“Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it.” – Proverbs 13:11 (ESV)

Cryptocurrency is everywhere in the news these days. There are multiple ads on mainstream radio stations promotion this or that guru who will teach you how to make a fortune by investing as little as $100 (after you pay him $50, naturally).

What’s right with cryptocurrency?

There are aspects of cryptocurrency that are appealing. First, the underlying technology — blockchain — seems to have real promise as a method for ensuring better security for individuals and businesses, alike. Artists and musicians can potentially use the indelible ledger characteristics to prevent fraud and ensure they get paid for their own work. Medical records and other sensitive information can remain confidential, due to the fragmented distribution of encrypted database entries.

The small-l libertarian in me likes the individual liberty aspects of a completely anonymous electronic money that is not traceable by any government. You don’t have to be engaged in illegal activities to want your business to remain your business.

And I won’t deny that some people have likely made a fortune (on “paper” anyway) speculating on cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin. Even so, I am skeptical. Here are my reasons:

Work that benefits others is noble

Ain’t nothin’ like the real thing, baby!

A year or so ago, I read a book in which the author made the point that worthy work benefits someone in addition to the one doing it. Firefighters, nurses, assembly line workers, sales reps, and engineers — to name a few examples — do work that feeds their families, but also delivers good to others. By comparison, day traders and currency speculators move money around in hopes they get to keep some. Cryptocurrencies may turn out to be a convenient way of buying and selling goods securely, but the current activity is nearly 100% exchanging money in hopes of getting rich. This is not noble or worthy work — it’s rather like playing roulette.

Ever heard of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”?

How about “Jack and the Beanstalk”? If you don’t recall either, note that in the former story, a couple of con men talked a king into humiliating himself by walking around naked in front of his subjects. Their strategy was to convince him that their virtual clothing was so rare and so fine that only people with refined taste could appreciate its beauty. In the latter story, the protagonist traded the family cow for a handful of magic beans — exchanging true value for a speculative promise of treasure. While it’s true that things turned out well for Jack in the end, I want to remind you that his story is a fairy tale.

Do you not think it’s a little strange that people selling cryptocurrencies want you to give up real money for virtual money? They will trade ones and zeros — and promises — for those wrinkled bills in your bank account. Seems legit.

The motivation seems all wrong

I once heard author and radio host Dave Ramsey advise a caller against buying gold. His counsel to the caller was that he should avoid buying or investing in anything motivated by fear or greed. Let’s be clear: profit is moral and generating a return on one’s talents is a biblical virtue, so what did Dave Ramsey mean? He meant that one should evaluate investment decisions as rationally as possible. Greed and fear engage the emotions at the expense of the mind. Math doesn’t have feelings. When you’re investing, math is your friend.

Besides, by the time everybody is talking about a

Cryptocurrencies are the Hotel California of investing

Let’s say you take some of your hard-earned cash out of the bank and buy Bitcoin or Ethereum. And let’s say your timing is perfect and you have become a millionaire. You now have a problem. The problem is not that you’re rich. The problem is that very few establishments accept payment in Bitcoin or Ethereum tokens, and many of the sellers of cryptocurrencies limit the amount of cash you can take out of your account. If you became a millionaire by speculating in cryptocurrencies and you wanted to buy your parents a million-dollar house for cash, it would take you almost three years to withdraw your purchase price. And that’s if the currency value doesn’t crash.

As the song says, “You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave…”

You might prefer cash

Electronic anything can be hacked. The blockchain logic makes this much less likely, but it is still theoretically possible.  But even if your cryptocurrency isn’t stolen, your electronic keys could be corrupted or held by a ransomware attack. A thief doesn’t have to attack the entire database — just your e-wallet. On top of this, people in favor of individual liberty might be reluctant to sign on to an electronic currency of any kind. When all your money is on a computer — all binary code — it’s much easier for your government to access your assets — for taxation or simple convenience. Think negative interest rates in Greece and Cyprus, for example.

Full faith and credit

US dollars are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. They used to be backed by gold, then silver, then multiples of the tangible assets, then the verbal commitment of the US government to back their unit of currency. This is called “fiat money.”

The supposed benefit of cryptocurrency is that it is intended to be more stable than any one government. So, for example, if you’re holding Venezuelan Bolívars and Venezuela defaults, you aren’t wiped out. The comparative stability of the European Union and the US, respectively, make Euros and dollars attractive to investors and businesses around the world for this very reason. (The US dollar is still considered the world’s reserve currency despite challenges from the Euro and the Chinese RMB.)

Cryptos are supra-national, but they are not tied to anything other than the assertion of the members of the club that they have value. If your argument is against fiat currency, you have a logical inconsistency if you endorse cryptos as the antidote.

A store of value?

Ah, the old store of value! Goldbugs argue that in turbulent times, precious metals, like gold, are preferable to government-issued money. Gold’s relative rarity is what makes it valuable. After all, there are few industrial uses for it, and apart from its occasional use as a garnish for conspicuous consumers, you can’t eat it. Gold is valuable due to a consensus — that is, enough people agree that it’s valuable, so it is. At least it has physical substance. Miners physically dig it out of the ground. The mining of Bitcoin and its cousins is essentially a puzzle that requires massive computer power to solve.

I’d add that a true store of value wouldn’t bounce around quite so much.

Perpetual motion snake oil

Basically this is the old desire to get something for nothing.

Perpetual motion machines are physical impossibilities because our universe is subject to physical laws. It takes energy to generate energy. This cost is referred to as energy loss. Energy loss is a part of every technology for generating energy.

Take nuclear power, for example. It’s true that the reactor vessel contains fissile material, and that the process of nuclear fission releases radioactive energy. But the power company doesn’t send radioactivity through the power lines. Instead, the intense heat of nuclear fission is used to heat water to its boiling point and to use the resulting steam to power a turbine, and the turbine drives the generator that produces the electricity that flows through the power lines. At every point in the process, energy escapes without being harnessed — from friction, from electrical resistance, from imperfect insulation.

While the energy losses associated with nuclear power generation are better than, say, coal-powered generators, these losses exist all the same. I’m skeptical of cryptos because money is subject to rules as well. And just as energy loss dooms perpetual motion machines to failure, I think the sum of negative attributes around cryptocurrencies dooms them — for now — for anything more than a hobby. If you can afford to speculate, I won’t tell you not to, but I would prefer to use the money I earn to invest in companies or buy products that put my neighbors to work.

Tell us how you really feel

Proponents of cryptocurrencies argue that their creators have democratized and distributed control of money to “the people” away from banks and governments. To the extent this is true, it is worth asking how anonymous and unaccountable creators of cryptocurrency are more to be trusted than governments who must answer to voters or bankers who are subject to laws. You can swim in piranha infested waters, but the fish are not obligated to give you a pass.

I was intrigued when I first learned about blockchain, and I may invest in companies or technologies that make use of it in the future. But I am not going to buy another currency — especially one with the many downsides I’ve listed here (and we haven’t even talked about the extraordinary electricity consumption required for mining Bitcoin).

Next time, let’s talk about a biblical view of money and how that fits into a biblical worldview. I’ll be here.

So how about you? What am I missing on cryptocurrencies? What is your strategy for building wealth in an ethical way? Add your comments below.

“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” – Psalm 73:26 (ESV)

We’ve spent the last couple of posts discussing the existence of truth as a knowable external reality, and the misuse of truth — turning it into a fetish, an idol. Now I’d like to discuss how to survey and navigate the territory between truth and perception.

If you don’t know where you’re going, any route will take you there.

Can we trust our senses?

Just the facts, ma’am

Use your head

Uncharted territory or an own-goal?

Eyewitness testimony

Putting it to work

So how about you? How are you pursuing wisdom and truth in your life? Add your comments below.

“Listen to your father who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old.  Buy truth, and do not sell it; buy wisdom, instruction, and understanding.” – Proverbs 23: 22-23 (ESV)

In my previous post, I argued that “truth” had become an idol — a fetish — a substitute for genuine transcendent Truth, and for authentic spiritual development. I also cautioned against the folly of succumbing to confirmation bias. I hope you’ll read it if you haven’t already.

In this post, I’d like to offer some additional thoughts on what philosophers call the problem of epistemology — that is, How do we know what we know?

Navigate by fixed principles – and you’ll get there.
(Photo by Jon Ottosson)

Begin at the beginning

If you’re a regular reader here, you may have noticed that I have interspersed original posts in this ongoing series on Identity, Stimulation, and Security with updates and re-posts on subjectivity and worldviews. These were important refreshers, as they will help to illuminate what I want to say here.

If you have identified your worldview, and you have a biblical worldview, you already have a grasp on the foundation question of origins. Where did we come from? If you believe in a divinely created and purposeful cosmos, you have a framework for accepting knowledge — of true and false, good and evil, right and wrong — as a given. If an infinite, personal god, who is present in his creation and yet distinct from it, created the world and everything in it, the existence of knowledge and truth would seem to follow as built-in attributes.

Said another way, if humanity exists and humanity has an awareness of a personal (as opposed to impersonal) creator god, that god must be relational in his personhood, and therefore knowledge is a gift a relational god would give to creatures made in his image.

Life is but a dream?

I always enjoyed the movie The Matrix. Scratch it deep enough and I think it tells a story of redemption, despite its superficial Buddhism. And don’t we all want to believe there is more to this life than what our senses perceive — that somehow, we can level up and overcome the limits of our mortal existence.

Tesla and Space X CEO and founder Elon Musk asserts that he believes we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation a la The Matrix. And he’s not alone. A California professor of cognitive science explains his view that reality is nothing close to what we perceive in this article published in The Atlantic.

This is not a new phenomenon. Hinduism teaches that reality is maya — illusion. But I am aware of far more people subscribing to this view and to its corollary that nobody can truly know anything than at any other time in my life.

Once you rule out objective reality as a valid explanation…

If one subscribes to the postmodern assumption that there is no such thing as objective reality, and if one is willing to be honest, one will arrive at some uncomfortable conclusions.

First, if objective reality doesn’t exist or is otherwise unknowable, one must conclude that he is on his own. He can not place faith in the existence of his dearest friends, his loved ones, or his own life. Given the obvious relational bent of humanity, and the relative rarity of hermits, this existential aloneness will strip a man of hope.

Second, because it’s all imaginary, logically morality would no longer be binding in any meaningful sense. If the only reality is what occurs within the walls of my skull, why would I deprive myself of any pleasure, or give a thought to any consequence of my actions.

I think very few people actually believe this to the point they are willing to take it to its logical conclusion. And this indicates that narcissism and/or solipsism don’t account for the world we have. Scientific observation and measurement based on physical and material laws of nature show us that there is a verifiable and consistent physical reality that we inhabit. It isn’t all in our heads. If we each had the ability to configure our respective physical and moral universes, rocks might sink in my world, and be lighter than air in yours. But we all know this isn’t the case.

I read and enjoy Dilbert creator Scott Adams’ writing. His thinking has influenced the way I view persuasion in politics, among other things. Although I admire him a great deal, I disagree with his view that our world is illusory. Again, this is a matter of worldviews. Adams is a materialist, and I believe our cosmos is a strict system, presided over by its creator. Both hypotheses are difficult-to-impossible to disprove. However, the presence of physical laws and their repeatability when tested, gives my hypothesis the edge.

Is it possible your “facts” are untainted? How do you know? And if all before us is illusion, why can’t we choose to abolish sickness, suffering, and death? Either there is objective external reality, or we’re piss-poor gods. If there were no such thing as objective external reality, why is there so much “out there” that troubles you?

Imagination has a dark side

No barrier vs deception 

 What does the Bible say?

Consider again the example of Jesus. A significant part of His earthly ministry was teaching. If the world is a computer simulation, and knowledge is impossible, why would God incarnate waste His time trying to teach?

Then how should we live?

So how about you? How are you cultivating an appetite for Truth? Add your comments below.

“Yeah, well, y’know that’s just, like, your opinion, man.”
-The Dude. The Big Lebowski

We have entered a period in our history where we have elevated what our senses can perceive as facts, while we relegate abstract principles to the realm of opinions.  This is not healthy.

I can see clearly now.

No sane man would question the sensory data that demonstrate the existence of water, trees, birds, fire, or anything tangible, or of the ways we speak of their dimensions. Height, depth, heat, cold, wetness — no one has a problem with these ideas or the substance they describe.

At the same time, however, we are losing our ability to consider the objective reality of concepts — of things — such as truth, beauty, justice, love, honor, right and wrong. Some of this linguistic debasement is intentional. Destroy the vocabulary for moral reasoning and you establish the frame for the debate, if there can even be one.

Let’s pay a visit to the poetry corner and talk a bit about the limits of stunting debate:

The Blind Men and the Elephant

 

It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
“God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a WALL!”

The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, “Ho, what have we here,
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me ’tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a SPEAR!”

The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a SNAKE!”

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee
“What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain,” quoth he:
“‘Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a TREE!”

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a FAN!”

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a ROPE!”

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

So how about you? How are you striving to cultivate your moral sense? What have you found helpful? Please add your comments below.

Note: We will resume our series on Identity, Stimulation, and Security next post. This is on-topic for where we’re going.

Sex. It’s everywhere. And if you believe the media it seems that everybody’s doing it with everyone else and that everybody’s doing it but you. It’s worth questioning whether this is so. And even more important, it’s worth asking if this is what we were designed for.

First of all, the idea that “everybody else is doing it” wasn’t persuasive to my great grandparents when my grandparents tried to use that argument.  Second, I believe that men are meant to lead in the context of relationships, so how, exactly are you leading if you’re just following the crowd?

Be fruitful and multiply… just don’t do it out of season!

Powerful Stuff

Yes, the sex drive is powerful — that strong drive is a gift that will come into its own in the context of marriage.  Until you’re married, however, it is a gift that needs to be protected and regarded with all the respect and care one would afford a loaded firearm.  And just as you would with a loaded gun, you need to keep your sex drive under your control until it can be used properly.

The Bible has a great deal to say about about men and women and about our true nature, and it has very straightforward guidance regarding sex.  I’m aware that some people say Biblical teachings on sex just don’t work in the real world — that abstinence doesn’t work and that telling people to wait until they’re married is futile and unrealistic — but I have noticed that the ones who say this aren’t even trying to apply them.  Having decided what they want, they dismiss any evidence to the contrary.  We call that managing to a conclusion.  It’s part of the near-infinite capacity for human rationalization.

Another way to translate this is:  “The Bible can’t possibly be right because it doesn’t conform to what I want to do, or what I see others doing.  Besides, doesn’t God want us to be happy?”  Not exactly, no.

So why not consider a different approach to sex?

What Does The Owner Say?

God Himself* is the inventor of sex, and His intentions and expectations are are clearly laid out in the pages of scripture.  Marriage is the only proper arena for the full enjoyment of the gift of sexual intimacy, and it is this lifelong covenant that makes sex moral. Anything else is theft.

So how can we be sure we understand these teachings correctly?

If God is real, and if God is capable of creating the cosmos and everything in it — including you — it is logical that He is able to communicate His will to His creatures in a form they can understand.  Further, it is also logical that if God communicated a set of standards for a particular behavior  — namely sex — then His prescription would provide the best results for individuals and for society alike.

Taking God’s existence and ability to communicate accurately as givens, we would then need to understand the moral attributes of God, His physical attributes, His heart and His character.  If God is love — and God presents Himself in the Bible as a loving Father —  then love would be His motivation, and love would permeate all his commands.  It is reasonable to conclude that God would not command anything that would harm those He loves.

Hurt vs. Harm

And here let’s distinguish between hurt and harm.  My telling you you’re out of line may hurt your feelings, but it will not harm you. Your shoving me out of the path of an onrushing truck may hurt me, but you would have saved me from greater harm.  Likewise, God’s commanding all of us to live chaste lives — to reserve the gift of sex for marriage — may make us uncomfortable, but it will not harm us.  Quite the opposite.

Nobody is promising that reserving sex until marriage is an easy thing to do.  As we’ve noted, temptation — especially sexual temptation — is everywhere.  And yet, God in His love and wisdom has told us something important about Himself through this amazing gift. The rational response to such love is to love God, to trust Him and to seek to follow His commands.

You can take the advice of a man who’s been married nearly 30 years: it’s worth waiting for. Be a leader and try something different — chastity.

So how about you? Are you committed to living a chaste life?  What’s the biggest challenge you’re facing? How are you and  your friends choosing to honor God with your lives?  Add your comments below.

*The question of God’s existence is stipulated for this blog post — if you don’t believe in God, it is my hope this will still be useful to you, but I realize that I cannot compel you to change your thinking — or anyone else’s — based on an appeal to authority.

“How small, of all that human hearts endure, that part which laws or kings can cause or cure.”
– Oliver Goldsmith

We live in a technocratic age. There seems to be a handy solution to every problem — from the plots of 30 minute TV sitcoms, to the prescription medicine advertisements that sponsor them. If you didn’t take care of the one body you have in your youth, no problem! Here’s a prescription or the address of a surgeon.

While I am thankful for the inventions and breakthroughs that enable us to live longer and in many cases better lives, I want to take our time together to explain why Progress is a false savior.

Health results in growth — the best kind of change

Do Something

In an earlier post, I made the point that innovation should be tempered by natural and moral law — that is, when one is considering what is possible to do, he should ask himself whether it is the right thing to do.

Through much of the 20th century and in this new one, nearly every institution from government to academia to the church promised that a new and better world was just around the corner. Businesses adopted this belief, spending shareholder wealth to promote the ideas that: a) change is inevitable and b) all change is good. In this view, it was always better to do something than to wait and assess the situation.

But is it good?

Certainly it is in the nature of every living thing to grow. Growth is a byproduct of health, so we can argue with some success that if we define change as growth, change is indeed inevitable in a healthy organism. At the same time, I question the notion that all change is good.

Let’s begin with simple logic. Amputation may be necessary to save your life, but the loss of a limb would be a change that was not good. Survival is better than extinction, but a reduction in your physical ability is not better than its continuation.

Progress is a mixed blessing

Technology has made each of us at once more capable and more helpless. We can communicate our thoughts to millions with little more than a smart phone and a network connection. At the same time, we seem less willing — or able? — than ever to do the soul work to live as free people. A recent tweet expressed it this way:

“It was an age when no one could change a tire or sew on a button. But everyone knew exactly how to end injustice.”

It seems we are awash in theoreticians with lofty ideals, but no practical experience. We pontificate from our anonymized ivory towers so we never have to pick up the check when our theories collapse under their own weight, with predictable damages.

Perhaps a movie would help

I have a love/hate relationship with the Disney movie Wall-E. I love it because of its ultimately pro-human message. I hate it because of its deadly accuracy regarding the spiritual dullness of humanity. Each day it seems we get nearer the realization of the movie’s portrayal of an infantilized population of passive adults who are utterly dependent on their overlords for their sustenance and amusement. It doesn’t matter whether the overlords are corporations, the state or their symbiotic spawn, the effect is the same – an enervated people.

Sideshow

Forgive the digression, but when I was a boy, a 300-pound human being was so rare a sight that you’d pay half a dollar to see him or her at a sideshow at the state fair. Now, you can go to Wal-Mart and see dozens of such specimens for free, navigating the aisles on scooters thoughtfully provided by the store. Clearly something has changed among our fellow citizens, but is anyone arguing that this is good?

What’s a man to do?

I write this blog to encourage you — and me — to become the men we were created to be. This is a call for each of us to become first-rate stewards of our bodies, our minds, our spirits and our culture. Does that sound like too much?

I recommend skepticism toward any untested idea — particularly if it comes from a centralized authority. Anglicanism used to posit that orthodoxy rested on a three-legged stool whose legs were scripture, tradition and reason. When your government, your company or even your church proposes some innovation, it is always prudent to analyze the proposal in light of these three.

Think for yourself. Endorse what is good and reject what doesn’t conform. No one but God has unlimited resources, so adopting an unworkable solution can tie up funds and keep you from other, better projects. This is the concept of opportunity cost.

No beneficial change comes by chance. As iconic football coach Vince Lombardi said, “The man on top of the mountain didn’t fall there.” We must know our strength and use it to give life. We must find allies and encourage each other. And we must persevere in the face of opposition — from those who would see us emasculated and enslaved, and from those who are afraid to rock the boat themselves.

We have already lost a great deal through lethargy and through our uncritical acceptance of progressive nostrums. Perhaps it is not too late to re-engage. This is not a project any of us can complete in an afternoon. It is the work of a lifetime. Are you up to the task?

So how about you? How can you begin to realize your full potential as a man? What are you doing now? Add your comments below.

We have entered a period in our history where we have elevated what our senses can perceive as facts, while we relegate abstract principles to the realm of opinions.  This is not healthy.

I can see clearly now.

No sane man would question the sensory data that demonstrate the existence of water, trees, birds, fire, or anything tangible, or of the ways we speak of their dimensions. Height, depth, heat, cold, wetness — no one has a problem with these ideas or the substance they describe.

At the same time, however, we are losing our ability to consider the objective reality of concepts — of things — such as truth, beauty, justice, love, honor, right and wrong. Some of this linguistic debasement is intentional. Destroy the vocabulary for moral reasoning and you establish the frame for the debate, if there can even be one.

Let’s pay a visit to the poetry corner and talk a bit about the limits of stunting debate:

The Blind Men and the Elephant
by John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887)

It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
“God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a WALL!”

The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, “Ho, what have we here,
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me ’tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a SPEAR!”

The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a SNAKE!”

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee
“What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain,” quoth he:
“‘Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a TREE!”

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a FAN!”

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a ROPE!”

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

So how about you? How are you striving to cultivate your moral sense? What have you found helpful? Please add your comments below.

Be fruitful and multiply… just don’t do it out of season!

Sex. It’s everywhere. And if you believe the media it seems that everybody’s doing it with everyone else and that everybody’s doing it but you. It’s worth questioning whether this is so. And even more important, it’s worth asking if this is what we were designed for.

First of all, the idea that “everybody else is doing it” wasn’t persuasive to my great grandparents when my grandparents tried to use that argument.  Second, I believe that men are meant to lead in the context of relationships, so how, exactly are you leading if you’re just following the crowd?

Powerful Stuff
Yes, the sex drive is powerful — that strong drive is a gift that will come into its own in the context of marriage.  Until you’re married, however, it is a gift that needs to be protected and regarded with all the respect and care one would afford a loaded firearm.  And just as you would with a loaded gun, you need to keep your sex drive under your control until it can be used properly.

The Bible has a great deal to say about about men and women and about our true nature, and it has very straightforward guidance regarding sex.  I’m aware that some people say Biblical teachings on sex just don’t work in the real world — that abstinence doesn’t work and that telling people to wait until they’re married is futile and unrealistic — but I have noticed that the ones who say this aren’t even trying to apply them.  Having decided what they want, they dismiss any evidence to the contrary.  We call that managing to a conclusion.  It’s part of the near-infinite capacity for human rationalization.

Another way to translate this is:  “The Bible can’t possibly be right because it doesn’t conform to what I want to do, or what I see others doing.  Besides, doesn’t God want us to be happy?”  Not exactly, no.

So why not consider a different approach to sex?

What Does The Owner Say?
 God Himself* is the inventor of sex, and His intentions and expectations are are clearly laid out in the pages of scripture.  Marriage is the only proper arena for the full enjoyment of the gift of sexual intimacy, and it is this lifelong covenant that makes sex moral. Anything else is theft.

So how can we be sure we understand these teachings correctly?
If God is real, and if God is capable of creating the cosmos and everything in it — including you — it is logical that He is able to communicate His will to His creatures in a form they can understand.  Further, it is also logical that if God communicated a set of standards for a particular behavior  — namely sex — then His prescription would provide the best results for individuals and for society alike.

Taking God’s existence and ability to communicate accurately as givens, we would then need to understand the moral attributes of God, His physical attributes, His heart and His character.  If God is love — and God presents Himself in the Bible as a loving Father —  then love would be His motivation, and love would permeate all his commands.  It is reasonable to conclude that God would not command anything that would harm those He loves.

Hurt vs. Harm
And here let’s distinguish between hurt and harm.  My telling you you’re out of line may hurt your feelings, but it will not harm you. Your shoving me out of the path of an onrushing truck may hurt me, but you would have saved me from greater harm.  Likewise, God’s commanding all of us to live chaste lives — to reserve the gift of sex for marriage — may make us uncomfortable, but it will not harm us.  Quite the opposite.

Nobody is promising that reserving sex until marriage is an easy thing to do.  As we’ve noted, temptation — especially sexual temptation — is everywhere.  And yet, God in His love and wisdom has told us something important about Himself through this amazing gift. The rational response to such love is to love God, to trust Him and to seek to follow His commands.

You can take the advice of a man who’s been married nearly 30 years: it’s worth waiting for. Be a leader and try something different — chastity.

So how about you? Are you committed to living a chaste life?  What’s the biggest challenge you’re facing? How are you and  your friends choosing to honor God with your lives?  Add your comments below.

*The question of God’s existence is stipulated for this blog post — if you don’t believe in God, it is my hope this will still be useful to you, but I realize that I cannot compel you to change your thinking — or anyone else’s — based on an appeal to authority.