"You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery.
But I say to you,
everyone who looks at a woman with lust
has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
It's actually a bad strategy to look at women lustfully if one desires to avoid adultery. Pornography does not quench the flames of lustful desire but rather adds to them additional fuel. The only real strategy that can keep one safe from a passion like this is one that began within the heart, one that is motivated by the awareness of how dangerous the poison of sin can be. It isn't enough to merely know the rules and yet try to get away with as much as the rules permit. That is a dangerous narrow ledge from which even a light breeze might make one fall.
It is better for you to lose one of your members
than to have your whole body thrown into Gehenna.
Jesus was clearly not speaking about maiming oneself, but rather about how the spiritual good of the person far outweighed those that were merely physical. Appendages of the body could be lost one after another and it would be no great problem for the human heart to continue to pursue lust, now more convinced than ever that it was justly entitled to do so as a consolation for what was lost. But the goods that could be gained through the senses were lesser goods, and not worth trading for an eternity in Gehenna.
But I say to you,
whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful)
causes her to commit adultery,
and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
Jesus came to fulfill the law. To that end he came to set marriage back in the framework of the original intention expressed when God made Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The two were to become inseparably one, open to being fruitful and welcoming of new life. It was precisely because this plan was so good that all perversions of it were so bad, but also so tempting. There was a lot of vital energy meant for good, for the preservation and thriving of the species that was now difficult to properly direct. And the devil knew this, seeking every opportunity to dam the stream and redirect it according to his own purposes. But only the truly fulfilled law of God was life giving. We see this in our own time as a culture celebrating recreational sex makes society less and less sustainable, ever increasingly isolated and addicted.
In our sympathy with the plight of the surrounding culture let's not be so taken that we come to wish that alternatives to God's plan for marriage were acceptable after all. There are perhaps at least a few of us who tacitly endorse Church teaching sadly and without conviction as though it would be better if it weren't true after all. If the Church changed its position would we breath a sigh of relief and celebrate? I say this to myself no less than to any readers. Sympathy is natural and compelling. The stories that used to gain our sympathy tend to by emotional and poignant, and are sometimes the stories of those we know. But the point is that although we are called to be infinitely sympathetic to those caught up in this culture, we are called to oppose the culture itself when that culture is opposed to the law of God.
A strong and heavy wind was rending the mountains
and crushing rocks before the LORD—
but the LORD was not in the wind.
After the wind there was an earthquake—
but the LORD was not in the earthquake.
After the earthquake there was fire—
but the LORD was not in the fire.
In seeking to be transformed ourselves and subsequently transform the culture we are not typically called to seek something that is immediate, loud, and obvious, like an explosion. The transformation we need cannot be the result of violence at any level, not within ourselves, not emotionally or verbally between peoples, not politically in our society, and not in wars between peoples and nations. Everything lasting must begin from hearts that are quiet and attentive, attuned to hear the still small voice of God when he at least speaks.
After the fire there was a tiny whispering sound.
When he heard this,
Elijah hid his face in his cloak
and went and stood at the entrance of the cave.
Like Elijah those of us who have tried to remain zealous might be tempted to despair that "the children of Israel have forsaken your covenant". But for us, as for him, the Lord has a plan. And the Lord sees the big picture and plays the long game. All the good things that zeal for the Lord makes us desire most likely will not be accomplished in our generation. But the Lord is looking to anoint those who will carry his mission into the future, just as he found Elisha to take the up the mantle of Elijah. And so? So let us remain faithful. Ours is a narrow horizon. But we believe and hope, with the psalmist, to see the bounty of the Lord in the land of the living.
No comments:
Post a Comment