Sing the Song Boys, Sing the Song!

My friends will tell you that I can justify pretty much everything that I do or want to do in life. In fact, Dan, a truly good friend to me for many years, put it this way: “Lee, you could murder my mother, and after talking to you, I would actually feel bad for ever being upset and even wonder why I ever questioned you about it.” In light of that, I see how I can talk myself in or out of just about anything. It’s frustrating at times, when I legitimately desire truth and understanding about a decision, though. I’m often worried whether what I’m doing is Christ in me, or am I just making my own justifications. Some might say that it wouldn’t really matter as long as you felt good about what you were doing. But, I’ve learned from Christ that it’s ultimately for my own self-interest that I figure out exactly what God would have me do. It takes faith to believe this, but He actually does have our best interest in mind through every situation He drags us into and out of. I’ve come to understand that He’s never trying to keep us from happiness. His desire for our holiness is completely intertwined with our joy.

Case in point: I’m an extremely sexual human. We might all be, but I definitely have a heightened awareness of the fact. Often, I used to wonder what the big deal was about exploring and enjoying things in your youth…(I mean it’s all in the name of Love?). With the powers that I have described above, I guarantee you that I could convince most people that it would be a positive thing for everybody involved. I mean, really, I could go either way here. I mean, the word of God is extremely clear that we should have no sexual lovers other than our one wife, but why?

Then the revelations of Christ roll into town. Just like in most situations that we try to figure out on our own, Christ proves that He wants much more for us than we are even wanting for ourselves. He knows there’s something crazy that happens when a man and a woman save themselves for the other. In doing so, they will be able to connect in an exclusively intimate way. I believe that it will surpass anything I could ever imagine. I know it will. I relate it to the way you share something special with someone when you discover and always listen to a certain song together. When you think of that song it’s like, aww… Well that, times about eleventy billion.

I see a theme here that, while obvious, I feel the need to point out. In the Christian story, it has always been about suffering, because of the hope you have in something greater. As we know, Christ had every out in the world to avoid His torture and eventual gruesome death, but He chose to go through it because God instilled in Him the hope of something amazing. The world is constantly wooing us into half-ass imitations of what’s really good, or “lovers less wild than Jesus,” if you will… Unfortunately, they will always eventually disappoint us.

Hope along with me, in something greater.