Here at Kiln of the Soul, we teach that Biblical Law is self-enforcing. We as individuals struggle to enforce the divine will on ourselves, much less on anyone else. Yet we are obliged to try despite the inevitable failures. Moreover, He requires that we strive to bring His Law to life within that small domain of stewardship He grants to each of us. It is only because His Law is also self-rewarding that we are fed and encourage to keep going.
Yes, His Law is its own reward. The sweet communion of His favor in our hearts is the one thing we need more than life itself. This is why we strive against the vast mountain of deception, struggling to embrace and manifest the essence of His divine will, His moral character. Creation celebrates that character with us, rejoicing that return to Eden and our birthright of holiness.
It’s a precious gift, and sin is anything except what He gave us. Sin is disputing with God’s revelation. That revelation reflects what was true before Creation, so it is not subject to the reasoning and fashions of human cultural drift. His revelation is eternal, and will still be the very nature of reality itself long after this world is gone. This is where we belong, church family.
We who walk in the heart-led way of that truth find it tragic when people cannot discern the sweetness of His Law. What a waste, to give one’s life to anything less! It’s a free gift to all of fallen humanity. All we can do is live this precious gift and pray that our example sways just a few to begin seeking their divine heritage. Further, this divine heritage is unique to each individual, so it’s not as if the details of our personal blessings are going to work for everyone. God’s revelation allows a large range on many issues, and all we can do is decide whether someone else’s answers offer enough harmony with ours to serve alongside them.
So there is nothing in our witness about enforcing God’s Law, as if there is anything we can do to change another’s heart. God alone can do this, so our mission is to live, not pretend we can enforce His Law. All around the world wallows in darkness and sorrows of hearts closed to His truth. This is why our message is: What you are doing is not in your best interest.
We can speak only what we know, what we have experience at the hands of Our Lord. Here at Kiln of the Soul we teach that some issues are simply too obviously strict in God’s revelation. For example, we find homosexuality a tragic mistake, a rejection of God’s divine will for the individual. What God put into DNA reflects what He demands of you. Your sexual identity is His choice. If you want to work alongside us, you need to work through any confusion on that point. The same goes with cross-dressing, since the Bible makes it clear there is something deeply fundamental to human nature in that question.
Human sexuality is easily the most dangerous single moral minefield in every generation. Nothing else about us is so utterly destructive, keeping us from full entrance into Eden. But even when we can get people to understand that, we have vast cultural mountains to move to uncover what God intended.
Here in America, the single biggest lie is that human nature can be reshaped by the will of humans. It’s as if there is no God, and certainly no revelation. We make fearful things that cannot be erased from our fallen nature. Biblical Law is about building barriers to restrain the worst of human sinful lusts. It’s not about brain-washing and fear, but of constructing ways to keep ourselves honest. The only sin you can conquer is the one you confess to God.
Pretending that Western men should not desire feminine flesh is utterly stupid, and vice versa. Stop suggesting it’s a crime to have perverse desires; it’s a crime to let them wander freely. The Wisdom Literature of the Bible (indeed, of the whole Ancient Near East) is loaded with references to the wisdom of holding your tongue. It’s partly parable for the idea of keeping some things to yourself. Not in steely self-discipline, but what we seek to cultivate is civil self-containment of things that do not contribute to shalom.
It shouldn’t be creepy if anyone you encounter should be caught looking at you with some kind of longing. Wiser people do less of that, but wisdom is a goal, not an iron demand. Men gazing at under-dressed women is not a crime, just immaturity, as is the woman’s lack of modesty. Jesus warned us that some temptations in this world are hard for us heart-led folks to overcome (Matthew 18, which includes a subtle warning about pedophilia). But we cannot control the sinful impulses of others, only defend the feudal grant from God for our little personal domain.
Again, this is not about harsh and punitive measures, but a recognition that the soul in the mirror is no better than any other. We will ever face the hostile ignorance of the world around us. It’s our sense of shalom and power in this world that calls to the lost souls.
Again, I want to blame a lot of our (American) sexual hang-ups on inherited Victorianism. We seem to have have employed a lot of the rules that broken off from that movement, and they have since evolved on their own from subsequent movements; Romanticism, feminism, and evangelicalism quickly come to mind. It’s a huge kaleidoscopic dumpster fire of morality. I’m starting to get surprised when I find a man and woman who have a halfway normal matrimonial relationship with each other.
I agree; Victorian culture is the source of both those that agree and those movements that depart from it. In the departure, the reaction follows exactly the same patter of assumptions. It’s rather like the Church of Satan aping and reacting directly to Catholic ritual, or how the Calvinist TULIP is simply a rejection of the Arminian 5 principles. All our American sexual moral problems bear the imprint of Victorianism.
Let’s remember where Victorian sexual hang-ups came from (in part) as well. There was a big upsurge in sexually transmitted diseases which were often fatal.
Yes. That was on top of a very strange hypocritical view of what was sin. The upsurge of STDs showed how profligate they were at ignoring their own widely stated moral values.
I guess it depends on who we define as ‘the Victorians’, it’s quite the generalisation. (For the majority of the population (the poor) it was a time of huge socio/economic upheaval. Hard enough for fallen humans to keep their morals together under stable circumstances. Even harder, perhaps, when you’ve lost the normal ‘anchors’ like family, land, traditions.)
But I wonder, isn’t ‘blaming’ Victorian influences just another way of passing the moral buck? The moral failing of each human being happens in the present. So does redemption. Doesn’t it?
You love long explanations, don’t you?
It’s a well established fact that during the time frame associated with Queen Victoria’s reign that the elites ruled the media. They had a long established insistence that they were the arbiters of what was best for the general public. To lend credibility to their admonitions, they used the name of Queen Victoria. The middle class, in their rush to pretense that they could rub shoulders with the upper class, would buy into this very stiff and impossible false morality. It was based on the very worst of Anglo-Saxon Christian theology. Even the elite didn’t try to live by it, but they never allowed the peasants to know it. In fact, the elites had long lived by an entirely different and frankly pagan mythology and morals. They simply kept up the pretense of proper Christian morals as controls over the peasantry. The lower classes probably never took any of it seriously.
It’s not too different from the wash of Social Justice and Political Correctness today. So-called Victorian standards were the false front of an elite who were determined to keep everyone else in their place. It’s part and parcel of the Tavistock model of public education, aimed it turning out vast armies of pacified and compliant worker bees. Yep, it’s the same old conspiracy going back to ancient times. What we see today is very much an extension of the particular flavor of Victorian hypocrisy. It’s the same habit of mind with the elites who control the mainstream media, and it was behind all the bad laws that oppressed everyone. It’s the reason society was so awful for anyone who wasn’t among the elite.
Redemption is made the more difficult because the folks we try to reach are hung up on that awful mythology-theology. God says we have to be merciful with people who are blinded by overwhelming bad culture. Those of us who know better can’t use it as any kind of excuse, but we surely feel the bite from bad conditioning and mental reflexes. Thus, “blaming” in this sense is helping people to recognize where the bad influence comes from, and allows them some path out of their sexual hangups. We are helping them identify how the Enemy of our souls tries to keep us down. We try to empower their rejection of a society with an unjust structure. This is the lore from which we start sharing a better understanding.
“You love long explanations, don’t you?”
There’s one of us in every classroom, Ed. 😉 Thankyou for taking the time.
I, too, enjoy long explanations. 🙂
Ed, were you referring to the noblesse oblige concept in Victorianism? There was an anime series I highly enjoyed based on that concept (had nothing to do with Victorianism). I’d have to watch that again.
Um, no. Jay, noblesse oblige is more about carrying out obligations of noble title. These days it carries the connotation of some burdensome or unpleasant duty, such as showing up in public at some festival and being ogled and acting nice to the smelly commoners. It implies some kind of “tax” on titles. I did mention public pretense of the elite, but that’s not exactly the same thing.
My fault. I thought it was a part of the Victorian moral framework. Maybe I was thinking of something else.
I’m sure you could correct my false impressions on a thousand other things I haven’t studied. This is why the Lord brings together in His family people with expertise that varies widely.