Tag Archives: sexual purity

Parade of Waste

Bible Talk, Poetry, Pop Culture, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Our little girls:
Pile cake on the face,
Glitter in the hair,
We tell them they should stand
They’re looking pretty.

Then they’re tweens:
Wear thong ‘cross the bum,
Liner round the eyes,
We tell them they should lie
They’re Looking pretty.

Now they’re teens:
Guard the lives at the pool,
Washing cars
In their bikinis raising money
For the school.

They learn life
From fathers’ friends as they drool,
Hold them close
In their arm chairs on their knees,
There a tool.

When did they
Discover don’t want lives like
Their mothers’,
In their boxes feeling lonely,
There the fools?

Dilemma
Is as fresh as the garden
Uncovered,
There worshipping the honey
They are cruel.

Can they be
Returned to state of pardon,
Beloved?
They’ve made off with the money.
Blessed Fools.

L.L. Shelton, Copyright 2016.

Brief Thoughts Regarding Human Sexuality

Bible Talk, Living the Word, Married Life, , , ,

(An Addendum to, Brief Thoughts of Love)

My Young Friend,

Each of us is composed of both physicality- our body and the stuff therein, and of a soul or spirit- the eternal self; that was a thought in the mind of God before our physical existence and destined to continue long after our body has perished. We are each in possession of a mind- emotion and intellect (albeit there are varying degrees of functionality among them) and along life’s way we each develop a personality and a sexuality, both a reflection of a deeper development- that of character. Character is the essence of who you are; it is your nature. These things are inextricably intertwined until the day of physical death. Until then, one can not function apart from the other and each is connected to and affected by the other. This is a terrifically complicated and marvelous design.

God has created our sexuality specifically to allow for and to encourage the most intimate level of communication in relationship that two people and their Heavenly Father can together experience. He designed this aspect of the system to lend us the ability to procreate and to grant us the capability of relating in a way that is illustrative of that way in which The Trinity relates, and of the way in which God in Christ relates to His people. Also, it is to be a reward unique to the covenant marriage of a man and a woman in the Presence of God.  It may be startling to consider that God is a part of the expression of one’s sexuality, and yet it should be obvious. God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and everywhere at once. As Christians, we are promised that His Holy Spirit lives in us- all the time. Our God does not slumber or sleep, rather He carefully watches over us continually.

However, because we are living in the contaminated environments of the earth and of our own fleshly bodies, we are apt to the perversion of our sexualities. Though there are myriad natural consequences as a result of expressing one’s sexuality outside of the one relationship for which it was designed, and those consequences are always spiritually degrading, often emotionally detrimental, and many times physically debilitating; still we are highly likely to misuse this aspect of ourselves, and yet Christ insists that we are to strive for sexual purity.

Interestingly, Christ is apparently unconcerned with the technicalities of things surrounding human sexuality; things such as whether or not a person should date at this age or that, whether a kiss is sexual or not, or that a person refrain from intercourse until marriage. It is possible that I have, again, startled you. I mean to convey that Christ’s concern is for something infinitely greater- our sexual purity; and sexual purity has its roots in the imagination. It is in our imaginations that He desires to reign supreme. Pure sexuality begins in the thought life and can never be achieved apart from it.

Sexual purity is maintained through the constant effort to view God, ourselves, and others appropriately, as living beings valued beyond price, worthy of sacrificial love; as opposed to objects to be used and abused according to our whims or our erroneous desires.

In God’s economy, there is truly no need for such deliberations as whether or not to hold hands on the first date; as He has in Christ surely freed us from endless and  rigorous  contemplations of the nature of “angels on the head of a pin” rather, God has allowed for us to be (in Him) all that we can be!

In His Love,
An Old Friend

See Psalm 51, Matthew 19, Mark 7

Copyright, 2012. L.L. Shelton

Bride On Fire

Church Culture, Living the Word, Politics, , , , ,

The strangely fluid and beautiful creature leaps and bounds in bright colorful array engulfing the structure that is the object of its appetite.  A crowd gathers, for a moment stunned by the apparent freedom of this gaily frolicking entity.  Then, as if shaking off a kind of stupor, someone screams to be saved.

In answer to the plea, a courageous number of that fantastic fraternity formed to fight this very devil, soon arrive and begin their bold work. The flames are doused and the remaining folks gathered at the scene, staring at the remnants of the edifice as it smolders amid the ashes, observe as the next skilled team arrives and begins the important work of inspection that will ultimately, hopefully, determine the origin of the monster.

The Church is on my mind, and having lived more than a half century now, it is my estimation that the road to perdition begins with one’s elevated view of oneself.

In  America, no more than 2% of our total population is gay, and approximately .8% of the 2% are involved in a same sex relationship, and fewer still are legally married.  Clearly, we have a much greater problem with other sexual sins in this country, such as fornication and adultery.  Of course, even the criminal sexual sins of child molestation and rape occur more frequently among us than does the sin of practicing homosexuality.

The sanctity of marriage is intended to be built upon a foundation of sexual purity which applies to all people.  The foundation has been under attack since humanity began.  Most of the twentieth century saw the institution of marriage, an institution necessarily established by God for our protection and to increase our joy, being questioned and demeaned by American society in general.  Yes, even we, the organized church felt it necessary to debate many issues surrounding the sanctity of marriage and family long before beginning to argue its very definition.  I submit to you that we, as a church, failed to properly defend marriage against those relatively minor attacks, thus we now stand perilously close to losing the war.

However, while It may be too late for us, as a nation, to raise the stakes- it is never too late for us to up the ante as the church.  Jesus did.

Jesus said, “Let’s begin with understanding lust as a sexual activity sinfully equal to adultery.  Let’s begin by demanding of ourselves a clean heart.” 

If we, the American population of the church, begin cleaning at the level that Our LORD mandated we may be able to effect the kind of change in our nation that is seen as nothing short of miraculous. 

Copyright 2015, L.L. Shelton