Copyright by Shea Oakley<\/p>\n
All rights reserved<\/p>\n
Discipline enables us to enter into and be abandoned to legitimate pleasure at the appropriate time. Lack of discipline leads to wrong forms of pleasure being indulged in at the wrong time. A mistake Christians sometimes make is to reject the willful enjoyment of even that which is not inherently evil. The problem is not found in drinking deeply of earthly delights that God Himself has created and ordained for us to experience, rather it is brought into being by indulging in a distorted version of those delights. Such distortion usually comes when we decide to seek pleasure apart from any rules and when we alone decide how and when we should have that pleasure. This is the definition of license, the undisciplined, wholly self-centered attempt to satisfy a God-given desire in a way that He forbids.<\/p>\n
In contemporary American culture probably the most obvious example of this principle is in the area of human sexuality. The spirit of times tells us that sexual gratification is a need rather than a want and that the freedom to engage in casual sex is our right. Yet not so long ago, before the vaunted \u201cSexual Revolution\u201d of the 1960\u2019s and 70\u2019s, it was generally recognized by our society that reserving sex for marriage was the best, if not the only, way to express this aspect of our personhood. As our culture has abandoned the pursuit of sexual self-discipline and become enamored with the principle of immediate gratification what we do with our bodies has become a matter of personal choice. Every kind of sexual distortion that the Bible prohibits, from adultery to \u201chooking-up\u201d, is at best winked at and at worst openly encouraged.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately some in the American Church have reacted to the world\u2019s embrace of unfettered promiscuity with an equally wrongheaded sexual asceticism. There are some fundamentalist Christians, for instance, who have published websites that go so far as to warn husbands and wives to abstain, even in the marriage bed, from indulging in what they consider to be ungodly sexual practices (one has to wonder whether such self-proclaimed guardians of sexual propriety have ever seriously read the Song of Solomon). The impression given is that they believe couples should not have too much fun enjoying their conjugal rights. These extremists appear to regard all forms of sexual expression as some sort of necessary evil. But heterosexual marital sexuality, in its many forms, is in no way evil if it is not coercive or abusive to either partner. As the title of a recent American Christian sex manual for married people rightly proclaims this gift from God is \u201cIntended for Pleasure.\u201d Joyful abandonment to loving mutual gratification in the marriage bed is as much the will of God for us as is our abandonment to loving Him in the act of worship.<\/p>\n
A pleasurable activity ordained by God only becomes a bad activity when, through lack of self-control, a believer seeks that pleasure at the wrong time or in the wrong way; in short, apart from God. It is the Lord\u2019s own desire<\/em> for us to deeply enjoy the good things He has given us. In fact the constraints He puts on us as to the timing and circumstance of that enjoyment are for our own good. Our God knows far better than we when His children are ready to receive the legitimate experiences of ecstasy that he longs to give us.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Copyright by Shea Oakley All rights reserved Discipline enables us to enter into and be abandoned to legitimate pleasure at the appropriate time. Lack of discipline leads to wrong forms of pleasure being indulged in at the wrong time. A mistake Christians sometimes make is to reject the willful enjoyment of even that which is… <\/p>\n