JITW Home
Background
Connection
Beliefs
Q&A
Sexual Purity
Community
Publications
Archives
Links
Fellowship
Outreach
Children
Inspiration
Photographs
Hebrew Fonts
Get In Touch
Outing The Propenstity For Sexual Abuse Within Us
Stopping Sexual Scandal in The Messianic Movement - Part 5-A
(Read Part 4 First if You Haven't)
First the sacred became scandalous. Then Vision Forum lost their vision, Reality TV turned raunchy. The founder of the Institute for Basic Life Principals sidestepped the basics of morality. Then we were hit with the bombshell of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries' founder being exposed as a sexual predator after he died. Prior to that we were hit with a plethora of Pedophile Priests. Waco went wrong and the Branch Davidians turned out to be yet another branch that bore perverse fruit. These don’t even scratch the surface of the sin that's been propagated by religious leaders and their followings over the centuries, and which continue being propagated today. So are we going to do we do about it?
Maybe you’ve reacted, they’ve reacted, and I’ve reacted. Maybe you’ve done more than you should and I’ve said more than I should. Or maybe someone else has suffered more than they should and we haven’t stood up for the cause of righteousness enough. Is it all about me? All about you? Or is it all supposed to be about the greater good of a community operating in holiness?
In the gospels, Yahshua refers to committing adultery being one in the same as looking with lust. Those same Scriptures we read every week tell us that “in His sight shall no flesh be justified”? They also remind us that “he who says he has no sin is a liar devoid of the truth” which means the truth does not exist in him. Any one of us can inwardly admit we have sin while acting like we don’t outwardly. Even a few easily touted phrases such as “I’m far from perfect” fail to exemplify true confession. For many of us though, that's what our confession has been reduced to; a tradition of men learned by rote and applied like whitewash to our tombs. Imagine a woman putting on her mascara and that is the level which many have reduced their repentance to.
Yeshua tells us to pray in the closet rather than be seen of men in our self righteousness. To confess our faults in the closet, however, isn't a command, nor is that what real repentance entails. Yeshua isn’t interested in hearing half-hearted apologies or private admissions of wrongs which we can later pretend never occurred in the public spotlight while we point the finger at someone else. Yahweh isn’t looking for inwardly broken people who outwardly put on a hard face.
The warning about hell-fire is that that whatever things you or I have looked at or "googled" by whatever means when we shouldn't, will condemn you and I to hell every bit the same as my old neighbor who sat in his house and played with the bodies of prepubescent boys. The evidence which incriminates you doesn't have to be in the DNA you left behind on a little girl either. It can be your Apple iPhone with a screenlock and the best encryption technology that Yahweh still sees. It can be your NetFlix account which made your kids' eyes turn into saucers when they came across your streaming history. And no, just getting rid of Netflix alone doesn't equate repentance, any more than Josh Duggar installing Covenant Eyes on his computer that was simultaneously connected to the black web demonstrated repentance! Maybe your stumbling stone is a little more subtle than Ashley Madison. Maybe its the tabloids at the checkout which you tell your same kids not to look at because "they're evil". Or maybe its the alluring waitress at the truckstop when you're on the road, and you just love listening to her southern drawl. Or maybe it's worse than that, like the porn magazines that came falling out of my 14 year old nephew's knapsack nine years ago when he least expected it. "Don't deceive yourself. Yahweh is not mocked. For whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap!!!"
If you're a womanizer, you might justify yourself for what you do, while condemning my old neighbor as a wicked pedophile. Your actions are intrinsically synonymous, however, in their stealth as well as their scope. They're equally sin. Yahweh is not a respecter of persons and it doesn't matter if your type of sin isn't as grevious to you because you don't set the rules and it's every bit as grevious to Him!. It doesn't matter what your pornography entails or where your lust lies. It doesn't matter where your eyes have been roving – even if it was with gloved hands tied behind your back at midnight when you couldn't see anything except in your mind's eye. If you don't rid your life of your own type of adultery, the Scriptures call you a fool (Sirach 25:2) and say you are no more justified than the old pedophile I lived beside as a boy who died of AIDs in a state penitentiary.
Have you sinned? You damn well know you have. Have I sinned? As sure as hell, that's something I've done too. No man alive on this planet has at all times mastered his eyes. No man has at all times mastered his thoughts. No man has at all times mastered his actions either, and no one gets special privileges at the judgement. That doesn't justify us, but here's the takeaway. If we pretend the pressures of our culture haven't negatively affected the way we look at others - and by that I mean our parents, our coworkers, our sons, and even our wives and daughters - we couldn't be more dastardly wrong. When this world's perversions are pushed at us all day every day, we’re blasted fools if we don't think about the effect it has on us. What’s wreaking havoc right now with the greatest ramifications though - even more than the perversions themselves - is our not being willing to address the issues head on. That is enabling these perversions to overcome us. The fact that we behave as though we are afraid of confronting the perversions is what's created an epidemic.
Shooting us up with epidural injections to further numb us isn't going to cure this sin either. It won't evaporate with any amount of treatment as long as religious leaders and laymen are more interested in hushing up the scandals than reforming their walk into a lifestyle of true holiness. How are our morals really any higher than the Catholic Church? How are we behaving any better than the ancient Israelites whom Moses came back down from the mountain and found dancing around to their shame? Do we have anything different than ancient Greece or Rome, or even Sodom and Gomorrah? We claim to have come out of the world but what if we’re doing worse than the world; worse because we, the ones who know better and are supposed to be setting the example, are only concerned about covering our a$$ to save face. It doesn't work that way buddy. The ass behind us is talking to us, trying to save the souls of some modern day Baalams. What happens if we play the part of the fool, refusing to listen to it, and instead keep fighting against it?
I'll just close with a quote from a friend who words it quite succintly. He says "The only way I’ve found to achieve immunity from the disease of becoming the demon that once attacked you, is to be able to see yourself in that demon while you choke the life out of it. If you set it free in impetuous pity, it will come back to haunt and torment you again. If you try to kill it thinking you are greater in virtue than it, you haven’t merited the humility to conquer it, and it will come back stronger than before. The only way to subdue it is to acknowledge that you are it’s most desirable habitation. Then you can be free because you will recognize the counterpoints which attracted it in the first place." -Rande Lee Coover, 1/3/2024
Continue to Part 5-B >>
(Read Part 4 First if You Haven't)
First the sacred became scandalous. Then Vision Forum lost their vision, Reality TV turned raunchy. The founder of the Institute for Basic Life Principals sidestepped the basics of morality. Then we were hit with the bombshell of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries' founder being exposed as a sexual predator after he died. Prior to that we were hit with a plethora of Pedophile Priests. Waco went wrong and the Branch Davidians turned out to be yet another branch that bore perverse fruit. These don’t even scratch the surface of the sin that's been propagated by religious leaders and their followings over the centuries, and which continue being propagated today. So are we going to do we do about it?
Maybe you’ve reacted, they’ve reacted, and I’ve reacted. Maybe you’ve done more than you should and I’ve said more than I should. Or maybe someone else has suffered more than they should and we haven’t stood up for the cause of righteousness enough. Is it all about me? All about you? Or is it all supposed to be about the greater good of a community operating in holiness?
In the gospels, Yahshua refers to committing adultery being one in the same as looking with lust. Those same Scriptures we read every week tell us that “in His sight shall no flesh be justified”? They also remind us that “he who says he has no sin is a liar devoid of the truth” which means the truth does not exist in him. Any one of us can inwardly admit we have sin while acting like we don’t outwardly. Even a few easily touted phrases such as “I’m far from perfect” fail to exemplify true confession. For many of us though, that's what our confession has been reduced to; a tradition of men learned by rote and applied like whitewash to our tombs. Imagine a woman putting on her mascara and that is the level which many have reduced their repentance to.
Yeshua tells us to pray in the closet rather than be seen of men in our self righteousness. To confess our faults in the closet, however, isn't a command, nor is that what real repentance entails. Yeshua isn’t interested in hearing half-hearted apologies or private admissions of wrongs which we can later pretend never occurred in the public spotlight while we point the finger at someone else. Yahweh isn’t looking for inwardly broken people who outwardly put on a hard face.
The warning about hell-fire is that that whatever things you or I have looked at or "googled" by whatever means when we shouldn't, will condemn you and I to hell every bit the same as my old neighbor who sat in his house and played with the bodies of prepubescent boys. The evidence which incriminates you doesn't have to be in the DNA you left behind on a little girl either. It can be your Apple iPhone with a screenlock and the best encryption technology that Yahweh still sees. It can be your NetFlix account which made your kids' eyes turn into saucers when they came across your streaming history. And no, just getting rid of Netflix alone doesn't equate repentance, any more than Josh Duggar installing Covenant Eyes on his computer that was simultaneously connected to the black web demonstrated repentance! Maybe your stumbling stone is a little more subtle than Ashley Madison. Maybe its the tabloids at the checkout which you tell your same kids not to look at because "they're evil". Or maybe its the alluring waitress at the truckstop when you're on the road, and you just love listening to her southern drawl. Or maybe it's worse than that, like the porn magazines that came falling out of my 14 year old nephew's knapsack nine years ago when he least expected it. "Don't deceive yourself. Yahweh is not mocked. For whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap!!!"
If you're a womanizer, you might justify yourself for what you do, while condemning my old neighbor as a wicked pedophile. Your actions are intrinsically synonymous, however, in their stealth as well as their scope. They're equally sin. Yahweh is not a respecter of persons and it doesn't matter if your type of sin isn't as grevious to you because you don't set the rules and it's every bit as grevious to Him!. It doesn't matter what your pornography entails or where your lust lies. It doesn't matter where your eyes have been roving – even if it was with gloved hands tied behind your back at midnight when you couldn't see anything except in your mind's eye. If you don't rid your life of your own type of adultery, the Scriptures call you a fool (Sirach 25:2) and say you are no more justified than the old pedophile I lived beside as a boy who died of AIDs in a state penitentiary.
Have you sinned? You damn well know you have. Have I sinned? As sure as hell, that's something I've done too. No man alive on this planet has at all times mastered his eyes. No man has at all times mastered his thoughts. No man has at all times mastered his actions either, and no one gets special privileges at the judgement. That doesn't justify us, but here's the takeaway. If we pretend the pressures of our culture haven't negatively affected the way we look at others - and by that I mean our parents, our coworkers, our sons, and even our wives and daughters - we couldn't be more dastardly wrong. When this world's perversions are pushed at us all day every day, we’re blasted fools if we don't think about the effect it has on us. What’s wreaking havoc right now with the greatest ramifications though - even more than the perversions themselves - is our not being willing to address the issues head on. That is enabling these perversions to overcome us. The fact that we behave as though we are afraid of confronting the perversions is what's created an epidemic.
Shooting us up with epidural injections to further numb us isn't going to cure this sin either. It won't evaporate with any amount of treatment as long as religious leaders and laymen are more interested in hushing up the scandals than reforming their walk into a lifestyle of true holiness. How are our morals really any higher than the Catholic Church? How are we behaving any better than the ancient Israelites whom Moses came back down from the mountain and found dancing around to their shame? Do we have anything different than ancient Greece or Rome, or even Sodom and Gomorrah? We claim to have come out of the world but what if we’re doing worse than the world; worse because we, the ones who know better and are supposed to be setting the example, are only concerned about covering our a$$ to save face. It doesn't work that way buddy. The ass behind us is talking to us, trying to save the souls of some modern day Baalams. What happens if we play the part of the fool, refusing to listen to it, and instead keep fighting against it?
I'll just close with a quote from a friend who words it quite succintly. He says "The only way I’ve found to achieve immunity from the disease of becoming the demon that once attacked you, is to be able to see yourself in that demon while you choke the life out of it. If you set it free in impetuous pity, it will come back to haunt and torment you again. If you try to kill it thinking you are greater in virtue than it, you haven’t merited the humility to conquer it, and it will come back stronger than before. The only way to subdue it is to acknowledge that you are it’s most desirable habitation. Then you can be free because you will recognize the counterpoints which attracted it in the first place." -Rande Lee Coover, 1/3/2024
Continue to Part 5-B >>