Do not say: 'Who will ascend into heaven or who will descend into the abyss' Rom 10

I responded to your post but it wouldn't go through at work. It also wouldn't let me cut and paste it later. So I had to do some screen grabs, save as an image, then email home and retype. I'm not sure why Blogger won't let you cut/copy what you've typed. Whatever, so here we go with a retype . . . .

I don't distinguish between sex and marriage, well hardly. I think the modern day service is exactly that, modern day with little eternal significance. They still acknowledge the sex act as the consumation of the marriage. I think if you have sex with someone you become one, you "know" the person and therefore are "married". The service or registering at city hall are not what creates the union. How that fits with prostitutes who would be technically one with 1000's of Johns, I don't know. And you have to throw in Solomon's 300 wives and double that in concubines. If it was okay for Solomon then why nokay now? A good basis for polygamy if you were a Mormon and wanted to go there. Does God care much about any of this stuff? relatively speaking of course. As I said, David did something truly abhorent, but ends up with Bathsheba and then Solomon and then the lineage that goes on to Christ's birth.

As for porn, there are varying degrees. Many would consider Sin City to contain porn. Not surprising considering the title and the type of sadistic violence would constitute another form of sinful behaviour. What values does the movie promote? Nudity, callous violence, table dancing, slaughter, demonic imagery etc. Doesn't this present a "false example" of how life is supposed to be? Who's to say when and who can't filter out the evil. This "filtering" is happening daily on every front. The capability level is dependant on the faith of the beholder. So you can filter the evil out of Sin City but I cannot from a picture of a naked women? Riiiight.

Many Christian's like to categorize everything so they can feel comfortable in this life. In the process they always throw the baby out with the bathwater. When you get a chance to peak under the hood for consistency it's not there, at least not what I call consistency. The only thing that is consistent is that there's no cost to what they do. So they criticise what's easy to criticise and avoid what would cost them. And cost is different for each person. But that's where Jesus wants us to cut the ties and bind to him. So I'm very careful about who I criticise and why. I need to know the person very well before I can make a contextually accurate judgement. Not that I think it takes long to get to know someone well.

My judgement of the church is much stronger than the world, since the world is lost and clueless about what they're doing, while Christians are supposed to know what's up. And the thing we talked about is a great example - preparing/editing a sermon. That kind of stuff scares the crap out of me because you're making a blatant statement about the Holy Spirit's place in your life. To come down on it would cost most people. And it would cost a lot. But that's what it's all about, that's the scary shit that makes you stick to Christ. It's easy to go on preparing sermons, most people expect it, and go on criticising smokers and porn and abortions and whatever else is acceptable to criticise in the Christian community. But do something that's biblically solid, makes total spiritual sense and is exactly what Jesus himself did and told us to do. Fuck that, because I might look stupid. I wouldn't want to explain that when I meet him.

The Mahaffey/French thing is all about contexts. And it was mom grasping after a just world that couldn't handle a potentially kingdom perspective. Mom's Jesus is just that, mom's Jesus. It hasn't been her discipline to question her views against other information to validate who Jesus is. The real guy can look brutal (food meant for children isn't going to the dogs etc.) but it's actually love. God is love but he also walked millions of people around in the desert for 40 years until they were all dead. People simply ignore the hurtful passages and mold a Jesus into their parents likeness. Dave's comment (intended to be between me and him) was not meant to be a summary of the entire event but rather an appendage to one aspect of it. Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God that's the bucket they were all in, regardless of their relative 10 commandment goodness which is all shit in relation to Christ. Start there and I'll listen to comments regarding his statement, but nobody starts there. They won't and/or can't. Thus the constant view that I am pessimistic about the state of mankind. I'm hopeful but not naive. Satan rules the earth through slavery, total and complete. If you die you can escape - the only way. And this perspective was an ever strengthening reality that was the living background to our conversations. So the "sex party" was an insignificant example of the world's depravity which occurs every second of every day in every corner of the earth and it was given the single sentence it deserved. The problem lies elsewhere.