by Dan Phillips (original post here)
Last Wednesday, one of those minor household accidents happened while I was away. My dear wife was readying some of her award-winning chili which, in my house, usually requires the accompaniment of corn bread. Everyone in my family loves corn bread, excepting only me. So chili needs corn bread, and corn bread needs honey. But our honey was crystallized.
So Valerie popped it in the microwave and got it boiling hot or thereabouts. In transferring it, something slipped, and she poured this boiling hot honey on her hand. Both she and my boys swung right into action.
What did they do?
What Valerie didn't do is say "Boiling honey has gotten a bad rap all these years. At some point, uptight and narrow-minded people took a wrong turn and labeled the experience of spilling boiling honey on your hand as 'painful' and 'bad' and 'harmful.' But if we read the ancient texts right, they were talking about particular honey produced by bees visiting a particular flower that grew only in Greece, and only in the fourth century BC. Our modern honey is nothing like ancient honey. We can't apply those categories to this experience."
Likewise, what my boys didn't do was to say, "Oh Mother-dear, because we love you so, we are going to embrace and celebrate your new discovery of this new experience of joyous new-honey-pouring. In fact, we must change the language. Instead of 'boiling-honey burn,' let's call it Glistening Aroma of Sweet Pinkness. You've just had a GASP of joy! Here, we want to be supportive! Let us boil some more for you!"
As I say, they did none of this. Instead, Valerie gave a yelp and headed for the tap, and the boys got her ice and took care of her. Because all the scholarly papers by all the pointy heads in all the world wouldn't change the fact that boiling honey hurts like fire.
You're a sharp bunch and I'm sure you know right where we're going. Yet another sad soul has reportedly greeted yet another scion's sin against God his Creator by trying to redefine reality to enable his son's damning immorality. And, as always, he is unsuccessful.
What we are seeing in such small events as well as the large sweeps of legislation and litigation is a large-scale attempt to force everyone to say that spilling boiling honey on one's hand is a good thing, a real good thing. Because the aim is to remove the shame from soul-ruining perversion. God forbid that someone feel bad for doing bad.
But feeling bad is as much for our good as are the pain receptors that told Valerie that something had gone amiss in meal preparations. If the honey hadn't hurt, she wouldn't have treated the injury. Worse, if she could have persuaded herself that it was actually a positive experience, God knows what might have followed.
It is the lot of fallen men in full flight from God that they "know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die" and, notwithstanding, still "not only do them but give approval to those who practice them" (Romans 1:32).
Now, we expect (or should expect) lost people to act like lost people.
But the professedly saved?
The place of the loving Christian is to stand athwart all such ultimately-ruinous, ultimately-hateful attempts, no matter how widespread they are nor how loud the applause. The call of God on us is to show such deeds to be what God says they are, to affirm the shame that attends them (Ephesians 4:11-12) and, at the same time and at least as insistently, point to the only One who legitimately strikes at the root of and offers the sure remedy for all such shame, both theirs and ours (1 Cor. 6:9-20).
But to tell a supposed loved one "Go ahead, pour boiling honey on yourself, everyone who ever said it was a bad thing was deluded"?
How much do you have to hate someone to do that?
Last Wednesday, one of those minor household accidents happened while I was away. My dear wife was readying some of her award-winning chili which, in my house, usually requires the accompaniment of corn bread. Everyone in my family loves corn bread, excepting only me. So chili needs corn bread, and corn bread needs honey. But our honey was crystallized.
So Valerie popped it in the microwave and got it boiling hot or thereabouts. In transferring it, something slipped, and she poured this boiling hot honey on her hand. Both she and my boys swung right into action.
What did they do?
What Valerie didn't do is say "Boiling honey has gotten a bad rap all these years. At some point, uptight and narrow-minded people took a wrong turn and labeled the experience of spilling boiling honey on your hand as 'painful' and 'bad' and 'harmful.' But if we read the ancient texts right, they were talking about particular honey produced by bees visiting a particular flower that grew only in Greece, and only in the fourth century BC. Our modern honey is nothing like ancient honey. We can't apply those categories to this experience."
Likewise, what my boys didn't do was to say, "Oh Mother-dear, because we love you so, we are going to embrace and celebrate your new discovery of this new experience of joyous new-honey-pouring. In fact, we must change the language. Instead of 'boiling-honey burn,' let's call it Glistening Aroma of Sweet Pinkness. You've just had a GASP of joy! Here, we want to be supportive! Let us boil some more for you!"
As I say, they did none of this. Instead, Valerie gave a yelp and headed for the tap, and the boys got her ice and took care of her. Because all the scholarly papers by all the pointy heads in all the world wouldn't change the fact that boiling honey hurts like fire.
You're a sharp bunch and I'm sure you know right where we're going. Yet another sad soul has reportedly greeted yet another scion's sin against God his Creator by trying to redefine reality to enable his son's damning immorality. And, as always, he is unsuccessful.
What we are seeing in such small events as well as the large sweeps of legislation and litigation is a large-scale attempt to force everyone to say that spilling boiling honey on one's hand is a good thing, a real good thing. Because the aim is to remove the shame from soul-ruining perversion. God forbid that someone feel bad for doing bad.
But feeling bad is as much for our good as are the pain receptors that told Valerie that something had gone amiss in meal preparations. If the honey hadn't hurt, she wouldn't have treated the injury. Worse, if she could have persuaded herself that it was actually a positive experience, God knows what might have followed.
It is the lot of fallen men in full flight from God that they "know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die" and, notwithstanding, still "not only do them but give approval to those who practice them" (Romans 1:32).
Now, we expect (or should expect) lost people to act like lost people.
But the professedly saved?
The place of the loving Christian is to stand athwart all such ultimately-ruinous, ultimately-hateful attempts, no matter how widespread they are nor how loud the applause. The call of God on us is to show such deeds to be what God says they are, to affirm the shame that attends them (Ephesians 4:11-12) and, at the same time and at least as insistently, point to the only One who legitimately strikes at the root of and offers the sure remedy for all such shame, both theirs and ours (1 Cor. 6:9-20).
But to tell a supposed loved one "Go ahead, pour boiling honey on yourself, everyone who ever said it was a bad thing was deluded"?
How much do you have to hate someone to do that?
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