One Of Those Little Incongruities

“It’s not news to anybody these days – not if they watch any television or glance at the covers of the magazines lining the checkout counters at the grocery stores – that we live in a sex-saturated society where supposedly the majority of young people are “doing it,” more often than not without “benefit of marriage.” The Playboy Philosophy and its derivatives are trumpeted by a thousand voices that glamorize casual sex, while most of the shrinking mainline churches present pitifully watered-down messages about morality that confuse rather than clarify.

Academic institutions, particularly the women’s studies programs, promote the idea that marriage is optional and young people are advised to “just do it!” The secular mantra, heard from middle school on up, is that sex will make you popular and happy; it’s great recreation that is free and fun.

There is a mountain of media out there promoting a phony philosophy about the joys of casual, risky sexual experimentation; one need look no further than the junk advice featured in magazines like Cosmopolitan to see just how pernicious it is. Even the relationship advice columns in many daily newspapers spread the expectation of sexual activity even for the youngest of our teens.”

Straight Talk About Casual Sex
Janice Shaw Crouse
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/04/straight_talk_about_casual_sex.html

So, on one hand we have more sex going on at younger ages then you can find in the pages of Huxley’s ‘Brave New World.’ Furthermore, in the government schools we teach the children about sex at increasingly younger and younger ages and in doing so push sex. The culture has given its imprimatur of approval on such adolescent coitus.

But on the other hand when teen sex putatively breaks out in the context of polygamy and communal living among consistent Mormons in Texas (FLDS) suddenly pop culture is abhorred and just can’t get over the indecency of it all?

Somebody help me out here.

Naturally, as a Christian, I am foursquare against both the scenarios painted above but to be perfectly honest if I were forced to choose between the kind of fornication that is being pushed among and pursued by adolescents in our schools and the kind of polygamous marriages that might be being pushed among and pursued by adolescent girls in a FLDS commune I could see an argument being made in favor of the FLDS commune. Think about it. In the former scenario you have children contracting STD’s, or you have pregnancy out of wedlock with the eventuality of either unprepared single parents, marriages between unprepared children, or abortion. However in the polygamous FLDS compound I would bet good money you would find few STD’s, you’d find a community that is going to support the marriages and you find older men who are likely more able to support their family (even if augmented by Welfare checks) then the average teenage adolescent boy.

Now remember, I think both scenarios reprobate but if someone put a gun to my head and told me I had to choose one of the two illicit sex scenarios for adolescent girls to enter into there is a part of me that would lean towards choosing the FLDS.

I find myself wondering if the real reason that our sex crazed culture is piously agog over consistent Mormons having sex is not because 15 year old Mormon girls are having sex with older men but rather it is because the same 15 year old girls are not having sex in the context of the predominant pagan culture with adolescent boys.

After all, if abnormal illicit sex is going to be the cultural norm, any abnormal illicit sex that isn’t abnormal according to the culture norms of abnormality must be seen for the abnormality that it is.

The Living Presence Of God

“The living presence of God in the heart of authentic Israelite culture, that is, in Israel’s laws and ordinances, explains why the Psalmist so loved the law and ordinances of God. They were sweet to him, a joy to keep and a light to ones path, because the Lord God of Israel was present in them. His presence gave to them their sweetness, their joy, and their light; to keep the law accordingly was to enter into the presence of the living God Himself. The life that one lived by keeping the law was the life of the Lord God Himself, and the character of that life was the character of the Lord God Himself. Biblical theology is therefore not produced but received from the God of Abraham Himself. Accordingly, authentic biblical theology is of a particular character, for it is a description of the particular Lord God who stands at the heart of biblical worship, who has brought Israel into being and given to him his distinctive character and identity.”

Kenneth Paul Wesche
Pastor — St. Herman’s Orthodox Church
Essay – Keeping The Faith

Let us posit that Wesche’s observations are correct just for the sake of argument. Let us agree that the living presence of God was in the heart of authentic Israelite culture, that is, in Israel’s laws and ordinances. Now as Reformed people we all confess that those who lived in the anticipatory covenant were living in an age front loaded with the eschatological ‘not yet.’ Now certainly there were adumbrations and lineaments of the eschatological ‘now’ but overall the age of the anticipatory covenant was weighted with the eschatological ‘not yet.’ Now, if even in the eschatological age that was weighted with the ‘not yet’ God’s living presence was in the heart of authentic Israelite culture how is it that so many Reformed people deny that in this age that is weighted with the eschatological ‘now’ — weighted so since the ‘age to come’ arrived in the advent of Christ — God could be be in the heart of authentic Christian culture?

Here we are living in the new and better covenant — new and better because the Kingdom has drawn near in the resurrected and ascended Lord Christ — and yet we are told by some that though the Israelites knew the living presence of God in the heart of authentic Israelite culture, those who comprise the new Israel must realize that the living presence of God cannot be possibly known in culture since there is no approximation of a such a thing called Christian culture.

Secondly, note the high estimation of God’s law that Wesche records about the members in the anticipatory covenant. Their delight was in God’s law and on it did they meditate both day and night. Now, quite obviously they did not love God’s law because they could use it as a ladder to acquire acceptability with God, but rather they loved God’s law because they were a Redeemed people, who being acceptable with God because of God’s provision in the sacrificial system, knew that life, shalom and vitality was found in a due respect for God’s law. Again, we should be reminded that this love for the law was found in the people who only dwelt in the anticipatory covenant. As Christians we are living in the ‘age to come.’ In light of that how much more should we find God’s law sweet to us? How much more should we as Christians, who will never increase our acceptability with God by loving the law, find God’s law a joy to keep and to be a light to our path? How much more should we testify that we love the law because the Lord God of Israel is present in them? Do we believe that God’s presence gives to the law its sweetness, its joy, and its light? Do we believe that to pursue the keeping of the law accordingly is to know the presence of the living God as Father?

Third, allow me to suggest that this quote gives hints that the supernatural comes to us in a way that is far different then the way we typically look for the supernatural. We look for the supernatural in the spectacular and the astounding. Perhaps though we should find the supernatural nearest to us when we participate in a community that is breathing with the presence of God as seen in its collective attention to and individual incarnation of God’s law. Is not the supernatural demonstrated and close to a people, who possessed by the Spirit of the Word of God, get that word of God into everything they touch and build? Is not the supernatural seen in families living out Christ? Is not the supernatural seen in Churches exalting Christ in Word and Sacrament? Is not the supernatural seen in communities that build their civil social institutional structures rooted in the Word of God? The Pentecostals have it wrong. The supernatural doesn’t normatively come to us in flashes of brilliance or demonstrations of strangeness but rather the supernatural comes to us in the rhythms of living in a community devoted to Christ the great Priest King. The living presence of God remains in the heart of authentic Christian culture.

Superiority Of Western Culture

“Cultures are equal in value only if there is no standard against which to judge them. The culture of the West, infused as it is with Christian values, is superior to any other, and all the valid charges against the West are indications that it has betrayed its own heritage. It is not superior because it is wealthy. It is wealthy because it is superior, because it believes that work is a calling, that matter is important, that reason is a gift of God. This culture, God’s gift, transmits its material blessings along with its interpretation of reality.”

Herbert Schlossberg
Idols For Destruction — pg. 72

That which differentiates Christian from Pagan society

“It is not enthusiasm, but dogma, that differentiates a Christian from a pagan society.”

T. S. Eliot
Christianity and Culture: The Idea of a Christian Society and Notes towards the Definition of Culture — pg.47

It seems in our church and culture today that enthusiasm is like a drug, the dosage of which, constantly needs to increased in order to get the same high. In light of this one can hardly fault those who abjure from the cult of enthusiasm who look upon Christians and mock the whole notion of what passes for Christianity. To be honest, there are times, when I don’t even want to be known as a Christian.

The more we continue to pursue enthusiasm, the more we communicate to our children that Christianity is about attending F.I.R.E. conferences, and the more we refuse to attempt the heavy lifting of knowing, understanding and entering into our dogma the more we will justifiably be characterized as pagan.