How do we find genuine freedom to enjoy life's pleasures?

Why do we relentlessly seek God’s answers when in the midst of suffering, yet we never seem to pause with equal sincerity to ask Him for guidance or wisdom in pleasure and seem very uncertain about God’s presence in fun and pleasure?



We postmodernists blame God for all the bad and credit ourselves with all that is good.

Have we all bought into a belief that God is not interested in making life enjoyable?

Has the Christian faith somehow been moulded and reshaped to appear as a killer of pleasure or as a barrier to fun?

Have enjoyment and amusement now been handed over to “the world” so that the very idea of pleasure is seen as deadly to spirituality?

Can God give us a wide array of pleasures including the physical and the aesthetic that we may enjoy without feeling that it is a break from the routine for the Christian?

How do we learn to think constructively rather than to live pragmatically, making momentary decisions without guiding principles that will inform our choices?

What deep struggles and questions must engulf us as we are fed a steady diet of all that appeals to the eye and the imagination, with so little to nurture the conscience.

What damage could be done to us long before we have the maturity and inner strength to glean the good and to reject the lies.
 

subtle but enormous chasm...

In trying to find a solution for guilt, we have finally come to the realization that to get rid of this guilt requires more than we thought and find ourselves separated from forgiveness by a rather enormous chasm.

"Not all the perfumes of Arabia," said Lady Macbeth (Shakespeare) "can remove this spot." "This disease is beyond my cure," says the doctor.

I think that if we can only take the next step and say, "I am guilty of sin," then the answer comes suddenly -- "I have a Saviour for you."

He went to the cross to carry the penalty and pay the price. It was not cheap; it was God’s priceless gift of His Son to bear the guilt brought by the sin of the world.
There is a cost to forgiveness - this article outlines what the costs are for a husband who has been unfaithful to his wife, but could be equally true for an unfaithful wife as well - check out this amazing article that clearly spells out the cost http://newlife.com/the-cost-of-forgiveness/

Guilt is real and if left unattended it will be compounded by each self-serving effort of irreverence, pride, fear, dismissal of the moral, or the claim of innocence. With admission of sin, there is the start of genuine restoration, because guilt is first a vertical problem before it is a horizontal one.
God has been violated before we have.  That is why it is God’s prerogative to forgive first. Only the forgiven know what that feels like, to receive forgiveness, and that is why they then in turn are able to offer forgiveness to others when wronged.

Check out the words to this amazing hymn --http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/hymntogod.php

Surrender Guilt to God's Grace

This is one of six responses that we have built into our life systems to deal with our guilt.

The biblical story of David and Bathsheba, focusing on Nathan’s timely entrance, probably exemplifies this best. Think of the number of ways David could have dealt with his guilt:
     – Nathan could have been arrested and killed
     – could have blamed Bathsheba
     – could have claimed the divine right of kings
     – could have abrogated the seventh commandment

Instead, he fell on his face before God and cried out…

Do you remember Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and their PTL ministry (PTL stands for "Praise The Lord" but the press said it stood for "Pass the Loot"). In 1986 PTL's income was $129 million and included Heritage USA – a 2300-acre religious theme park, a hotel and a shopping mall in North Carolina and its own TV station on 1200 channels.

Jim Bakker had an affair with the church secretary Jessica Hahn in 1980 and resigned in 1987 when it came to light that he had paid her about $265,000 in blackmail money over the affair.

After his resignation, it was discovered that the Bakkers had been taking large amounts of money from the ministry fund, including hundreds of thousands of dollars in salaries for Bakker and his wife, insurance, property and other fees. The IRS investigated and discovered that the couple had diverted $4.8 million for personal use.

Part of that sum came from fraudulent $1,000 partnerships, which secured each partner three days per year of free lodging at the hotel in Heritage USA. However Bakker took the money from so many partners that it was a promise that he was unable to keep. Indeed the fraud was on such a scale that it was estimated that about 1500 people a month were being defrauded of their free time-share.

Jim Bakker was indicted for fraud in 1988 and sentenced to 45 years in prison and fined $500,000.

When the scandal broke, Bakker's Christian friends quickly deserted him. He became an outcast in the Christian world. And when he was sentenced, his wife Tammy Faye left him and then divorced him.

Six months into his sentence, Bakker was surprised one afternoon when the prison warden called him into his office. Bakker had a visitor: Billy Graham. When Graham came in, Bakker asked him why he had come to visit – because he knew that any association with Bakker would tarnish Graham's reputation.

Graham replied that Bakker was his friend in good and in bad times – and now when things were bad, he would stand by his side. And Billy Graham was true to his word.

Bakker's sentence was eventually reduced, on appeal, to ten years and when he came out of prison on parole, he had nowhere to stay.

So the Grahams invited him to stay with them.

On the Sunday following Bakker's release, Ruth Graham took him to church with her.

Disregarding what people would think about her, she stood up in church and introduced Jim Bakker to the congregation as her friend Jim Bakker.

I think that this illustrates the idea of what happens when we surrender our guilt to God.  Sin scorches us most after we receive the grace of forgiveness, not before.  The forgiven one realizes the gravity of the sin more when they are genuinely repentant and have been forgiven.

Summarizing our six points:

1. When expelled by irreverence, guilt makes life in mutual harmony unliveable
2. When smothered by pride it makes one’s life unaccountable
3. When concealed by fear it makes the pain unbearable
4. When dismissed as cultural it makes morality untenable
5. When claiming absolute innocence before God it makes the claim unjustifiable 
6. When guilt surrenders to the grace of God, it makes the sin forgivable

In religion:

• Hindus pays his Karma through millions of reincarnations 
• Muslims intones hopefully, “Insh Allah” – if God wills – and even at death never knows any certainty of forgiveness

In Christianity – anyone who comes to the cross know with a certainty that the debt has been paid

Deny Guilt by Innocence

Basically this means that we do not feel any guilt because we have lived a life as best as is possible and so repentance is not a necessary concept within our framework.

I still remember the day and where I was walking with my uncle and we had our conversation on heaven and hell.  Uncle Jacob couldn't believe that famous people, and he named a few that lived a good life, would go to hell.  He himself, who looked after my grandmother for years, doing all the menial work that went along with that - he said do you believe I will go to hell even after all of that?

He was implying that there was no hell, and if he had to play harps all day in heaven, he would rather spend eternity in hell.

“British journalist and Christian Malcolm Muggeridge has stated (paraphrased) that the doctrine of the total depravity of man is the most empirically demonstrable doctrine in the bible, yet it is the one most universally denied. The basic idea is that when we look around, we see the sinfulness of mankind played out on every stage. In every newspaper, every news website, every television news program, we see the evidence of the sinfulness of mankind on display. Yet this doctrine is often denied, because we don't like to think of ourselves as 'bad people.' Some of these people would say that we are born 'basically good.' Others would see us as being 'good, with the choice to do good or evil.' These people note, rightly enough, that we don't do everything bad that we could do. Even some of the most evil people have some good qualities.”

It is true that Jesus did not come into this world to make bad people good. He came into this world to make dead people live.  Those who were dead to God were to be made alive to Him through the work of the Holy Spirit, 

        •What do we mean by good anyway?
        •Do we each have our own definition?
        •Do we deny everyone else the right to have their own definition of good?

I think that we all think we see the big picture.  We think we see everything there is to see.  However, bring a microscope to bear upon an object, and a world we didn't see suddenly startles the mind as it comes into view.  That's in effect how God sees the world - He sees everything.

A woman died and could not go to Heaven because she had been mean and cruel to everyone all her life. She went to Hell, and from there she prayed for mercy. Was there no way she could be admitted to Heaven?

The angel who guards the gates looked around and asked all the souls in Heaven, "Is there anyone here who has ever had a kind word or an act of generosity from this woman?" Only one stepped forth. He said that in life he had been a starving beggar, and one time this woman had given him an onion. The angel told him, “Bring me the onion.” It wasn’t much of an onion—small and shriveled—a pretty poor meal even for a beggar. Would it be enough of an act of kindness to raise the old woman out of Hell?

The angel took the onion and reached down with it into Hell. The old woman grasped it and the angel began to pull her up. The thin dry stalk seemed like it might snap at any minute, but as she held onto it, her feet were lifted from the ground. The other damned souls around her saw her beginning to rise Heavenward and they grabbed at her skirts and her feet, hoping to be pulled up with her. The onion stalk was so spindly. Would it hold?

The old woman looked down at the other damned souls clinging to her and yelled, “Let go! It’s my onion!” And with that, the onion broke.

•Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky (who also wrote Crime and Punishment)

Claiming complete innocence in the eyes of God is unjustifiable.

Dismiss Guilt as Cultural

This is one of six responses that we have built into our life systems to deal with our guilt.
The most convenient escape in a confused society is to glibly brush aside guilt as a cultureal appendage.  Such academic dismissal of moral reality fails to take into account that even when we differ culturally from one another in our behaviour, the reasons that justify that behaviour are often the same – meta-ethical similarities.

Moral understanding transcends particular societies and cultures.

We find lots of wickedness, self-deception, insincerity and hypocrisy at the United Nations. But we find too that diplomats understand each other’s arguments, and that they often quarrel about each other’s factual premises but rarely about pure moral principle. No one defends acknowledged unprovoked aggression. Hence, it appears that there is a transnational understanding of moral reasoning.

Conceal Guilt by Fear

This is one of six responses that we have built into our life systems to deal with our guilt.

The most tormenting way to deal with guilt - conceal it and live with the fear of exposure.

Maybe envy is the only one of the seven deadly sins that does not bring immediate gratification and fear adds apprehension to remorse in the midst of guilt.

As we learn from the movies, the blackmailer is never satisfied or sufficiently compensated, as is the one who lives in fear while nursing guilt ends up by blackmailing his or her own heart in order to pay the mind. And the heart is never consoled, for the mind is never sufficiently paid.

A wrong that is concealed seldom stops within the one who harbours that hurt. 

The pain is sooner or later spread to others, particularly to those closest to us. Victimless crimes are an illusion.

The story of Jacob’s deception of his father shows us how a nation was wronged as a result – deceit is a monster that needs constant feeding.

In an attempt to steal the blessing, Jacob thought he would only deceive his father and flee to some place of refuge until his father’s anger subsided. But his duplicity severely wounded the entire household. Because of his sin he would be absent from his mother’s bedside when she died.

Esau spent years tracking him down, and when the moment of confrontation between the brothers finally arrived, Jacob wrestled all night in prayer because of his fear that the wrong he had committed years before would be avenged against his children.

He could no longer run.

SAT-7 lives, operates and shares the Gospel in this area of the world where the harsh reality is that during thousands of years of history in the Middle East blood has been spilled because of wrongs that were carried forward for generations.

Experience dictates that sensitivity be at the forefront when dealing with one overtaken by fear. At the same time truth demands that such an individual be honestly addressed lest, in a desire not to add to the pain they already feel, we rob them of the possibility of healing – I am thinking of abuse at the moment.

No one wants to admit that at the heart of our malady is a mangled spirituality. The story from Greek mythology of Aprhrodite’s infidelities may still have something to say to us.  Living as she was in her unfaithfulness, she gave birth to two sons among others, one called Eros and the other called Phobos. Illicit indulgences beget eroticism and fear. This generation has birthed these twin monsters.

If expelling guilt by irreverence makes life unlivable and smothering it by pride makes one’s life unaccountable, then concealing guilty by fear makes life unbearable.

Smother Guilt by Pride

This is one of six responses that we have built into our life systems to deal with our guilt.

How we are perceived in public or esteemed by our circle of friends is for most people an all-consuming passion.

Listen carefully to the rationalizing and the explanations when a person is charged with having violated a law or is exposed for unsavoury behaviour.

The sinister manoeuvres towards self-exoneration – there is no limit to which the mind will not stoop for cover when wanting to appear justified.

Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent and it appeared that the buck stopped there.  King Saul was
a humble man who became king of Israel saw nothing in himself to make him worthy of such privilege.  Yet the brief enjoyment of power left its deadly aftertaste and poisoned his mind into believing that he was indeed due that greatness and acclaim.

•To strut into a courtroom guilty and claim innocence is not power but weakness
•To refuse to acknowledge failure is not success but self-deception
•To resist repentance before God is not intelligence but folly
•To be puffed up with pride in the face of wrongdoing is not to become bigger but to become hollow

“Of all the causes which conspire to blind our erring judgment, and misguide the mind; What the weak head with strongest bias rules, - Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools” - Alexander Pope, English Poet, 1688-1744

“The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility. You may remember, when I was talking about sexual morality, I warned you that the centre of Christian morals did not lie there. Well, now, we have come to the centre. According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.” - C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

This is why, as Jesus finished his 40 days in the desert, Satan presented his first two temptations before Jesus, appealing to His pride was an essential element - changing the stones to bread, and the world will follow you and jump and see if the angels will protect you.

"Humility is thinking less about yourself not thinking less of yourself. Pride is not pleasure in being praised, wanting to please others. The truly proud person could care less what others think of her…” - Peter Kreeft, Professor of Philosophy at Boston College

The lowest point of pride comes when an excuse to explain a choice is not even sought because the choice is deemed sufficient explanation for any action. When a point of not caring for any other person’s counsel or warning has been reached, when we bask in our own success, thinking ourselves invincible, then God might need to take drastic measures to break that stranglehold upon us.

 "In order to overcome their pride, God punishes certain men by allowing them to fall into sins of the flesh which, though they be less grievous, are evidently, outwardly, humanly more shameful. From this, indeed, the gravity of pride is made manifest, for just as a wise physician in order to cure a worse disease allows the patient to contract one that is less dangerous, so the sin of pride is shown to be more grievous by the very fact that as a remedy, God allows men to fall into other sins.” - Thomas Aquinas

Jesus consistently reminded His audience that the glory of His kingdom was not shown in the power of individual attainments but in the simplicity of a little child’s faith.