Tag: interpersonal relations

Questions About Sex (1 Corinthians 7:1-9)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment

Now regarding the questions you asked in your letter. Yes, it is good to abstain from sexual relations. But because there is so much sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman should have her own husband.

The husband should fulfill his wife’s sexual needs, and the wife should fulfill her husband’s needs. The wife gives authority over her body to her husband, and the husband gives authority over his body to his wife.

Do not deprive each other of sexual relations, unless you both agree to refrain from sexual intimacy for a limited time so you can give yourselves more completely to prayer. Afterward, you should come together again so that Satan won’t be able to tempt you because of your lack of self-control. I say this as a concession, not as a command. But I wish everyone were single, just as I am. Yet each person has a special gift from God, of one kind or another.

So I say to those who aren’t married and to widows—it’s better to stay unmarried, just as I am. But if they can’t control themselves, they should go ahead and marry. It’s better to marry than to burn with lust. (New Living Translation)

After getting into several issues of interpersonal relations within the church, the Apostle Paul turned his attention to matters the Corinthian congregation had questions about. Primary among them were issues of sex and marriage.

Within an ancient port city that was rife with all sorts of sexual practices and immorality, it was inevitable that the Corinthian Christians would wonder about the nature of sex and the marital relationship. Is it okay to have sex? Is sex good? What’s sex supposed to be like in marriage? How am I to treat my spouse when it comes to sex?

It seems every culture in every era has plenty of questions about sex and marriage.

The Apostle’s answer to the Corinthian believers is that sex is a good thing, that is, within a proper context. Sex is similar to fire. They’re both good, but they both have an incredible potential for destruction if there are not some solid boundaries and limits to them.

And that’s where marriage comes in and has a significant role for us as sexual beings. Marriage is also a good thing; it’s good to have a marital partner to share life with and to consummate a loving relationship with the intimacy of sex.

Our sexual drives are strong. After all, we were created with both the desire and the bodily equipment for sex. And marriage is a sacred institution which is strong enough to provide those boundaries and limits that we need to enjoy sex without harming others and ourselves.

In a world full of all manner of sexual deviancy and disorder that destroys many people, the marriage relationship is, ideally, a safe place for sexual expression and enjoyment.

For that good to happen, it is most necessary for the marriage bed to be a place of mutual love, of equal acceptance and sharing. Sex always turns bad when it is forced or coerced. It must be an agreed upon activity, or it moves into the place of covetousness, greed, and selfishness.

Again, ideally, marital relations are an opportunity for the marriage partners to think about and satisfy one another. In other words, the best sex happens when each partner considers what is best for the other.

The marriage bed is not the place to insist on your way. Rather, marriage, at its heart, is a deliberate and volitional decision to serve the other person – whether in bed, or out of bed.

It’s not uncommon for individuals who come to Christ out of a culture awash in unhealthy sexual practices to question if sex is good, or not; and whether one ought to abstain from sex, even if already married.

The Apostle Paul’s counsel is that abstinence from sex between two married partners is good – but only for an agreed upon period of time, and only for the purpose of prayer and fasting. In other words, if and when a couple agrees to forego sex for a time, spiritual practices must replace sexual practice. Without a clear plan, married couples can cause one another more harm than good.

Always know when to come back together again. That’s because our old adversary, Satan, is far too crafty in arranging temptations to derail us from the good gift of sex, and the good institution of marriage.

Paul made it clear that he was not pronouncing some ex cathedra instruction concerning abstinence for couples; he was only answering a question and providing some helpful counsel in order to maintain legitimate relations with each other. Nobody is under obligation to abstain, let alone be celibate.

However, the Apostle, an unmarried and celibate person himself, wanted to point out that there are advantages to the celibate life. I must say, I cannot disagree with Paul’s observation that life is whole lot simpler being single than married!

Yet, Paul also understood that the celibate single life is not for everyone. He gave the sage teaching that both marriage and celibacy are gifts from God. One is not necessarily better than the other.

Unmarried persons are not in a lesser class of people simply because they are single. And if they have the ability to manage their desires and emotions when it comes to sex and relationships, then Paul would say, more power to them. There is no need to be married, just to be married.

Conversely, however, there is certainly no need to be single and celibate, as if this were some superior spiritual situation. Believing that singleness is necessary for spiritual commitment, or mandating that an entire group of people must be single and celibate in order to serve Christ, is completely foreign to the Apostle Paul’s line of thinking.

Any single person who discovers they are swimming in sea of sexual desire ought to marry, rather than be frustrated and struggle with self-control. Imposing unnecessary suffering on oneself is not at all spiritual or preferable – it’s masochistic, and helps no one.

The reality of married and non-married relationships is that they both have their advantages and their disadvantages. Both marriage and singleness are good. Both sex and celibacy are gifts to receive with gladness and joy.

So, make sure to unpack your gift well.

Holy God, in the midst of our sexualized world of insanity and disordered loves, I ask for your mercy and grace to be pure and holy, just as You are holy. Enable us all to live into healthy forms of sexual relations, without succumbing to the sexual immorality all around us.

Almighty God, I thank you for the gift of sex and marriage, as well as the gift of singleness and celibacy. May Your healing love meet us in our sexual brokenness, and Your compassion overflow to the sexually oppressed.

Blessed God, I am grateful for Your blessing upon us, for never shaming nor humiliating us, but making us pure and holy in Jesus Christ our Lord, through the enablement of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We Are All In the Same Boat (Romans 3:9-20)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment

What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all! For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin. As it is written:

“There is no one righteous, not even one;
    there is no one who understands;
    there is no one who seeks God.
All have turned away,
    they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
    not even one.”
“Their throats are open graves;
    their tongues practice deceit.”
“The poison of vipers is on their lips.”
    “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood;
    ruin and misery mark their ways,
and the way of peace they do not know.”
    “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin. (New International Version)

Whenever there is division, separation, and polarization between two groups of people, it’s important that someone has the ability to come back to what is true and common to all of us.

And that is what the Apostle Paul did in addressing the two differing groups of people in the ancient Roman Church of both Jewish and Gentile believers in Jesus.

The Jewish Christians, Paul argued, did not have a leg up on the Gentiles, just because of their long history with God. They tended to see themselves as better than their Gentile brothers and sisters in Christ. After all, the Jewish believers reasoned, we don’t have such a background of sinful pagan practices and estrangement from God.

Well, actually they do, however the Apostle did not rehearse his own people’s long history of stubborn rebellion and waywardness from God. Instead, he went back to the scriptures, and reminded the Jewish Christians of something they seemed to have lost sight of:

To be a human being is to be intimately familiar with sin and godlessness, guilt and shame, no matter the group nor the individual. We are all in the same boat.

In saying this, the Apostle Paul was not implying there is not anything good in anyone. Quite the contrary. For what is also true of humanity is that every individual person is a good creature, created from a good Creator, with the divine stamp of God’s image and likeness. There are no exceptions to this.

With all the mudslinging within the church, Paul simply pointed out that there is more than enough blame to go around. All the things that one group accuses another of is also true about they themselves.

And when it comes to sin – all those actions, words, and attitudes we have done and failed to do in loving our fellow humanity, and God – every one of us is in the same boat of guilt before God. There are no exceptions to this.

The power and ubiquity of sin is everywhere. Sin is like a nasty weight which continually burdens the world, and like an acrid fog that is always hanging in the air. We all feel the heaviness; we all breathe the same air.

All of our puny attempts at dividing one another into star-bellied Sneetches, and Sneetches without stars upon thars, is only proof positive of our sinful predilections to acquiesce to sin’s power on this earth.

This means that none of us can claim to take the moral and spiritual high ground. Nobody has an advantage on another. Therefore, it is ridiculous to ever try and implement policies of favoritism, cronyism, or prejudice. Such thinking itself is sinful, and ought to be jettisoned at the first awareness of it.

Whether we know what is right, or not; and whether we have the law and a covenant code, or not, isn’t really the issue. Obeying the law and doing what is right and just, with a good heart, is the real issue for all of us.

But it’s rather difficult to truly embrace justice and righteousness if the heart is no good. In truth, all of us have some rather dark places in our hearts. And until these are addressed, we will keep having all of our humanly contrived divisions and separations based upon a supposed superiority of the other.

The very fact that it is so easy to point out the sin in another, and label them as sinner, ought to tell us that “It takes one to know one.”

All Jews and Gentiles are under the accusation of God’s law, without exception. Everyone is accountable to God and the law. Proper observance of the law is to love God and neighbor – and thus, condemnation under the law is to ignore and disobey God, and to ignore and hate one’s fellow humanity.

What’s more, neither Jew nor Gentile can be justified by the law. Not a one of us can undo our guilt by ourselves.

No amount of work can satisfy the breadth and depth of that guilt. Pledges of perfectionism cannot help us, namely because we don’t even have the ability to follow through on them. Sheer hard work will not do the trick, because it would be like trying to empty the ocean with a kid’s sand toy bucket.

Only grace can reverse things. We need a pardon, and a new heart, which can sync and beat with the holy rhythms of divine love and justice. We need Jesus.

The Apostle Paul eventually got to that point later in his letter. Yet, here, he needed to establish everyone’s commonality of sin, so that they would embrace Jesus together as the one people of God who are in desperate need of his saving work, and the Spirit’s sanctifying work.

Therefore, the proper place to begin in being at peace with God and the world is to confess our own complicity in sin. Let us, then, offer this prayer of confession:

Lord Jesus, we have sinned times without number, and been guilty of pride and unbelief, and of neglect to seek you in our daily lives. Our sins and shortcomings present us with a list of accusations, but we thank you that they will not stand against us, for all have been laid on Christ. Deliver us from every evil habit, every interest of former sins, everything that dims the brightness of your grace in us, everything that prevents us taking delight in you. Amen.

Avoid an Ambush (Acts 23:12-35)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment

The next morning some Jews formed a conspiracy and bound themselves with an oath not to eat or drink until they had killed Paul. More than forty men were involved in this plot. They went to the chief priests and the elders and said, “We have taken a solemn oath not to eat anything until we have killed Paul. Now then, you and the Sanhedrin petition the commander to bring him before you on the pretext of wanting more accurate information about his case. We are ready to kill him before he gets here.”

But when the son of Paul’s sister heard of this plot, he went into the barracks and told Paul.

Then Paul called one of the centurions and said, “Take this young man to the commander; he has something to tell him.” So he took him to the commander.

The centurion said, “Paul, the prisoner, sent for me and asked me to bring this young man to you because he has something to tell you.”

The commander took the young man by the hand, drew him aside and asked, “What is it you want to tell me?”

He said: “Some Jews have agreed to ask you to bring Paul before the Sanhedrin tomorrow on the pretext of wanting more accurate information about him. Don’t give in to them, because more than forty of them are waiting in ambush for him. They have taken an oath not to eat or drink until they have killed him. They are ready now, waiting for your consent to their request.”

The commander dismissed the young man with this warning: “Don’t tell anyone that you have reported this to me.”

Then he called two of his centurions and ordered them, “Get ready a detachment of two hundred soldiers, seventy horsemen and two hundred spearmen[a] to go to Caesarea at nine tonight. Provide horses for Paul so that he may be taken safely to Governor Felix.”

He wrote a letter as follows:

Claudius Lysias,

To His Excellency, Governor Felix:

Greetings.

This man was seized by the Jews and they were about to kill him, but I came with my troops and rescued him, for I had learned that he is a Roman citizen. I wanted to know why they were accusing him, so I brought him to their Sanhedrin. I found that the accusation had to do with questions about their law, but there was no charge against him that deserved death or imprisonment. When I was informed of a plot to be carried out against the man, I sent him to you at once. I also ordered his accusers to present to you their case against him.

So the soldiers, carrying out their orders, took Paul with them during the night and brought him as far as Antipatris. The next day they let the cavalry go on with him, while they returned to the barracks. When the cavalry arrived in Caesarea, they delivered the letter to the governor and handed Paul over to him. The governor read the letter and asked what province he was from. Learning that he was from Cilicia, he said, “I will hear your case when your accusers get here.” Then he ordered that Paul be kept under guard in Herod’s palace. (New International Version)

An “ambush” is a sudden and unexpected attack from a concealed position. In the Apostle Paul’s case, there were those looking to ambush in order to kill him.

Some Jerusalem Jews were determined to be rid of Paul. They demonstrated their commitment by taking a solemn oath to not eat or drink until they killed the Apostle – which has always made me wonder, when I read this story, if the plotters starved to death, or not, when the ambush was foiled.

In retrospect, I hope the would-be assassins saw how stupid it is – in more ways than one – to make an oath of killing someone.

Maybe even more nonsensical is that the oath-takers presented their plan to the Sadducees (the Jewish chief priests and elders) who endorsed the whole thing, signed-off on it, and actually participated in it.

I’ll just make the historical observation that the Sadducees no longer exist today; and they haven’t since the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. I grew up with an old rural folk saying that essentially said, “Dumb dogs die young.”

In the end, the nefarious plan of the Jerusalem Jews was foiled by Paul’s nephew. The young lad caught onto the conspiracy, reported it to Uncle Paul, and then to the Roman authorities.

The Roman commander lost no time in providing an impressive display of security in transporting Paul to Ceasarea. There, the Roman official Felix received him, along with a letter from the commander.

Once in Ceasarea, Felix promised Paul a fair hearing when his accusers arrived. In the meantime, Paul was kept under house arrest. The planned ambush was thus averted, and Paul was securely in Roman custody.

Unfortunately, there are people in this world who twist even their own religious ethics in order to justify violence – going so far as to ambush an innocent person to prevent an unwanted agenda (in this case, the Christian faith) from making inroads into society.

It will not do for any of us to believe that we are immune from trouble in the form of an ambush – whether the ambush is a literal physical one, or mental, emotional, or spiritual.

Gaslighting is a sinister form of mental ambush; a group bullying and threatening an individual is a horrible emotional ambush; and I personally have been the victim of, or diverted, many a spiritual ambush from disgruntled parishioners over the years who wanted my ministry finished.

Yet, many of our emotional ambushes are much more subtle. We might not realize, until later, that we’ve been had by one. Many times the ambush is couched in language of flattery, such as:

  • “We’re depending on you.”
  • “You’re the only one who can do this.”
  • “You did such a good job last time.”
  • “I’m counting on you.”

Or the statements can be more blunt:

  • “Don’t mess this up. A lot is riding on you.”
  • “If you don’t do it, everyone will be disappointed; everything will go to hell.”
  • “You’ve done it before. You have to do it again.”
  • “Don’t make me look bad, or else.”

Please remember the following whenever you find yourself in the crosshairs of an ambush:

  1. You are under no obligation to do whatever another person says.
  2. Take a deep breath and respond from the core of your being instead of from your fear and anxiety.
  3. There are 7 billion people on this earth. Everything doesn’t depend on you.
  4. You have the freedom to say, “No,” without having to explain why or justify it.
  5. Call a spade a spade. If you walk into an ambush, call it for what it is, and report it to the proper persons. It’s really okay to do that.

The more we can connect with what is of most value to us, the greater we can make decisions we’re able to live with, even in the moment.

What’s more, it’s possible to prepare ahead of time for a potential ambush, simply through consistent daily growth in wisdom and knowledge.

Be safe. Be strong. Be spiritual. We are all in this life together.

The Idea of Spiritual Separation (2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment

Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said:

“I will live with them
    and walk among them,
and I will be their God,
    and they will be my people.”

Therefore,

“Come out from them
    and be separate,
says the Lord.
Touch no unclean thing,
    and I will receive you.”

And,

“I will be a Father to you,
    and you will be my sons and daughters,
says the Lord Almighty.”

Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God. (New International Version)

There are entire Protestant denominations built upon verses such as today’s. They take the admonition to be separate as a cornerstone value. Ever since the Reformation, various Christian groups have struggled to maintain their witness in the world through, essentially, having nothing to do with the world whatsoever.

The dogma of separation inevitably leads to defining precisely what is “worldly” and what isn’t. This is where the idea of creating lists of what’s not acceptable come from. Each group or denomination has it’s own teaching about how to identify oneself as a Christian, and what sorts of behaviors communicate one isn’t a Christian. And the lists often vary quite a bit.

The Puritans had detailed lists and laws of what must be done and not done in order to remain in the community and be pure without spiritually contaminating oneself. For example, here are just a few of the many puritanical laws in Massachusetts in the 1600’s:

Sunday was a holy day. Trade and business were not allowed. No other public meetings could be held (except church services). No travel, except for walking to and from church and for emergencies. No entertainment. Church attendance was required. If a person missed church, they had to go to court (on Monday) and pay a fine.

All the other days were holy, too. Immodest and ostentatious clothes was illegal. Long hair for men was illegal. Smoking was illegal in the street. Courting a girl without her parents’ consent was illegal. Kissing in public was illegal. The following behaviors were illegal: using bad words, drinking too much alcohol, laziness, gluttony, fighting, poorly made products, having a bad attitude, and gossip.

Any violation, in Puritan thought, put the entire community at risk of raising the ire of God – who may punish them with various natural disasters. With all of these laws and lists, there was no opportunity for anyone to ever marry an unbeliever or be in business with a non-Christian, simply because it was illegal to be anything but a Christian!

None of this is meant to pick on the Puritans. It’s commendable that a group of people would want to be holy in all that they do and say. Yet, attempting to legislate every facet of another’s life isn’t so admirable – especially against their own Christian convictions.

Because, the reality of it all is that, in such systems, the few (usually old white guys) make the laws and decisions for everyone else – whether everyone likes it, or not. And worse, the old guys would couch their laws in the pious language of maintaining the common good of all persons (that is, themselves).

That sort of practice is still done today, in every system and every institution; the few call the shots for everyone else. And yes, even in a stated democracy like the United States of America.

So, if that isn’t what the Apostle Paul was getting at with the Corinthian Church, what then did he mean when he talked of separating from unbelievers, not being contaminated, and maintaining purity amongst the community?

Paul was speaking about the reality that the Corinthians – who had been ardent pagan worshipers before their conversion to Christianity – were still making significant accommodations to their surrounding pagan environment. Like a pair of ox yoked together, it just did not work. The two were greatly mismatched; they would not be able to go anywhere or get anything done.

In a series of rhetorical questions, Paul sought to illustrate the incompatibility of being a spiritual square peg trying to fit into a round hole. To be holy means to be set apart for the specific purpose of and devotion to God.

Rather than making holiness be the avoidance of dancing, drinking, playing cards, and dressing up, holiness and purity is to be characterized by righteous humility and gentleness; warm and compelling light; peace and peacemaking, like Christ did; love for fellow believers; and commitment to Christian community.

Put another way, avoiding spiritual contamination means to work on separating from sinful pride; giving into the shadows and the darkness of one’s heart; fostering arguments and division; and being unmerciful.

If the Apostle were to write to us today, on this topic of separation, what would he say to us? Maybe his rhetorical questions would be something like this:

What are you doing, failing to make a distinction between good and bad, right and wrong? How can you partner up with people who have ethics which are opposed to Christ? Can the light of justice ever be best friends with unjust darkness? Do Jesus and Satan ever have a midnight stroll holding hands with each other? Would anyone ever set up a worship altar to the wealthy or powerful in a church building?

Paul may argue, even today, that we contaminate ourselves in rather creative ways by employing illegitimate means to try and accomplish a legitimate need.

The truth is that anything that hinders us from doing God’s will; anyone who draws us away from a good relationship with Jesus; and whatever causes us to put the Christian life on the back burner of life, needs to be jettisoned. It will make us impure, ineffective, and eventually bite us in the backside.

We can always look at other groups of people whom we believe didn’t get things quite right. Yet, we really must deal with ourselves in this moment and for this time. Comparative holiness will get us nowhere (except maybe hell). Instead, let us contend with God and God’s people in ways that are redemptive, life-giving, and helpful for us and for our salvation.

Almighty God,
to whom all hearts are open,
all desires known,
and from whom no secrets are hidden:
cleanse the thoughts of our hearts
by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit,
that we may love you completely,
and rightly magnify your holy name;
through Christ our Lord. Amen.