intensity of their anguish, I kept piling up the evidence; expecting these dear people to eventually accept the power of rational, Bible-based argument. Even when at last they seemed to grasp it, however, their relief was short-lived. In just a few days they would be back with yet another supposed reason for them continuing to doubt their salvation. Eventually, to my astonishment, I was forced to conclude that if ten thousand angels spent ten thousand hours emphatically declaring to these people that they were genuinely redeemed, their assurance would begin to melt away and their doubts return soon after the heavenly visitors had completed their assignment. These special people did not see it that way. They were sure that such a sign would settle the matter for life, but my long experience counseling literally hundreds of them has shown me otherwise.   For years I prayed and prayed, seeking spiritual insight as to how these people could have their breakthrough. Finally, I discovered that my approach would never work because these otherwise normal, intelligent people suffer from an anxiety disorder that keeps undermining their ability to accept rational argument. In all other areas of their lives they are perfectly rational but not in whatever matter is of the greatest emotional importance to them. Not surprisingly, for Christians, this problem usually targets assurance of salvation, since this is the matter that is of supreme importance to them.   If you suffer this, I understand your agony. God’s solution, however, is very different from what you expect, and you and I will be at cross purposes until you can see beyond the superficial to comprehend what is really happening to you. Our priorities will differ as much as if you had acute appendicitis and want nothing but painkillers whereas my understanding of the medical necessities obligates me to focus not on pain relief (as much as I passionately want that for you) but on the  cause  of the pain and to convince you of the critical importance of getting proper treatment. Just as pain killers would not be the real answer to appendicitis but would actually lessen your motivation to get the help you desperately need, so assurance that you are divinely forgiven or ending your unwanted thoughts is not the help you really need, despite it seeming that way to almost every sufferer.   If, for example, horrendously blasphemous thoughts against the Holy Spirit keep flooding your mind, you are being hit by torturously strong temptation, but the Tempter is hoping to get you so confused that you do not even recognize the temptation. Blasphemy is  not  the temptation. The spirit realm is amazingly unconcerned about that. Not even gross sin is the real temptation. The temptation is to  stop believing  that because of Jesus, God forgives, loves and delights in you.   You might be sure God’s forgiveness and cleansing extend to everyone else, but your ugly temptation is to believe you have managed to expose a flaw in God’s love and goodness; that the power of Christ’s sacrifice is not as infinite as Scripture claims; that your repeated sin or atrocious thoughts are able to make a liar out of the God who offers forgiveness to all who accept Christ’s cleansing; that you have somehow found a loophole in Scripture to all of God’s promises regarding salvation; that because you feel guilty, uneasy and distant from God that your feeling is more spiritually dependable than the love and integrity of God and the power of the cross.   Just as an addict yearns for a miraculous end to withdrawal symptoms, you yearn for a miraculous deliverance from your distress. But although you are sure miraculous deliverances from the temptation to doubt would be in your best interest and God’s best interest, they are not.  Life’s Mysteries  explains this surprising truth but if you read it, you must keep in focus that the spirit world does not even see blasphemy as the temptation. The real temptation is to fall for the Deceiver’s malicious lies that if you suffer disgusting thoughts or have done some other hideous thing and then sought forgiveness, then God no longer delights in you. The temptation is a concerted attempt to trick you into giving up on God because you wrongly suppose the blood of Christ no longer cleanses you. It is like being conned into thinking Fort Knox is filled with fake gold. It is only by having to battle this temptation to doubt that you can truly become Christlike and grow in faith. Miraculous deliverances are superficial. They leave us as weak as being carried everywhere would cause our muscles to waste away. No matter how appallingly agonizing your affliction is, and how pathetic and ungodly it makes you feel, it can become a springboard to spiritual greatness.   As surely as there is no quick or easy way to become an Olympic champion, so it takes enormous effort to become a spiritual champion. You might simply want an easy life and to languish in mediocrity, but you are stupendously loved of God. He believes in you and has far greater plans for you than you dare dream. Please don’t break his heart. The easy life is not for you. You were born to rule.   Because the road to spiritual greatness is long and hard, you need all the insight and support and encouragement you can get. That’s what my webpages are about. As an expression of the immensity of God’s love for you, I have devoted years and years and years of agonizing prayer, counseling, study, and wrestling with words; pouring my life into providing you with everything I can find to help you. I am far from perfect, but having done my utmost, I have no choice but to leave the final critical step to you. It is up to you to reciprocate by devoting to reading these pages an effort equal to at least a fraction of all the prayer and mental exertion I have given to amass this support for you.   What these webpages offer is so immense that to get the equivalent through personal counseling would cost you thousands of dollars. Instead, moved by how precious to God you are, I have provided it all for free. Even if an athletic coach generously offered all his services for free, however, it would still cost a would-be champion massive effort. That is unavoidable. You must be willing to invest significant effort into prayerfully reading and re-reading and re-reading all that I have provided for you. All my years of passionate prayer and searching has found no alternative to having to keep plowing through these webpages.   Right now, you might wish it were less reading but when you find your anxiety grinding on and on and on, you will be thankful I have written so much. I have provided all this reading to keep your mind fixed on reassuring truths and guidance, rather than slipping into panic. Constant reminders are needed to help counterbalance the constant anxiety that keeps tricking the mind into supposing there is a genuine reason for alarm.   If the pages were brief you would get bored reading them over and over and over, and I cannot guarantee other websites.   My pages are like having instant access to a counselor who is on-call every moment of every day of every year. I cannot do this personally for the thousands of people who crave it, but my writings can.   I might update my pages from time to time but print off at least some pages so that you can access them even during a power failure, or some other unforeseen circumstance.   I’m no substitute for God, however. Read prayerfully and don’t lessen your fellowship with God, no matter how many appallingly blasphemous thoughts and mental images flood your prayers and how much false condemnation tries to terrorize you.   The Mysterious Power of Anxiety   Earlier in this series of webpages (starting at  Feeling Condemned? There’s Hope! ) I have provided enormous quantities of detailed information, carefully explaining all the biblical, spiritual and rational reasons why forgiveness is fully available to absolutely everyone who puts faith in Jesus’ forgiveness, no matter how gross or repeated their sin (before or after salvation, including the vilest blasphemies) and no matter how plagued they are by blasphemous thoughts. Later in this series you will find many testimonies from people whose atrocious blasphemies and hideous sins after salvation confirm that forgiveness is available to all. (I am almost ashamed to include these testimonies, however, because they are totally unnecessary. It is like suggesting the Bible is unreliable and God might be a selfish liar unless people have testimonies that prove otherwise.) In addition to all this proof, I have another long series of webpages beginning at  How Much does God Love Me? Receiving a Personal Revelation of God’s Love for You  proving the magnitude of God’s personal, never-ending love for every person.   All of this only helps normal people, however. There are those who require such a radically different approach that it usually flabbergasts people when they first hear it. To ease the shock I will try to gently prepare you. First, you must understand what it means to have an anxiety disorder and that it is common for people to have no idea they are suffering from one.   Anxiety acts as an alarm, warning us that something needs urgent attention to avoid a disaster. An alarm triggered by a technical malfunction sounds exactly like the real thing and so we rightly panic when it occurs and feel compelled to check whether we are in danger. If we examine the most obvious source of danger and find no reason for concern but the alarm keeps going, we will feel compelled to check another possible source, and another, and another. If we finally convince ourselves that we have eliminated every possible source of danger, we will heave a sigh of relief and reset the alarm. Should the alarm be faulty, however, it is likely to go off again in a day or so, and again we will panic and feel compelled to investigate. If this happens day after day, it will get very tiring, but alarms are designed to be too irritating to ignore and each time it goes off we have no way of telling whether this time there is genuine danger.   An anxiety disorder subjects a person to continual false alarms, each of which feels just like the real thing – terrifyingly so – and despite doing everything we can think of to put our minds at rest, the nagging, deeply worrying anxiety will continue. As if this were not disconcerting enough, anxiety feels like a guilty conscience (which makes it seem spiritual) and the inner alarm it sets off is so overwhelming that it drowns out our ability to feel peace or joy or God’s presence (which again adds to our worry that something must be spiritually wrong).   Christians suffering this will assume they must be in spiritual danger and jump to some conclusion as to what could be the cause. Even when they finally reach the point of being sure that what they initially thought could be sabotaging them spiritually is not a valid cause for concern, the alarm will keep blaring (anxiety) and so they will simply switch to assuming there must be some other spiritually valid reason for concern. The inner alarm feels so terrifyingly real that they get highly inventive in dreaming up excuses for believing their never-ending anxiety rather than believing the reality that God has forgiven them. There is  no valid reason  for anyone seeking forgiveness through Jesus to doubt that they are cleansed from all sin, but here are some examples of the  false reasons  people come up with for doubting their salvation:    They have blasphemed the Spirit  They keep falling into sin *  They are more sinful than anyone else on the planet *  They never feel God’s presence *  They don’t have enough faith *  They have not adequately repented *  They have demons *  They have sold their soul to the devil *  They are not sincere enough *  They are not chosen by God *  They have denied Jesus *  They cannot pray without blaspheming *  They are angry at God *  They don’t feel guilty when they sin *  They have found some Scripture or authority that confirms their fears *  They feel condemned whenever they read the Bible or go to church *  They never feel peace or joy or an inner witness that they are saved *  They keep having dreams or supernatural signs that they are not saved.   Not one of these things is a valid reason for doubting your salvation. None of them can separate us from the love of God. None of them – nor anything else you dream up – is unforgivable.  If you were to keep stubbornly refusing to believe that God is loving enough or powerful enough to forgive you through Jesus, or you kept refusing God permission to rule in your life and you were not in the slightest willing even for God to make you willing, you would have a problem until you changed your mind. The moment you change your mind, however, total forgiveness and cleansing from all sin is yours.   It is with reluctance that I provide the above list because it is like listing a thousand diseases never before considered by a hypochondriac who keeps needlessly fearing he is ill. The bottom line, however, is that anyone going down this path will keep being plagued by anxiety, no matter what he does, and the sooner he realizes it, the sooner he is likely to accept his need for an entirely different approach.   Evil spiritual powers can never touch God’s love for us, nor the infinite power of the cross. All they can do is meddle with our feelings, in the hope that we will start believing our changeable feelings rather than stick to believing in God’s unchangeable love and forgiveness. So anyone looking to his feelings to confirm that he is right with God is leaving himself wide open to doubting his salvation. In fact, until completely weaned off treating feelings as a spiritual barometer, every one of us is dangerously vulnerable to spiritual deception. Moreover, if anyone with an anxiety disorder looks to his feelings to confirm that God accepts him, doubt will always win because, no matter how close he is to God, highly unsettling anxiety will keep dominating his feelings.   I suggest that you not only pray the following but that you print it out so that you can keep returning to it:   In the name of Jesus, who shed his blood that I might have eternal life, I rebuke and refuse to surrender to any and every evil power that would like me to doubt the infinity of God’s love and goodness and to doubt the power of Jesus’ sacrifice to forgive  all  sin. I hereby relinquish everything that is not of God and I pledge my allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ, affirming him as my Lord and Savior and declaring that the cleansing power of his sacrifice is stronger than any sin I could ever commit.   Anxiety might plague me, Lord, but I praise you that you are stronger than any unwanted feeling, doubt, worry, guilt, fear or disgusting thoughts. Moreover, you have promised to work all things together for the good of those who love you. I love you, so this is your promise to me.   I thank you that this persistent anxiety that harasses and confuses me is my opportunity to grow spiritually stronger, just as having to keep running uphill is a chance to grow physically stronger. Faith is more precious than gold (1 Peter 1:7) and faith can only develop during times when feelings and circumstances clash with what you want me to believe. So I praise you for this opportunity to grow in faith. And I thank you that even though, because of the very nature of the trial, it will feel as if you have left me, you are actually with me every step of the way. Despite everything that might plague me and confuse me, you have pledged never to leave me nor forsake me (Hebrews 13:5). Regardless of what I feel, you remain faithful and true.   You are Truth and you declare over and over such things as:   1 John 1:9  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.   You rightly say that if I claim to have never sinned, I deceive myself and accuse you of lying. In the same way, if I, who have confessed to you my sins and put my faith in Jesus, claim to be unforgiven, I also deceive myself and accuse you of being a liar.   Anxiety feels like a guilty conscience. This tempts me to dishonor you by concluding that just because I  feel  guilty, you must have lied when you made this promise to cleanse all who confess their sin to you. Despite these horrible feelings, however, I make you, not my feelings, my God – my spiritual authority and source of truth. Since you, in the above Scripture, declare me purified from all unrighteousness, then I  am  purified from  all  unrighteousness, no matter what I experience and how powerfully I might be tempted to think otherwise. So I hang on to your truth, refusing to contradict you, no matter what feelings and doubts rage within.   I cannot stop powerful feelings that are contrary to your truth – even Jesus was tempted – but I can repent of caving into the temptation to accept those feelings as truth. I repent of being so carnal as to think that a mere feeling – rather than your Word – indicates spiritual truth. I have sinned by thinking that you might not be the God of infinite love and that you therefore must prove your love for me by giving me signs or feelings or assurances. I have insulted you by wanting such “proof,” as if you could lie or be unloving unless what you say is true matches my feelings or circumstances. From now on, I steadfastly refuse to believe that any feeling, no matter how strong, persistent and convincing, is a more reliable source of truth than you are.   “The just shall live by faith” (KJV, cited four times in the Bible – Habakkuk 2:4. Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11; Hebrews 10:38). So I choose to live by faith, not feelings. I hereby renounce feelings, or anything less than you alone, as a reliable source of spiritual truth.   The perfection of divine love means that you passionately love even your worst enemies; more fervently yearning to forgive them than any human is capable of craving anything. You recoil at the thought of in any way letting your beloved Son’s agonizing sacrifice for the sins of the entire world be in vain. You want  no one  to perish (1 Timothy 2:3-4; 2 Peter 3:9; Ezekiel 33:11).   You tell us to forgive “seventy times seven” and yet I keep worrying that you will tire of forgiving me, as if perhaps you were a hypocrite. The truth is that you love me far, far more than any human has ever managed to love himself or anyone else. Driven by infinite love, you passionately long to keep on forgiving me and to lavish your mercy upon me for all eternity. Since this is your burning desire, propelling you to the extreme of the cross, I was wrong to ever  beg  you to forgive me, as if there were any reluctance within you to cleanse me. You are  eager  to forgive; your reluctance is in giving signs and feelings because that makes me spiritually vulnerable by fostering a dependence upon means that the Deceiver can easily replicate and manipulate. Your word declares that it is faith, not signs and feelings, that is “the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1, KJV). I repent of playing into the devil’s hand by seeking such things instead of simply accepting your loving forgiveness. I acknowledge that signs and feelings are the Devil’s playthings – his way to entice us to get our eyes off the cross and the integrity of your character. He cannot touch spiritual truth but he can toy with signs and feelings. Faith is our only shield; our sole protection against his trickery.   So I commit myself to start honoring you by stubbornly clinging to you, no matter how many doubts, fears, worries, guilt feelings and unwanted thoughts scream within me.   I cease right now from insulting you by wanting signs, feelings or assurances as proof that you love and forgive everyone – including me – who comes to you in the name of Jesus Christ. I renounce all attempts to get such things. The integrity of your character is all that I need. I resolve from now on to live as you have called all your children to live – by sheer faith, and nothing else.   As surely as you need to keep recharging your cell phone, I expect you will need to keep returning to this prayer because this commitment is enormously difficult to maintain when plagued by relentless, torturously strong anxiety and/or well-meaning preachers who have no idea of the havoc they wreak in some people’s lives by speaking as if feelings matter.   The great illusion for anxious people is that they will at last find peace if they resolve a particular issue. The truth is that an anxiety disorder means that anxiety will continue no matter how many issues are resolved. Just like a faulty alarm that keeps going off no matter how safe the situation, the anxiety will keep on going and it will keep on feeling as if there must be some genuine reason for concern and so their mind will stay in overdrive trying to find some reason, rather than accept the fact that it is a false alarm.   It usually takes months, or even years, of hard work for these dear, anxiety-plagued people to become convinced that just one of the supposed reasons for concern listed above is not valid, but when they finally get there, the anxiety will continue as strong and insistent as ever and so,  unless they reach the point of learning to live with the false alarm of anxiety and stop treating it as genuine , all that will happen is that they move to obsessing over another supposed reason for doubting.   It often takes years of agony before they finally realize it but it turns out that, for many devout Christians, nothing – with the possible exception of medical help – is capable of easing their anxiety (the source of their doubts, fears and overwhelmingly strong guilt feelings). Like a thirsty man chasing a mirage, these genuine Christians sincerely believe there must be some assurance that would finally satisfy them. They will temporarily feel better after receiving a full explanation of why their fears are spiritually, biblically and rationally groundless but the devastating worry that they are doomed will soon return. Despite the mirage seeming so real, the truth is that this side of heaven there is literally no experience or proof, no matter how stupendous or spectacular that could permanently quell their fears. To illustrate, let’s go to extremes.   Suppose not just one but hundreds of gigantic angels in dazzling white clothes and supernatural glory appeared to you and declared that Almighty God is pleased with you and will reward you eternally. If you are one of the Christians plagued by an anxiety disorder (and vast numbers are without realizing it), you would be on Cloud Nine; flooded with peace and joy. You would finally feel certain that you are saved and that you will never doubt again. Within a few days, however, you would yet again become aware of the anxiety incessantly gnawing at you; inducing panic and causing your mind to go into overdrive wondering why you cannot rid yourself of this strong gut feeling that something is seriously wrong. Rather than accept that the feeling itself must be wrong, one’s mind dutifully seeks to ensure one’s safety by assuming that for as long as the anxiety continues, a real threat might be present. In a protective frenzy it keeps seeking any way in which there could be danger despite that supernatural confirmation that all is well. Before long, under the relentless scrutiny of your intellectual powers, possibilities will begin to emerge, such as, “What if that divine visitation were just my imagination or a dream or wishful thinking or a false memory or a psychotic episode? What if what I experienced were someone playing a clever prank with lasers and holograms? What if it were demonic deception? What if that angelic pronouncement were true at the time but I’ve since sinned and am now lost forever? What if . . . ?” Soon, all that relief and certainty you had just a few days ago will have vanished.   How the Natural and the Spiritual Interact   I am still cautiously inching my way to the part that initially staggers deeply spiritual people because on the surface, it seems unspiritual. Some readers might wish I would jump ahead – and you may skip this section if you insist – but most will need this introduction more than they currently realize. In fact, after proceeding through this webpage and ones that follow, many who have read this section will begin to discover that it is more valuable than they had thought and will want to return to read it again with renewed interest.   Often the natural and the supernatural are not opposed. Indeed, they often work hand in hand. After all, they were both lovingly created by the same infinitely good God, and both realms have been attacked by the same anti-God spiritual forces.   Not only is it not unspiritual to consider the natural, it is often unspiritual to ignore the natural. For instance, James 2:15-16 ridicules those who say spiritual things to people in physical need but do nothing to help them in a practical (natural) way. Likewise, Jesus emphasized the importance of caring for people’s physical needs, be it a cup of water, feeding and clothing the poor, welcoming a stranger, caring for the sick or visiting prisoners (Matthew 10:42; 25:34-39). Jesus’ earthly ministry was by no means exclusively focused on people’s spiritual well-being; healing their physical bodies was a high priority with him. To be so “spiritual” as to ignore the physical is to be more “spiritual” than God!   I so much believe in the Bible’s teaching about demons that I am convinced we all regularly deal with demons. For instance, since the devil does not have the divine power to be everywhere at once, it is not usually Satan who personally tempts us but his underlings.   Typically, temptation is evil spiritual entities attempting to exploit any natural weakness they can find in a person. Temptation has a spiritual component but there is also a natural component. Let’s consider the holy Son of God. When he was tempted to turn stones into bread, the devil was exploiting a natural chemical imbalance within our Lord. He had not eaten for weeks. It is natural – inevitable – for any hungry human to keep thinking of food. Moreover, many of the stones in this wilderness were shaped like the loaves of bread that Jesus had eaten all his life. For perfectly natural reasons, his body craved food and his mind invariably kept reminding him that those stones looked like bread. Anyone with the ability to turn stones into bread would keep thinking how wonderful it would be to do so. Such thoughts would torment any person but they were perfectly normal, given the chemical imbalance in Jesus’ body. If anyone were to worry that having such normal thoughts would render a person unforgivable, it would not merely be theologically ridiculous but such an unfounded fear would turn an already unpleasant experience into something terrifying. Having one’s mind continually flooded with such thoughts is not sin, however. It would only have been sin had Jesus actually broken the fast.   Similarly, as I will soon explain, your fears, doubts and unwanted thoughts are actually as natural and physically-driven as a starving man craving food. Evil powers try to deceive people who suffer this natural weakness. They exploit human weakness  not  by trying to entice these people to do what happens naturally and is inevitable – having unwanted doubts, fears and thoughts – but by falsely accusing them for having these natural reactions and by trying to seduce these dear people into believing the lie that being subjected to this naturally-driven experience nullifies Christ’s power to love, cleanse and forgive them and grant them the gift of divine approval.   Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness was so intense only because his body was abnormally hungry. Likewise, any of us can have an abnormality in our bodily chemistry that renders us vulnerable to attacks that others simply do not suffer. Those free from such attacks might seem more spiritual or better Christians, but they are not. As unbelievable as it might initially seem, the only difference between the two groups of people is a slight deficiency or chemical imbalance within their bodies.   We have already cited Scriptures that whether it be in the realm of temptation or how we show love, we should pay attention not merely to the spiritual but to the natural. For one last example: 1 Corinthians 7:3-5 says that husbands and wives should meet each other’s physical needs “so that Satan will not tempt you”. Even the great apostle Paul, who had denied himself marriage, insists that it is spiritual and right to consider the physical side of temptation and to lessen a spiritual problem by attending to a physical need if a morally acceptable way is available. Likewise, if, for example, medical researchers were to discover a healthy, morally neutral way of healing a physical abnormality and thus rendering ourselves less vulnerable to spiritual attack, then we would have a spiritual obligation to avail ourselves of it.   The staggering truth I’ve been so cautiously trying to prepare you for is that many people are tormented incessantly by what feels exactly like a guilty conscience and inability to feel God’s love, and yet it turns out that the cause is not spiritual at all. It seems initially unbelievable but for these people what drives intense feelings that are so easily mistaken for divine judgment – and it can even generate horrifically blasphemous thoughts as well – is a mild medical disorder that causes excess anxiety.  None  of my vast array of carefully written information provided elsewhere in this website will lower the deep concerns plaguing the millions of people whose anxiety has a medical basis. Just as proof that you are forgiven will not end the pain of a physical illness, neither will proof that you are forgiven end the inner pain of all the doubt, fears and worries generated by a physical illness – a disorder in one’s brain chemistry.   I completely understand you thinking I am mad , or at least unspiritual, to suggest such a thing. If you have not yet read many of my other webpages, you have not had the opportunity to discover how strongly conservative and into prayer and Scripture I am. If you need convincing, quickly scan  You’re Forgivable: A Sample of the Bible Proof  and  Life’s Too Short to Skimp on Prayer  for just a couple of sample webpages, and then immediately return to this page.   For years I have devoted enormous amounts of time and agony trying to help people who felt unforgivable. (For example, despite me being an  exceptionally slow writer  you will find on this website  over 500 pages  I have written specifically for people who find it hard to believe God forgives them.) For very many of those years, if anyone had suggested that there could be a medical component to this spiritual matter, I would have thought they were crazy or ungodly. Large numbers of people kept e-mailing me seeking help, however, and as I kept pouring my life into trying to help them, I began noticing something peculiar. Anxiety disorders were astoundingly common for those who could not be helped by even large numbers of faith-building Scriptures. Usually they regarded their anxiety disorder as irrelevant to their spiritual concerns, but as I kept conversing with more and more people, the link kept occurring far too often to be mere coincidence. Eventually, I discovered that a huge body of scientific research had already confirmed the link.   Like me, you will probably need a lot of convincing. That’s okay. I am so passionate about helping people who are suffering this horrific spiritual torment that I have gone to immense lengths assembling and carefully explaining the evidence in a logical, easily intelligible manner. All I ask is that you keep prayerfully reading it.   People afflicted by blasphemous thoughts or by continual doubts are among the surprisingly large number of people who are perfectly sane – and some are highly intelligent – except that their mind plays tricks in whatever narrow area of their life is of greatest importance to them. It is not because they have less faith, Bible knowledge, will-power or devotion than other Christians. In fact, they are usually above average on such measures. It is just that in this area of life, anxiety is almost literally driving them crazy. Contrary to what seems intuitively obvious, their fears are not spiritually or rationally driven but stem from a chemical imbalance that causes them to suffer from abnormal levels of anxiety. Because it has a medical basis, you cannot switch off this anxiety (and corresponding guilt feelings, worries about salvation, inability to control your thoughts, etc.) by more Bible reading, trying to worry less, working harder on building up your faith, or whatever. To suffer from medically caused anxiety is no more an indication that one is spiritually lacking than suffering a broken leg means one is spiritually lacking.   It boils down to the fact that the unfortunate people suffering this physical problem feel needlessly guilty, ill at ease or worry far more than average people about at least one thing (and it usually zeroes in on whatever is most important to them). And regardless of what they do – how much fellowship with God they have, how much faith they muster, how much theological knowledge they gain – that awful, unsettling feeling keeps gnawing away at them because the cause is not spiritual or rational but physical. No matter what they believe or think and how much God approves of them and delights in them, that horrible feeling keeps returning. Our brain is designed to treat that feeling – usually called anxiety – as an alarm warning us that something is seriously wrong. The problem is that when a chemical imbalance sets off a false alarm, the very alarm we rely on to alert us to physical or spiritual danger has been triggered. As hinted at previously, the part of our brain designed to respond to the alarm cannot distinguish a chemically induced false alarm from the real thing. As the alarm keeps on and on, the brain keeps frantically hunting for some danger that set off the alarm. No matter what reassurances come from God, Scripture, spiritual authorities, past experiences or whatever, the alarm keeps blaring and so the worry keeps persisting that there must be some genuine spiritual danger.   What confuses these people is that what some call their gut feeling – some call it one’s conscience and some even confuse it with the voice of God – has been seriously distorted by a condition well known to the medical profession. Unfortunately, in contrast to the experts, the implications are rarely understood by the general population.   With this deeply disturbing false alarm indistinguishable from the real thing blaring within a person day after day it is enough to seriously distort anyone’s spiritual perception. This devastating feeling keeps incessantly nagging; drowning out what for anyone not subjected to it would be more than enough proof of God’s acceptance. Although this highly unpleasant and confusing affliction troubles a relatively small  proportion  of people, the numbers add up to literally millions of people worldwide.   Multitudes of people suffer from an undiagnosed anxiety disorder. You could be one of them and if it turns out that you are, so many things will not make sense to you. For example:   *  If you are plagued by horrible thoughts, the harder you try  not  to think them, the more you will have them.   *  If you yearn for assurance of God’s forgiveness, the more you seek assurance, the less you will have it.   There is no space for a full explanation here – that comes further on – but once the process is carefully explained, it is readily understood by average people. Those suffering from this affliction, however, will have a much harder time accepting the truth because they find it so contrary to what feels intuitively right, and that dreadful feeling that something is terribly wrong keeps droning on as incessantly as ever. Everything within someone suffering from excess anxiety will scream against the truth. So despite trying to the point of utter exhaustion, those suffering this way will keep getting worse instead of better unless they totally change their understanding.   I hyperventilated once. I felt certain I was not getting enough air and so I breathed harder, totally oblivious to the fact that I was actually suffering from  too much  air and I needed to breathe less. So it is with those who are hounded by unwanted thoughts or yearning for assurance of salvation. They will only get worse until they learn to do almost the exact opposite of what they feel sure will help. They are so convinced that they need to be doing the opposite of what will actually help that they usually cannot even grasp what the following webpages are saying, but keep misinterpreting them to line up with their mistaken views.   I long to help you but it is impossible unless you not only read the following webpages but  study  them, regularly praying that your eyes be opened to the truths in them that you are currently blinded to. Even after you finally grasp the truth, you will repeatedly find yourself letting it slip and reverting to your old mistaken thinking that  feels  so intuitively right. So to keep on track you will need to keep returning to these webpages.   Don’t forget to asked those who care about you to read the abridged version of this webpage:  Tormented by an Over-Sensitive Conscience .   You Need More: If you want a rest from reading, now is a good time. If you worry that you are in spiritual danger, however, you will need to return to these webpages whenever you can and read more. Record the web address of the next webpage before leaving. Forever Lost Your Salvation?

“ No matter how new or experienced you are, I am praying for the privilege of taking you on a thrilling vacation from which you will return not just refreshed but transformed.” Grantley Morris A man suddenly finds himself flitting from world to world in a terrifying, thrilling, bewildering, deeply moving series of events. Where is he? What danger is he in? Is he suffering psychotic episodes or is he really encountering lifeforms ranging from cute and fascinating to horrifyingly alien? Is he discovering profound spiritual truths or being deceived? Will beliefs that have driven him most of his life be confirmed or prove mistaken? Gripping, entertaining and easy reading and yet thought-provoking and life-changing, no matter how new or seasoned you are spiritually. Full of twists and astonishing insights into nature, humanity, and the spirit world. Fast moving, sometimes alarming, sometimes humorous, sometimes heart-warming, always memorable. Comments Until I stumbled across Mind Blowing I considered Christian fiction to be spiritual baby-food – all mushy! I saw myself as a mature Christian, dining on strong spiritual meat, quite above reading anything as trivial as ‘Christian Fiction.’ The edition of Mind Blowing I came across began with the words, “I’d love your feedback.” Well, for that, I’d have to read it, wouldn’t I? I did – and I haven’t been the same since. As I read, my soul fed on rare, iridescent beauty. I have found nothing like it. I am not an imaginative person, and yet my spirit soared as I read magnificent descriptions, and ‘listened in’ on lofty and challenging dialog. My concepts of time, space, reality, and nature were stretched – especially nature! I am left with a greatly increased appreciation, reverence and love for my awesome God. Helen Hall Download Options More Comments Early response: I have already managed to bite two fingernails painfully to the nub. I am hooked and cannot wait to read more. Later: This book engendered a plethora of emotions in me. Could Mind Blowing possibly rival John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, the book that has been translated into over two hundred languages and for generations was second only to the Bible in readership? Nikki Johnson One of the book’s surprises is being taken to Golgotha and allowed a glimpse of the cross from beyond a human perspective. A seasoned Christian comments: The most riveting and convicting portrayal of the passion I have ever encountered. Janet Congo MFT Upon reading Mind Blowing, I thought Grantley Morris is a genius who writes the most exquisite prose I’ve ever known. Terrance J. Etalia Amazing material! Dynamic and inspirational. What a gift for expressing the wonder of the gospel and biblical concepts in powerful and creative ways! Stunning! It impacted me greatly. Ian Hutchinson Download Options More Comments WOW, you have such a talent with words! The way you describe the places you find yourself in is amazing and brings the scenes to life. As a writer myself I can appreciate talent when I see it! But more than this, you have really helped me ‘see’ the awesome majesty of God, and his overwhelming love toward us. What a passionate, kind, incredibly intelligent, stunning God we serve! And how did you think up so many adjectives and metaphors etc. to describe HIM, heaven and the angels? I am completely jealous! Your writing has really helped lift my faith levels, and I intend to look back at it whenever I feel a downward spiral coming on. I was especially moved over your description of the crucifixion scene. After having shared the beauty of heaven and the angels etc., and then to be faced with the reality of his death deeply stirred me and gave me such a deeper appreciation of all he has done for us. When I come across such writing I hold it closely because it paints for me the mental pictures I so desperately need to see and new concepts I so desperately need to embrace. THANK YOU. I do hope that you will share your novel with many others that they might be as blessed as I have been! Please don’t stop writing! One other thought: reading it felt very much like reading a play that would be seen in the West End in London. It would hold its own against A Midsummer Night’s Dream! Jackie Butterworth It’s riveting . . . a huge blessing! Penny MacPherson Spiritual Writing Coach Download Options With whatever device you have, at least one of these will work: EPUB (387 KB) Works on most book reading apps including iPhone and iPad MOBI (479 KB) MOBI files still work for reading on older devices and with specific apps like Kindle (for existing files) and Calibre. PDF File (1485) KB Microsoft Word Forma t (771 KB)

Are African Blacks Human? Are All Black People Human? Are Some Blacks Part Animal? Almost all Whites are so certain that all Blacks are fully human beings that they would be utterly shocked to find anyone who questioned it. In fact, I have seen tears in the eyes of Whites upon hearing that some Blacks in Africa – some well educated – have accepted the atrocious lie that Blacks are less human than Whites and are part animal. The belief that any race is not fully human is totally contrary to science and to the Bible. Even the United States constitution states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [people] are created equal . . .” I am not American but it is thankfully illegal in most predominantly white countries to imply that one race is inferior to anyone and, as a typical White, I find the equality of people of all races so obvious that, until recently meeting some Blacks who genuinely doubted that Blacks are full human beings, I had never in my most far-fetched fantasies imagined there would be the slightest need to prove it to anyone. To be racist – or look down on anyone – is to plunge a knife into the heart of the God who determines our eternal fate. We will see below why racism is not only always a sin against people close to God’s heart, it is a slanderous attack on God himself. It appalls everyone who truly knows and loves God. We will look later at science and other perspectives but of supreme importance is not human opinion but God’s opinion. So this is where I will start. God & Racism

Christianity & Racial Issues To be racist – or look down on anyone – is to plunge a knife into the heart of the God who determines our eternal fate. We will see below why racism is not only always a sin against people close to God’s heart, it is a slanderous attack on God himself. It appals everyone who truly knows and loves God. Both the Old Testament (the Jewish Bible) and the New Testament affirm that if you trace everyone’s family tree back far enough you will find the same human ancestors. Quite a percentage of Christians believe that just as God made us and yet we formed in our mother’s womb by a gradual and complex process, so humanity was created by God and yet formed by a gradual and complex process, commonly called evolution. There is not need to squabble over that right now because regardless of one’s opinion on the method God chose to create, all Christians unite to affirm that we are God’s creation and that the Bible’s purpose is not primarily to teach science but something far loftier – to reveal the heart of God and how he would have us view things. And over and over, God’s Word makes it clear that God wants us to see everyone, regardless of race, as being physically “one blood” (Acts 17:26, literal translation). There was once a version of the theory of evolution that denied this biblical truth of the genetic unity of the human race and claimed that different types of apes evolved into different races of people. Because it is only a theory, evolutionary scientists differ amongst themselves and over time change their minds, but this particular guess is so contrary to the study of human genetics that it has been largely abandoned as ridiculous. I will explore this further later in the webpage. No matter what is currently fashionable for scientists to believe, however, God – who is way ahead of everyone – reveals in his Word that, ultimately, all races of people have the same genetic heritage and, in a very real sense, are physically brothers and sisters. Moreover, he reveals that the same spiritual Savior – the Lord Jesus Christ – loves Blacks as much as Whites or Chinese and gave his life to give them the same spiritual destiny. We will go much further than this, but just the fact that God created every race has chilling implications for anyone who wishes to look down on a race. If I hint that I regard a particular work of art as inferior, I can expect the artist’s hot displeasure. To think anyone is inferior is to insult that person’s Maker. Only a hypocrite would have the hide to claim to honor the Maker if he had a low opinion of what he has made. Hypocrisy is one of the few things that made the holy Son of God furious. The culmination of Jesus’s work on earth was to entrust his disciples with this mission: Matthew 28:19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. In modern English, nation refers to a large geo-political unit, but Jesus did not speak Twenty-First Century English. Bible scholars say that the word Jesus used refers to a usually smaller number of people, identified not by geography or politics but by their distinctive cultural and genetic heritage. The last book in the Bible spells this out with almost excessive clarity: Revelation 5:9 And they sang a new song: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation .” Revelation 7:9,10,14-17  . . . before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb . . . . And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” . . . they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore, they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple . . . Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. (Emphasis mine) If I wanted to refer to everyone in the world, any one of these four words would suffice. Combining nation, tribe, language and people – is almost overkill. It is stressing that, without exception, every grouping of people, whether distinguished by language, ancestry, culture, or geographical location, is so significant to God that he is committed to ensuring that each group has representatives who will be spiritually one with God for all eternity as a direct consequence of his precious Son trading his life for theirs. Every one of them is priceless to God because for each the same inconceivably high price was paid – the life of God’s one and only Son – and all of them are spiritually equal because they are all spiritually one with God and with each other: John 17:22-23 . . . that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. . . . John 17:11, 20-23 . . . Holy Father, keep them through your name which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are. . . . Not for these only do I pray, but for those also who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that you sent me. The glory which you have given me, I have given to them; that they may be one, even as we are one; I in them, and you in me, that they may be perfected into one; that the world may know that you sent me, and loved them, even as you loved me. This spiritual equality is spelled out here: Galatians 3:26-29 You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus . If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. Colossians 3:9-12  . . . you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all . Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved . . . (Emphasis mine) This is saying that regardless of race, status, gender or cultural and religious background, there is no distinction in God’s eyes between anyone who belongs to Christ. All have the same spiritual heritage and the same spiritual destiny. He is equally in us all and the Father of us all: John 1:12-13 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God – children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. (Emphasis mine.) I’m not so dumb as to walk up to a heavy weight boxer and tell the proud father that I think his child is inferior. That would be far smarter than criticizing in the hearing of Almighty God – and he hears everything – someone he proudly thinks the world of. And there is no one on this planet whose welfare the Almighty would not only gladly pay galaxies of diamonds for, but paid the highest conceivable price of his infinitely precious Son, the closest thing to his heart. You have never seen a proud father like Almighty God. The Bible closely connects loving God with loving people: Luke 10:25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?” He answered: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ” “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” And Jesus immediately launched into his famous parable of the good Samaritan, thus emphasizing the ethnic and Bible stresses implications of loving people the way God expects us to. The unbreakable link between loving God and loving people is further emphasized here: 1 John 4:20 If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. The Bible highlights the ridiculous incompatibility of using the same tongue to praise God that has been used to put down another human being. Not only is this because, regardless of who it is, God loves that person stupendously, but because God himself is like that person. James 3:9-10 With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness . . . . this should not be. And the Bible does not just stop there: Matthew 5:22 But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, . . . anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell. James 4:11-12 Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you – who are you to judge your neighbor? Without repentance, to exalt oneself above anyone can be spiritual suicide: Luke 18:10-14 Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men – robbers, evildoers, adulterers – or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. Proverbs 16:19 Better to be lowly in spirit and among the oppressed than to share plunder with the proud. Isaiah 57:15 For this is what the high and lofty One says – he who lives forever, whose name is holy: “I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.” 1 Peter 5:5 . . . All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” To insult any race or tribe or ethnic group is to insult people who will spend eternity delighting in God’s presence – even if by your attitude you exclude yourself from that privilege. The Bible is almost color blind; seeing no need to mention the color of people’s skin. In fact, about the only reference to skin color is: Jeremiah 13:23 Can the Ethiopian change his skin . . . ? So every Bible reader, no matter how ignorant about skin color, knows that Ethiopians have black skin. Is it mere coincidence, then, that one of the most celebrated conversions in the early church is someone we know was black: the Ethiopian eunuch? Because the Bible sees it as highly significant, it gives considerable space to this event. Permit me to shorten the biblical account: Acts 8:26-29,35,36,38-39 Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road – the desert road – that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians. This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the book of Isaiah the prophet. The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.” . . . Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus. As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water. Why shouldn’t I be baptized?” And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing. To the embarrassment of those who imagine that being white is desirable, white skin is mentioned in the Bible only as a sign of shame and proof of divine disapproval. As divine punishment, Elisha’s servant became “as white as snow” (2 Kings 5:26-27). Similarly, in Numbers 12, Moses’s sister, Miriam, suffered white skin (“like snow”) because of the horror of a skin abnormality inflicted as divine punishment for wrongly criticizing Moses for marrying a Cushite. It would be dishonest not to point out that the big stir was over the disease rather than the color. However, that both accounts mentioning the color emphasizes that the natural color of their skin was not so white. Moreover, the color seems to be particularly significant in Miriam’s case. In this dispute over marrying someone with jet black skin, God emphatically took Moses’ side. By his actions, the Lord seems to have been saying, “Because you disapprove of Moses marrying someone of darker skin than your family, I’ll strike you with whiter skin than your family.” The black skinned woman that Moses married is usually thought to be Jethro’s daughter (Exodus 18:5-6). So it seems that Jethro, too, must have been Black. This is highly significant because of Jethro’s exalted status among God’s people: Exodus 18:12 Then Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, brought a burnt offering and other sacrifices to God, and Aaron came with all the elders of Israel to eat bread with Moses’ father-in-law in the presence of God. Exodus 18:17,24 Moses’ father-in-law replied, “What you are doing is not good. . . .” Moses listened to his father-in-law and did everything he said. Despite being led by the cloud of the Lord (Numbers 10:34), Moses begged Jethro (also known as Hobab) to remain with the Israelites and guide them: Numbers 10:31 But Moses said, “Please do not leave us. You know where we should camp in the desert, and you can be our eyes. . . .” The Bible stresses that everyone is made by God, loved by God and is in his very image. So to insult any race of people is to insult the God who made them, loves them and is like them. To be racist – or look down on anyone – is to plunge a knife into the heart of the God who determines our eternal fate. Racism is not only always a sin against people close to God’s heart, it is a slanderous attack on God himself. It appals everyone who truly knows and loves God. Scientific Proof 1. Genetics Dr Douglas C. Wallace (professor of molecular genetics at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta) points out that the average genetic difference between any two people in the world, even if they belong to the same people group, is about 0.2 percent. In contrast, racial characteristics such as skin color, eye shape etc. account for a mere 0.012 percent of genetic differences between people. He concludes that “the so-called ‘racial’ differences are absolutely trivial – overall, there is more variation within any group than there is between one group and another. If a white person is looking for a tissue match for an organ transplant, for instance, the best match may come from a black person, and vice versa.” If you studied Black, White and Chinese artists, cleaners, professional athletes and western-accredited doctors, they would be far more alike in abilities if grouped according to profession than if grouped according to race. 2. What Makes Someone Human? Scientifically, a species is defined as having the genetic capacity to interbreed and produce fertile offspring. Blacks and Whites can produce healthy children and so blacks and Whites are full members of the same species. In fact, when Blacks and Whites intermarry, their children are often genetically stronger than those born to more genetically similar couples. In fact, scientists regard all races as belonging not just to the same species known as Homo sapiens but to the same subspecies known as Homo sapiens sapiens (yes, peculiarly, sapiens is repeated). Whites More Ape-Like Than Blacks? Let’s examine some key features distinguishing humans from monkeys and apes. Brain Size Whilst the human brain is impressively larger than that of apes, there are virtually no differences in brain size between races. Furthermore, any attempt to examine the exceedingly minor variations in people is confusingly complex. For example, years ago at university I was taught that Neanderthals and early modern humans, sometimes called Cro-Magnons, have a slightly larger cranial capacity to modern humans. This is now generally regarded as possible but is stated with less confidence. The challenge seems to be to find enough fossils from which to obtain a statistically reliable average. On average, modern men have larger brains than women but mine is large enough not to attempt any conclusions. Manual Dexterity Without exception, every race is equally superior to apes in intricate hand movements. All are physically equal in their capacity to thread a needle, write by hand, and so on. Their Walk Unlike any ape, all races walk fully erect, with their arms usually playing no role in locomotion. All races walk identically, although if you want to be really finicky, it could be argued that average representatives from some people groups walk with more finesse (more gracefully and with more poise) than the average Anglo-Saxon. Lack of Body Hair With this is a major difference, it is worth noting that some people groups, such as Mediterranean/Middle Eastern people, have more body hair than Blacks. Chinese have the least of all. Moreover, Blacks have fuzzy hair. Technically, it is more apelike to have straight hair. Prominent Mammary Glands (Breasts) Human females have proportionally larger breasts than apes. I’m not too confident that my wife would let me do a study on the subject, but let’s just say that Blacks are not lacking in this distinguishing feature. Moreover, even without detailed analysis I think it safe to say that there are people groups in which the average female bust is proportionally less than that of Blacks. More Apelike? Anyone who has seen a plucked chicken knows that they have white skin. Does this make Whites more like chickens than Blacks are? It has been claimed that “All chimps have white skin, thin lips and flat butts.” It seems, however, that beneath their hair, chimpanzees vary as much as human races in their skin color. (Source: A ll chimps have white skin, thin lips and flat butts. wn.com/Naked_Chimp_St_Louis_Zoo  . . . shaved chimps actually have white skin. The only dark skin is on parts of their body with less hair. www.thelifefiles.com/.../dont-do-drugs-you-might-end-up-like-this/ [Chimpanzees] are extraordinarily variable in skin color, running from a grayish pink that is almost white to black, with several yellowish shades between. Their color range is essentially the same as in the races of man . . . (Coon, C.S. The Origin of Races Alfred A Knopf: NY, 1962, page 145 cited in Fuerlen Richard D. ErectusWalks Amongst Us: The evolution of modern humans Spooner Press, NY, 2008, Chapter 6, footnote 9.) Perhaps by certain measures it might technically be true that Whites are marginally more apelike than Blacks but the difference between all people and apes is so vast as to render ridiculous the whole question as to which race is more apelike. Jesus Was Not White Studies of skulls found in Jesus’ day indicate that Jews have undergone considerable physiological changes since that time. With the Jewish dispersion through White European populations and subsequent intermarriage, the skin color of these Jews has presumably been lightening over the two thousand years since Jesus walked the earth. To get some idea of Jesus’ racial characteristics, including skin color, we need to go back even further in time and examine his genetic heritage. Probably next to no one in the entire Bible had fair hair or blue eyes or skin as white as the typical Englishman. Interestingly, “His eyes will be darker than wine” (Genesis 49:12) is Jacob’s divinely inspired blessing upon the Messianic line (Judah). Most likely, virtually everyone referred to in the Bible had brown eyes and (other than a few exceptional redheads and old people going grey) dark hair. But the Bible does not bother to tell us. Despite Scripture mentioning vast numbers of people, for almost no one does it give the vaguest of what the person looked like. In the entire New Testament we are told almost nothing about the bodily appearance of anyone other than certain deformities that had to be mentioned in order to describe healings and that Zacchaeus was short (mentioned only to explain why he ended up in a tree – Luke 19:3-5). Not even how they dressed receives attention other than John the Baptist’s eccentric attire and fleeting reference to Jesus’ humiliation at the hands of his tormenters and one of his followers, who deserted both Jesus and his clothes. This disinterest in physical appearance is entirely consistent with the Bible’s insistence that God evaluates no one on the basis of what a person looks like: 1 Samuel 16:7 . . . Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart. Proverbs 31:30 Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised. Luke 16:15 . . . You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight. Anyone claiming to be of God should, like him, focus on the inner person; on the spiritual not one’s body of physical appearance: 2 Corinthians 5:16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. . . . 1 Peter 3:3-4 Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. If God’s Word did not regard skin color as so unimportant that it nearly never mentions it, most of us would be surprised to see how many Blacks feature. For example, few of us stop to consider that Africa is not only the home of Blacks but the home of the Jewish nation. Abraham’s descendants exploded in numbers for over four hundred years in Africa (Exodus 12:40) and although Egyptians did not have jet black skin, you can be sure it was not only Hebrews who traded with them and/or were enslaved by them. When the Hebrews finally left Africa, a diverse range of other peoples joined them, referred to in the King James Version as “a mixed multitude” (Exodus 12:38). Many of these must have been jet black. As with those who joined the Israelites in subsequent centuries, the Lord insisted that non-Israelites like these could become full members of God’s people. Gentiles in pre-Christian times could enjoy the full benefits of God's people Exodus 12:48-49 When a stranger shall live as a foreigner with you, and will keep the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it; and he shall be as one who is born in the land: but no uncircumcised person shall eat of it. One law shall be to him who is born at home, and to the stranger who lives as a foreigner among you. Leviticus 17:8 . . . Any man there is of the house of Israel, or of the strangers who live as foreigners among them, who offers a burnt offering or sacrifice Leviticus 19:34 The stranger who lives as a foreigner with you shall be to you as the native-born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you lived as foreigners in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. Leviticus 24:22 You shall have one kind of law for the foreigner as well as the native-born; for I am the Lord your God. (Numbers 15:29 is similar) Numbers 15:14-16 If a stranger lives as a foreigner with you, or whoever may be among you throughout your generations, and will offer an offering made by fire, of a pleasant aroma to the Lord; as you do, so he shall do. For the assembly, there shall be one statute for you and for the stranger who lives as a foreigner, a statute forever throughout your generations. As you are, so shall the foreigner be before the Lord. One law and one ordinance shall be for you, and for the stranger who lives as a foreigner with you. Numbers 15:26 All the congregation of the children of Israel shall be forgiven, as well as the stranger who lives as a foreigner among them; for with regard to all the people, it was done unwittingly. Numbers 35:15 For the children of Israel, and for the stranger and for the foreigner living among them, shall these six cities be for refuge; that everyone who kills any person unwittingly may flee there. Deuteronomy 10:17-18 For the Lord your God, he is God of gods, and Lord of lords . . . He does execute justice for the fatherless and widow, and loves the foreigner, in giving him food and clothing. Deuteronomy 14:28-29 At the end of every three years you shall bring all the tithe . . . The Levite . . . and the foreigner living among you, and the fatherless, and the widow . . . shall come, and shall eat and be satisfied; that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hand which you do. (Deuteronomy 26:11-13 is similar) Deuteronomy 16:10-11 You shall keep the feast of weeks to the Lord your God with a tribute of a freewill offering . . . You shall rejoice before the Lord your God: you, your son, your daughter . . . the Levite . . . the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow . . . Deuteronomy 29:10-13 All of you stand today in the presence of the Lord your God; your heads, your tribes, your elders, and your officers, even all the men of Israel, your little ones, your wives, and the foreigners who are in the middle of your camps . . . that you may enter into the covenant of the Lord your God, and into his oath, which the Lord your God makes with you today; that he may establish you today as his people, and that he may be your God, as he spoke to you, and as he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. The Outworking of this Joshua 8:33,35 All Israel, their elders and officers, and their judges, stood on both sides of the ark before the priests the Levites . . . the foreigner as well as the native; half of them in front of Mount Gerizim, and half of them in front of Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded at the first, that they should bless the people of Israel. Ezra 6:20-21 . . . they killed the Passover for all the children of the captivity . . . The children of Israel who had come again out of the captivity, and all such as had separated themselves to them from the filthiness of the nations of the land, to seek the Lord, the God of Israel, ate Isaiah 56:3,6-7 Let no foreigner, who has joined himself to the Lord, speak, saying, "The Lord will surely separate me from his people.". . . Also the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to serve him, and to love the Lord's name, to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath from profaning it, and holds fast my covenant; I will bring these to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Jeremiah 39:16-18 Go, and speak to Ebedmelech the Ethiopian [a Black], saying, the Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says: Behold, I will bring my words on this city for evil, and not for good; and they shall be accomplished before you in that day. But I will deliver you in that day, says the Lord; and you shall not be given into the hand of the men of whom you are afraid. For I will surely save you, and you shall not fall by the sword, but your life shall be for a prey to you; because you have put your trust in me, says the Lord. Even under the Old Covenant, being Black was no obstacle to becoming a Jew. The account quoted earlier about the Black Ethiopian eunuch reading Scripture on his way home from worshipping in Jerusalem indicates how drawn Blacks were to the Jewish religion. The Hebrews and Egyptians were already of darker skin than the typical White. Nevertheless, inspired by the example of their leader, Moses, who married a Black, and confirmed by divine judgment upon Miriam who criticized that union, you can be sure there were plenty of interracial marriages that would have contributed still further to the darkening of the average Israelite’s skin color. For those who wish to go beyond mere skin color, it is noteworthy that Rahab was not only a descendant of Ham (who was not cursed but some of his descendants are thought to be jet back), she was a descendant of Canaan (who was not jet black but was cursed – Genesis 9:22-27 ). Rahab was an ancestress of Jesus (Matthew 1:1,5), extolled in Hebrews 11:31 as one of the Faith Heroes, alongside Noah, Abraham, Moses and King David. Related Pages ‘ God Loves You’ means You Are God’s Favorite Are there really different races?

Touching? Cuddling? Smooching? Fondling? Tongue kissing? Pashing? Heavy petting? Oral sex? How Far Is Too Far? Holding? Hugging? Stroking? Groping? Necking? French kissing? Dry humping? Foreplay? Practical Help for Christian Singles of all Ages In Setting their Own Guidelines Getting physical? Light petting? Caressing? Snuggling? Tonguey? Getting tight? Making love? Intimacy? Open-mouth kissing? Slap-and-tickle? Passionate lovemaking? This page is best understood by first reading: When Christians Date ‘Recently my fiancée and I made the horrible mistake of having sex outside of marriage and it has damaged our relationship, and also severely damaged my relationship with God. I can’t seem to find peace with Him and the adversary is all around me making everything even worse. I have this gut-wrenching feeling inside of me that will not go away. I feel torn apart . . . .’ As I read the heart-breaking e-mail, I learned that he had been a Christian since he was in his early teens. My mind flashed back to the shock I felt when I first heard the claim that research suggests that nearly as many Christian couples as non-Christian have at least once fallen into premarital sex. Then I remembered what I had once written about temptation, and with that the mystery slowly unravelled. Here’s the gist of what I remembered: Most people who lose their battle with temptation do so because they don’t start the fight soon enough. They let the Tempter have too many early victories. They give the Evil One easy, uncontested wins by hardly thinking twice about viewing/hearing/reading things that weaken them, and dabbling with ‘legitimate pleasures’ that edge them closer and closer to the crumbling cliff face. Suppose you are in a leaking boat. You are lounging on deck as the water seeps in a few bucketful's an hour. No problem. Any fool can bail that out. Hour after hour you continue to snooze until suddenly you find yourself plunging toward the ocean floor. You then bail furiously but it’s too late. The disaster was not the product of some momentary weakness or inexplicable lapse in the last five seconds. It was all so avoidable, if only the danger had been taken seriously. That’s what it’s like with temptation. Act soon enough, and you’re safe. Take no action as temptation begins to seep in, and the danger slowly mounts until finally not even the strongest saint could survive the onslaught. It’s not what happens in a moment of weakness that is critical. What matters is what you do right now to protect yourself from those moments. I began wondering how far back from intercourse one must begin the fight. If there is no big difference between Christians and non-Christians when it comes to the movies they watch and the way they kiss when dating, should we be surprised if there is no big difference further down that slippery slope? It would be very wrong to suppose that knowing where to draw the line is just a young person’s problem. It is a dilemma for Christian singles of all ages, breaking countless hearts, even when it hasn’t led to a moral fall. A woman in her mid-sixties, having been widowed for several years, was not only free from fresh memories of sex, she had gritted her teeth during marital relations throughout her long marriage. A 70 year old widower, whom she felt no physical attraction to, tongue kissed her. Despite what we might expect from her age and sad sexual history, she found it dangerously arousing. He couldn’t see a problem. She felt herself inching closer to a no-longer dormant volcano of uncontrollable passion. The result was heart wrenching as she tried to explain why she had to back off. As I pondered the danger of snoozing in a leaking boat, I recalled a feature of lovemaking that I, being unmarried, suddenly found alarming. Because of its key role in maintaining marital oneness, lovemaking is divinely designed to disarm one’s reservations and aloofness and be almost drug-like in its amazing ability to soothe. In fact, when the Bible speaks of David comforting his grieving wife, it resulted in pregnancy (2 Samuel 12:24). The nearly miraculous power of lovemaking to comfort and reassure is a feature not just of those aspects of lovemaking that must be restricted to marriage. Even something as innocent as holding hands or saying or hearing the words, ‘I love you,’ is infused with an almost hypnotic power to melt away one’s apprehensions and make a couple feel wonderfully secure and at ease in each other’s presence. Little wonder, then, that when, as an unmarried couple, we become even slightly affectionate, we tend to let our defenses down in the very situation that we need to be on heightened alert to sexual temptation. Two devout Christians who had been dating received a very special touch from God in a church service. They left the church on a spiritual high, and after an hour or so they fell into sin with each other. Devastated, they came to their pastor in tears. ‘How ever could this have happened at such a time?’ they asked in shattered disbelief. They had been feeling so close to God that they supposed they were invulnerable. Filled with the warm love of God and excitement over what he had done, their feelings imperceptibly slipped from God to love for each other and slowly gained momentum on the roller coaster ride to out-of-control passion. The enemy is like a beast of prey silently stalking those who suppose they will not be attacked. He’s smart enough to know that those who are on the alert for danger will spot him early and be off in a flash; running so fast that he’ll never sink his teeth into them. ‘So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!’ (1 Corinthians 10:12). In other words, a false sense of security is as spiritually lethal as passionate kissing behind the steering wheel of a speeding car. The issue is not whether a couple can trust each other but whether they can trust the devil. Letting our defenses down is as smart as bedding down to sleep across a railway track. If we were alone with a stranger of ill repute, alarm bells would be blaring within us. Not so, when we are alone with our most trusted and dearest friend. And yet we have a deadly spiritual enemy who delights in tempting us when we least expect it, and in getting at us through the person we love and respect the most. He used this very ploy on the Holy Lord himself. ‘Get behind me, Satan,’ the Son of God was forced to tell his best friend. Moved by love, Peter was trying his utmost to comfort and reassure his dear friend. It was at that very moment that the enemy slipped in. Peter had no idea that his attempts to comfort his beloved Master were being used of the Evil One to tempt the Holy Lord (Matthew 16:21-23). Given the soothing, reassuring nature of lovemaking and the fact that it involves our dearest friend, it is hard to think of any other type of temptation in which we are so lulled into letting our guard down. Add to this the fact that even limiting oneself to handholding – to say nothing of further down the slippery slide – is like trying to stop at eating a single salted peanut. No wonder so many of us fall! There have been times and societies in which couples were never allowed alone until after the wedding. That sounds hopelessly old-fashioned – almost as old-fashioned as virginity is becoming. I’m seeking, not necessarily to convince you of the wisdom of the past, but to stimulate your thinking. My goal throughout this webpage is to inspire you to stretch your mind and to think outside the square in your personal search for wise, Spirit-led ways to avoid soiling yourself. This is needed because the sad reality is that the approach of average present-day Christian couples is simply not working. By the way, don’t let the Deceiver tell you that because of a past tragedy you have nothing left to preserve. If you are trusting Christ’s miraculous ability to purify, then you are his virgin and have everything to preserve. You won’t want to break the heart of the One who gave his all for you. Insanely In Love My years of dating combine with my virginity to make me feel I could resist almost any temptation to engage in physical sex. Such thinking is dangerous speculation. Nevertheless, I’ve indulged in this madness to highlight an entirely different area of vulnerability that must be considered when deciding how far is too far. Even if I were completely safe when kissing a woman, what temptation am I inviting afterward, when I am alone with my thoughts? What sin might my mind slip into while trying to shut my brain down for the night? How hyped up will I get when trying to sleep? What might I be tempted to do to relieve the pressure? Might I avoid sin with her, only to grieve my Lord afterward in response to passion I had stirred up during my time with her? It had always seemed impossible, but after an apparently endless fight, involving ruthlessly denying myself any sight or thought or touch that even slightly aroused it, I have finally managed, with massive help from God, to put my sex drive to sleep. Having experienced the advantages, there is no way I want to risk waking it. Yes, an unsuspecting couple might end up sinning together. The blotch would indelibly embed into their brains and like a blood-sucking parasite they would carry the memory inside them until their dying day. But to this consideration, we must add the more subtle but spiritually dangerous matter of what getting amorous might lead to when the couple are apart. Moreover, to these concerns we are forced to add yet another need for caution about the physical side of a relationship. And this third factor makes me want to be even stricter in the amount of physical contact I permit myself. Here it is: even something as mild as handholding can lower my ability to choose the right life partner. Did you know that fond – as in ‘She’s fond of him,’ – originally meant stupid or mentally retarded? That initially startles us, but upon further reflection it fits the jigsaw. Modern English language about couples in love is filled with such expressions. He’s insanely jealous, she’s mad about him, they’re crazy about each other. Such expressions are a part of everyday speech because experience has taught multitudes that the high of being in love grossly affects our ability to be level-headed. The exhilaration might be exciting but a reduced ability to make level-headed decisions as to who we marry takes some of the mystery out of why the divorce rate is so high. Did you know that far more arranged marriages last than marriages based on romantic love? It’s not surprising when we think about it. What concerns me is that even physical contact lowers still further our ability to choose the right marriage partner. Let me explain. I am plagued with a deep ache for very basic touch – handholding and a hug. (Mind you, if that need were met it would slowly ignite a burning for going just that little bit further. And if I yielded that tiny bit, I’d be satisfied – for a while. Then a craving would grow to get just that little bit more physical with my friend. On and on it would go, like a junkie, who month after month needs higher and higher doses to keep his craving at bay.) But even without the complication of the need escalating, touch brings with it a most disturbing danger because choosing to marry the wrong person must be one of the worst mistakes anyone can make. If a woman I were dating met my basic need for touch, she would merely be doing something millions could do and yet it would heighten my feelings for this one woman. I might presume that I enjoy a woman’s companionship and hardly be aware that most of my enjoyment has nothing to do with her uniqueness but is just the thrill of having my basic need for touch met, like almost any woman could do. I might only be dating, with marriage being far from my mind, but I cannot guarantee that my feelings for her would never end up drifting toward marriage. The high of having my need for touch met by someone I am dating would further fog my brain at the very time when clear thinking is both more elusive and more important that at almost any other time of my life. Since there must be few things in life worse than ending up married to the wrong person, this is a matter about which I desperately need to hear from the all-knowing, all-wise Lord. Looking for a partner is most certainly not the time to risk having raging hormones drown out the Spirit’s whispers. My longing for marriage rose-tints my glasses. I’m so desperate that the moment I see a woman seeming to have the slightest potential as my wife, glaring deficiencies in her vanish in a rose-colored haze. I’m alarmed at how blatantly unsuited to me some of the women were who for a while I thought might possibly be ideal for me. Have you ever been shocked to discover that a radio announcer isn’t half as good-looking as you had imagined? When getting to know someone there are huge gaps in our knowledge. If we feel positively toward that person our imaginations inevitably fill in these gaps with things that are better than reality. Add to this natural tendency a longing to find as soon as possible that ‘someone special’ and we find ourselves swept off our feet by a torrent of wishful thinking, when getting to know someone we are initially attracted to. How long does it take for women to see their future husbands as someone who burps, snores and picks his nose? How many men see their future wives as someone who will have stretch marks and moods and frivolously spend their hard earned money? We are seldom aware that what we suppose to be our intimate knowledge of our friend is peppered with significant chunks that are not the real person at all, but simply our guesses and wishful thinking. As they say, ‘[Romantic, hormonal] love is blind, but marriage is an eye-opener [i.e. we discover reality after it’s too late to correct a life-determining decision].’ Even when keeping open their physical eyes, dating couples kiss with their eyes closed. Like you, I want to come to my senses before plunging into what might be the biggest mistake of my life. We have already mentioned the almost intoxicating ability of touch to generate a feeling of closeness and oneness. It is frighteningly hard not to confuse this physical feeling with a genuine oneness of mind and spirit. When dating, we are unconsciously evaluating someone’s suitability as a potential life partner. Even light petting can create a most convincing illusion of oneness at a time and in an area of life in which illusions can have life-shattering implications. Friendship is such a vital ingredient of an enduring relationship and yet when hormones kick in, they so dominate as to swamp everything – even the ability to develop genuine friendship. If you are not ruthless in toning things down, by the time things calm down enough to discover that you don’t have what it takes to be good friends, you might already be married. Our sole defense against spiritual attack is faith in the power of Christ, not faith in human rules. ‘So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature’ (Galatians 5:16). Nevertheless, the same Bible commands us to flee youthful lusts (2 Timothy 2:22). We are called not to stoically endure lustful pressures but to hightail it out of there, putting as much distance between lust and us as we can. This is such an important spiritual principle that on four different occasions the New Testament tells us to flee from sin and temptation (1 Corinthians 6:18; 10:14; 1 Timothy 6:11; 2 Timothy 2:22). That’s how we escape the sin that could entrap us, and fix our eyes on the Author and Perfector of our faith (Hebrews 12:1-2). Joseph maintained his purity not by praying while enjoying a seductive woman’s attention, but by literally running away from her when she started getting physical (Genesis 39:12). When, day after day before that, Potiphar’s wife had tried to seduce him verbally, ‘he refused to go to bed with her or even be with her ’ (Genesis 39:1, emphasis mine). Note how far back from intercourse he drew the line. No matter how inconvenient, nor how much he was missing out on, nor even how weak some people might think him by acting that way, he set boundaries and stuck to them and he even added stricter ones (running) when that became necessary. We don’t prove what good Christians we are by taking heroin, confident that in Christ we can break the habit at any moment; we prove our devotion to Christ by totally avoiding any experimentation with things that entice. We don’t prove our commitment to Christ by playing chicken with the devil, seeing how close we can get to grieving God without actually falling. Setting a big gap between you and forbidden pleasure is the spiritual, God-honoring way to act. The Story So Far We have explored reasons for getting it right when setting limits in expressions of love. We have yet to get to the nitty-gritty of spelling out those limits, however. I have also discovered a factor that often pushes us into things we regret and yet is so subtle that few of us ever realize that it pushed us. So let’s plunge into these critical issues. Continued . . .

(Part 2) holding hugging stroking groping smooching pashing tongue kissing heavy petting making love foreplay oral sex getting amorous fondling French kissing passionate lovemaking caressing getting physical necking light petting getting tight dry humping cuddling intimacy open-mouth kissing snuggling touching Read Part 1 here When I began this webpage I never expected to write things you’ll find here. Mentally and prayerfully wrestling with this subject has changed me. I’m astounded to have discovered things about myself that operate on an almost subconscious level. And I think it applies to all of us, to varying degrees. If it startles even the writer, it could well take an act of God for the reader not to entirely reject it. You’ll be shocked, angry and offended, especially at my exaggerated examples. It is the very exaggeration, however, that was like turning up the volume and caused me to know things that have always been in the background but until then their significance had escaped me. The Forgotten Side of the Coin Creatures that sexually reproduce are divinely fitted with in-built courtship behavior, the exact nature of which varies from species to species. In peafowl, for instance, the ritual commences with the peacock enticing the female by a visual display of his gorgeous tail feathers. Presumably, without that visual display no peahen would ever be in tears over an unwanted pregnancy. Although humans can override their natural tendencies, we, too, have inbuilt courtship patterns that lead to pregnancy. Essentially, it goes like this. The female, consciously or unconsciously, uses her physical appearance to sexually entice the male. The aroused male moves closer. Almost instinctively, his hands begin to wander over the female’s body. Skilfully, though almost unconsciously, he uses touch (kissing, stroking, and so on) to gently break down every trace of the female’s resistance to full intimacy. Discussions of the morality of dating behavior rightly consider the male use of touch to entice, and yet many overlook the female contribution – her unique power to use her physical appearance to set the temperature of a date. So let’s lift the lid on this significant, forgotten factor. If Muslim societies pressure women to hide their sexuality, decadent western societies pressure women to flaunt their sexuality. The pressure is so immense that the average woman is made to feel ashamed to be seen in public unless she tarts herself up more than even prostitutes do in most other societies. The very suggestion that we might do this offends us, and yet that is how observers from other cultures often view us. Are they wrong, or are we too close to see clearly? Should we stop to wonder why it is that even in church services in the west, women typically expose more flesh than their male counterparts? Is it because, unlike men, women are cruelly pressured by the world to feel great shame and embarrassment if they do not display and visually enhance their bodies to look like sex objects? Godly women seem forced to end up with some sort of uneasy compromise between flaunting their bodies and full modesty. If you are a woman, your response to this pressure is a personal matter, although, of course, your decision will affect everyone who sees you, particularly a close male friend. Please remember that throughout this series of webpage I’m not interested in pushing my view, but only in jolting you into prayerfully re-examining issues, rather than mindlessly following the mob. I’m no expert; God is. Simply ask him if there is a grain of truth in any of the mad things I say, and whether, in his eyes, you are already perfectly on course. Where your prayerful exploration takes you is between you and your Lord. In fact, would you mind if we prayed right now? Father, You tell us: Romans 12:1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship. (2) Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will. From the moment of my birth right through to this present moment, everything I have ever seen or heard has either been the world, or been influenced by the world, or, even if it is entirely from you, has possibly been distorted by me interpreting it from a mindset that has been affected by the world. Like everyone else, I have been unavoidably brainwashed by the world to the point where I cannot possibly trust my judgment on anything. As you say: Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? Proverbs 14:12 There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death. 1 Corinthians 4:4 My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. Luke 16:15 . . . What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight. I don’t even know what things about the world I must avoid conforming to. Surely there must be things about the world – such as most of technology – that are morally neutral. And yet there could just as easily be things that I – and most other Christians – unthinkingly accept that are ungodly or unwise. Even Satan himself, the ultimate in evil, is the Deceiver who masquerades as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14). This is an impossible mess that throws me entirely upon your mercy to open my eyes. It seems inevitable that I would be biased against learning the truth about worldliness because there must be much about the world that to me feels cozy, and much about going against the world that would make me feel embarrassed and a freak. No wonder you preface the Scripture about not conforming to the world by telling me to make myself a living sacrifice. This is going to be hard. I shrink from pain. I therefore plead with you to force my eyes open to what things of the world I must no longer conform to. I ask you to break worldly brainwashing that I’ve been subjected to since birth. And yet you ask me to no longer be conformed and to renew my own mind. Clearly, there must be much that you expect me to do to participate in this vital process. Grantley, the author of this webpage, could be just as influenced by the world or by a religious spirit as me. You alone have the purity and objectivity and intellectual power to discern. So I look to you to open my eyes as I read this webpage. When an average Christian woman in western society tells herself she just wants to look nice, she seldom realizes that she is actually making herself as sexually irresistible as she dare –just how much she dares, of course, depends on her. How conscious are we that by following normal western dress standards, women end up wearing clothes that are ingeniously designed to sexually tantalize a man? For instance, what in the west is typically feminine clothing is cleverly designed to make it unpredictable just how much more will be exposed when a woman bends or sits or the wind blows. Men don’t know what flash of flesh they will miss if they take their eyes of her for a moment. It is almost as if a woman is giving a continual, partial striptease, stirring within a man a yearning to remove her clothes. If a worldly woman has no intention of actually letting anyone remove her clothing, it adds an exhilarating feeling of power to the buzz she gets out of thinking herself sexually alluring. Worldly women who hypocritically think themselves more moral than nudists because they ‘leave something to the imagination,’ typically dress so as to provoke men into letting their imagination run wild. Sometimes their goal is merely to prove themselves to other women, but regardless of motivation, they try their hardest to deceive everyone into imagining that they look sexier naked than they really are. Do they, for instance, wear stockings to hide how sexy their legs really look, or to hide blemishes or draw attention to their legs? Are high heels chosen for comfort or to make the ankles look slimmer and hence the legs look sexier than they really are? (In fact, some think that by changing the posture and walk, high heels make the entire body more sensuous.) If a worldly woman thinks herself attractive, even when she covers up, it is usually to incite lust. If she wears slacks when she dresses up, it is usually so that she can show off her buttocks. If she wears a sweater with a high neckline, her choice is usually tight enough to emphasize her breasts. And innocent girls mindlessly follow. Although I am vehemently opposed to nudity outside marriage, nudists have a strong case in arguing that (especially after a few minutes) full nudity is less sexually tantalizing than the way western women typically present themselves. If those who keep their clothes on were truly moral, their goal in dressing would be to give the impression that their naked body has less to offer than it really does. How many western women dress like that? When sexually aroused women make love, their lips usually redden and become more prominent, their cheeks become flushed, and the pupils of the eyes enlarge. These act as sexual signals that drive a man making love to become still more passionate. It is no coincidence that modern facial makeup mimics sexual arousal. Let’s have some fun as we explore this subject. Don’t take me too seriously; just keep your ear tuned to the Lord in case something initiates a thought that the Lord wants you to pursue. When a woman dresses modestly, a date is not so dangerously hot. If she covered her hair, and wore no makeup or perfume, the temperature would lower still further. If she didn’t have a bath for a week and looked like an apprentice grease monkey about to do an oil change on her tenth car for the day, the temperature would go down even more. If she wore a baggy gorilla suit and mask, and a few slightly smelly fish strung around her neck, the temperature would be so low that the fish would freshen up. Even a nun would be proud of the man’s self-control. By now you know I’m a fruitloop, but I have this theory – and I’m sticking to it – that few women who have rolled in fresh manure on the way to a date have ever come home pregnant. Am I right, or am I right? Seriously, if just a dab of doggie poo behind the ear could keep a man in check, then, as ridiculous as it sounds, could something as minor as a dab of makeup in many cases have been a key factor in precipitating a chain of events that has ended in lifelong regret? It all has to start somewhere. If there is any truth in this, it in no way lowers male guilt. I’m just wondering whether there are factors that most of us have underestimated. Women try their hardest to appeal to men by their clothing, hairdos, makeup and perfume, and then seem to forget that it actually works. The visual side of sex is often as significant to men as foreplay is to women. So let me speak directly to women for a moment. When you try to make yourself look nice you are probably very conscious that the result is far from being the sexiest sight on the planet, and even far from the sexiest you could make yourself look. This, understandably, is likely to lull you into thinking that prettying yourself up has only a minor effect in stirring within your male friend a craving to do morally unacceptable things to you, or at least drive him to commence a chain of events that could get dangerously out of hand. What makes your physical appearance critical, however, is that your male friend knows that other women who drape and paint their bodies to tease him sexually would most likely resist his attempts to caress them. If he thinks he has a better chance of acceptance from you than from strangers, then the way you present yourself will influence his behavior more than how alluring other women make themselves. There is a significant sidelight to this that I – by education a student of human behavior – find fascinating. When women think they look attractive, they are usually more sexually responsive. Or, looked at another way, the more women feel they have succeeded in making themselves look nice, the more vulnerable to temptation they are. So, surprisingly, the more a woman enhances her looks, the harder it is not only for her date, but also for herself, to exercise self-control. I’ll try an analogy that might seal for you the significance of what a woman does without even touching a man. If a person were desperately trying to diet, it would be cruel to waft delicious food under his nose. The more tasty the food looks and smells, the more pressure his self-control is under. If it is merely a picture in a cookbook or seen through the window of a stranger’s house, the extent to which food is made to look mouth-watering will affect him, but if he can’t get his hands on the food, he won’t end up eating it. It is how tempting the food looks that is right under his nose that is most likely to break down his self-imposed restrictions. If delicious food were put through a blender to look like baby food, and somehow the food had no aroma, it would still be just as tasty, but you would have a better chance of not letting yourself down by overindulging. If I were dating a woman, the more I felt drawn to her, the more I’d prefer to make my life less torturous by restricting most of our contact to phone, and when I’m with her I’d prefer her to look as unattractive as possible. Maybe she could wear a scarf and thick rimmed glasses, no make up and something like a shapeless trench coat covering jeans and high-necked top. ‘In your dreams!’ every woman screams. Oh, well, at least with dreams like that I won’t wake up with a smouldering pillowslip. If cupid were really working overtime, my long-suffering, soon-to-give-up-in-disgust friend could add to her arsenal of cupid repellents by smearing herself with foul smelling gel such as those rather old-fashioned preparations intended to relieve muscle aches or for nasal decongestion. I know what you think about me, but I assure you I’m so sane that the psychiatric nurse says I’ll soon be able to have visitors. Oh, dear! This was going to be such a serious webpage. Now look what’s happened! Hopefully rather than dismissing my ridiculous examples, they have rammed home to you how critical a woman’s grooming really is. And a man’s appearance isn’t totally irrelevant either. In fact, it could play a bigger role than many of us realize. (With any luck, someone might mistakenly think that’s why I look like something the last high tide washed up.) What a woman does with her face has so subtle an effect compared to what she does with her breasts that men can be excused for thinking it irrelevant. One of the greatest dangers of grooming, however, is precisely that it seems insignificant. It seduces without setting off alarm bells. A weakling who slips under a tripwire can do more damage than a fearsome brute that triggers the intruder alarm. Such seemingly inconsequential things as how kissable the lips are made to look, how flawless the complexion, how big the eyes, how alluring the hair, and how inviting the perfume, can contribute to how out of control things end up. Surprisingly, it can be just as significant as how short the dress and how plunging the neckline. As you know, there is more to determining whether a woman looks attractive than her hemline and cleavage. Obviously, each couple must come to their own decision before God as to what extremes they will go in order to calm things down. Understandably, single women want to look their prettiest when they are with their special man, and yet if they must pretty themselves it would be better for them to do it for complete strangers and to be their plainest for those they feel most passionate about. If this sounds strange, it not as weird as the fact that soon after marriage women typically slip into putting more effort into their appearance when they are with strangers than when alone with the one person on the planet whose passion they have a legitimate right to stir up. The serious problem with lowering sexual tension by toning down one’s appearance is that it is most embarrassing for women to be seen in public looking less seductive than they are capable of (and some men want to boost their own ego by being seen with a sexy woman). Ironically, if I could persuade a woman to look more like I’d prefer her to look before marriage, probably one of the places where I would most want to avoid seeing her is in church because that is a place where women are likely to feel pressured to dress up and wear makeup. A further complicating factor is that many women are genuinely scared that God won’t give them a husband unless they lower themselves to using their bodies as bait. Do women who have used their looks to catch a man ever wonder how come they have landed husbands who can’t keep their eyes off other sexy sights, or who prefer women as young as they were (or tried to look) when they first attracted their men? If they can’t trust God in the selection of a husband, they can’t blame him for the result. Boundaries? It’s not for me to lay down rules, Of necessity, however, every couple needs to establish their own rules. Limits must be soberly and prayerfully determined and set in concrete ahead of time. To leave it to spur-of-the-moment feelings to influence where we draw the line is too foolish to contemplate. The tragedy is that we only have to let ourselves down once and it is like breaking down a safety barrier than can never be repaired. It is forever harder not to again go careering over the edge at the same point. We can only erect another barrier still further from the edge but it will always be weaker than the original safety barrier. That entire area is less safe than before. What we could previously get away with will now be too dangerous. It’s a fact of life that we each set boundaries. Especially in the early stages of a relationship, however, we are nervous about spelling them out to our friend. We hope he/she is a mind reader or miraculously happens to think exactly like us. That’s about as unlikely as it is that we both had identical dreams last night. We are all built differently. Honorable men who wouldn’t dare touch their girlfriend’s breasts might be alarmed to learn that certain women are even more aroused by having their earlobes kissed. And there are women who would be shocked to learn that touching some men’s nipples is as sexually dangerous as could ever be the case with a woman’s nipples. Human variability is so pronounced that no matter how many partners our friend has had, there are probably some aspects of our sexuality that our friend has never before encountered. This makes it so dangerous to clam up about our personal vulnerabilities, vainly hoping that our friend understands our uniqueness or stumbles upon the discovery before too much damage is done. If we don’t tell our friend ahead of time exactly where we draw the line, we lose the advantage of having our friend’s support in maintaining those standards. Keeping secret the precise location of your carefully erected safety rails means your friend is never sure whether you are transgressing your personal standards. This renders us less motivated not to let ourselves down in the heat of the moment. Another concern is that unless it is openly discussed, your friend might mistakenly assume that you feel coldly toward him/her, when it is simply where you would draw the line with any person, no matter how deep your feelings. We need to get it not only into our heads, but deep into our hearts, that the standards one sets reflect one’s morality, not one’s weakness, nor one’s passion or commitment to the relationship. If your friend surrenders to your seductive wiles by lowering his/her standards, it proves not what a good lover you are, but how low you have stooped. No matter how minor the infringement, by trespassing his/her boundaries, you have not only abused the person you claim to respect, you have seared that person’s conscience. Spiritually, the sin of seduction is even worse than forced sex because seduction makes its victim a willing partner in sin. ‘But what we did wasn’t sin!’ you protest. Scripture is clear that if a person yields to what he/she regards as sin, then in God’s eyes it is sin. If you think something is wrong and do it, how can you be innocent in the eyes of the One who sees your heart? (This principle is expounded in Romans 14 and Corinthians 8). For your friend to lower his/her standards for your sake is proof not of your friend’s love, but only of his/her weak self-control and of your ability to act like the devil. There are no winners when that happens. We know we should talk these things over but it is so hard when we are tentatively getting to know someone. The ability to discuss embarrassing matters is a vital key to a good marriage and to great sex within that marriage. Right now is the perfect time to develop communication skills that will enrich you for the rest of your life. It’s scary, but the benefits are immense. A perfect way to broach this awkward subject is to share this entire webpage with your friend. Doing so doesn’t necessarily mean you are getting serious about each other. It’s helpful and enlightening to learn how different Christians feel about these matters, and it assists us in developing our own standards. There is no need for any other motives. Maybe you could read the webpages out loud to your friend, with a pause between paragraphs to allow the opportunity for discussion. This would be particularly helpful if your friend is not a great reader. The Nitty-Gritty I’m about to give some statements you might like to ponder. You are unique and can have a personal relationship with God, so I’m unconcerned about whether you accept, reject or modify these statements. They are not necessarily even the standards I would apply to myself. They are simply your opportunity to begin exploring your heart, your friend’s heart and God’s heart. My longing is only that you use these statements as a launching pad for prayer and for discussion with your friend until you can say, “‘It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us’ ( Acts 15:28) that my friend and I should act this way. Discuss with your friend your reaction to each of the following. To what extent do the statements need modification to express exactly how you feel before God that you should act? While we remain unmarried: We should commit ourselves to doing nothing we wouldn’t do in front of our parents or our pastor. The man should not see uncovered nor touch (even over clothing) any part of his girlfriend that would be covered if a woman were wearing a very modest bikini. Nor should he touch her upper thighs. The man should not touch the bare skin of any part of his girlfriend’s body that would be covered by a one piece bathing costume, nor the thighs or armpits. The man should not touch bare skin between the chin and knees nor the inner part of the arm above the elbow. The woman should not wear tight clothes, dress in any way that emphasizes her breasts, shows cleavage, or shows off her behind. When we are together, the woman will try to conceal/tone down her beauty. Discuss ways of doing this. We will endeavor never to be completely alone together. (Phone calls might be a great way to have long, intimate chats. Some libraries, restaurants, parks, public events, and so on, allow privacy of conversation without being entirely concealed. Other possibilities include being in a room alone with an open door through which someone might enter at any time, or being in a car alone on your way to a destination at which you will be missed if you were delayed.) Points for discussion: Talk over with each other your feelings about tongue kissing (French kissing) before marriage. Over the time you have been close friends, what fluctuations have you noticed in your private and shared prayer lives? Helpful Suggestions To one or both of you, some rules you set may seem very strict or unworkable. You might therefore prefer to leave them open for re-consideration after a trial period or perhaps each month. Since something might suddenly prove unexpectedly arousing, you should agree that either of you can instantly raise standards higher, but agree never to lower standards in the heat of the moment. If anything ever required a cool head and a prayerful heart, it is in establishing or modifying your personal set of guidelines and boundaries. If you have a fear of intimacy that could possibly hinder you in marriage, don’t hide behind these standards. You need to discuss possible difficulties openly if the relationship is looking as if it might lead to marriage. Never resort to emotional blackmail such as: ‘If you loved me you would lower your standards.’ ‘I’ll be forced to leave you if you don’t lower your standards.’ ‘I can’t sleep because I so desperately need you to lower your standards.’ ‘So and so does it.’ In relation to this last complaint, remember that, given the number of Christians who sin and do their utmost to keep their shame secret, arguments about what other unmarried couples seem to get away with, hold little weight. Christians who freely confess their pre-conversion sins typically go deathly quiet about their post-conversion falls. And no one knows what their liberties are doing to their thought life and to God’s breaking heart. You might also be blessed with a higher libido than them. It feels like an act of cruelty to know that one’s loved one in craving physical contact and not give it. A problem, however, is that although your friend genuinely believes that just one, relatively safe thing will satisfy him/her, that satisfaction will be short lived and then your friend will crave something a little further down the slippery slide. Bringing it Together We have been seeking to determine not what is sin, but how far from the edge a couple must stop to be free from the danger of falling into sin. Because we each have unique pasts, unique bodies, and differing libidos, the point at which we must draw the line will vary from person to person. This means that for most couples, one person could safely go further than the other. This difference can be frustrating, but the person who could safely go further must strongly support his/her friend’s boundaries, even though it seems unduly restrictive. This could demand a massive rethink. You have rightly committed yourself to avoiding intercourse before marriage, but for your friend’s sake you might have to avoid very much more than that. If you are unwilling to make this sacrifice for your friend’s sake, then you are unworthy of your friend. Related Webpages Part One of This Series When Christians Date

When Christians Date Touching, Petting, Making Out, Getting Physical: How far is too far? Suppose you are unmarried and have a hot romance. I’ll assume your friend is Christian, because, as explained in Dating a Non-Christian , God views sex with a non-Christian in a disturbingly different light to the way we tend to. Regardless of your Christian friend’s past, the Almighty Lord sees him or her as the purest virgin, and he feels as fiercely protective of his or her purity as the most devoted father would feel toward a young and cherished daughter. And Father God never lets his darling out of his sight. You never see the Father, but he sees you. You may forget he is there. He never forgets. It would be a grave mistake to misinterpret the fact that the Almighty’s anger is seldom displayed instantly. As the Eternal, all-seeing Judge, he holds all the aces. It seems that for almost a year King David thought he had got away with his sin. Only after Bathsheba’s baby was born did he first learn of God’s judgment. Years later, he was still suffering the consequences (2 Samuel 11:26 – 12:14). There’s a sense in which intentionally or unintentionally tempting someone to be morally loose with you, is spiritually worse than rape, because it is an attempt to defile someone in the deepest possible way. Rape produces an innocent victim. Seduction corrupts far deeper because it reduces a person to a willing partner in sin. It is better to die than to tempt someone, warned Jesus. Matthew 18:6-7 but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him that a huge millstone should be hung around his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of occasions of stumbling! For it must be that the occasions come, but woe to that person through whom the occasion comes! Jesus’ teaching on divorce shows the seriousness with which God views a relationship in which two become one flesh. A bond is forged so binding that it should never be broken. And yet the alarming truth is that Scripture applies the principle of two becoming one, to even the most casual of sexual encounters. 1 Corinthians 6:15-18 . . . Shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them members of a prostitute? May it never be! Or don’t you know that he who is joined to a prostitute is one body? For, “The two”, he says, “will become one flesh.” . . . Flee sexual immorality! “Every sin that a man does is outside the body,” but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Matthew 19:5-6 . . . ‘For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall join to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh?’ So that they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, don’t let man tear apart. [I believe this last statement means “what God declares or regards as being joined together . . .” – not necessarily a union that took place in holy submission to his will. Verse 5 suggests that God's plan was for sex to occur only after the deliberate and public act of leaving one's parental authority for the purpose of joining oneself to other.] There is another sobering consideration stemming from Scripture’s declaration that in the act of prostitution, two become one flesh. One might guess that with less effective contraceptives in ancient times, prostitution might have been more likely to involve acts that stop short of coitus (full heterosexual relations). Scripture does not specify exactly how far one need go physically for God to regard two as one. And let’s not forget that deliberately having sex with someone in your fantasies is a serious offense, even though it is the ultimate in ensuring that no one gets hurt. From the ten Commandments . . . Exodus 20:17 . . . You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife . . . Matthew 5:27-29 You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery;’ but I tell you that everyone who gazes at a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart. If your right eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and throw it away from you. For it is more profitable for you that one of your members should perish, than for your whole body to be cast into Gehenna. In actual fact, God would be hurt and so would you. Moreover, anyone you sin with in your thoughts has, in reality, been sinned against as surely as someone who is unaware that he or she has been swindled. (And if the object of your fantasy were married, you would have also sinned against the marriage partner.) Sinning in one’s thought life is a most serious matter that must be understood correctly, lest the Enemy distort the truth to cause unnecessary condemnation and further temptation. Morally, there is a huge difference between sin and mere temptation (even the holy Son of God was severely tempted) but Satan loves to muddy the difference. He tempts by putting evil thoughts in your mind. One of his ugliest tricks is to then make you feel guilty about his own failed attempts to tempt you! If sinful thoughts keep coming and you keep fighting them, God commends you for the fight and regards you as victorious. The thoughts are originating not from you, but Satan. It's enjoying wrong thoughts – deliberately entertaining them – that is wrong. If Satan succeeded in actually getting you to sin in your mind he would then try the lie that you have blown it so much that you might as well sin physically. However, no matter how much mental sin corrupts the fantasizer, it leaves the other person pure. To sin with someone else doubles the evil because it corrupts the other person as well. The Old Testament, taught the apostle Paul, is written to warn we who live under the New Covenant. The Value of the Old Testament Today Romans 15:4 For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that through patience and through encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. In the passage printed below, Paul reminds us of the Old Testament record of the Holy Lord on various occasions slaying thousands of Israelites for their sin. He then concludes: 1 Corinthians 10:11 Now all these things happened to them by way of example, and they were written for our admonition, on whom the ends of the ages have come. The Full Scripture 1 Corinthians 10:1-10 Now I would not have you ignorant, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; and were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and all ate the same spiritual food; and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. However with most of them, God was not well pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted. Don’t be idolaters, as some of them were. As it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.” Let us not commit sexual immorality, as some of them committed, and in one day twenty-three thousand fell. Let us not test Christ, as some of them tested, and perished by the serpents. Don’t grumble, as some of them also grumbled, and perished by the destroyer. One of the concepts the Old Testament tries hard to impart is that to violate something holy is to call down the fearsome wrath of God. Your friend’s body is holy. It is the sanctuary of the Holy Spirit. The word chosen to convey this truth in the original text (1 Corinthians 6:19) is often used to specify the inner, holier part of the temple, rather than the temple as a whole. In fact, it is appropriate to think in terms of the holiest thing in ancient Israel, the ark of the Covenant, since your friend’s body is the very object in which the Holy One has taken up residence. We are not discussing ritualistic or theoretical holiness: the Holy Spirit of almighty God literally resides within the bodies of Christians. Most of us have totally missed the implications. Better to play with a nuclear reactor than tamper with something made holy by the actual presence of the King of the universe. You need to treat your friend’s body with almost the caution with which Old Testament saints had to treat the ark. Seventy used the ark to satisfy their curiosity. They were struck dead. Later, another touched it in an inappropriate way. He died. Be careful how you touch that which is holy 1 Samuel 6:19-20 He struck of the men of Beth Shemesh, because they had looked into the Lord’s ark, he struck fifty thousand seventy of the men. Then the people mourned, because the Lord had struck the people with a great slaughter. The men of Beth Shemesh said, “Who is able to stand before the Lord, this holy God? . . .” 2 Samuel 6:6-7 When they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached for God’s ark, and took hold of it; for the cattle stumbled. The Lord’s anger burned against Uzzah; and God struck him there for his error; and he died there by God’s ark. When God struck Uzzah dead for touching the ark, Scripture says ‘David was afraid of the Lord that day’ (2 Samuel 6:9). Such fear is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 1:7). If few of us have this fear of sinning against God, it is not because we live in the age of grace, but because we barely know the God of the New Testament; the God who in Acts struck Ananias and Sapphira dead, killed Herod for his pride, and blinded Elymas for opposing Paul; the God of the Corinthian believers who were afflicted, or even killed, for the flippant way they treated holy communion; the God into whose hands, warns Hebrews, it’s a fearful thing to fall; the God whom Jesus said is the one Person in the universe to fear because he alone can destroy body and soul in hell. The Fear of the Lord Acts 5:9-11 But Peter asked her, “How is it that you have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? Behold, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out.” She fell down immediately at his feet, and died. The young men came in and found her dead, and they carried her out and buried her by her husband. Great fear came on the whole assembly, and on all who heard these things. Acts 12:23 Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him, because he didn’t give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and died. Acts 13:11 Now, behold, the hand of the Lord is on you, and you will be blind, not seeing the sun for a season!” Immediately a mist and darkness fell on him. He went around seeking someone to lead him by the hand. 1 Corinthians 11:29-31 For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy way eats and drinks judgment to himself, if he doesn’t discern the Lord’s body. For this cause many among you are weak and sickly, and not a few sleep. For if we discerned ourselves, we wouldn’t be judged. Hebrews 10:31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Matthew 10:28 Don’t be afraid of those who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul. Rather, fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna. The Judge of all the earth is our Father. Do we see the implications of this in the same light as Scripture does? Since you call on a Father who judges each man’s work impartially, says 1 Peter 1:17, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear. Scripture tells us to “flee fornication” (1 Corinthians 6:18, KJV) and “Flee also youthful lusts” (2 Timothy 2:22, KJV). Paul, an old man at the time of writing to Timothy, was referring to lusts that were “youthful” relative to his old age. “Flee” is definitely the meaning of the Greek and it is in the continuous tense, meaning to keep on fleeing. The divine directive as to how to protect ourselves from the danger of sexual temptation is to run from it as one would flee a bomb that could explode at any second. To flee is to desperately try to put as big a distance as possible between yourself and what you are fleeing. How does our behavior compare? How likely are we to receive divine protection if we ignore God’s directive and choose the exact opposite by trying to edge as close as we dare to the danger? We have looked briefly at sexual sin, but it applies to all sin. The point is that we rarely view any sin with the seriousness that God does. It is said a pirate killed a man. He was so horrified by his sin that it ruined his sleep for days. Yet he kept killing. He reached the point where he could murder someone and sleep like a baby, using the corpse as a pillow. We, too, having been surrounded by sin all our lives, have a conscience that in many areas has become disturbingly dull, and we must fight Satan’s attempt to keep us that way. Related Pages How Far Is Too Far? Dating a Non-Christian

Help in Finding the Correct Bible Interpretation A Serious Look at a Serious Issue Although divorce and remarriage is such a contentious issue that it divides Christians, my goal is to serve you with a webpage that all Christians agree with. “Marry in haste; repent in leisure,” is a saying laced with alarming possibilities. Even more terrifying is the possibility of too hastily presuming that our views on divorce and remarriage are of God. I passionately long to comfort you and yet I dare not downplay the fearful gravity of this matter. Jesus (and the apostle Paul – Romans 7:3) kept equating wrong divorce with the sin of adultery. Let’s not allow worldly immorality to desensitize us to what a grave offense this is. Under the Old Testament – still in force when Jesus uttered the words – adultery incurred the death penalty. No wonder Jesus’ teaching on divorce sent such a chill down the disciples’ spines that in horror they responded that it is better never to marry (Matthew 19:10)! And let’s not suppose we can get away with this under the New Covenant: 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral . . . nor adulterers . . . will inherit the kingdom of God. That does not render the sin unforgivable, but just as a fireman cannot save a person who refuses to leave a burning building, so Jesus cannot save people who refuse to leave their sin. We cannot save ourselves but we must be willing to let Jesus drag us from the sin we love, or we will die in our sin. I agonize over the possibility that most Christians who sincerely believe they know the morality of divorce and remarriage are completely unaware that their understanding of the Bible’s teaching on this subject is dangerously shallow. Although we tend to drastically oversimplify the biblical and moral dilemmas of divorce and remarriage, it does not necessarily mean we have reached the wrong conclusion. It drastically increases the chance of such a mistake, however; thus exposing us to the grave danger of sinning against God or of being responsible before God for directly or indirectly influencing others to sin. “You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery?” writes Paul (Romans 2:22), implying that one can commit the sin and be quite unaware of it. Your church and favorite Bible teachers might be excellent and have far deeper understanding than me, but does that make them infallible? I doubt if anyone on the planet has a one hundred percent correct interpretation of every aspect of the entire Bible. How then can you be certain that that fraction of a percent where your church or Bible teacher is incorrect does not include teaching about divorce? So why should I be any less fallible? I’m not. So I will not presume to tell you the correct view. What I hope to do, however, is provide a checklist of things that should be prayerfully considered before concluding you have God’s mind on the critical issue of divorce and/or remarriage. You will discover that some points seem pro-divorce and some seem anti-divorce. That’s because I’m not pushing my own views, but seeking to assist you to personally discover God’s will for your situation. Pondering seemingly conflicting points will initially seem confusing but it’s a vital stage in the journey to truth. In addition to the obvious, it eradicates false confidence and drives us to plunge into the heart of God, where both you and I will find all we need. After the checklist we will look at how to find answers. If you tire of the checklist go straight to the next section (the link at the end of this webpage) Since Christians have vastly different views on this matter, let’s start by considering whether one’s sincere beliefs about the morality of divorce will influence God’s judgment of us if we go ahead and do it. Suppose two Christians in identical circumstances each remarry. One sincerely believes that he has God’s blessing on the new marriage. The other believes that by remarrying he is committing a gross sin. Will God judge them differently? In most countries, ignorance of the law is no excuse. Is this how God judges? In two long passages of Scripture, Paul explains that some things become sin merely because a person believes them to be sin (Romans 14:1-23; 1 Corinthians 8:1-13). It is most important to realize, however, that Paul was referring to acts that are not of themselves sinful. He is not saying that if someone believes “sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery” are moral, then they suddenly become acceptable. On the contrary, these belong to the list of which Paul declares, “I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 19-21). Elsewhere he says the same about adultery (1 Corinthians 6:9-10). To understand what Paul was saying, consider this: if you knew that someone believed he was deliberately poisoning your child, you would be extremely upset by his action, even if it turned out that he was mistaken and the substance was harmless. His belief about his action is enough to highly offend you. On the other hand, if someone carelessly poisoned your child, believing the substance to be harmless, you would also be upset. A person’s belief can turn something harmless into sin, but it cannot turn sin into something harmless. If Jane believes something that is innocent is adultery, then if she chooses to do it, she is guilty of adultery in the eyes of the One who sees her heart. If, however, she does something that in God’s eyes is adultery, then she is committing adultery even though she sincerely believes that what she is doing is innocent. If Jane’s ignorance is genuine, God will be lenient, but she will still be held accountable. Luke 12:47-48 That servant who knows his master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what his master wants will be beaten with many blows. But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. There is greater leniency for one, but both are punished. Ignorance is not bliss. Proverbs 16:25 There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death. If your “belief” that something sinful is acceptable is merely because you have schemed to silence your conscience or to fool God by trying to convince yourself that it has God’s approval, then such “belief” will not even buy you leniency. If you have a shadow of doubt over the legitimacy of something, you must avoid it. Romans 14:23 But the man who has doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin. This Scripture is talking about eating because it applies to minor things, not major matters like adultery. Feeling certain that whatever you do has God’s approval is an essential starting point. To avoid what God regards as adultery, however, in addition to believing that it is right, it must be right. A divorced woman told me: I have friends who say I should consider remarriage, but I don’t dare, because I do not want to rationalize that remarriage is permissible if it’s not – and for centuries the understanding of the church was that it was not permissible. Is it mere coincidence that over the last decades, as the world has grown increasingly accepting of divorce, so has much of the church? To discover how addicted to change this world has made us, look back to an era when most people were farmers working the same plot of land as their father’s father, or craftsmen engaged in the same work in the same place, not just all their lives, but for generations. Look at an era where one’s mode of transport or plough puller was not a heartless machine to be traded in next year for the new improved model, but an animal that inspired affection and loyalty and whose death was mourned. Our era stands out from the past as one that exalts self pleasure over duty, personal “advancement” over loyalty, and change over stability. (Note how even the words duty, loyalty, and stability seem old-fashioned.) Wherever we look in modern society we find stressors and mindsets driving us to trade in our partner for a new improved model promising higher status or excitement. Of course, just because certain Christians lived in another era does not make them right. The issue to beg God to search your heart over, however, is this: Are you, and the Christians who influence you, being led by the Spirit of God or unknowingly led by the spirit of the world? Divine forgiveness is perhaps life’s most wondrously liberating experience. We must understand, however, that total forgiveness of our past mistakes does not make us free to keep sinning or to keep enjoying the benefits of past sin. For example, if you stole a million dollars, forgiveness does not make it acceptable for you to continue to live off your ill-gotten gains. Scripture is clear that you must return all the money you stole. Forgiveness does not mean God ceases to be holy and lowers his standards of honesty and faithfulness. If I broke my marriage vows, forgiveness would remove my past guilt, but not my continued moral obligations to the woman I promised myself to. Suppose marrying a particular person was an act of rebellion against God. You might now despise that person but if in God’s sight you are still married to him/her, forgiveness does not mean you are free to commit adultery. A man who is unfaithful to his wife can find forgiveness, but not a divine license to keep committing adultery. To confuse forgiveness with a license to sin is a grave offense against God. So regardless of how deeply forgiven you are, before marrying anyone else you would need to be certain that you are not, in God’s view of marital commitment, still being married to your former partner, because that would make re-marriage adultery in his eyes, no matter what divorce documents you can produce and how much your past offenses are forgiven. Jesus gives an exception to the general rule. “Except for fornication” is how the King James Version puts it. That’s rather mysterious. Why didn’t he say, “except for adultery”? Exactly what Jesus meant is not immediately obvious. Some think Jesus was referring to any form of sexual infidelity, perhaps even including deliberate and continual adulterous thoughts or an addiction to porn or to masturbation. Some go to the other extreme and think that because Jesus did not say “except for adultery,” he was referring solely to premarital infidelity discovered after marriage, such as discovering on the wedding night that the bride is not a virgin. Jesus does not say that the person initiating the divorce commits adultery. What he says is much more puzzling. He says the man divorcing a woman causes her – “the innocent party” – to commit adultery. Matthew 5:32 But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife . . . causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery. I will not give my opinion of the following interpretation, but before proceeding with divorce one needs to be certain that it is incorrect. (For ease of reading I refer to “Mary” and Joe” but the genders could just as easily have been reversed.) Mary is a good, faithful wife who longs to remain married to Joe, but he divorces her. As far as the divorce is concerned, Mary is utterly innocent. If Joe remains celibate for life, he has not committed adultery. Nevertheless, Joe’s decision to end the marriage exposes Mary to the strong temptation to eventually re-marry. Of course Mary is responsible for her response to the temptation, but by initiating the divorce, Joe is as guilty as the devil in causing Mary to suffer the strong temptation to “commit adultery,” that is, to re-marry. To be the cause of temptation is a grave offense: Luke 17:2 It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin. But why would Jesus imply the innocent party commits adultery if she remarries? Because, according to this interpretation, in God’s sight a marital union can be dissolved only by death, regardless of how innocent one party is or how guilty the other one is. Whoever Mary marries is likely to be doubly innocent regarding the divorce and yet this person is committing adultery, because despite a divorce certificate and subsequent marriage, in God’s sight Mary is still bound to her former partner, even though he no longer wants her. Jesus gives an exception to the above – one that applies if Mary were not innocent. Suppose Mary were committing adultery before Joe even considered divorce. Since she is so hell-bent on committing adultery that not even marriage keeps her faithful, it could not be said that by divorcing her, Joe was causing her to commit adultery. She would commit adultery even if he didn’t divorce her. Nevertheless, Joe would himself be committing adultery if he remarried, because marriage is binding for life no matter what either party do. Mark 10:11 Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. I repeat that I make no claim about the correctness of this interpretation, but to honor God, one should be certain it is wrong before proceeding with divorce or re-marriage. Could there be situations where God actually requires divorce – or at least separation? We see an Old Testament instance of this in Ezra chapter ten, where those guilty of marrying pagan wives were compelled to divorce. This must be read in the light of 1 Corinthians 7:12-16, which seems to take a very different approach. Nevertheless, here is a case where divorce was not merely permitted but was mandatory. Now let’s move to the New Testament. It speaks of the importance of separating from those who claim to be believers but are engaged in blatant, repeated, unrepentant sin. We read, for instance: 1 Corinthians 5:11  . . .  you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat. Suppose, you are married to someone who considers the ideal is to “enjoy” both sexual unfaithfulness and the benefits of being married to you. If you knowingly allow your spouse to pursue this, does that make you a partner in his/her sin? Of course you cannot prevent your partner from being unfaithful, but if you are aware of what is happening, it is your decision as to whether your partner can enjoy marital privileges with you while pursuing extramarital sin. In theory, you could give the ultimatum: “Either be completely faithful or the marriage is over.” What if giving this ultimatum is the one thing that would keep your partner from sin? If you give and maintain the ultimatum and your partner disregards it, no one could say you have made it easy for him/her to sin. Imagine for a moment if in God’s eyes marriage is dissoluble only by death. Would that mean that if Jan is married to a divorced man, every day that she remains married to him she is continuing to commit adultery? Does this mean that in order to stop sinning she must separate from him? Does it mean that if for these reasons she divorces him, she is free to remarry, since her first marriage was not a marriage in God’s sight but an adulterous affair? One might suppose that remarrying someone you had previously divorced would be a godly way of correcting a past mistake. However, our Lord revealed in the Old Testament that, at least in some instances, this could be highly offensive to God. It says that if a man divorced his wife and she married someone else who then dies or divorces her, it is a gross sin for the first husband to remarry his former wife (Deuteronomy 24:1-4). This should be treated with extreme seriousness, given the fact that it is found in the same Testament that permits divorce. The precise situation it describes, however, might be critical. Without David divorcing his wife, her father had her married off to someone else. David took her back again (2 Samuel 3:13-16), presumably because although she had been remarried, there was no divorce of the first marriage. This suggests that each condition of Deuteronomy 24:1-4 must be fulfilled before God considers remarrying the same person an abomination. An example of a scenario not specifically mentioned is if the divorcee did not marry someone else. God’s commands are not always blanket statements divinely intended to cover every rare and unlikely scenario. For instance, of all the Gospels, only Matthew says “except for fornication” when forbidding divorce. Presumably Mark and Luke regarded this as an intended exception that they felt no compulsion to spell out. Could there be other exceptions to the general ban on divorce that Scripture does not bother to enumerate? For an example on the other side of the ledger, the Ten Commandments forbid the coveting of a neighbor’s wife, but say nothing about a woman coveting a neighbor’s husband. Clearly this is a law not intended to include every possible scenario. It is an obvious instance of the Lord expecting his people to draw principles from general laws and under his inspiration and guidance – not our whims – apply them to specific situations. Jesus said, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and taking the consecrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions” (Luke 6:3-6). Jesus seems to regard this as acceptable, even though such an exception is not spelled out in the law. There are grave dangers with pursuing this line of thought but the next point demonstrates that the other extreme is not without its dangers. It is possible to offend God by being too strict in interpreting his commands. Many devout Jews felt they were honoring the Almighty by insisting that Jesus not heal on the Sabbath. This seems reasonable; after all there were six other days in which one could heal. Nevertheless, their strict interpretation was wrong and drew Jesus’ wrath because it showed lack of compassion. If, through too strict an interpretation of Scripture, you influenced a woman not to leave her abusive husband, could God hold you guilty of pressuring her to be molested or tormented by her husband? Or could you cause an abandoned partner to fall into sexual sin because you have convinced that person that re-marriage is forbidden? We must avoid being like those experts in Jewish law whom Jesus accused of loading people down with burdens (Matthew 13:4). Even the apostle Paul, whose personal preference was that every Christian remain unmarried, recognized that in our sex-crazed world, celibacy is an impractical and excessive burden to lay on most people (1 Corinthians 7:1-9 – note, however, the next verse). Let’s not forget that God allowed divorce in the Old Testament because of people’s “hard hearts.” Does this mean that Jesus was describing the ideal – what we should all aspire to – but the Old Testament was describing God’s understanding of practical reality in a fallen world? I won’t presume to explain what he meant by it but Jesus himself said about his teaching on divorce, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. . . .” (Matthew 19:11). And even if you have a soft heart, your partner may not. On the other hand, even in the Old Testament, the Lord says he hates divorce (Malachi 2:16), so one would think that at least one partner in a divorce – but not necessarily both – would be grieving God’s heart. If you are hurting over the way your partner is treating you, it breaks God’s heart, as it did for him to see his Son being tortured to death. Our amazing Lord would rather suffer himself than see you suffer. Nevertheless, the undeniable reality of God’s extreme compassion does not of itself indicate whether cruelty is sufficient grounds for divorce or even separation. We must weigh up the fact that the following clearly applies to women with less than godly husbands: 1 Peter 3:1 Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word . . . Moreover, this Scripture is found in the very letter that repeatedly speaks of the importance of physically suffering for Christ, and tells slaves to submit even to harsh masters. Just as with Jesus’ suffering, there are times when more eternal good is achieved by our short term suffering than by us having an easier life. Do you know of someone divorced and remarried who seems greatly blessed of God and powerfully used by him? You have probably also heard of men of God whom the Lord seemed to treat that way despite them being repeatedly involved in secret sex outside marriage. Is their sin a license for others to act that way? Who knows what devastation such people will experience when they stand naked before their Judge? Despite all the mighty things they have done in Jesus’ name, will they receive an “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!” (Matthew 7:22-23)? God temporarily withholding his wrath – as he did even with Sodom and Gomorrah for years – is no foundation on which to build moral conclusions. Scripture stresses the supreme importance of “swearing to one’s hurt” (Psalms 15:4) – keeping one’s word even when unforeseen circumstances make fulfilling the promise devastatingly painful and costly. When marrying, it is the norm to vow to remain committed to one’s partner “till death do us part” or “for as long as we both shall live.” I haven’t come across marriage vows that allow the option “until my partner commits adultery” or “until my partner marries someone else.” Perhaps the vows should have been worded differently. Nevertheless, the vows you made – not the ones you wish you had made – are the ones you have committed yourself to. Does this mean that even if God would have allowed you to remarry, the very vows you voluntarily made have cancelled that permission? Have you, because of your vow, obligated yourself before God to remain faithful to your partner “for as long as you both shall live,” regardless of what he or she does? “. . . what God has joined together, let man not separate” (Matthew 19:6). But who exactly is it that “God has joined together”? It cannot be only those who have had a church wedding because in Bible times there was no such thing as a church wedding. Scripture applies this Bible truth of two becoming one flesh principle even to a fleeting, sin-ridden encounter with a prostitute (1 Corinthians 6:15-16). It might be that “what God has joined” [or what God declares to be one flesh] applies to every sexual encounter, no matter how contrary to God’s will that relationship is. Might it be similar to Joshua and his nation, who were tricked into making a covenant with people whom God had declared should be destroyed? The Israelites had been conned, they regretted it, and it was completely contrary to God’s will, but merely because they had made a covenant, it was so binding in God’s eyes that he insisted that they, (Joshua 9) and even subsequent generations (2 Samuel 21:1-9,14), must keep that covenant in its entirety. Other nations were so furious with these people for selling out to the Israelites that they massed their armies to destroy them. This seemed an ideal opportunity for the Israelites to have their past mistake eradicated. Without lifting a finger against these con artists, the Israelites could let heathens wipe them out, as God had originally intended. But instead, the Lord insisted that they fight to protect those they had made the covenant with. And to assist, the Almighty even made the sun stand still (Joshua 10:1-15). There is biblical evidence that God regards sex as entering into a binding covenant. Could it be that a major factor behind God being so strict as to who one has sex with is that he views sex as joining people together in a bond that should never be broken, no matter how much God may wish it had never happened? One of the themes threading through Scripture is that God is moved to treat us like we treat others. In Luke 6:37-38 Jesus lines up one example after another: * Do not judge, and you will not be judged. * Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. * Forgive, and you will be forgiven. * Give, and it will be given to you. . . . Here are some other examples: Psalm 18:25 To the faithful you show yourself faithful . . . Matthew 5:7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Galatians 6:7  . . . God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. In addition to the above, we know that Scripture sees a close similarity or link between marriage and our relationship with God. Let’s team up these two truths and see where they lead. No matter how unlikely it seems to me, it is not impossible that I could at some time fall into a delusion or become so infatuated with sin that I turn my back on my Savior and, as it were, divorce him. I need a God who, if I were stupid enough to do this, would remain free to be joined to me again, should I later come to my senses. I would not want God to become so attached to someone else that he is no longer able to take me back. If I had a wife who was unfaithful to me and divorced me against my will, dare I remarry – thus permanently cutting myself off from the woman I had committed myself to – when it would be the worse thing in my universe for God to treat me the same way? Under Old Testament law, a number of sins incurred the death penalty, including rejection of the true God (eg Exodus 22:18, Leviticus 20:2,27; 24:16) and certain sexual sins – proven adultery, homosexual acts, bestiality, incest (eg Leviticus 20:10ff). We all know that the death of one’s partner frees one to remarry: Romans 7:2-3 For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man. Of course, the death penalty no longer applies to these sins, but does it reveal a divine principle that if one partner continues to remain unrepentant of such gross sin and is dead to God, the innocent one is free to remarry as he/she would be had the partner died? Or is Old Testament practice irrelevant, since the person in still physically alive? Even if divorce in certain circumstances were acceptable to God, that of itself might not mean that re-marriage is acceptable. For instance, one must consider this: 1 Corinthians 7: 10-11 To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. . . .” In wedding vows one promises to love. This is a beautiful, highly Christian concept that is too often ruined by confusing it with the worldly love of romantic fiction. Romantic love can never be promised. It is fickle, fleeting and selfish. It is not a virtue and the only predictable thing about it is that it will fizzle. In contrast, the love that can be promised is noble. It inspires all heaven to applaud you. It is a virtue of eternal worth. Ideally, we should marry not for our own pleasure but for God’s glory. Similarly, our decision about divorce should be based not on our ease but on what will maximize God’s glory in a difficult situation. Are we driven by what will make us more like Christ, or by what will make us more like a bit part in a soap opera? Just because romantic love vanishes does not make it time for divorce; on the contrary, it is your chance to start gaining eternal glory. Resolving the Issues If you are facing divorce or the prospect of loneliness, I long to comfort you. So it hurts me that after reading this webpage you could initially feel more confused than ever. I felt the need to write what I did, lest you reach a decision with life-shattering implications before prayerfully considering all the spiritual issues involved. Moreover, we will discover that, as unlikely as it seems, confusion is the ideal launching pad to fire us to the answers we need. Perhaps the discrepancy between the ideal and God’s response to practical reality explains some of the seeming contradictions in the checklist we have just looked at. Another possibility is that some apparent contradictions could be due to misinterpreting what God is really saying in certain Scriptures. Could some sticking points, however, be because of us not recognizing the cost of doing right; forgetting that we are called to follow the One who was tortured to death? I suggest deferring all critical decisions until you feel confident that what you believe God has revealed to be his will for you can be reconciled with the full truth about every item on the above checklist. As you seek God, you might not be given all the answers as to how what you believe to be God’s will fits every point on the checklist, but I suggest you need to keep seeking until you at least feel peace that such answers exist and that in God’s eyes your decision gels perfectly with every part of the Bible. For clarity, you particularly need the final section of this study: Finding God's Will

Breaking habits, addiction, temptation and demonic powers Becoming a Winner!   Finding Supernatural Power to Break Free   *  Breaking the Stranglehold of Habit   *  Spiritual Warfare   *  Pleasure Secrets   *  The Unexpected Thrill of Obeying God   *  Demons?   Beating Temptation and Satanic Attack     You’ve made it!   Blinding light flashes from the Throne. Creation quakes. On Heaven’s Throne is a shining figure robed in purity. Powerful. Majestic. Holy. Who is this mighty victor, the one deemed worthy to rule forever, the joy of the Father’s heart? You. Yes, you, the butt of jokes, the focus of Satan’s slur campaign.   Christian, through the  miracle of spiritual rebirth,  you and Christ are one. That makes his victory, your victory. Before him, every knee in every universe and dimension must bow. That’s  your  victory. Right now, no matter how defeated you may feel, you are enthroned with Christ as head of the universe.   A little boy walks tall when his father becomes world champion. Even though the boy contributed nothing to the achievement, his father’s glory exalts him, flooding him with new confidence. Total strangers give him new respect. That’s the faintest shadow of what Jesus’ triumph has done for us. We walk ever so tall because our supernatural union with Christ far exceeds the deepest bond between father and son, and Christ’s incomparable victory utterly outclasses any human achievement.   Suppose a billion dollars were deposited in joint names in a special bank account, and one of those two names is yours. All you would then need to live like the billionaire you have just become is learn how to make withdrawals.   With Christ, you have joint claim to the highest honors. His victory was for  you . Heaven sees you as the champion of champions. For this eternal fact to be seen on earth, all you need do is learn how to draw on the victory that all of heaven recognizes as being yours. In the rest of this webpage we’ll examine how to make that victory obvious. No matter what illusions temporary circumstances might suggest, however, in the eyes of all spiritual powers, whether satanic or divine, you have already made it.   Living a holy life is simply letting Christ, who now lives inside you, express himself through your actions. It’s letting run wild the divine genes (the new nature) you inherited when you were born again into God’s family. Living a Christian life is not about exercising will power, but reveling in God’s love, living the supernatural; doing all manner of things that were previously impossible for you.   Being free from enslaving and degrading habits is a wonderfully fulfilling and liberating way to live, but don’t imagine it is the way to gain God’s approval. You won that approval the moment you trusted Jesus for your forgiveness. You can’t get any more forgiven, and any more the object of divine favor than the moment you first trusted Jesus to do it all for you – when you had nothing but sin to offer your Lord.   Non-Christians suppose that by cutting sin out of their lives they could reach a holy God. It could never work. Lifetime perfection is God’s minimum standard. We cannot even start with a clean sheet, because none of us can remove our past failures. Because of Jesus, however, Christians have already reached God. They can live a holy life because the holy God lives within them.   When Diana Spencer married Prince Charles, she suddenly became rich. Suddenly, she was royalty. Suddenly, she was famous and important. She was one with Charles. His assets and honor became hers, as much as they had ever been his. That is rather like your transformation, the moment you were born again. Your status and assets skyrocketed, although at the time you were only vaguely conscious of the enormity of what happened  (More) .   After that famous wedding, Princess Diana underwent a second, much slower and uneven transformation. Step by faltering step, a shy, plainly dressed girl gradually became a confident, sophisticated, superbly dressed woman who captured the admiration of millions. That second change was only possible because she firmly believed in the reality of the first transformation – that she really was royal, rich, important and famous. Had she kept telling herself that she was insignificant, that she had no right to Charles’ money, that nothing she did was of any consequence, she would still have had much, but that second change would never have occurred. As it was, she would probably have blossomed further, had she felt more secure in Charles’ love and in the acceptance and approval of his family.   This webpage focuses on that second type of transformation that can be yours. The change will be slow and uneven, teetering on how secure you feel in God’s love, and how convinced you are of that change of status that occurred the moment you were united to Christ.     Temptation is spiritual rape   Do you think the holy Son of God was tempted to lust? Was Christ tempted to punch someone, to hold a grudge, to be lazy, to swear, to get drunk? That is surely what Hebrews means. Hebrews 2:17  For this reason he [Jesus] had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God . . .  (18)  Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. Hebrews 4:15  For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted  in every way, just as we are  – yet was without sin. (Emphasis mine.) Hebrews 7:26  Such a high priest [Jesus] meets our need – one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens.     Temptation occurs when an evil intelligence violates your mind, invading your inner person with its filth. The temptation could be anything that is not in your highest interest. It might be to hate yourself, to over-indulge, to doubt, to smoke, to hold a grudge; the list is endless. It is something that in the short term seems right or desirable but in the long term ends up robbing and hurting you. For brevity, I call the source of temptation Satan, or the devil, although we are more likely to be tempted by one of his underlings than by the Prince of demons himself.   To understand the nature of spiritual rape, we need to consider physical rape. I’d rather avoid this distasteful subject, but I feel the need to demonstrate just how disgusting temptation is.   Suppose the trusted boyfriend of a virtuous girl one day goes way too far. He forcibly but painlessly immobilizes her and begins to gently and seductively violate her. Her mind is repulsed by what is happening, but her body is designed to respond to certain stimuli by sending pleasure signals to the brain. This physiological fact has nothing to do with her purity or morality. It simply means she is normal. After the ordeal she ends the relationship and yet, for years afterwards her sensitive conscience is tormented with false pangs of guilt; wrongly imagining she must have the morality of a harlot to have had her feelings of horror tinged with the slightest feelings of pleasure.   She eventually marries but she cannot forget her involuntary bodily reaction to the rape in which pleasure signals were sent to the brain. She so despises herself for feelings she had no control over that she becomes convinced that her husband must secretly loathe her for her past, even though he actually sees his darling as being utterly pure.   Despite all her husband’s loving assurances and tenderness, this poor woman so focuses on that awful event that she continues to feel immoral, unloved and unwanted. Overwhelmed by this illusion, she starts telling herself that she has so ruined her life that she could not be more immoral if she became a prostitute. Tragically, after years of such thinking, convinced she is doing her husband a favor, she leaves the man she mistakenly thinks can no longer love her. Finding no other means of support and imagining she has no purity to preserve, this highly moral woman ends up the harlot she wrongly saw herself as being.   Sadly, such a route to promiscuity is not uncommon for sexual abuse victims, harassed by false feelings of guilt over the pleasure signals involuntarily sent to the brain when their will was violated.   A similar tragedy could be played out in anyone of us if we condemn ourselves over the fact that temptation, by its very nature, makes sin seem enticingly pleasurable.   When Jesus was being tempted, the purest person ever to walk this planet was being spiritually raped. The Holy Lord was subjected to the inner urge to sin; a craving to do wrong. His mind and spirit were repeatedly and shamefully violated. You know he emerged from the horrific experience with his purity intact.   So do not despise yourself when evil thoughts come to you, or when you find yourself longing to do wrong. It simply means that, like God’s holy Son, and all his saints, you have been spiritually molested. And like the most despicable child molester, the Evil One tries to make his innocent victim feel guilty for  his  crime, and for pleasurable feelings he induces.   It’s only if you cease trying to resist those evil thoughts and urges, that the harassment could touch your purity. And even if you totally gave in, you would have no rational basis for continuing to imagine you are impure, because the instant you return to your Savior with genuine regret, you are again spotless in the eyes of the Holy One.   Does Satan often appear and speak to you face to face? He’s far too cunning. He speaks in your mind, pretending to be your own thoughts. Disown those thoughts. Refuse to cave in to false guilt.   Imagine how hard it was to tempt Jesus. Satan had to try to persuade the Son of God to act totally out of character. And yet it is exactly the same when the Evil One tempts you. He tries to inflict you with a desire to do something utterly contrary to your nature. The real you is Christlike. From the moment you were born again, Christ took up residence inside you. You gained his goodness, his holy character, his purity of motives, his inexhaustible love. You might have committed a certain sin hundreds of times a year since childhood, and continued for the many years you have been born again. Nevertheless, every time you commit that sin, you are acting out of character. Satan will muster all his brainwashing skills to try fooling you into thinking that sinning is your real nature. You will be like a rape victim plagued by a wrong self image. This is more than just unpleasant; keep believing that false self image, and you will end up acting as if it were true.   We find ourselves back at the same point as when we considered Princess Di: so much hinges on us fully grasping the enormity of the transformation that took place when we were born again and how special that makes us in God’s eyes.   Facing temptation is engaging in spiritual combat in which victory depends on whether we can trust God to love us enough to be our personal bodyguard. It would be highly dangerous to go into spiritual battle, tragically handicapped by imagining you are one of God’s less loved children. Before engaging the enemy you need the assurance that God’s love for you is so intense that he is fiercely devoted to protecting you. You need to know you are one of God’s favorites, and that he has made you so pure that he is proud of you. If you have the slightest doubt about this, or could benefit from the slightest building up in this area, bookmark this page (or note this website address) and go to the following webpages.   You Are loved!   To God You Are Special   If you feel battered by guilt feelings, there is also a helpful series of beginning with:   Handling Guilt     Tragically, countless thousands are under the mistaken impression that they have been born again. You can walk down a church aisle, repeat a prayer, spend your life acting like a devoted Christian, even have prayers answered, and still miss this elusive experience. If you have the slightest doubt about whether you have had this spiritual transformation, I beg you to read a fascinating webpage:     You Can Find Love       So how do we beat temptation?   James 4:7 brings it together:   1.   Let Jesus rule in your life  (Life’s most exciting adventure)   ‘Submit to God,’ is the way James put it. Let God control your life.   At first thought, this seems so oppressively restrictive that it’s frightening. And we’re scared we’ll be told to go somewhere awful and do something embarrassing. In reality, for you to fear God’s commands is as unnatural as a much loved baby fearing its mother’s breast; as a shivering child fearing sunshine; as someone sick fearing health. To obey God is to say good-bye to mistakes and regret and open the door to excitement and achievement.   No one understands you like your Maker. No one knows your future like your God. No one has your best interest at heart like the One who shed his blood for you. No one can bring you happiness like the Inventor of sex and sunsets, sight and sound, touch and taste, life and beauty. He alone offers heaven.   When you really analyze it, nothing could be more exciting, fulfilling and rewarding than God’s desires for you. Fearing God’s will is as irrational as worrying about what the world’s best mechanic might do to your car, and as stupid as insisting on defusing a bomb for fear that experts will not do it properly. The Almighty, your Creator and Savior, is selflessly devoted to maximizing your happiness. Moreover he has infinite knowledge. When God asks you to do something, he is granting you the unique privilege of tapping into the greatest Mind in the universe. You have the opportunity to do something infinitely smart.  Explore that thought.  It could add a whole new dimension to your life.   Disregard your Maker’s right to tell you what to do. He merely gave you life and everything you’ve ever touched. He holds your atoms together and gave you the brain cells you think with. Forget that Christ purchased your allegiance by trading his life for yours, becoming the devil’s plaything on the cross so that evil couldn’t touch you. And overlook the power of God to determine your eternal destiny. Consider merely God’s infinite knowledge, perfect goodness, and self-sacrificing devotion to your highest good. That alone is enough to force the conclusion that disregarding God’s slightest suggestion is the height of stupidity.   Yet another exhilarating thing about God’s will for you is that it is not only perfected by infinite love, it is backed by infinite power. It is not only achievable, it is unstoppable. For as long as you let Jesus rule your life, nothing can thwart it. Do you believe God is all-powerful? Then you believe he could over-ride your every weakness. He could ask nothing of you that he couldn’t do through you. And if he has a speck of love, or any respect for his reputation, he’s not going to command, and then abandon you to your own resources. It’s exciting when God asks the impossible of you. A miracle is around the corner!   Since God, in his love, longs to see you reach your highest potential, his desires for you will stretch you to the limit. But no matter how Satan tries to distort that thrilling truth into something scary, there is always something more frightening than doing God’s will –  not  doing God’s will. The mere fact that we could fear God’s beautiful will is clear proof that God has a spiritual enemy who carpet bombs our minds with malicious untruths. Nothing could be wiser, or better, than obeying the God who has a sacrificial commitment to giving you the very best.   God telling you to do something is the Almighty Lord expressing his desire for you to enjoy his best. And obedience is simply receiving that love, delighting and rejoicing in the beauty, perfection and security of God’s yearnings for your welfare. We only disobey when we secretly believe we are smarter than God, that his love for us is inferior, or that he is so weak that our inadequacies could nullify his power. Obedience is love made real.   It has rightly been said that God’s will is the greatest good his infinite wisdom can devise. Snuggle into it. Experience the exquisite perfection of his love plans for you. Then luxuriate in the security of knowing that of every possible alternative, you have chosen the very best.   Note that submission to God is letting God be God – allowing Jesus to assume his rightful place in your life. The emphasis is not on you trying to obey, but on Jesus ruling. It is letting him do the work. It is avoiding taking upon ourselves responsibilities that don’t belong to us. The Evil One would love to distort this into a dreary put down, but it is actually a glorious relief. We’re free to enjoy life as God’s children and leave all the hard work to Jesus. We don’t have to prove ourselves to God, Jesus has already done it. We don’t have to defeat sin, Jesus has already done it.   Submitting to God must never be thought of as obeying a set of rules. That’s dull and cold. And God is neither. Following a list of dos and do nots is not following God the person, but something impersonal. It brings with it the great danger of shutting God out. Submitting to God is loving God the person, getting as close to him as you can, and drawing strength and comfort and direction from him. It is driving with God in the front seat with you, enjoying his companionship. From time to time in your conversation he will say such things as, ‘Turn left. . . . You’ll need to slow down a bit here. . . . Let me show you a short cut. . . . This next part is easy, drive however you choose, I know you’ll handle it well. . . . Further on it gets tricky. Better let me do the driving for that stretch.’   Now let’s be brutally frank. God’s directions are seldom that clear, although when the situation demands that degree of clarity, he will give it. Mostly, God leads by such things as vague feelings. That can be frustrating, but it’s our opportunity to let faith rise, trusting God to guide with whatever degree of clarity divine wisdom knows is best, while we play our part by drawing close and listening intently. God and I seem to have an on-going argument. ‘Speak louder!’ I keep telling God. And I think he keeps replying, ‘Listen harder!’   An important aspect of submission involves avoiding battles God has not authorized you to fight. Sam has the commendable self-control to never switch a television on, but if it’s on, and a sex scene appears, he rarely musters the will power to switch it off until he has seen it all. Jody finds it very hard to resist sex when subjected to heavy petting, but she can carefully pray as to who she dates and ensure she only goes out with men she can trust to never touch her where they shouldn’t. Sam must avoid all television that has a remote chance of a sex scene and Jody must avoid getting into compromising situations with men. In other words, they are winners, provided they are not so foolish as to engage the enemy on a front where they have no right to be.   Some situations God permits no Christian to enter. Some situations he permits only certain Christians to enter. Don’t be influenced by what other Christians can get away with. Listen for your Commander-in-chief’s personal orders. We live in a war zone. Various areas are subjected to differing types of attack, and some areas are more heavily protected. The Commander-in-chief knows his troops, and he has equipped them to engage in different types of warfare. All of us are safe, provided we each follow his orders, staying within our designated areas.   Sin has you in its deadly sights. It’s about to pull the trigger. Jesus steps in front of you and takes the bullet, so that you can live and enjoy life. To try fighting sin without your Savior’s constant help is to slap Christ in the face, then walk out of his protection into the devil’s hail of bullets. If we face temptation alone (ie without Christ), sin will mow us down. But we need never be so foolish. We need never face temptation alone.   The moment Joe Ordinary becomes a police officer he gains special power over evil. He’s no stronger, nor smarter, yet suddenly law breakers fear him. His extraordinary power rests entirely on him submitting to his superiors. Disregard their orders and he would be suspended from the force. His powers would immediately vanish, and law breakers could walk all over him. Likewise, our power over sin hinges on our submission to God.   Because your power link with God is critical to the defeat of evil, the Enemy will do all he can to drive a wedge between you and your Savior. He’ll do his best to make you feel that God is harsh, thinks lowly of you, and so on. If you have the slightest doubt about God’s feelings for you, I again remind you of the following webpages.   You Are loved!   To God You Are Special   And a helpful series of webpages beginning with:   Handling Guilt 2.     Resist the devil   Stubbornly refuse to give in. How dare that slimy loser act as if he owns you! Dig your heels in.   Imagine your father buys you a sleek second hand car for your eighteenth birthday. Next day, the former owner arrives, demanding your car keys. ‘No way!’ you exclaim.   ‘It’s my car!’ he shouts. He’s bigger and older than you.   The car’s mine!’ you protest, ‘My father paid for it!’   The veins in his neck bulge. ‘You know nothing! Hand me the keys!’   ‘Get out of here, or I’ll call my Dad and he’ll have you for trespassing and for fraud!’   That’s resisting. It’s standing up for your rights. It’s refusing to be cheated out of something Father has given you. It’s preventing a con artist from walking off with things that cost your Father greatly.   Over and over, Scripture affirms  our  need to take action against sin. Here’s a sample:   Get rid  of all moral filth – James 1:21   Rid yourselves  of all malice . . . deceit, hypocrisy, etc – 1 Peter 2:1   Put on  the new self – Colossians 3:10   Put aside  the deeds of darkness – Romans 13:12   Put off  your old self – Ephesians 4:22   Put to death  . . . whatever belongs to your earthly nature – Colossians 3:5   Throw off  . . . the sin that so easily entangles – Hebrew 12:1   Notice, it’s not all God. We would have to cut our Bible to shreds to produce one that says God does it all. We ourselves are expected to put in an effort. This surprises many people, and others get it wrong, so let’s see what is involved.   Sin kidnapped us, and our effort does nothing to pay our ransom. Only Jesus could pay that exorbitant price. Innocence was nailed so that we, the guilty, could go free. All we do is stand up for the rights Christ paid for in blood. Resisting the devil is simply cooperating with God; choosing to enjoy the freedom Christ has won for us. All the hard work has already been done for us, and even then God is with us every step, to ensure we make it.   But there’s a spine tingling reason why God wants you to play a part. Like the proudest father, your God wants you to be like him. The Almighty actually wants to share his throne with you! This is serious, and glorious. You are being readied for a heavenly crown, not a party hat. That’s why God has entrusted you with a role in resisting Satan’s attempt to trespass on your turf. You are being trained to rule.   You’ve probably heard of people being effortlessly freed from sin’s grip, such as heroin addicts delivered from addiction without a single withdrawal symptom. That’s the mighty God we serve! For God to forever do everything for us, however, would be like a teacher never trusting us to sit for a test, but always taking the test for us. Eventually, like the devoted parent he is, our heavenly Father wants us to begin to grow up and start exercising the authority he has proudly entrusted to us. Maturity must never be confused with lack of intimacy with God, however. We exercise spiritual authority only by maintaining our power link with the Almighty, and letting his power flow through us.   If you’re looking for a soft religion, dump Christ right now.  Hebrews  urges us to look to Jesus for inspiration. He suffered enormously to make us pure. And he chose the agony, knowing it would be totally eclipsed by the joy it would finally produce. Your war with sin,  Hebrews  continues, hasn’t yet reached the point where your blood pours out. The Bible never promises that our fight with sin will be painless, just that surrender would end up being significantly more painful.     I’ve heard it said that holiness is reaching the point where you have no more longing to sin than you do to eat horse manure. Not likely. Remember Jesus, nearing starvation after eating nothing for forty days, being tempted to turn stones into bread. Remember Jesus, in the garden dripping blood-like sweat, praying ‘with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him’ (Hebrews 5:7) as he stammers, ‘Nevertheless not my will . . .’ Remember Jesus in agony on the cross, when he could have called legions of angels to his rescue. ‘He learned obedience by what he suffered,’ (Hebrew 5:8). Holiness is not reaching the point where temptation loses its attraction. Holiness is choosing God’s way when it seems every fiber of your being is crying out for the devil’s way.   To be Christlike is to be willing to suffer for the sake of God. Strong temptation toughens us. When resisted, temptation acts like your personal training coach, building you up so that you will receive more glory on the Big Day.   (For inspirational material to build courage,  click here ).   Ironically, the more prepared you are for a long, tough fight, the shorter it usually is. Once you uncover one of Satan’s schemes, and become determined to hold your ground no matter how strong the pressure gets or how long it lasts, the Enemy quickly senses he is wasting his time persisting with this tactic, and he usually backs off soon after.   Satan is furious at having lost you. He knows he has no hold over you, but if he fools you into thinking he can still boss you around, you’ll make his day. He’ll try every dirty trick he can dream up to bluff you out of all that is rightfully yours, and to cast doubt on the extent of Christ’s stupendous victory. To stand up to someone as persistent and conniving as Satan, you have to thoroughly know the rights Christ won for you, as spelt out in God’s Word.   Think of it this way. Through a life and death struggle, Jesus disarmed Satan and handed you a loaded weapon. Don’t expect Jesus to pull the trigger. That’s easy. He’ll let you have the fun of scaring off Satan. But if that diabolical cheat can fool you into thinking the weapon Jesus gave you is unloaded, he knows you won’t bother to use it. He then has nothing to fear, and he’ll walk all over you.   Because you have given Jesus control of your life, you have the upper hand whenever you meet evil. Resisting is simply realizing that your enemy is beaten, and acting accordingly. It is refusing to let a defeated enemy steal back your precious liberty and dignity that cost Christ everything. The almighty Son of God let the devil nail him, so that you could walk free. Live in that freedom. And no matter what happens, keep seeing yourself as God sees you – powerful, holy, victorious. It is this faith that makes you a conqueror.   Submit to God, resist the devil . . .   3.     And the devil will flee     We’re winners! By ignoring Satanic lies and letting Christ do all the hard work, we have the firepower to put the devil on the defensive. With Jesus in us, we make demons quake. But it is important not to misunderstand the implications. Temptation will not vanish after one token resistance. Look at Jesus’ battle in the wilderness. He held out against temptation . So what did Satan do? Hurl temptation And after that, temptation . And that was nothing like the end. Satan skulked away, only to seek a time when Jesus was more vulnerable (Luke 4:13). We don’t know how many times the devil renewed the attack. We know Jesus had to tell Peter ‘Get behind me Satan.’ We know the enemy entered into Jesus’ dear friend, Judas, to destroy the Son of God. We know Christ had a bloodcurdling battle in Gethsemane. And we know Jesus won every time.   And through him, you, too, can win every time. That’s God’s promise. It’s in black and white. There’s not the vaguest hint that you won’t feel like giving up. Nor the slightest suggestion that you won’t feel as helpless in the teeth of temptation as a mouse trapped in a lion’s cage. But there’s a divine guarantee that no matter how weak you feel, no matter how horrific your past failures, no matter how impossible it seems, you can beat every temptation that comes your way. If you ever meet a temptation too strong for you, the God who raises the sun each day has suddenly become unreliable, the God who didn’t spare his darling Son for you has suddenly lost interest in you, and the moral integrity of Holy One has collapsed.   The Devil is the Deceiver   Satan is a con artist. He wants to rip you off, cheating you out of everything that is rightfully yours. He’s the enemy of everything good, hating you with all his filthy fury. He offers the soft, warm bomb that will explode your life into a million pieces. He generously gives momentary relief and fun that leads to deeper bondage and torment; the short cut to heaven’s ecstasy that ends in hell.   With Christ having rendered all of Satan’s weapons inoperative against Christians, the Enemy has nothing left but psychological warfare – illusions, false accusations, attempted brainwashing.   Suppose you were a soldier at war, and an evil enemy had the opportunity to attempt brainwashing you. The enemy would try to wear you down by repeatedly putting thoughts into your mind that the side you serve:   is wrong, or not worth serving will lose the war, or is not strong enough to protect you has rejected or abandoned you, or does not care about you. The enemy would also try to:   isolate you make you feel useless destroy all hope. That’s the diabolical enemy you face every day. He’s the master of the half-truth. Yes, sin is delicious – like candy laced with poison. It’s true that sin is exhilarating – as exciting as skydiving without a parachute. And he’s right when he hisses that God’s ways can feel annoyingly restrictive – as confining as a parachute harness when you are plummeting to earth.   The author of pain and despair and death maliciously paints God as a killjoy. The Almighty has your highest good in focus, not some short term fizz that ultimately leaves you cold, empty and without a future. God’s way is the way of eternal joy; of love, triumph, self-respect. He’s the sole source of beauty and of everything that lasts. He empowers you to make this world a better place. He offers you protection, security, purity and wisdom. Don’t slip out of his divine embrace into the devil’s quicksand.   The Seducer makes giving up seem the easy option, but the real cost is enormous. Any area of defeat is an ugly blemish. The Lord wants to beautify your whole life but he dare not bring other things to your attention while this one is such a burden to you. So other shameful blotches, probably obvious to those who see you, remain untouched.   No matter how horrific the pain of resisting, it always ends up the genuinely easy option.   Sin is never the easy way out; the attractive alternative. Take the bait and you’ll feel the hook. Swallow the lie and you’ll writhe in regret.   The best defense against cunning lies is to fill your mind with truth. Immerse yourself in God’s Word.   Strategies   Feel defeated? Chances are that you could be weaker than you are, and still have total victory over the temptations that presently defeat you. How? By taking temptations more seriously, and drawing the line against them much earlier.   If we could only grasp the enormity of the dangers, our drive to beat temptation would skyrocket. We would sooner tap-dance on a minefield than toy with sin. And Satan would get such a scare at our new determination that we might not see him for days at a time.   Knowing how critical this is, I believe the Deceiver expends much effort trying to keep us in a fog, only vaguely of what is really at stake. I have prepared a tiny eye-opener. For a new glimpse of the seriousness of sin,  click here .   Over and over and over, Scripture insists that, like nothing else, sin has the power to destroy you. Sin is the most fearsome thing on this planet, worse than a ferocious wolf lusting after your blood. Better to lose a limb or an eye or to drown, than let it get you, warned Jesus. When a blood-crazed beast is on the prowl, the only sensible thing is to put as big a distance as possible between it and yourself. That’s how we should treat sin. Yet instead of seeing sin as a ravenous wolf with deadly fangs, we often treat it like a smelly stray pup – rather disgusting, basically harmless, at times almost cute. The thought of dabbling with sin should terrify us. If it doesn’t, we are toying with disaster. We need to  flee  from sin, warns many a verse of God’s Word.   Ways to increase the distance between you and sin   Disclaimer   I dare not try to set rules for you. My longing is that you listen intently to the Spirit of God for his direction. He alone has mapped your personal escape route. My hope is merely to offer a few suggestions for you to talk over with your Lord, and to see where he leads from there.   At all costs, avoid the horror of following a set of rules, rather than a living Savior. This double tragedy ends both in arrogance and deserting Christ. Ugly pride, even bigotry, festers when you discover you draw your line further from sin than someone else. And you are in danger of abandoning your Savior when you begin to trust your homemade rules for salvation (your holiness and protection from temptation) rather than seeding your entire faith in your crucified Lord.   Burn your bridges   What would you think if a husband told his wife he wants to be faithful to her, but explained that just in case temptation gets too strong, he will keep his former girlfriend’s phone number programmed into his phone? Well what does your Lord think if you deliberately make it easy to access drugs, or some other thing you are trying to give up? Don’t you think God sees right through a person who asks for forgiveness for substance abuse, or porn, or whatever, and keeps a tiny supply ‘just in case’? Divine forgiveness is not available to the person who is not willing to be finished with sin  (Explanation) . ‘Make no provision for the flesh,’ says Romans 13:14. In other words, store up nothing, make no allowances, for sin.   When Jesus spoke of hacking off a hand or foot, or gouging out an eye, he was not speaking literally,  (proof)  but he was describing the need for radical, painful and costly sacrifices in order to make it harder to sin. Cancer is so deadly that people are willing to lose parts of their body in order to halt its spread. If people go to such extremes to fight something that can only affect earthly life, what sacrifices should any sane person make to fight something that can afflict someone forever? Your collection of things that help you sin might have cost you a lot of money. If you don’t destroy it, however, you’ll find it will cost you a lot more still!    Here are some ways of attacking sin that you should seriously discuss with God.   Destroy all spiritually dangerous books, magazines, CDs, DVDs, addresses, phone numbers, membership cards, occult objects, illicit drugs, and so on that you own. Radically alter your television viewing habits. Most of us are so hooked on television that to keep it switched off would hurt as much as losing an eye, yet it fills our minds with sinful thoughts that we could regret for all eternity. Even most programs said to be suitable for children are tainted with impurity and ungodliness. And on commercial channels, acceptable programs can be laced with poisonous ads. If the internet presents you with temptation, obtain software designed to keep children from objectionable material. Note the circumstances in which you are most vulnerable to temptation and do all you can to avoid those situations. If, for instance, when you lie awake in the morning, your mind wanders to things it shouldn’t, try your hardest to avoid that situation. Set your alarm earlier and make sure you get up. If you find you are more vulnerable when alone, avoid that situation as much as possible. Would it help to share accommodation with someone?   Alternatively, would it help to move out? When you feel vulnerable to temptation, get your mind off it by visiting or phoning someone. Go for a walk or a drive, if it will help. Resolve that if ever you sin against someone, you will confess it to that person and put it right. If, for instance, you steal, you’ll restore what you stole, with an additional 20% as compensation. If you lie, confess it to the person you lied to. Make yourself accountable to a mature, trustworthy Christian, who is unlikely to be tempted by the knowledge that you have fallen (should the unthinkable ever happen). Be sobered by the knowledge that if ever you sin, you will have to endure the shame of confessing to your accountability partner. To maintain your purity while dating, carefully explain that saying no to something you used to do together is not because you are growing cold towards your friend. (I am appalled at what some couples do to each other and still regard themselves as virgins.) Since people differ as to what arouses them, it is important to tell each other what not to do, and to respect another’s guidelines, even if to you it seems quite innocent. A person may have got into a habit of crossing a particular boundary and innocently forget. Sometimes many reminders are necessary. Be cautious about being alone together. Give the Evil One less time to entice you, by filling your life with spiritually wholesome activities – more church services, Christian fellowship, prayer, Bible study, and so on.

Oh, the glory! One with Christ! Our union with Christ is like that of a perfect marriage in which there is a total merging of assets. Since this is the perfect union, however, the oneness extends far beyond what normally occurs in marriage. Everything that is ours becomes Christ’s (our sin – that’s what killed him – time, talents, possessions, relationships, etc) and everything that is his becomes ours (his perfection, endless life, abilities, achievements, honor, riches, relationships, etc). The principle is stated in general terms in many different parts of the Bible. For example, in 1 Corinthians 3:21,23 we read, ‘All things belong to you . . . and you belong to Christ. (See also Song of Solomon 2:16; John I6:15,23; Romans 8:32; Philippians 4:13; 2 Peter 1:3.) ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours,’ the father (representing God) told the prodigal son’s brother in Jesus’ parable. (Luke 15:11-32) The older brother had missed out on so much because he had failed to realize the extent of his father’s love and generosity. He hadn’t realized that he only had to ask. In fact, having full faith in his father’s generosity, he should simply have taken and used his father’s things. We, too, can so easily miss out, if we don’t realize all that God has lovingly given us. A true Christian has Christ (2 John 9) and this includes Christ’s: Knowledge – John 15:15; 16:13-15 Riches – Philippians 4:19 Glory – John 17:22; 2 Thessalonians 2:14 Throne in Heaven – Ephesians 2:6; Revelation 3:2l Peace – John 14:27 Kingdom – James 2:5; Revelation 22:5; 2 Timothy 2:12 Joy – John 15:11 Moral purity – 2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 Corinthians 1:30 Miracle-working power – John 14:12,13 Victory over Satan – Romans 16:20 (1 Corinthians 15:25) Spirit – Romans 8:9 Mind – 1 Corinthians 2:16; Philippians 2:5 Power over death – 1 Corinthians 15:55-57 Likeness – 1 Corinthians 15:49; 1 John 3:2 Inheritance – Romans 8:17 Life – Galatians 2:20; 1 John 5:12 Ministry – John 17:18 (compare John 8:12 with Matthew 5:14) Presence – John 14:23; Ephesians 3:17 Relationship with God – John 17:23,26; Galatians 4:6; Hebrews 2:11 And there’s probably more I’ve forgotten to list! Truly, ‘in union with Christ, you have become rich in things ...’! (1 Corinthians 1:5) Your potential is limitless (Philippians 4:l3). But we can still make the mistake the older brother made and fail to enjoy what is rightfully ours. We must take the gifts that cost God so much to make available to us. We do this by believing God has given them to us and then, while nothing seems to have changed, acting as if we have received them. That might sound strange, but that’s the way God operates. Displaying faith in God’s generosity is the greatest way to thrill him.

Jesus’ Astounding Power to Turn Evil into Good It might seem impossible to believe that what was once your defeat and shame will end up being your victory and glory. It hardens into reality, however, because you are loved by the God of the impossible. You have a God of selfless love who passionately hates evil and is so powerful that he overcomes evil with good. Infinite goodness is the perfect antidote for evil. It is as if the Lord keeps pouring his goodness upon the mountain of anti-God things that were inflicted upon you. He keeps it up, year after year, until you can eventually look back on what was unadulterated evil and see so much good flowing from it that you are flooded with awe and gratitude. In his mind-boggling goodness, the Almighty uses his unlimited power to turn disasters into blessings, defeats into victories and shame into glory. Look at Jesus, who blazed this trail for you to follow. See him stripped naked, exposed to the world, as he hangs helpless on the cross. See him – if you can stomach it – mocked and scorned, humiliated and bloodied, being tortured to death as the nation’s esteemed religious leaders get their hateful way with him. He seems the embodiment of shame and defeat; growing weaker and uglier by the minute, as horrific pain sears through his tormented, broken body. What looked like the most humiliating disaster, however, turned out to be the greatest victory over evil the universe has ever seen. Forever and ever he will be worshipped by adoring millions; honoring him far above anyone else because he chose what seemed unspeakable shame. And that’s the path Christ blazed for you . Like him, and through him, your shame, pain and blame will be transformed into your glory; like a disgusting grub becoming a butterfly of breathtaking beauty. (Incidentally, beautiful butterflies exist only because they were once grubs.) You can see good coming from the horrors in Jesus’ life but you might think there are too many differences between Jesus’ suffering and your bad times for there to be any connection. Look at this, however: Romans 8:28-29 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. (Emphasis mine.) Those who, through faith in the power of Jesus’ sacrifice, are in spiritual union with the triumphant Lord, not only share his destiny but are becoming increasingly like him. Right now, your life may seem a hopeless mess of shattered pieces, but your devoted Lord treasures every fragment, even those life experiences you have suffered that seem worse than useless. Discarding nothing, he will lovingly treat each incident in your life as a critical piece of a jigsaw that only a supernatural genius could solve. He will reassemble every meaningless disaster, shameful failure and hideous sin, until together they form priceless beauty that no one would ever guess could emerge from such evil and chaos. Yes, things would have been better still had we not sinned, but when we come to Christ for cleansing, he not only removes our shame and makes us sparkle with his purity, he works all things – including our sin – together for good (Romans 8:28). Even our pre-Christian days will end up flooded with divine glory. Consider, for example, the apostle Paul’s atrocious sin. If anyone had reason for shame, it was this man. He arrogantly and brutally tormented Christians in the hope of destroying their faith and making them blaspheme Jesus and permanently renounce their Lord and Savior, thus destroying them eternally. With Christianity in its vulnerable infancy, Paul, like perhaps no one else in all of history, had the opportunity to totally wipe from the planet every memory of Christianity. And he was intent on doing so. God intervened, of course, but had Paul’s determined plans succeeded and Christianity were eradicated before any of the New Testament were written, all of us today would be without the Gospel, destined for hell. Given the eternal implications, this makes serial murder seem like a parking offense. How could even the God of the impossible wring any good out of that evil? There is no thought in the Bible of covering up the story of Paul’s atrocious, anti-Christ behavior, however. Amazingly, the story is told in detail not once, but three times in the book of Acts (Acts 8:1-9:20; Acts 22:3-16; Acts 26:9-20). That’s how significant Paul’s sinful background is to God. That’s how much the Holy One longs to use it for his glory. And in two of those passages, it was Paul himself recounting the story when a powerful testimony was needed. It was presumably a regular feature of Paul’s evangelism. In addition to being critical in turning countless skeptics of the power and authenticity of the Gospel into committed believers, Paul’s dramatic transformation from a violent, hate-filled opponent of Christianity has inspired millions. Throughout the Christianity’s history, similar transformations of evil acts have been repeated too often for anyone but God to count. People’s former shame has been transformed into such powerful evangelistic tools and sources of inspiration as to tempt Christians with more mundane backgrounds to be envious. “I was a criminal,” “I was a Satanist,” “I was a prostitute,” I was a heroin addict,” declare Christians, who almost reach celebrity status because of pasts that should have been shameful. Past atrocities are no longer guilty secrets that shame them into silence but, through Christ, what should have been stumbling blocks have been turned not just into stepping stones but into launching pads to spiritual achievement as they use their past to win souls and inspire fellow believers. What about sins after conversion? Though you would be excused for expecting the opposite result, throughout history literally millions of Christians have drawn comfort and inspiration from Peter denying his Lord three times. “If there’s hope for Peter, there’s hope for me,” they gladly conclude. The same is true of King David’s shocking adultery and murderous cover-up. Moreover, who alone out of David's many sons did God choose as heir to David's throne and ancestor of the Messiah? Bathsheba's son, Solomon. This man should never have even been born. His mother should still have been married to the man David murdered. And yet God so forgave that he chose the product of David's greatest moral fall to be a key figure in Jewish and redemptive history and the one he endowed with astounding wisdom. As I have written elsewhere: From Crushing Defeat to Eternal Fame We find him lurking in the shadows of Scripture. He was a breath of fresh air in a whirlwind. John Mark was bad news. In the human race he led the field from go to woe. He has often been identified with Christianity’s first streaker – the man who blurred through Gethsemane’s garden with the raw grace of a plucked chicken, leaving behind his clothes and his Savior (Mark 14:51-52). More humiliations were to follow. His unflattering nickname, stub-fingered, suggests he was physically impaired. To this he added a handicap of his own making: he was branded a deserter – a second time. When the pressure mounts, the last thing you need is for a trusted companion to abandon you. That’s what Mark did to Paul and Barnabas. His desertion seems to have deeply hurt Paul. The apostle was adamant that hanging out with this dodo was a no-no. Barnabas, who always stood up for the under-dog , defended his cousin Mark. The result was a rift between old friends; the shattering of a great missionary team (Acts 15:37-39). We never hear of Barnabas again. One look at ‘stump-finger’s’ yellow face and you knew this jinx had had mistake and eggs for breakfast again. Whenever this egg-head cracked, everyone got egg on their face. Just what the church needs! He must have felt as blue as a browned off white man seeing red because he’s accused of being yellow. Mark could have drowned in self-pity. He could have resented Paul. He could have turned back to Judaism. Instead, he redoubled his efforts, eventually being recognized even by Paul as having an outstanding ministry (2 Timothy 4:11; Colossians 4:10; Philemon 24). Peter also spoke affectionately of him (1 Peter 5:13). As writer of possibly the earliest gospel and a primary source of Matthew and Luke, Mark’s contribution even to today’s church is beyond measure. This planet is a better place today because nineteen centuries ago a ‘no-hoper’ called stub-fingered decided to tough it out. Knowing our weaknesses, our loving Father has preserved many such stories for us to gain strength. ‘Then will I teach transgressors your ways,’ crooned David. When? After a calamitous moral fall (Psalm 51: title, 3-5, 12-13). ‘Simon ... feed my sheep’ (John 21:17). When? After denying his Savior. ‘He slew at his death more than he slew in his life’ (Judges 16:30, paraphrase). When? After Samson’s greatest humiliation. Samson and David each knew the horror of spiritual failure. On the crest of their vocation, they plunged to abominable depths. Their lapses were inexcusable. Their ministries were desecrated. Yet they refused to dwell in defeat. They were failures for a moment, but they were overcomers forever. Grasping God’s hand of forgiveness, they clambered to new heights for the exaltation of the One who washed them clean. Oppression crushed Simon the rock into sand. On the brink of ministry, after years of grooming, he blew it. He lied. He invoked a curse on himself. He disowned his Lord (Matthew 26:74). Yet though it rocked him, this one-time rock didn’t peter. Empowered by his Savior, he again turned to stone. Though the righteous – that’s you and me in Christ Jesus – fall seven times, they rise again. That’s a promise (Proverbs 24:16, see also Psalm 37:23-24). It was just a hair-cut For the plaything of Delilah; And just a prayer-cut For Peter the denier. Strong they dozed But weak arose, And knew it not. Men destroyed by fatal cuts Left to wallow in their ruts; Left with blame And haunting shame, In sin to rot. A seed so small and barely sown Meant to die, but how it’s grown! Things so small Grow so tall, But marvel not. If sin can grow, So can prayer; If prayers will flow, So will hair. With faith restored Hope will soar, And blunders blot. His repentance real, The victim of Delilah, Had victories still. And the spineless Christ-denier Shed his shame And became The church’s rock. Because God bringing good even out of sin is so mind-boggling, I’ll give just one more example. Suppose you had an abortion. No matter how appalling the sin, the Lord is keen to forgive and once he forgives you, amazing things can happen. The Lord could, for example, use the experience to deepen your awareness of the magnitude of God’s forgiveness, or to keep you from falling into pride, or to give you ministry and witnessing opportunities by increasing your empathy for others who have suffered that way. Should we sin that grace may abound? Of course not! But our sufferings move God far too deeply for him to let them be wasted. Romans 8:28-29 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son . . . (Emphasis mine.) This seems to be saying that the good that God works toward by manipulating all things that beset us is not that we get our selfish pleasure but that we end up conformed to the image of Christ. If that disappoints you a little, you haven’t thought it through. To be like Christ is something far more wondrous than any cheap thrills you might have had in mind. To be like Christ is to be filled with the fruit of the Spirit – love, peace, goodness, self-control, and so on. That’s thrilling, but there’s more. To be like Christ is to be not just dignified but regal; not just powerful but ruling from heaven’s throne; not just smart but having access to divine wisdom; not just attractive but radiant with unsurpassable inner beauty; not just morally upright but perfect in the piercing eyes of humanity’s holy Judge; not just happy but overflowing with inexpressible joy; not just youthful but eternal; not just sympathetic but empowered to transform lives. It’s something worth paying the highest price for. To again quote myself: Defeatists say ‘Yesterday’; winners say ‘Yes’ today. It’s too late to lament the past. That’s lost forever. But it’s never too late to move into overdrive. The present is ours to charge with defiant faith. NEXT (To continue this theme, click above)

Dating a Non-Christian We will examine this critically important matter from two quite different perspectives. 1. Our Surprising Spiritual Vulnerability Like Peter, who was so sure he would remain faithful to Jesus and yet so soon afterward denied his Lord, most of us have a grossly inflated opinion of how we would spiritually cope with various scenarios. This is particularly true of the long-term spiritual implications of being emotionally close to a non-Christian. One of the divine purposes of the Old Testament is to provide immense historical proof of how weak God’s people are when they come in close contact with people who are not committed to the true God. That’s why the Lord told the Israelites it was necessary for their spiritual survival to remove from the land the followers of other religions (Canaanites, etc.). Their failure to do this caused huge numbers to fall from God, generation after generation. 2. A Completely Different Perspective Even if we entered God’s kingdom as little children, in the terrifyingly holy eyes of the Judge of all humanity, we were once so defiled that there was no one on this planet more deserving of eternal torment than us. Every one of us was once spiritually dead, enslaved by darkness, ensnared by sin, an enemy of God and destined for hell. We were spiritually transformed only because Christ died for the ungodly. Everyone on this planet is just as able to enjoy this transformation as we are. Until they do, however, there is an uncrossable spiritual gulf between those who have experienced it and those who have not. Grubs become butterflies not because of what they do or deserve but by an act of God. For them to imagine they had made themselves better than grubs would insult God, who did it all. Nevertheless, for them to regard themselves as still grubs would also insult God. Moreover, it would be a perversion for a butterfly to consider mating with a grub. Likewise, for any of us to consider ourselves more worthy of God’s grace than the vilest non-Christian is such an insult to God as to expose ourselves to God’s judgment (see Luke 18:10-14). Our union with Christ, however, so transforms us as to render it spiritually perverse to contemplate a union with anyone who has not yet been transformed. Suppose you are an animal lover who discovered a near-dead feral animal stricken with diseases and other afflictions it had picked up from other feral animals. You rescue the animal, going to great expense and anxiously nursing it to health. Then, as the only way of keeping it safe from being reinfected, you adopt it as your own. Even though you love all animals, you would not want it running off and again mixing with creatures just as disease-ridden as it had previously been. In contrast to committing oneself to staying in love, falling in love tends to be something outside our control. Devoted Christians can therefore find themselves in love with non-Christians. Some, unaware that Scripture addresses this matter, have even deliberately exposed themselves to this in the hope of winning someone to the Lord. If ever the saying ‘The path to hell is paved with good intentions’ were true, it applies to this tragedy. It is not fair to anyone to add the extreme emotional pressure of romance to seeking to lead someone to Christ. Whether intentional or not, it is taking manipulation and emotional blackmail to new lows. Not only does the non-Christian feel pressured to falsely claim to be a Christian, emotions could be surging so high that not even the supposed convert can be sure how genuine the commitment to Christ is and whether he/she is likely to stand the test of time or is being artificially buoyed by the initial euphoria of romantic love. And the original Christian, too, is likely to be so blind-drunk on the emotional high as to be unable to discern how genuine the supposed convert is. As confirmed by the parable of the sower, many seem to start their walk with God gallantly, only to fall away. That danger never vanishes, but the longer a person has been committed to Christ and the less it is linked to a relationship, the more likely it is to last. ‘Do not be misled,’ says Scripture, ‘bad company corrupts good character.’ No matter how strong you are, choose the wrong friend, and you’ll be corrupted. Not everyone believes that. That’s why Scripture prefaces this warning with the words, Do not be misled , or, as some versions put it, ‘deceived’. A careful look at the context reveals that ‘bad company’ is not necessarily people we would normally think of as being ‘bad,’ but people whose belief about Jesus is faulty, even though they might claim to be Christian and live moral lives. A prime example is Solomon. Not even all his wisdom could keep him from ruining his life because he chose to befriend women who, though religious, believed the wrong things about God. Since the Bible insists you have little chance if you choose ungodly people as close friends, you must choose between God and wrong friendships. You will not have both for long. When choosing close friends, especially where there is a chance of romantic involvement, remember this simple fact: a person either belongs to God or to the devil. There is no middle ground. To have sex with a non-Christian is to defile Christ. Scripture is emphatic that sex makes two people one. A born-again Christian is spiritually united to Christ and anyone not a Christian is spiritually united to the devil. To marry a non-Christian is therefore to try to make Christ one with the devil. A spiritually mixed marriage is a hideous perversion. It is the profanity of trying to unite that which must never be united – trying to unite that which belongs to the Holy One to that which belongs to the Evil One; trying to make holiness (that’s what we are through our union with Jesus) one with evil (that’s the basic nature of the nicest non-Christian). Whoever is born of God becomes a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). Someone commented that those who have been born again are virtually a new species. There is a lot of truth in that thought, and this puts sexual union with a non-Christian almost on the level of bestiality. When 2 Corinthians 6:14 says, ‘Do not be yoked together with unbelievers,’ Paul had in mind an Old Testament law: Deuteronomy 22:10 Do not plough with an ox and a donkey yoked together. Linking side by side two different species of different height and gait, and making them pull together, would be an act of cruelty. Interestingly, in Old Testament thinking, an ox is a clean animal (able to be used in the service of God) and a donkey is unclean. In the back of Paul’s mind might also have been another Scripture: Leviticus 19:19 . . . Do not mate different kinds of animals. . . . We have not yet considered exceptional circumstances in which a Christian could end up innocently married to a non-Christian. Just as there is an enormous difference between being murdered and committing suicide, so there is a vast difference between being raped and having consensual sex outside of marriage. Likewise, for a Christian to knowingly marry a non-Christian is totally different to two non-Christians marrying and afterward one of them discovering Christ. In both cases, a Christian might end up married to a non-Christian – like someone who is murdered might end up as dead as someone who kills himself – but the circumstances are entirely different. A Christian ending up married to a non-Christian because he/she becomes a Christian after marriage is not even a case of a Christian marrying a non-Christian – they were both non-Christians when they married. This very situation occurred frequently in the early Church, since vast numbers never had the chance to hear the Gospel until later in life. So the New Testament specifically addresses this situation and, not surprisingly, God treats it as differently as he regards rape as totally different to consensual sin. It would be ridiculous to expect God’s perfect morality to be so crude that he disregards circumstances and heart attitudes. For God’s compassion on those who innocently end up married to non-Christians, study this: 1 Corinthians 7:13-14 And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. Contrast this with God’s people who deliberately married those who did not belong to the true God: Ezra was so appalled to discover that Jews had married non-Jews that two chapters are devoted to describing the seriousness of the offence and all of those who had done this were compelled to divorce and lose their children. People who become Christians after they are married have God’s blessing because they did not deliberately enter a spiritually perverse marriage. They were both non-Christians when they married. They can expect spiritual protection from their unchristian partner. But Christians who sin by marrying non-Christians are in grave danger. By disregarding God’s warning about relationships, they throw away their right to divine protection, unless they thoroughly repent, which involves genuinely regretting that they married. Never imagine you can fool God by deciding beforehand to ‘enjoy’ both sin and God’s forgiveness by ‘repenting’ after your deliberate sin.