The slow fade.

One of the greatest errors non-believers (and many believers) have fallen into is the belief that sinful actions are those things that we naturally want, and are therefore good for us, but an oppressive church seeks to restrict solely for the sake of maintaining power and control.

So, the thinking goes...

• ...fathers and mothers do not deserve respect in themselves, because respect must be earned, not given freely.
• ...children are a choice, not a gift.
• ...opposition to contraception and abortion is an invitation to poverty.
• ...opposition to homosexuality is an opposition to love.
• ...opposition to adultery, pornography, and other forms of sexual perversion opposes our natural, animal desire for sex.
• ...opposition to stealing presupposes that we have a right to private property, which we don't.
• ...opposition to stealing is opposition to the first lesson we learned as a kid, to share what we have.
• ...opposition to stealing keeps hungry people in poverty under penalty of sin.
• ...opposition to lying is unreasonable.
• ...opposition to lying would have gotten Jews arrested during the Holocaust.
• etc. &c et cetera.

Holding to this belief is like standing on your head and insisting that gravity forces things upward.  The natural order of a righteous life is what leads to happiness.  Sin is the perversion of that order and deceives us into thinking that the fleeting biological moments of pleasure are equal to the spiritual and biological happiness that is the result of a virtuous life.

Consider sexual immorality.  I hold that this is truly the central sin of our age for other sins like lying, stealing, and murder break off of it like spokes on a wheel.  One need only watch an episode of the daytime soaps to see this.  Sin is the cause of much of our plagues that cause us tremendous suffering.  A couple that waits until marriage to engage in intercourse, are both virgins when married, and never commit adultery will not contract AIDS or any other STD unless some other sin, like rape, enters the picture.

The solutions we propose are mind-numbingly absurd.  Rather than manage our passions like rational creatures, we find work-arounds to hopefully not contract disease.  Billboards, doctors, and pundits tell us that we can't trust our lovers, and that we must use condoms lest they give us a disease.  It always amuses me to see people who panic if a piece of food falls on their dinner table, but have no qualms about swapping bodily fluid with someone who may have a deadly or painful illness that could be passed onto them.

Consider pornography.  The internet and cable TV have brought pornography into nearly every home.  It is being consumed on a nightly basis for often hours at a time.  There are often secret rituals that involve the use of pornography.  One spouse will find a way to keep the other from finding out about the pornography.  It is a standard feature in web browsers now to have private browsing that doesn't save the history or cookies, lest you forget to clear it all.  Lying.  Deception.  Barriers.  And we wonder why marriages fail.

Alcohol is the second most abused drug in America.  Pornography is the first.  How well would our society function if every household had a never ending supply of free alcohol in it?  Millions more would become alcoholics.  Hangovers would become our normal mode of operation, until we are perpetually curing ourselves with the hair-of-the-dog.  Yet this is exactly what we have done to ourselves with pornography.

Here's a comment on the above video: 

S. Craig

I am sitting here alone in an apartment, now separated from my wife and 3 children after 25 years of marriage. It began by walking away from the Lord....and the slow fade began. I am working on myself, my relationship with God and praying that his will would be done here. I am scared, but need to "trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your path straight" Proverbs 3, 5-6 Please pray for us all. Thanks

There are millions more just like S. Craig.  But many tell us that the walk away from the Lord is the way of enlightenment.  If enlightenment means not being able to trust people, having relationships fall apart, contracting diseases, and being addicts, I will take the foolishness of happiness any day.