The Seventh Commandment: Multi-Attracted, the Orientations of Lust (Part Two)
“If thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door...and thou must rule over it” (Gen. 4:7).
“Every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed” (Ja. 1:14).
“Make a tree good, and its fruit will be good” (Mt. 12:33)
“The ax is laid to the root of the trees” (Mt. 3:10)
“The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire” (2 Pet. 2:22)
“And such were some of you, but ye were washed” (I Cor.6:11)
Listening to preachers, theologians, and religious soothsayers discuss LGBTQIX is like listening in on Luther’s talk with the adulterer Philip Hesse: they can’t stop doing what they do because it is who they are, and they can’t help being who they are. They are so at one with their strongest attraction that it orients every atom of their mind, soul, and body, and are so driven to act upon it, that it becomes impossible for them to see themselves without it. Luther did not for a minute try to convince Philip otherwise. It was what it was, and Luther would have to take it from there. Likewise, the church has largely concluded that LGBTQIX is such a part of a person’s nature, that it can only be channeled and guided and ministered to--it cannot be changed. Calvin College and Wheaton hire LGBTQ Christians to minister to the “LGBTQ family.” Luther was able to find an outlet in polygamy, and others, by venting lust through a thousand and one “exception clauses.” By such expedients, the church was able to more or less deflect the accusation that it had rewritten the Bible to make room for adultery: that, finding it impossible to move the mountain, it simply pulled up stakes and moved to the mountain.
This is the banner under which LGBTQ is now marching into the church. When Vice-President Pence was forced to administer the oath of office to Richard Grenell and his male consort on a Bible, the entire world watched every twitch on Pence’s face to see what happens when a Christian is forced to make such a brutal assault on his conscience. His pastor has so far made no comment. Last week’s Senate hearings gave the world a spectacle not witnessed since the specter of the Roman Senator Incitatus: Caligula’s horse. Imagine proud, pompous Roman Senators, the most dignified debating body in the entire world, grovelling on the Senate floor (horse apples and all) with no other thought but “how do we get through this nightmare with our heads still on our shoulders.” Last week the Capitals of the world howled with glee at the spectacle of proud Christian Senators groveling before a man in a dress, carefully guarding their expressions lest the slightest frown cost them their careers, a national humiliation unprecedented in history. They argued vehemently on the only safe subject allowed them, genital mutilation in foreign countries. And what does that have to do with a man in a dress on the Senate floor? Because, their only thoughts were “what are real men doing having a dignified conversation with a man in a dress.” And a man who will diagnose a man for a woman is to be entrusted to diagnose the state of the nation’s health? There lacked but the little boy to cry “that man is wearing a dress,” to make the streets of America shake with laughter. It was not to be. Not so much as a “dumb ass speaking with man's voice forbad the madness of the prophet.” They knew the New York Times was watching every twitch of their face, and would have called for their heads for so much as a frown. And the streets would have burned, again. This could not have happened if the man in a dress were not already in the church. The distance between church and society remains constant throughout history, with the degree of decay commensurate to the degree “the salt hath lost its savor.” When raging nations cry, “Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us” (Ps. 2), they pay homage to the arresting power of the church, when it is “the light of the world.” The church has society on a tight leash, and where they go one they go both, “until He is taking out of the way” (2 Th. 2:7).
But now the unresolved problem of Luther’s Philip is once again raising its ugly head in the form of the multi-headed hydra of LGBTQ. The argument is precisely the same: What to do with all-consuming orientations that, try as one might, cannot be overcome. Like Peter’s sow, conversion therapy (the sorceries of church counselors) only makes the washed sow worse (2 Pet.2:22), and if anything acutally amplifies lust. Sooner or later, the “dog returns to its vomit.” This is what Philip told Luther, and Luther had no answer, except to allow polygamy as a way of escape.
There was a Scriptural answer in the Gospel, but when you read the Bible within earshot of the politicians who protect and pay you (Herod and Herodias), you cannot as much as read the sermons of Christ, which deal largely with the SIxth (killing) and Seventh Commandment (adultery)--they are that plain, their teaching so unmistakable. Preaching on either would soon find the preacher's “head on a charger.” This is what reduced Reformation preaching to mere “vain jangling.“ With John the Baptist dead, you’re left with the dark mutterings of the Pharisees, or the monstrous prefordamnations of the Calvinist sects, which no one can hear gladly. When you spike the Sermon on the Mount, you decapitate the Bible, and kill preaching: the price of a whore for John Baptist’s head. This is what is killing preaching today. It is not LGBT, for LGBT did no more than ride Herodias into the church. LGBT is no more than the newest incarnation of Herodias. Luther/Cavin/Zwingly/Knox, through one expedient or another, had to make room for Herodias when they had no choice but to baptize the uncleanness of their Princes’ bedrooms as the price of protection from the Catholic Antichrist. The Temple was no more than a huge deodorant stick to sanitize the filth of Herod’s bedroom. When John’s preaching exposed the whole charade, he was killed.
The licentiousness of the court” was a familiar expression in Luther’s time. Princes exist to wage war, and a warlike prince without a wandering eye would raise eyebrows. No one would expect a rich person like Philip to confine himself to a loveless marriage. People who went that route would renounce their wealth and assume a life of prayer in the cloister. But to live as an ordinary person in the midst of endless temptations was unthinkable. What good is wealth if you're miserable? He was not about to put on sackcloth. This was his orientation. He could not do otherwise. It was for the preacher to find a solution to fit the situation. The problem is God’s. Like the Pope says, God made you what you are, no need to change.
The modern church has stopped calling LGBTQ orientation a perversion, or even sinful, as long as not acted upon. It accepts the notion that LGBTQ attractions are no more sinful than Philiop’s “burning” outside of marriage, and Luther did not seek Philip’s repentance. Philip’s orientation was certainly not contrary to nature. So where would you find sin here?
Philip didn’t hide anything. He accepted Luther’s doctrine of justification without works. But he couldn’t live without committing adultery, and he was greatly troubled in his conscience by it. He wanted to be justified, but knew he could never live within monogamy. Luther told him he did not have to. Calvin would have found an easier solution in “the exceptions.” But no one expected such a man to live a life tormented to the end of his days by monstrous lust. There had to be a way of escape that he may bear it. And a way of escape there always was, one way or another. No one had to “cut out the right eye.” The Sermon on the Mount soars like a beautiful swan to call men to contemplate another world in a different realm, but no one would ever take it seriously in the real world. It speaks of a time of better men, but until such men appear, we must keep our swords sharp, and our “exceptions” ready at hand.
When God rejected Cain, He not only rebuked him for “not doing well” (Gen. 4), but also for his unwillingness to do well. “Sin,” God says, “lieth (crouches like a beast) at the door of the heart, and you must rule over it.” It is here where the will, mind, heart, soul, conscience, and the law of God written on the heart, interact to manufacture the thoughts and intents of the heart. It is here where Cain nourished and allowed a monster to dwell, to incubate sin, to orient the entire man, and took delight in doing so. He wanted to be “drawn away” by it, and had not the lightest interest in “controlling” it. “Out of the heart,” Jesus said, “proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” But this is where Cain turned to when he wanted to feel alive. His idea of righteousness was sitting on a cloud in heaven singing hymns--a fate worse than death.
The heart is the “wallow” to which Peter’s washed sow will inevitably return. Conversion therapy will avail you nothing here. Programs will avail you nothing here. Mentoring will avail you nothing here. Counseling will avail you nothing here. Like the woman with the issue of blood, “having spent all her living upon physicians”--could not be “cured by any.” This is the monster that made Cain do what he did. This is the orientation that is in of itself sin, even when it is not actually not “doing well.” This is what makes an unconverted person a “child of the devil, to do the lusts of their father.” It is what makes even “the plowing of the wicked sin.” This is the sow, washed or unwashed. This is the bad tree that cannot but bear poisonous fruit. Nothing will do here but to lay the ax at the root. Death: “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” But Cain saw nothing in his life that he didn’t like, and all Philip wanted was to find another wife. What good is the Gospel that sets men free, if you now allow only a trickle through the narrow gate. Luther saw the contradictions as insurmountable. The Sermon on the Mount took with the left hand what Paul gave with the right. Very few Germans, in listening to Luther, would have had reason to fear exclusion as long as they did not outwardly renounce the formula. And listening to Luther, you would soon get the sense that your salvation ultimately hinges on your “baptism” (as a child--he speaks of this when he speaks of regeneration), or the Sacrament of the Lord’s Table, where the Lutheran priests says, “I forgive you your sins.” In this muddle, polygamy seems less far-fetched. To “lay the ax at the root of the tree” made no sense if “man is justified by faith alone.” Which causes many to consign Hebrews, James and Peter to Christian Jews only. And the Sermon on the Mount is elevated to the time when “the lion will lie down with the lamb.” It is relevant to the Christian only as some parts may be used in the manner in which people draw comfort from the 23 Psalm. If you could make it stop at verse 16, all would be well. From there to the Lord’s Prayer (6:9) seems like a never ending valley of the shadow of death, where you feel the rod but can barely discern the Shepherd. These are the killing fields of the Gospel, where the Kingdom of Patience (Re.1:9) wages total war against sin by laying the ax to root after root. But politics is the religion of expedience, and all Protestant preachers were the king’s chaplains. As politicians they needed religion on the order of politics--quick and immediate. Repeat after me a few verses and “thou shalt be saved.” The Sermon on the Mount, Hebrews, Peter and James cannot be reduced to a quick formula, and have thus not been able to shake their “strawy” nature. They are ill suited to the Temple, because Herodias “cared for none of these things.”
The woman was cured when, as Jesus says, “power has gone out of me.” This is a picture of the renewed man, the New Creation, that makes old things pass away, and all things become new. When the thief on the cross asked Christ to remember him, he received a new heart in that instant. It is this new heart that lies behind Jesus' confidant words: “go sin no more.” Cain was no more able to control the monster within him, than the Pharisee Nicodemus of understanding the New Birth. Cain loved darkness, rather than light, and willfully “held down “the truth in unrighteousness.” Nicodemus was right to think that this was beyond man, or even the will of man. But so would many at Pentecost, before their “hearts were pricked by the Holy Ghost” upon hearing the word of God. God knocked open the door of the heart and “bound the strongman.” God’s word will do this. “Man is justified by faith,” and “faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” Cain, hearing this, would have made it a point not to hear, and so would Philp of Hesse, and so does LGBTQIX. You can add nothing to the word of God. A simple verse of Scripture has more power than seeing “one raised from the dead”--even a verse from the books of Moses. Cain’s orientation to “not do well” would change to “doing well” if “sin laying at the heart” were dealt a mortal blow, “the ax laid to the root of the tree. Make the tree good , Jesus says, “and the fruit will be good,” Leave the tree bad, and the orientation will be accordingly. This is Luther’s Philip and this is LGBTQ. LGBTQ is no more a problem in believing church than is adultery, murder, drunkenness, thieving, etc. The demons will soon screech to be allowed to depart for the wallow, and if they don’t, it can only mean that they are already in the wallow. The sow, washed or even with Solomon’s gold ring in her snout--the fact that she is not in the wallow does not make her less of a sow, because she is fatally attracted or oriented to the wallow. Luther would have to tell Philip to “cut out his right eye.” That, for Luther, was unworthy of the Good News of the Gospel. To put the same stark choice to LGBTQ, to tell them that God will accept nothing less than total repentance (metanoia--mind change/orientation)--”godly sorrow that worketh repentance, not to be repented of”--without which they “cannot enter the kingdom of God, seems as unreal today as it did to Luther. And the next thought is this: “if this is so, then who can be saved.” This sounds like a world of misery for the multitudes. How can this be Good News?
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Today NY Times wrote on old Nazi guard the US sent back to Germany. Can't believe they let my comment through:
"Banal, self-righteous, vindictive, moral preening. This guy would have been shot on the spot for disobeying orders. You put on the uniform to kill people. Once you cross that initial threshold, the rest is mere trivia. The Geneva Convention which humanized war even allows the killing of woman and children as collateral. And even a woke President has to promise to use "the football" to annihilate entire civilizations. What sort of a person would vow to do this? One who has crossed that threshold."