The life of a Christian is definitively not for the faint of heart. It requires overcoming obstacles, dealing with difficult circumstances, and resisting temptations every single day. To be Christian is to become comfortable doing hard things. Through the examples in the Bible we will learn about those who have gone before us, having faced difficulty, and overcome. We will also learn why it is so important to actively choose to do the difficult things that God directs us to do, because the reward that comes from doing them is great.
Eric Rank
The Simplicity In Christ
So much of the world is confused about what Christianity is. Biases, assumptions, and fallacies hide the simple Truth that Jesus Christ brought to the world through His ministry. We will reveal the magnificent and beautiful plan of God contained in the Bible to break down the confusion that gets in the way of understanding Christ.
Part of Something Big
Everything in our life occurs in the present moment. Because of this, it can be a challenge to keep the events of life in context of the bigger picture.
In my family, our young boys’ lives are centered around play and snacks. Just about every decision, complaint, and desire of theirs focuses on satiating their hunger for fun and food in the moment. Our older sons, now grown young men, have matured beyond the self-indulgent appetites to have concerns focused on starting their journey into adulthood. As such, being interested in their well-being, my wife and I bring those concerns into our own lives. Their concerns become ours too. In addition to our investment in their upbringing, we have myriad other concerns that we have accumulated from our own grown-up responsibilities we’ve picked up along the way. Things like the Work of the Church, employment, physical health, home ownership and much more put demands on our time. I bring this up to illustrate the up-close micro details that consume our attention, bring us delight, stress us out, and consume the resources of our days. This is what our lives consist of in the moment: Getting to work on time, getting food on the table, coaching our children to shape their lives.
In an up-close view, the substance of concern in our lives becomes magnified by the demands of our daily activities. The molehills of concern are mountains in the moment. Even the most trivial kind of problem, such as a wrong turn on the way to an appointment is the most important thing in the moment. In the close-up view, our activities appear to be an accumulation of little things right in front of us.
To say this is not to diminish the importance of our immediate attention, physically, mentally, nor emotionally. The little things really are important! People must necessarily operate on the little things that are right in front of them. Our interface with the world is limited to that which we can directly affect. All we can do is work with the moment, material, and people which are immediately before us. A journey of a thousand miles requires taking one step after the other.
The Bible makes it clear that the little things matter in our lives and also explains why they matter. “He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much” (Luke 16:10). The way that we live in the moment reflects how we live in the larger context! In this passage in the Bible, Jesus Christ explains that the principles that govern our behavior apply both at small and large scales. We use the same source of faith for the small things as the large. Likewise, if we make justifications for sins because we consider them to be small and insignificant, we may be prone to make justifications for all other sins too. The little things matter because they are part of a mosaic in a much larger picture.
The least of our actions takes place in the context of God’s plan for us. “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). Our kindness to another in a passing moment is an expression of brotherly love that has the power to lift their heart, improve their day, and even change their life. The negative examples hold true as well. A hurtful word to another can damage trust in the span of a second and take years to repair. Therefore, our actions in the moment need to be considered in a much broader spectrum than our close-up view allows. God is working with us in our lives to help us learn and grow.
When considering the details of our lives in the moment, what should the scope of our perspective be? How far should we zoom out to properly see the setting of our momentary actions? It is no exaggeration to say that we need to view our moments in the context of the plan of God that He has for the entirety of creation. “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God” (Romans 8:18-19).
Knowing that everything we experience in the moment is part of God’s master plan ought to give us great comfort. Our struggle, joy, boredom, and excitement take place in the context of something big. We may get wrapped up in the magnified concern of the moment, but those things only matter in their purpose to help us to grow into the children that God is helping us to become.
Jesus Christ’s Marriage
Marriage is the most intimate and committed kind of relationship that we humanly experience. The Bible uses betrothal and marriage as a model for us to understand Jesus Christ’s relationship with Israel and the Church of God. Seeing that the Church of God is considered to be the betrothed bride of Christ, how does this understanding affect our lives?
How Did You Do?
The Feast of Unleavened Bread gives us the opportunity to examine ourselves to discover the sin that might hide in the corners of our lives. When we find those sins we remove them, just as we remove any leavening that we discover by surprise during the Feast of Unleavened Bread. This process of removing sin from our lives is a prerequisite for us as we give our offerings to God.
How to Enrich Your Life by being a Better Servant
Jesus Christ offers us the perfect example of what service means. Do we really understand His example of how to serve and are we willing to live by it? By doing so, we will find our lives fulfilled, abounding with love and peace. While the rest of the world stigmatizes the idea of being a servant, we have a better understanding, knowing that Christian service enriches our lives with meaning.
John the Baptist
John the Baptist fulfilled prophecy through the work of his ministry. What did he do? Why was he an important figure relative to Jesus Christ’s ministry and the growth of the New Testament Church? What can we learn about his life that can give us a deeper understanding of Jesus Christ’s teachings and our Christian conversion?
Maintaining Balance
Living a balanced life takes continuous practice. How can we detect when we might be falling off balance before we fall? The Bible abounds with examples for us to learn from, so we can become ever better at balancing the varied conditions and competing interests in our lives.
A Living Sacrifice
What does it mean to live our lives as a living sacrifice? By learning to practice obedience, we prioritize God’s way of life over any of the physical rewards that the world can offer. The sacrifice of giving up those comforts to choose the path of righteousness instead is how we serve God.
What are the dangers of pornography?
“Pornography” may be difficult to define, and many may not agree on a common definition. When Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart was asked to describe his test for obscenity in 1964, he responded: “I know it when I see it.” In applying this quasi-definition to a motion picture at issue, he concluded that it was not pornographic. This was in 1964. Surely, today’s standards and definitions are even much more liberal.
We will not try to define pornography in this article. Rather, we set forth guidelines which the reader may use to come to conclusions applicable to oneself, based on his or her understanding and conscience. We use the word pornography (another word might be obscenity) with this introductory precaution in mind.
In this present age, pornography is frighteningly easy to access. With the lightning speed of a whim, people can view pornographic images and videos on computers and phones, dramatically reducing barriers to availability that would have otherwise prevented them from doing so. Hand in hand with greater accessibility, media and entertainment increasingly normalize pornography. The proliferation of pornography and derivations of it are designed to exploit the raw sexual urge of people, especially men. The nature of pornographic content may stimulate physical sensations to the extreme, such that it is common for it to become the source of addiction. Truly, pornography might serve as a quintessential example of decadent worldliness which the Bible warns about.
Since Christians are human beings with physical inclinations like anyone else, they are not immune to the seductive allure of pornography. Yet it is such a taboo topic that even bringing it up as a Christian can be embarrassingly shameful! But the duty of a Christian is to become equipped to overcome carnality, so it is important to directly address the topic of how to handle pornography.
Leaving aside the definition of what makes content pornographic, we can focus on its designed effects. Quite simply, it is designed to elicit sexual arousal through voyeuristic fantasy using images of a provocative nature, most commonly with naked people engaged in all kinds of sexual activities, not to mention deviations like the abominable practice of bestiality and other perversions. There is nothing inherently wrong about sex and the instinct of arousal that accompanies it. God made man and woman as sexual beings. But he designed this aspect of our physical nature for married men and women to enjoy in a healthy way. Pornography, through its elicitation of sexual fantasy, is designed to stimulate imagination and ideas in the viewer that are definitively not anchored in what it takes to build a healthy, loving relationship in the way God intended.
To view pornography is to have a relationship with it. But this is not the kind of sexual relationship that God designed. God made man and woman to develop love for one another, become married, and create a family of their own. (We understand, of course, that in this day and age not every couple can create a family with children, for numerous reasons. In other cases, God may not even intend for a person to get married.) God designed marriage to nurture a healthy kind of sexual relationship, which involves developing an intimate relationship between a man and a woman, including on a spiritual level. “Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge” (Hebrews 13:4). From this passage, we understand that there is a right way and a wrong way to treat sex.
The model of the right way to treat sex is in a married relationship as God designed, and the wrong ways are the sexually immoral and cheap counterfeits for it. Like fornication and adultery mentioned in the passage above, pornography is a cheap counterfeit. It may set false expectations through its fantastical imagery that could damage a healthy sexual relationship with a partner in marriage. Whereas a healthy marriage relationship involves developing a deep understanding of one another, consuming pornography and engaging in other types of sexual immorality such as fornication, stimulates arousal while skipping over all the hard work that makes a marriage relationship so rewarding. Pornography teaches wrong lessons about what it takes to develop an intimate relationship. To apply those lessons learned through the examples of pornography in real life will only result in failure, disappointment, or worse.
We write about the healthy kind of sexual relationship between a man and woman in our free booklet, “God’s Teachings on Sexual Relationships.”
“While it may be unfashionable, we take the Word of God seriously and unashamedly in spite of the mainly secular society in which we live. We read in Genesis 2:18, 20–23 that God provided a wife, Eve, for Adam. Verse 24 is critical: ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh,’ and this is the biblical example at the dawn of civilization. One man and one woman and no other variation is mentioned nor acceptable, and in Genesis 1:28 they were told to ‘Be fruitful and multiply,’ and that is supposed to happen only when two people of the opposite sex are united in marriage.
“There is one aspect of marriage that seems to be rarely, if ever, discussed.
“In Genesis 2:24 we read: ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.’ We might ask why the Bible teaches that a man is to leave his parents in order to cleave to his wife? What is meant by this? Does this also mean, by extension, that the wife is to leave her parents as well, in order to cleave to her husband?
“The Bible is very explicit, for important reasons, to enjoin the newly married couple to live separately from their parents. In addition to this instruction in Genesis 2:24, we read later, in Matthew 19:5, that Jesus Christ quotes this very Scripture with approval, to explain and to uphold the sanctity of the marriage relationship.
“Commentaries agree that this command is meant to be taken and obeyed quite literally. A reason for this command is given in the Ryrie Study Bible, as follows, ‘Jesus cites the purpose of God in creation that husband and wife should be one flesh—the oneness of kinship or fellowship with the body as a medium, causing marriage to be the deepest physical and spiritual unity.’”
From this explanation of how God designed marriage, we understand what true intimacy consists of. Pornography, as well as fornication and adultery, corrupt this model set by God.
Another way that pornography can be dangerous is in the stimulation of lust. The images of pornography are designed to arouse a lustful desire, which can be overwhelming in their allure. We understand, of course, that lustful desire can be aroused in many different ways, and it may be different for particular individuals. Consider what the Bible says about playing with a similar type of strong lust and its effects. “For the commandment is a lamp, And the law a light; Reproofs of instruction are the way of life, To keep you from the evil woman, From the flattering tongue of a seductress. Do not lust after her beauty in your heart, Nor let her allure you with her eyelids. For by means of a harlot A man is reduced to a crust of bread; And an adulteress will prey upon his precious life. Can a man take fire to his bosom, And his clothes not be burned? Can one walk on hot coals, And his feet not be seared? So is he who goes in to his neighbor’s wife; Whoever touches her shall not be innocent” (Proverbs 6:23-29). This passage is about allowing oneself to become seduced away from a healthy sexual relationship, and instead inviting sexual lust and temptation to take control. What is the result? To become metaphorically burned and seared through the experience! Pornography carries the same danger. Images may sear into the mind of the viewer and burn into his or her consciousness, reinforcing the wrong ideas about what a healthy, godly sexual relationship consists of.
We’re reminded that physical lust is something that Christians are to overcome. “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.” (1 John 2:15-17). Of the many examples of what fulfills the lust of the eyes, pornography is among the most apt. To fall prey to sexual temptation brings one full force into carnal indulgence. Carnal lust is something to overcome as a Christian. As mentioned in the passage above, it is not of God. We know that Satan is the god of this world, and he uses all kinds of wrong sexual influences to tempt us. Paul tells us in Ephesians 6 to fight against those influences.
Being convinced of the dangers of pornography, what can one do to escape them? The Bible gives us simple instructions with actions expressed in extreme terms to drive home the point that decisive action is necessary. Christ tells us: “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell” (Matthew 5:27-30). This instruction from Jesus Christ is about looking lustfully at a woman desiring to have a sexual relationship with her, but the lesson is something that we can easily apply to the dangers of pornography. Such images may stimulate lust for someone else, even if only in the imagination. In this example, Jesus equates this kind of lust to the sin of adultery. The prescription He offers is to physically separate oneself from the source of sin, figuratively plucking out the eye and cutting off the hand. Jesus does not instruct us to literally mutilate ourselves, but the lesson is clear. We are to decisively act, physically removing ourselves from the stimulus of sin and any sinful environment.
We emphasize this point of taking decisive action to flee sexual immorality in our free booklet, “God’s Teachings on Sexual Relationships.”
“Let us look now at God’s teaching in the Bible on this subject, which is what should concern us the most.
“1 Corinthians 6:18 (in the Authorized Version), we read ‘Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.’
“The New King James Bible renders ‘sexual immorality’ correctly as ‘fornication.’ This word clearly includes sexual activities before and outside the confines of marriage.
“The instruction is to ‘flee fornication and wrong sexual activity,’ but so many ignore or do not even know about this instruction. This is the problem when God’s Word is ignored or not considered relevant today, and where there is antipathy toward doing what God commands us to do, which is for our benefit and is always in our best interests. However, man thinks that he knows better than God and makes up his own rules (or lack of them) to facilitate a ‘just do it’ attitude.
“There was obviously a problem in the Corinthian Church with wrong sexual activity, including fornication (compare 1 Corinthians 6:9; 2 Corinthians 12:21). Here the Bible warns us that fornicators and other sexually immoral individuals will not inherit the Kingdom of God, and so it is an activity that must be avoided by those who are called and chosen by God. God defines His standards and what He requires of His people, which is very different than the liberal, promiscuous approach that today’s societies adopt.”
Pornography is a powerful force in this age. Many even become addicted by its strong arousal and ease of access. It can lead to fornication or other sexually immoral behavior. It is dangerous in that it is designed to corrupt the perfect model of a healthy sexual relationship between a married couple, which God intended. Overcoming the danger of pornography’s temptation is possible, however. By calling upon the strength of Christ to resist its allure and flee from its presence, one can avoid falling prey to the damage it does.
Lead Writer: Eric Rank