Obey Your Body

Traversing a mall with a friend recently, we spotted a booth selling some crap in a bag with pretty ribbons (women love that shit!) over which was a sign that read, “Obey Your Body”. Most people don’t even notice such things, but of course, my response to it was to excitedly exclaim “OK!” and make like I was squatting to take a dump, complete with sound effects. Then I suggested we stand in front of it and piss, and when anyone complained, we could just say, “hey, I’m obeying my body – my body said I needed to piss!”

At this point I really did have to stop my comedy routine as my friend is eight months pregnant and belly laughter can be uncomfortable for a pregnant woman, so in deference to that I gave it a rest. The point is, just imagine if the sign had said “Obey Your Husband”. It seems I can hardly go anywhere anymore without seeing the absurdity of people’s comfortable obliviousness to the demonic, while at the same time knowing that they would react to anything hinting at Jesus like a vampire reacts to holy water.

So why dance around the obvious – they react because their hearts contain the Truth, put there by God. The state they must be in, numbed to God and immersed in what has become essentially a culture of death – one that simultaneously denies/avoids death (“that’s put a bit of a damper on the evening hasn’t it”) yet daily sacrifices hundreds of unborn babies in the name of convenience – cannot allow the light in, because it is too painful and it burns.

Being in the world but not of the world is not an easy path. It is heartbreaking, exhausting, galling, horrifying. But the path of rejecting God, of being numb to evil to the point where soaking the land in the blood of the unborn is looked upon as a right, where hideous demonic concepts that hide behind fluffy, feel-good catch-phrases are treated as Gospel, is the utterly terrifying path chosen by the multitudes.

As the Chinese philosopher Mencius wrote around 300BC:

To act without clear understanding, to form habits without investigation, to follow a path all one’s life without knowing where it really leads, such is the behaviour of the multitudes.

In other words:

Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few. – Matthew 7:13 (RSV)

Parents Asleep at the Wheel

While MTV sinks to a new low (remember when it was a music channel?), it seems many parents are asleep at the wheel these days. Christians strive to repress sexuality by not talking about it or ignoring these things.

Christians seem to think themselves immune from cultural influences and allow subversive poison into their homes. While I would be thought weird or shocking for allowing occasional home nudity with my children, no one seems to bat an eye to their six-year-olds parroting “I’m Sexy and I know It“, or at what I saw the other day; a boy probably barely 14 whose voice hadn’t even broken yet, attempting to rap:

Pussy so wet you think it just got off the log ride
And when I do my thing she be screamin’ “you the king”
Inside her so much she nicknamed me Nuva Ring

There is a well-known, reputable Catholic boys’ high school nearby and I am quite certain that is where this kid came from. And can I just add that unless you’re the Beastie Boys or Eminem, if you’re white, please stop rapping! ::cringe:: The absurdity of this kid aping this crap, who likely hasn’t been anywhere near a pussy since he was born from his mother, just makes me sad. Before he’s likely even kissed a girl, this is what is in his head. What kind of adult would steal these things from children for profit?

MTV’s Lose Your Virginity “reality” show is not even shocking, but simply disgraceful and sad. Increasingly in this culture, the best thing anyone can do for one’s children is to throw out the TV and homeschool them. There are many people filling the pews dutifully every Sunday who are asleep at the wheel; they are shirking their sacred duty to their children, buying into the culture that hates them, that hates God, that loves nothing more than to see their daughters “give up their V-card” for cheap entertainment and their sons rap disgusting “lyrics” put down by some witless, talentless schmuck. But who is the real schmuck here?

Relationship Cycles Can Solidify the Foundation

ALL relationships have ‘down time’. This can be anything from introverts who need time to themselves to minor quarrels to huge, catastrophic events. The key for any kind of down time is having the patience to wait and the willingness to talk through it. This is different than wanting to ‘work it out’ on the spot, which is something women tend to want to do more than men. Men are not so fast moving or as emotional as women; his periodic withdrawal is not so laden with insecurity as hers.

We can recognise that relationships have cycles and that, so long as emotional distance isn’t left to go on for too long (I think Athol Kay’s two-week limit is a pretty good time frame), this is normal and nothing to worry about. Many of us have experienced this withdrawal as beginning of the slow deterioration of the relationship because it never gets dealt with properly and so is left always partially unresolved (and we all know how women want resolution – popularly termed ‘closure’, a term I dislike).

It is sad how many people end up like this:

It is impossible for a relationship to be nourished unilaterally. It is true that everyone is flawed, but it is also true that some will absolutely refuse to allow themselves to be vulnerable enough to work through the difficult emotions. A couple will inadvertently hurt each other, but we can choose whether we take this clumsiness (that we all have) as a deliberate personal slight or not, and that is the indicator of our respective ability to forgive truly.

Of course, we should never allow attacks on character to pass our lips; we have to guard our own words and watch our own thoughts and re-frame it in terms of how something made us feel, rather than what a poor excuse for a human being our partner is. Furthermore, we need to accept that sometimes we will hurt each other so that we can accept the other’s emotions as valid and real, that we were the cause of them, but in a way that this is not one attacking the other or purposefully hurting the other. We can avoid escalation by accepting whatever each has to say, not being personally offended, and not expecting the other to change who they are.

This is comparable to the life of faith. Sometimes it is rather dry – sometimes more often than not – and the rewards seem few. It is a human tendency to expect rewards to be forthcoming and to desire a life of bliss, and then to be disappointed when it is not delivered to us. Do we persevere or do we give up? It can be tempting to put up a pretence of perfection otherwise known as keeping up appearances, but when we do that, does it help us to grow?

In the same way we ought to practice patience with each other, we know God is patient with us and that we cannot make demands on Him to conform to our schedule or to relieve our suffering. If He relieves it, it is only through His good grace, not because we deserve it. We need to practice that kind of love with each other. We will always have to be hurt and forgive, over and over, just as we must see ourselves unworthy of the presence of God, yet He doesn’t stop loving us. When our prayers seem to fall on deaf ears and our spiritual practice seems dry, do we feel forgotten and curse God’s name, or do we wait?

If our partner hurts us, do we close our hearts, or do we remember that “wounds from a friend can be trusted”? In the latter case, there is the possibility of finding a deeper love, even of falling in love all over again. In the former, we will likely lose the love we had.