Examined Christian Faith 'Forgiveness' 3.6 What is Christainity

I believe that without question, the most unpopular of all Christian Virtues is the one I am going to address today: “you shall love your neighbor as yourself”.  Because Christian morals mean that “your neighbor” includes “your enemy”, thus we are pushed up against this terrible duty of forgiving our enemies.   Nearly everyone you ask will tell you that forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.  Then to mention the subject at all is to be greeted with distain and anger.  It isn’t that people think forgiveness is too high and difficult a virtue; it is that they think it hateful and contemptible.   Most of who are reading this have already decided to ask me “I wonder how you would feel about forgiveness if you had a family member inside the World Trade Center on September 11^th, or if your spouse had betrayed you with cold and calculated malice. 

So do I: In answer to the first question I wonder very much, in answer to the second it is a battle I fight each and every day.  Christianity tells me that I must not deny my religion to save myself from death or torture, I wonder what I would do if it came to that point.  Do not mistake me for one of those who writes a book telling you that I have mastered the Christian doctrine of forgiveness – I am simply telling you what Christianity is.  I did not invent it, yet right in the middle of it, we find “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”  It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we will not be forgiven.  There are no two ways about it.  So what are we to do?

It is going to be hard, but I think I there are at lest two things we can do to make it easier.  First, just as when you start learning math, you did not begin with calculus, you began with simple addition (1+1=2) In the same manner, if you really want to learn how to forgive (but you have to really want to forgive) perhaps you should start with something easier then those things that repulse everyone with any morals, those things that there can be no justification for.  Start instead by forgiving something someone has said this week, and continue to build on top of that.

Second, I think we should try to understand exactly what loving your neighbor as yourself means. I have to love him as I love myself?  Then exactly how do I love myself?  I can only speak for myself but I have not exactly got a feeling of fondness or affection for myself.  Nor do I always enjoy my own company.  So apparently “love your neighbor” doesn’t mean “to feel fond of him, or to find him attractive” Do I think I am good, think I am a nice person?  Honestly, sometimes I do (and those are no doubt my worst moments).  But that is not why I love myself, in fact it is the other way around: my self love makes me think myself nice (thus those who argue that they are a good person are without doubt the most narcissist of all) but thinking myself nice is not why I love myself.  So if you extend that, that loving your enemies does not mean thinking they are nice either.  Which at least to me is a great relief as forgiving my enemies does not mean that I have to say they are not such bad people, when it is quite plain that they are.

Taking that one step further, in my most clear sighted moments not only do I not think of myself as a nice person, but know that I am a wicked one.  I can look at some of the things I have done with horror, which apparently means that I am allowed to hate some of the things my enemies do.  Remember Christian theology teaches that we are to hate the evil person’s actions but not the evil person.

For a long time, I thought that was just hair splitting, how could you hate what the person did and not hate the person?  However, with time it occurred to me that I have been doing this all my life – namely with myself.  I might dislike some of what I have done, yet I went on loving myself.  In fact the reason I hated the things was because I loved the man.  Because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of person who did those things.  Consequently Christianity does not want us to reduce our hatred we feel for cruelty, treachery, deceit, and self-fishiness.  We should hate them, but we are to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves.  Being sorry that the person could have done such things, yet hoping that somehow, sometime, somewhere, someway, he or she can be cured and mad human again. 

 

Does loving your enemy mean not punishing them?  No, for loving myself does not mean that I should not subject myself to punishment for my sins.  If one had committed murder, the right Christian thing to do would be to give yourself up to the police and accept your punishment, even if that meant death.  Thus what is the Christian thing for a thief to do, or an adulterer, an unscrupulous businessman?  The modern church has removed punishment, (JUSTICE) from its teachings.  But I do not think God has suddenly, due to popular demand ceased being JUST.   It is therefore in my opinion perfectly right for a Christian Judge or minister to deal swiftly with perpetrators, demanding justice for both the perpetrators and the victims.   Mercy is measured by Justice.

Some (more often then not those who are guilty of things that repulse the average moral Chrsitian) will say “if one is allowed to condemn the enemy’s acts, and punish him, what is the difference between Christian morality and the secular view?”  All the difference in the world.  Remember, Christians think man lives forever.  Thus what really matters is those twists on the central inside part of the soul which are going to turn it in the long run into a heavenly or hellish creature.  We may punish, if Justice is necessary, but we are not to enjoy it.  The ‘feeling’ of vengeance must simply be killed.  

Even while we punish we must feel about the enemy as we feel about ourselves – to wish that he or she were not bad, to hope that he or she may in this world be cured; thus in fact to wish him or her good.  That is what is meant in the Bible by loving him: wishing for your enemy good, not feeling fond of him or her, nor saying he or she is nice and a good person when they are not.

I admit that I struggle with this myself, because it means loving people who have nothing lovable about them.  But then again do I have anything loveable about me? I love me, simply because I am 'me'.  God intends us to love all “ME’s” in the same way and for the same reason.  I find it easier to do, when I remind myself of how He loves me.  Not for any nice, good attractive qualities I think I have, but because I am me.  Because really there is nothing in us to love: we are creatures who actually find hatred pleasurable, and that to give it up is like giving up alcohol or cigarettes. 

Previous Posting in this series "Marriage" 

Next Posting in this series; "The Sin of Sins" 

Examined Christian Faith 'Marriage' 3.5 What is Christainity

If your faith can not save you from your own self-centeredness, your own selfishness, then it will not save you from Hell.  

No where is it more obvious and painfully clear to both those who claim Christianity and those outside the faith to readily see the true nature of a person’s heart, then by observing their response to the Christian viewpoint on marriage.  Christ’s teachings on this matter are clear and absolute; as a result this is where pretenders and hypocrites are sorted out, where the wheat is separated from the chafe.   This is where those who are a ‘good person’ and a ‘nice person’ have their selfish, self-centered, self serving heart exposed.

These next sentences are critical to those who claim the Christian faith.  The Christian idea of marriage is based upon Christ’s words that a man and wife are to be regarded as a single creature (one-flesh), and that Jesus was not expressing a sentiment, but rather a fact – just like a lock and key are one mechanism.   When God created humans, He created them in two halves, the male and the female, they were made to be combined (joined together) not just on the sexual level, but totally combined.  The monstrosity of sexual “relations” (as we like to call it) outside marriage is that those who live that lifestyle are attempting to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all the other kinds of union which are intended to go along with it and form the complete union.  

As a consequence, Christianity teaches that marriage is for life.  There are no if’s, and’s or but’s.  Divorce plus remarriage, equals adultery.  You will hear a lot of ‘Christians’ who will take issue with that statement, but it does not alter Jesus’ teachings on marriage.  He was crystal clear and left no wiggle room.  Christians and all Christian churches following Jesus’ teachings, regard divorce as something like cutting up a living body, as a kind of surgical operation that is so violent that it cannot be done.  That divorce is more like having both of your legs and arms cut off with a rusty dull saw, than it is like dissolving a business partnership.  Christians follow Jesus’ teaching that disagrees and condemns  the modern viewpoint that divorce is a simple readjustment of partners, to be made whenever someone feels they are no longer in love with the other, or when either of them “falls in love” with someone else. 

One must not forget to consider this in relation to another virtue that I wrote previously about, “Justice”.  Justice as I mentioned in a previous posting includes keeping promises. Everyone who has been married in a church has made a public solemn vow to stick to his or her partner until death.  The duty and responsibility of keeping that promise has no special connection with sexual morality: it is the same as any other vow or promise.  If as some would have us believe that the sexual desire is just like all other desires; then it should justifiably be treated like all our other desires; and as our other desires are controlled by our promises, so should this one be.   If it is as I believe, it is not like all our other desires, but is rather one that is morbidly inflamed, then we should be especially careful to not let it lead us into dishonesty. 

Now I freely admit that there are those who make this promise as a mere formality and never intend to keep it.  Who were they trying to deceive, the groom, the bride or the in-laws, or just the public?  If so their words and heart is treacherous.  Or perhaps he or she is trying, when they make the vow to deceive God, if so they can only be counted among the foolish, the very - very foolish.  These individuals want the benefits and the respectability that is attached to marriage without ever intending to pay the price that is required.  They are imposters, they are liars, they are cheaters and God calls them adulterers.  If they remain contented to be a liars, and adulterer, then I have nothing to say to them (pearls before swine’s), who would urge the high and hard duty of chastity on someone who has not yet desired to be merely honest?   However if they have now removed the blinders from their eyes and truly want to be honest, then their promise, already made constrains them.  This then comes under the heading of Justice.  

The idea that some have that “being in love” is the only reason for remaining married, leaves no room for marriage as a promise at all.  If love is the entire thing, then the promise can add nothing, and if it adds nothing then it should not be made.  The curious thing is that lovers know this while they remain really in love, better than those who talk about love.  The Christian law of marriage simply demands what lovers already know, that they should take seriously something which their passion impels them to do.  

Of course, the promise, made when I am in love and because I am in love, to be true to my beloved as long as I live commits one to being true even if I cease to be in love. A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions.  No one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way.  You might as well promise to never have a headache or to always feel thirsty. 

Being “in love” is a glorious state, and in several ways is good for us, it helps us to be generous and courageous, it opens our eyes to beauty, and it conquers lust.  No one would deny that being in love is better than common sensuality or self-centeredness.  Being ‘in love” is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. It is a noble feeling, but it is till just a feeling, no feeling can be relied upon to last in its full intensity or even at all.  Principles can last, knowledge can last, habits can last; but feelings… they come and go.  However, ceasing to be “in love” need not mean ceasing to LOVE.  LOVE as opposed to “being in love” is not merely a feeling, rather it is a deep unity, maintained by will and deliberately strengthened by habit, and grace.  This LOVE can be kept even in those moments (hours, days, weeks, months) that you do not like each other, just as you love yourself even when you dislike yourself.  This LOVE can be retained even when each other would easily if they allowed themselves, to “be in love” with someone else.  “Being in love” is what moves one to a promise of fidelity until death, “LOVE” enables you to keep that promise.

This is one little part, I think, of what Christ meant by saying that a thing will not really live unless it first dies.  Far too few people understand that if you decide to make thrills (being in-love) the definition of love, then over time the thrill will get weaker and weaker, fewer and fewer, until you at last end up a bored disillusioned old man or woman. However if you let the thrill go- let it die away- go on through that period of death into the happiness that follows (Love, honor, commitment, loyalty, faith, hope)- you will find that you are living in a world of new thrills all the time.  It is because so few people understand this that you see husbands and wives destroying themselves, their spouses, their families, their faith, when they are at the very point when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all around them. 

As I said in the beginning - If your faith can not save you from your own self-centeredness, your own selfishness, then it will not save you from Hell.  

If you honestly desire to fully understand Christian Divorce and Remarriage, you might want to consider my book   "I am an Adulterer"

Next Post in this series: "Forgiveness" 
Previous Post in this series; "Sex" 

Examined Christian Faith 'Sex' 3.4 What is Christainity

Morality in general is a hard enough topic, but now it is time to address specifics, and we might as well start with sexual morality.  Chastity is the single most unpopular of all the Christian virtues. The Christian believes in one rule “Either marriage with compete faithfulness to your spouse or else total abstinence.”   I will be the first to admit that it is so difficult and so contrary to our instincts that obviously either Christianity is wrong or our sexual instinct has gone wrong.  It can only be one or the other, The Christian believes that it is the instinct that has gone horribly wrong. 

    

All human instincts have a biological purpose, the biological purpose of sex is children, just as the biological purpose of eating is to repair and refuel the body.  Using that as an example, if I we to eat whenever I want and as much as I want, it is true that I will probably eat too much, but not terrifically too much.  Maybe enough for two, but hardly enough for 10, 15 or even 20.  The human appetite goes a little beyond it’s biological purpose to ensure survival, but not grossly over.  However if a man were to indulge his sexual appetite whenever he felt inclined, and if each act produced a baby, then he would within a matter of years populated an entire town.  This appetite is preposterous to its function.   Yet everyone knows that if I were in fact to be a glutton either with food, with sex or anything, then my appetite grows by that indulgence. None of which are healthy or natural.

We have been told, until one is sick of hearing it, that sexual desire is the same as any of our other natural desire, and if we only stop trying to not talk about it, then everything will be restored, and perfectly natural, everything will be perfect in the garden of Eden again. That sounds nice, but it is the biggest bunch of crap being peddled.  If you look at the facts, and beyond the hype and propaganda you will see it for what it is;  a lie.

We are told that sex has become such a mess because it was hushed up. But get serious, all you have to do is open any magazine, listen to any song, or watch any television show, movie or commercial to realize that for the past 40 to 50 years, all anyone ever talks about is sex.  Yet it still remains a mess.  Maybe, just maybe, humans originally hushed it up, because it had become such a mess. 

Those of the current age are always saying “sex is nothing to be ashamed of.” They mean either one of two things, 1^st that there is nothing to be ashamed of that sex is the way the human race reproduces itself, and that it gives pleasure in the process.  If they mean that then they are right, and Christianity say the same thing.  It is not the thing, nor the pleasure that is the problem.  The problem is in the 2^nd way that they may mean it.  If when people say “Sex is nothing to be ashamed of.” They mean ‘the state into which our sexual instincts has fallen into is nothing to be ashamed of.’ Then they are wrong, there is every reason to being ashamed of it, if half the world made food the main interest in their lives and spent their time looking at pictures of food dribbling and smacking their lips at all times; gorging themselves at the expense of others, no one looks at a glutton and thinks there is not something seriously wrong with him or her. 

With all the advertisements, all the propaganda for lust (sex sells) to make us feel that our desires that we are resisting are natural and healthy and so reasonable that it is perverse and abnormal to resist them.  Movie after movie, book after book, picture after picture, commercial after commercial  all associate the idea of sexual indulgence with health, youth, and normality.  All of it a lie, based on a grain of truth (that sex is normal and healthy).  The lie is the suggestion that any sexual act that you are tempted at any given moment is normal and healthy.  However surrendering to all of desires always leads to disease, lies, concealment, jealousies and everything that is the reverse of health, happiness, and truthfulness.  For any happiness in the world always involves a lot of restraint.  Every sane, logical, rational, moral person must have some set of principles by which he or she chooses to reject some desires and to permit others.  No one who claims to be rational and moral gives into all their desires, proving that a desire, even when strong counts for nothing.  

I am not so naive to assume that every Christian is perfect in keeping their chastity.  God knows our situation, what matters is our sincerity and perseverance of our will to overcome them.  Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself, but just this power of always trying again.  For However important chastity (or courage, truthfulness, loyalty, faithfulness, forgiveness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still.  Our illusion about ourselves are cured and we learn to depend on God, we learn on one hand that we can not trust ourselves even in our finest moments, and, on the other hand that we need not despair even in our worst.  The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.

Before I close, I want to make it clear that the center of Christian morality is not here.  While the sins of the flesh are bad, they are the least bad of all sins.  Those sins that are far worst are purely spiritual; the pleasure of harming another, of putting self before others, for slandering, lying, betraying others, the pursuit of power, greed, hatred, and selfishness.  Jesus comforted the prostitute, and offered forgiveness if she would repent, yet he left no doubt that the cold self-righteous ‘follower’ who saw nothing to repent of, was nearer to hell then the prostitute. Needless to say, it goes without saying that it is better to be neither.  

Previous Post in This series: "Cardinal Virtues"

Next Post in this series: " Marriage"