“Chastity is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues.” – C.S. Lewis

The Princess Bride is one of my favorite movies of all time.  (If you haven’t seen it, go watch it now.  I’ll wait.)

Keep the blade in its scabbard until the proper time

In a famous scene, one of the villain Vezzini’s henchmen, a Spanish swordsman named Inigo Montoya, corrects his boss.  Vezzini replies to every bit of unfavorable news with the exclamation “Inconceivable!”  After several such eruptions Montoya cocks his head and says, “You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means.”

In a previous post, I encouraged you to “be a leader and try something different — chastity.”  I realize that I may not have explained what chastity is and what it is not.

Making love right

Chastity is about the proper use of sex.  For the single, chastity means waiting until marriage.  (Most people, whether they agree or not, get that part right.) For the married, it means remaining faithful to your wife — “forsaking all others” as the traditional marriage vows say.  That means you invest your sexual interest and energy  – your thoughts, affection and loyalty — in your wife and in no other woman, real or imagined.

Chastity is not lifelong celibacy

Unless you are called to singleness, chastity doesn’t mean no sex for you — ever.  Yes, celibacy’s required before marriage, but in marriage, celibacy gives way to sexual exclusivity.  By the way, the Bible teaches that husbands and wives are not to deprive one another sexually.  Our Roman Catholic friends call this the marriage debt — and like all other debts, bad things happen if it isn’t paid.

Chastity is not anti-sex

In fact, the opposite is true.  Chastity places a higher value on sex and therefore doesn’t allow for the cheapening and commodifcation of such a great gift.  These days, women’s bodies are treated like props to sell us all kinds of products.  And with the ways we are marketed to constantly, in our culture we have become consumers — consumers of beauty, consumers of women.

Chastity honors the imago dei – the image and likeness of God — that He designed into us.  The complementarity of maleness and femaleness and the attraction of men and women to each other is for our benefit. It impels us toward love and its fullest expression in marriage, but the way is not broad and lighted like a runway.

It is easier to follow the herd and to become a consumer of women, rather than the lover of one wife.  But this more difficult way is the appropriate environment to discover what God reveals about Himself through the gift of sex.

Chastity is not about what you cannot have

I follow the slow-carb diet and I’m strict about it.  Friends ask me how I eat and when I tell them, many say, ” I couldn’t do without bread.” Or potatoes.  Or doughnuts — whatever.  This is the wrong way to go about a diet, and it’s the wrong way to go about living a chaste life.  Constantly thinking about what you can’t have is a way to make you miserable, and becoming obsessed with the forbidden is a nearly flawless way to give in to it.

Chastity is about the good of the individual and the community

Author Wendell Berry wrote that sex has a communal basis — that ultimately, it’s everyone’s business.  This idea is completely at odds with what our society believes is strictly personal.  But look at it this way: God gave human beings sex to be a picture of the love He has for His bride, the church.  God is revealed in scripture as a totally faithful — and jealous — lover.

In its proper place, sex is the deepest, most exclusive kind of knowing and being known.  If marriage and the family are the cornerstones of civilization, marital and sexual fidelity are the mortar that holds them together.

You unmarried guys need to see us older married guys living right so you know it is possible.  And we older married guys need to see you young single men living right so we aren’t led astray.  Let’s encourage and set a Godly example for each other.

Choosing to be a leader and to live a chaste life honors God and helps you to avoid one of the classic blunders.  More on this later.

So how about you?  What are you doing to help you live a chaste life?  Add your comments below.

“We are men of action. Lies do not become us.”
– The Princess Bride

We’ve all seen some shocking events in the news lately. Undercover videos have removed the gauzy curtains of plausible deniability regarding the true nature of abortion and the truly abhorrent selling of human body parts by Planned Parenthood. For those who are willing to confront the truth of it, we now have widely available and indisputable evidence of the barbarity of the abortion industry — an organization that presents itself as a public servant kills unborn children in their mothers’ wombs and receives cash in exchange for these children’s organs.

“Rescue those who are being taken away to death…”
(Photo by Liane Metzler)

My words here are purposely gentle. If you have not seen the videos — and you have the constitution for what you’ll see — you can view them here.

We follow the One who identifies Himself as Truth

As difficult as these videos are to watch. As sickening as it is to hear people who trade in human body parts joke about buying Italian sports cars with the proceeds, at last we can dispose of all the euphemisms and begin to call abortion the evil that it is — the taking of innocent human life. As difficult as this is, because we’ve taught that it’s rude,  calling evil by its real name is the first step to conquering it.

We can expect opposition, but we should not fear it. The practitioners of this grotesque practice are on video talking candidly about what they are doing. Their complaints at being exposed ring hollow and inadequate compared to the millions of babies they and their colleagues have exterminated.

The opposite of life is not “choice”

Part of the way this evil has persisted for so long is through the corruption of language. Note that for decades, people in favor of abortion on demand have always insisted on being called “pro-choice.” But that’s not all: Abortion proponents have used linguistic gymnastics to refer to the life snuffed out by an abortion as a fetus, an embryo, a clump of cells, a blob of protoplasm — anything other than what it always was — human life.

Consider — and research for yourself — all that we have learned about babies’ development in the womb. The child has a heartbeat beginning at three weeks gestational age. This is earlier than many if not most women even suspect they’re pregnant. Sonograms show fully formed feet and hands – with fingerprints — as early as eleven weeks. Neonatology continues to advance, making it possible for some preemies born at 22 weeks gestational age to survive and go home from the hospital. It’s now possible for pediatric surgeons to operate on unborn children in their mothers’ wombs. With all we know, it simply is a lie to say that unborn children are not human.

And let’s finally dispense with the lie that “what a woman does with her own body is her business.” The child in his or her mother’s womb has its own DNA distinct from that of the mother. If the child is a boy, it’s obviously false that the mother’s body has male genitalia.

A culture of death

You may have noticed that I quote from Proverbs a lot. There’s a good reason for that. Since I seek always to offer practical encouragement, I can think of no better source of wisdom than the book of the Bible written by that wisest of men, King Solomon. Several times in the book of Proverbs, Solomon contrasts wisdom and foolishness, and in chapter 8, Solomon says that all who hate wisdom, love death (Proverbs 8:36). Pretending that truth doesn’t exist, or that it isn’t true, is the heart of foolishness.

So what’s a man to do?

On the issues of abortion and justice, consider how fitting these words from King Solomon are:

“Rescue those who are being taken away to death;
    hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.
If you say, “Behold, we did not know this,”
    does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?
Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it,
    and will he not repay man according to his work?”
– Proverbs 24:11-12 (ESV)

If we love truth, we must proclaim it. And if we love God, we must also promote justice — and by this I mean our faith must result in action. This means protecting the weak from the strong and ensuring that the same standards apply regardless of wealth, status, education, race, sex, etc. It also means that once we become aware of injustice, we have to be willing to sacrifice our comfort to correct it. This is a righteous application of masculine strength.

With all this evidence can we fail?

Unfortunately, yes. The first way we can fail to combat injustice is to simply become jaded — to be so callous that we fail to see the humanity of these little ones being torn to pieces for money. The second is fatalism — we throw up our hands and say it’s too big, it’s hopeless. The third is to assume it’s someone else’s job. The fourth is to grow weary of standing against the deception of the well-entrenched and — as we now know, lucrative — culture of death. But as Solomon reminds us God sees and cares what we do. It matters a great deal that we do not slide back into the comfortable fog of our previous deception.

Are there people seeking to promote themselves instead of genuine justice? Yes. Does their existence mean that there isn’t genuine injustice? No. As Westley said in The Princess Bride, “We are men of action. Lies do not become us.” And as I like to remind you: abuse doesn’t invalidate use.

Abortion is not the only form of injustice in our country — but it is the one perpetrated on the largest scale — 55 million dead and counting since 1973. Now you know. What are you prepared to do?

So how about you? How are you preparing to embrace truth and promote justice? Add your comments below.

Keep the blade in its scabbard until the proper time!

“Chastity is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues.” – C.S. Lewis

The Princess Bride is one of my favorite movies of all time.  (If you haven’t seen it, go watch it now.  I’ll wait.)

In a famous scene, one of the villain Vezzini’s henchmen, a Spanish swordsman named Inigo Montoya, corrects his boss.  Vezzini replies to every bit of unfavorable news with the exclamation “Inconceivable!”  After several such eruptions Montoya cocks his head and says, “You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means.”

In a previous post, I encouraged you to “be a leader and try something different — chastity.”  I realize that I may not have explained what chastity is and what it is not.

Making love right
Chastity is about the proper use of sex.  For the single, chastity means waiting until marriage.  (Most people, whether they agree or not, get that part right.) For the married, it means remaining faithful to your wife — “forsaking all others” as the traditional marriage vows say.  That means you invest your sexual interest and energy  – your thoughts, affection and loyalty — in your wife and in no other woman, real or imagined.

Chastity is not lifelong celibacy
Unless you are called to singleness, chastity doesn’t mean no sex for you — ever.  Yes, celibacy’s required before marriage, but in marriage, celibacy gives way to sexual exclusivity.  By the way, the Bible teaches that husbands and wives are not to deprive one another sexually.  Our Roman Catholic friends call this the marriage debt — and like all other debts, bad things happen if it isn’t paid.

Chastity is not anti-sex
In fact, the opposite is true.  Chastity places a higher value on sex and therefore doesn’t allow for the cheapening and commodifcation of such a great gift.  These days, women’s bodies are treated like props to sell us all kinds of products.  And with the ways we are marketed to constantly, in our culture we have become consumers — consumers of beauty, consumers of women.

Chastity honors the imago dei – the image and likeness of God — that He designed into us.  The complementarity of maleness and femaleness and the attraction of men and women to each other is for our benefit. It impels us toward love and its fullest expression in marriage, but the way is not broad and lighted like a runway.

It is easier to follow the herd and to become a consumer of women, rather than the lover of one wife.  But this more difficult way is the appropriate environment to discover what God reveals about Himself through the gift of sex.

Chastity is not about what you cannot have
I follow the slow-carb diet and I’m strict about it.  Friends ask me how I eat and when I tell them, many say, ” I couldn’t do without bread.” Or potatoes.  Or doughnuts — whatever.  This is the wrong way to go about a diet, and it’s the wrong way to go about living a chaste life.  Constantly thinking about what you can’t have is a way to make you miserable, and becoming obsessed with the forbidden is a nearly flawless way to give in to it.

Chastity is about the good of the individual and the community
Author Wendell Berry wrote that sex has a communal basis — that ultimately, it’s everyone’s business.  This idea is completely at odds with what our society believes is strictly personal.  But look at it this way: God gave human beings sex to be a picture of the love He has for His bride, the church.  God is revealed in scripture as a totally faithful — and jealous — lover.

In its proper place, sex is the deepest, most exclusive kind of knowing and being known.  If marriage and the family are the cornerstones of civilization, marital and sexual fidelity are the mortar that holds them together.

You unmarried guys need to see us older married guys living right so you know it is possible.  And we older married guys need to see you young single men living right so we aren’t led astray.  Let’s encourage and set a Godly example for each other.

Choosing to be a leader and to live a chaste life honors God and helps you to avoid one of the classic blunders.  More on this later.

So how about you?  What are you doing to help you live a chaste life?  Add your comments below.