The hardest thing I do in dealing with Christians is helping them break some very bad mental habits.
If you absorb the assumption of a unitary universe, you will struggle with most of what I write. You will be mixing Spirit and Flesh at some fundamental level that will keep you confused. Virtually the entire world suffers from at least a little of this poisoning, but Westerners are born into it. Your mental reflexes will keep kicking in and you will miss what I mean. Almost every dispute people have with my teaching arises from this one very basic error. If I can get them past that, almost everything else is smooth sailing.
It’s the reason people say crazy stuff like: “Invite Jesus into your heart and be born-again.” That’s not in the Bible, neither the words nor the teaching. Jesus and His Apostles consistently preached repent and turn to God. When the word “baptism” was mentioned, it was always in the context of Hebrew history — it was a ritual symbolizing renewed commitment. The entire Bible stands on the assumptions of ANE feudalism, that God has a claim on your life; He is your Maker, Owner, Master, and Lord. He is your divine Sheikh and you serve Him.
Legalism had no place in that image. It was a mystical union, full of subtlety and deeply personal. The opportunities are endless, but privilege comes with proving to Him your commitment. Of course, this particular Sheikh can read your mind — and your DNA, for that matter. He knows what He can get from you if you are willing, while you don’t really know what you could or would do when the moment comes. Moreover, He knows how to jigger things to make you better than you could be any other way.
So while revelation presents generalized images of His requirements for every human, there is ample evidence of individuality for you to expect Him to play favorites, as it were. If any of us did that, it would be capricious and arbitrary, but when God does it, it’s always in our best interest. He knows what He’s doing in ways we cannot comprehend. Remember when the resurrected Jesus told Peter not to worry about what He had in store for John? “You follow me!”
What are we supposed to do with the New Testament teaching on divorce? First, we have to answer the basic question of what difference it makes if you sin in any other way. It has nothing to do with whether you go to Heaven or Hell, at least not in the sense most folks think of it. It has everything to do with how close you adhere to God’s character on this earth and how much of His glory shines in your life.
If you muck up this marriage business, you poke holes in your cup of blessings. That can be mitigated, but only if you already take seriously God’s claim on your life. What matters is that you understand how big of a hole it is when you blow off your first sex partner. Yeah, it goes back that far. If you and your spouse are virgins, you stand on some very rich and rare ground of blessing and glory. It makes a big difference. Anything less means you done messed that up. There are other good things God will bring into your life, but that cannot be undone. The Bible makes it clear this is easily the hardest thing to get right.
It makes a difference, but not the difference most people expect. Nothing we do is sufficient of itself to send us to Hell, nor get us out of it, on that level. That question is handled on a different level. We first have to reprogram our entire orientation away from this world and to the Spirit Realm before we can even begin to talk about that.
Interestingly, I was taught by a Medicine Woman that those we love & lose rip holes in us, and especially so if there are children. By raising the children of these relationships as best we can, she said, we can mitigate the damage but never heal it entirely. If we screw up the kids, we’re walking sieves and so are the kids. Sad!