What I Believe

This is what I believe, in the words of others and occasionally my own words. Sometimes I feel I've been fighting the same battles for so long that my words have no impact anymore, no power to make any sort of change, no matter how much I pull from Scripture, from experience, from the aching longings of my heart to be understood and supported in my belief. Especially last week, when I drafted this, several things came up that left me feeling battered and worn. Belief is hard, and as Christians we're told to expect that, but knowing what to expect often doesn't make it easier. So for this post I've pulled from the words of others: pastors and writers and speakers I respect and trust. These are sentiments, emotions and truths that I hold close. This is what I believe.
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This is what I believe regarding homosexuality.

 ...Love does no harm, and homosexuality clearly harms everyone involved.

.....Consider how many times you’ve read the word “gay” or “homosexual” in this post without thinking about the actual behaviors those terms represent. “Gay” and “homosexual” are polite terms for an ugly practice. They are euphemisms. In all the politeness, we’ve actually stopped talking about the things that lie at the heart of the issue–sexual promiscuity of an abominable sort. I say “abominable” because that’s how God describes it in His word. I think we should describe sin (and righteousness) the way God does.

 ...What we’re really talking about when we talk about “homosexuality” is not just sex gone wrong but wrong sexual behavior.  ...The knowledge of that moral wrong repulses us because we’re moral beings, made that way by our Creator. ...Our apologetic task is to bring to the surface what has been  written on the conscience and cannot be not known. We need to do this with as much kindness, insight, warmth and fairness as the gay journalist in the private boardroom ten years ago. And we need to do this soon.

 - Above excerpts from This article by pastor Thabiti Anyabwile, originally published on The Gospel Coalition's website on August 19, 2013.

...Brothers, do we not all have to give up something to enter the kingdom of God? Homosexuals are not unique in this. No one enters eternal life without walking away from his sinful desires and picking up his cross and following Christ. A person’s very life depends on it.

- Excerpt from What would you do to live? by Andree Seu Peterson, published by WORLD Magazine on June 11, 2013. 

This [trend of supporting same-sex marriage] has major implications for evangelicalism. A soft middle has developed as evangelicalism has become culturally popular....“Give me neither conservatism nor liberalism,” many evangelicals seem to have whispered. “Let me be an evangelical, but an inoffensive one.”
       
 ...What we must do now is gear up for persecution of varying kinds (per Matthew 5:1-11). And we must set our faces like a flint to speak the truth and to love our neighbor, including those who would silence us (Matt. 22:37-39). ...People are going to watch us. They’re going to see if we respond to those who call us bigots with hatred and anger. Will we lash out?
     I believe that we won’t, many of us....We know that sin, in whatever form, only brings pain and destruction, and that the gospel, however demanding its call of transformation, only brings life and joy.  So we will proclaim the truth without any fear or hedging. And we will love our neighbor to the utmost.

- Excerpts taken from Rob Bell, Homosexuality and the New Cultural Acceptance by Owen Strachan, March 18, 2013.

Every human being has desires that are not satisfied in this life. These are the very things that God uses to develop in us the character He wants us to take into eternity with us. If an actively homosexual person tells you that he cannot make it through the night and through life without his homosexual lifestyle, it is his word against God’s. This life is brief, and the next one unending.

- Excerpt taken from Do all our desires need to be satisfied? by Andree Seu Peterson, published by WORLD Magazine on June 4, 2013. 
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This is what I believe regarding pornography.

God says "I value her above all else because she is made in my image, in my likeness." You watch her being humiliated and violated and desecrated and all the while fantasize about doing the same. God says "Of all I created there is nothing with more worth and dignity," and you delight in her desecration and indignity. God says, "I hate it when her body and soul is stained," and you say, "It turns me on."

- Excerpt taken from Desecration and Titillation by pastor Tim Challies, published June 3, 2013. 

Solomon says that the young man who follows the forbidden woman gives away his honor and his time, he loses his strength and his labor, and he even calls for consequences to his flesh and body. Ultimately, he calls down public humiliation and divine judgment upon himself. ...We have the better part of a generation of young men who are giving their strength to this forbidden woman.

What will be the cost to the church if young men continue to give themselves to pornography? The church will be weakened by young men who give so many of their best days to the worst purpose. ...The church will be weakened by men who could be leaders, but who pursue pornography and never escape its clutches. ...The church will be weakened by families that are unstable because the husband has brought his love of pornography into his marriage. How many men could be serving in ministries, could be pastoring churches, could be training to preach, could be planting churches, except that they have given their strength to another? The cost is high. The consequences are fearsome.

- Excerpts taken from What Will Be the Cost to the Church? by pastor Tim Challies, published on August 19, 2013.

...Pornography strikes out against the picture of Christ and his church by disrupting the one-flesh union, leaving couples like our prehistoric ancestors, hiding from one another and from God in the darkness of shame.

- Excerpt taken from Moore to the Point by pastor Russell D. Moore, published Jan. 23, 2012.

The discovery – or, more often, the confirmation of fears - that a loved one spends days and nights clicking through images of naked, twisted bodies hits you like a cannonball to the chest.
    ...You are horrified at the thought of seeing more and yet feel pulled to know everything they’ve seen. If you try to look deeper, to prepare yourself to confront them with everything, you realize that’s impossible. There’s just too much. No one ever just looks at just one site, reads just one erotic story, watches just one explicit video. The web of pornography is enormous and hideously tangled.You want to scrub yourself until you bleed, though it still won’t be enough.

- Excerpt taken from A hole in my heart, written by me on May 12, 2010.

I know where you are.
I’ve seen the pictures.
I know now what it takes to turn you on.
Women…people like me
 Tortured, humiliated, hated, used
 Discarded.
 Images burned into your brain.
How could you think they would not show in your eyes?

- Excerpt taken from an anonymous poem published on challies.com, Dec. 18, 2010.  
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This is what I believe regarding alcohol.

Christian millennials are increasingly accepting of alcoholic beverages...but sometimes this enthusiasm goes too far when one’s identity starts to be associated with a liquid they consume.
     Is alcohol a “nice to have” or a “must-have”? ...Are we mindful of those around us, and if they struggle with alcohol in any way are we willing to abstain for their sake? ...Do we have a serious-enough understanding of how dangerous alcohol can be? Alcohol has a long and tumultuous history as an addictive wrecker of lives. We all know people who’ve been ruined or nearly ruined by it. ...Alcohol is not something to be trifled with.

-Excerpt taken from Are You Free NOT to Drink? by Patrick Schreiner, published July 19, 2013. 

The least we can infer from all this [in the Bible] is that while drinking is not always viewed as wrong, its dangers and harmfulness were such as to call forth numerous warnings, and in some cases, abstinence was seen as commendable. Drunkenness is always wrong.
      I choose not to drink because of my conscience. I would feel uneasy and somewhat guilty if I were to purchase and use alcoholic beverages. The biblical principle here is that we should not act against our conscience, even if our conscience condemns us for actions that are morally neutral in themselves. 
      The second reason is that alcohol is a mind-altering drug. ...The third reason why I choose total abstinence is that alcohol is addictive....The fourth reason I choose total abstinence is to make a social statement.

- Excerpt taken from Total Abstinence and Church Membership by pastor John Piper, first published on October 4, 1981. 
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This is what I believe regarding marriage.

So here is the happy ending to the story: Our marriages get to be a portrait of Christ and the church. What a privilege! Marriage is a display of the gospel. This means that whatever we do in marriage is meant to bring glory to Christ, and that is the happiest ending of all. Now that we know that, we can read those scary words like submission and headship and see that it is all going to work out really, really well.

- Excerpt taken from A Picture-Perfect Marriage by pastor Tim Challies, published Jan. 23, 2012. 

God wants us to work on eradicating the little foxes—that temper problem, that tendency to walk out of the room when things are unpleasant, that habit of getting the last word in an argument, or of excessive TV watching that robs time from your spouse, or that obsession with cleaning, or shopping, or polishing your car, or Facebook.
 Let us get rid of the little foxes. And here is the promise: Your vineyard will blossom.

-Excerpt taken from Getting rid of the little foxes by Andree Seu Peterson, published by WORLD Magazine on July 31, 2013. 

 And this article that is all verses from Scripture, entitled 8 Bullet Points on Marriage by pastor Tim Challies, published June 19, 2012. 
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This is what I believe regarding the Bible and Biblical living. 

It is one of the wonderful enticements for me in reading the Bible daily to realize that I can pick out any verse in the 66 books and know that God has total recollection of having written that verse. Moreover, He meant every word of it at the time, and still means every word of it.

- Excerpt taken from He meant every word He wrote by Andree Seu Peterson, published by WORLD Magazine on May 30, 2013. 

Forgiveness is the thing I ask for the most. In my head maybe I know that God’s forgiveness is eternal and inexhaustible but in my heart I feel like He’s going to run out of it. That He’s got a limited supply. And I’m burning them up, one by one, sin by sin. ...[but] He pours it out on us in such abundance that it’s almost wasteful.

- Excerpt taken from Thinking God will run out of Welcome Home Banners by Jon Acuff, published July 22, 2009. 

 In Ephesians 5 Paul says, "But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving." 
   ...When we laugh at what God calls evil, when we enjoy watching what God says is private, when we speak too crassly or even too frankly about things that are vile, we compromise God's standards. There is to be no filthy talk among us and no crass words. We are not to delight in what God says is evil.

-Excerpt taken from Compromising God's Standards for Sexuality by pastor Tim Challies, published Sept. 17, 2012. 

God gave us passionate souls. He meant for us to love fully, deeply and with all that we have. But He also gave us instructions on what to love. Our love and passion is not meant to focus on just anything that brings us momentary pleasure. "Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable...think about such things." - Philippians 4:8

- Excerpt taken from Indulgence, written by me on June 4, 2013. 
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Also, 

I do not believe that Fox News, WORLD Magazine or The Weekly Standard are conservative hate-rags.

I do not believe in art for art's sake.

I do not believe that tolerance is a virtue. It has become a blanket word, a catchphrase to cover all transgressions. It's one thing to have a "fair, objective and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, practices, etc. differ from one's own," but when those opinions and practices differ from God's, it is not okay and should not be tolerated. We are called to love, and love never says "I give you permission to do what you want just because you think it's okay."

I do not believe that God is a distant, uncaring deity.

I believe that God never turns away from us, but we often turn away from Him.

I believe that everything happens for a reason, but because we are human and He is God, we are not always meant to understand His reasoning.

I believe that the world is full of ups and downs and in and outs and shadows and glitter all doing their best to hide the truth. But despite everything the world may say,

I believe that He will not mislead me. 

Catch the little foxes

Please, please read this short article: Getting rid of the little foxes in your marriage

I've really only read Song of Solomon when I have to (oh, the awkwardness!), but the verse she quotes above makes me realize I've missed out. I have never noticed that verse before, and wow, is it true. Ridiculously true.

Excerpt from the above article: 

...Not all of us will encounter the giants in our marriages, but all of us will encounter the little foxes. This is because while not many of us are adulterers or murderers or wife beaters, all of us are prone to bad habits and mild addictions and assorted baggage we carried into wedlock with us.
...The thing about little foxes is that they might even seem cute or harmless or funny, and sometimes they are dormant for long stretches of time...You may even think they are simply the inevitable “human condition” and not worth dealing with because you will never be perfect before heaven.
...[But] God wants us to work on eradicating the little foxes—that temper problem, that tendency to walk out of the room when things are unpleasant, that habit of getting the last word in an argument, or of excessive TV watching that robs time from your spouse, or that obsession with cleaning, or shopping, or polishing your car, or Facebook.
 Let us get rid of the little foxes. And here is the promise: Your vineyard will blossom.  

- Andree Seu Peterson