Boundaries

For anyone who wants to get a better understanding of God and his great love and care for all that He has created, the "healthy" parent/child relationship is one of the best places to look. 

One of the most important things that good parents do is to set appropriate boundaries and enforce them. 

Well...God does the same. 

Like children, many of us question or even scoff at the boundaries He sets. Many of us intentionally defy those boundaries. That is called sin.

Like our children, we often question God in regard to such things. Why, Lord, would you prohibit this or command me to do that? 

In time, those who are faithful followers of Christ press on long enough to learn just as our children often do, that He was right all along.

Many of God's commands are in stark contrast to the things that are tolerated in our world. 

There's friction there, externally as these things become social issues provoking arguments and disagreements among people, and internally, as we as Christians try to process the contradictions between a culture that is at war with holiness and the commands written in God's Word.

Here again, I hesitantly bring up Phil Roberson's interview with GQ. He has received both accolades and words of condemnation for the things that he said. Though his approach is not especially agreeable to me, there are parts of it that, because of my faith and its applications to the things that I see happening in the world today, I cannot disagree with. 

"Everything is blurred on what’s right and what’s wrong. Sin becomes fine…Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men,” -

Now before you get mad and leave, did you know that...
-an Italian high court recently found ‘romance’ in 60-year-old man’s sex with 11-year-old, and overturned his guilty verdict?
-Canada just struck down their remaining laws that prohibited prostitution?
-a federal judge delivered a victory to a family of reality TV polygamists by striking down part of a Utah law that prohibits polygamy?
-medical journals in the most esteemed institutions of education (like Harvard) have recently published documents classifying pedophilia as non-deviant behaviors?
-bestiality is practiced in many areas of the world today?

To me, this is indicative of a society and a world that has not only pushed the bounds of morality but rather, have broken them. 

What many do not perceive is that, once we begin to do things outside of the framework in which God has created us to live, there are no bounds to what extremes we will go.

Just as we have reasons for the things that we require of our children, God has good, solid reasons for the things that he requires of and denies us.

Lately, I've seen instances in which worldly studies and data are reflective of the wisdom inherent in doing things God's way. 

Again, did you know that...
-Porn has recently been proven to reduce sexual satisfaction among men?
-Studies show that women experience far greater sexual satisfaction and fewer regrets after having intercourse within committed relationships than just casually.
-Men who have sex with men, which the CDC estimates at four percent of the American population, are more than 44 times more likely to be diagnosed with HIV/AIDS than heterosexual men. They make up 52 percent of the American population with HIV/AIDS, and account for about 63 percent of all new HIV/AIDS cases.

You have to wonder why the mainstream media doesn't report such statistics as are listed in my third example. Might it be that it flies in the face of the liberal agenda of normalizing homosexual behavior? Additionally, studies show that the majority of these men continue to have sex with other men despite knowing that they have AIDS.

In this country, where nurses are being required to get the flu shot for the protection of their patients, of what benefit is it to withhold such information from the general public?

Yet sadly, the more we as a society refuse to recognize homosexuality as a deviant behavior, the more of a problem this will become.

We set up fences for our children for good reason. God gives us boundaries in His word for good reason. It's okay to have doubts. If you do, I encourage you to talk to Him about it. Yet, whatever you do, I encourage you not to let those doubts take you off the path of righteousness that he has planned for your life.

My purpose is not to harp on homosexuality here, though I felt it important to address. Yet God, in His Word does not exalt this above any other sin.

"...know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with men, 10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God." 
(1 Corinthians 6:9,10)

But thankfully that is not the end of the story.

"... such were some of you: but ye were washed, but ye were sanctified, but ye were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God." (1 Corinthians 6:11)


I'm sorry but I can't come up with a better ending for any of us than that.