Do Not Forget The Holy Nature of God

"Myriads of professing Christians at the present day have not an idea of their own sinfulness and guilt in the sight of God. They flatter themselves that they have never done anything very wicked. They have never murdered, or stolen, or committed adultery, or borne false witness. They cannot surely be in much danger of missing heaven. They forget the holy nature of that God with whom they have to do. They forget how often they break His law in temper, or imagination, even when their outward conduct is correct. They never study such portions of Scripture as the fifth chapter of Matthew, or at any rate they study it with a thick veil over their hearts, and do not apply it to themselves. The result is that they are wrapped up in self-righteousness. Like the church of Laodicea, they are 'rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing.' (Rev. 3:17.) Self-satisfied they live, and self-satisfied too often they die." 

- J.C. Ryle

Brian McLaren Finally Comes Out of the Closet as a New Ager

Posted by Christine Pack

Emergent Church Leader, Brian McLaren

Thank you to Eric Barger for pointing out this story. Writer Brian McLaren, who is often wrongly identified as an evangelical Christian (even though he rejects the central tenet of Christianity, Christ's atoning death on the Cross, and calls it "false advertising for God"), will be one of the keynote speakers with something called The Vision Project. The Vision Project is a New Age think tank and group that is dedicated to promoting its New Age view of the world: chiefly, that all of life is evolving upward, and that as all humans evolve spiritually, they will become spiritually enlightened and thus will be able to "co-create" and transform the world around them into a better and better place.

In joining The Vision Project, Brian McLaren has now openly aligned himself with New Agers like Barbara Marx Hubbard, Andrew Cohen, Jean Houston and Heidi Rose Robbins.

 What is The Vision Project? 

The Vision Project is a New Age think tank/community whose purpose is to advance the New Age eschatological view. Yes, even heretics and New Agers have eschatology. It's wrong eschatology, but it's eschatology nonetheless.

es·cha·tol·o·gy /ˌeskəˈtäləjē/ - Noun: The part of theology concerned with death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind. 

The New Age eschatological view is that all people have a divine inner spark within, and, for a significant period of their physical evolutionary development, are unaware of this. But that, once humankind has physically evolved to a certain state, they will begin to awaken to this divine inner spark, and thus begin their spiritual evolutionary journey. This is believed to culminate in an awakening to one's own divinity and one's ability to co-create the future of our world with God. It is believed that humanity will reach a "critical mass" in its spiritual evolution, at which time a paradigm shift will occur, and a "heaven" or "enlightenment" will be ushered in. This "critical mass" is believed to be achieved when "enough" people awaken to their inner divinity and ability to co-create the future of our planet along with God. (Of course, this is absolutely against the clear teaching of the Bible which is that God alone holds the destiny of our world in his hand, and that, rather than becoming better and better, the world will spiral into sinful wickedness as the return of Christ draws closer.)

You might be asking: Why does it matter how lost New Agers think about the end times? Because it is not only the New Agers who reject the clear teaching of the Bible that as God's judgment draws closer and closer, the world will spiral into deeper and deeper depravity and wickedness. Leaders of the dangerous and heretical Emergent Church Movement - many of whom have bestselling books that are  popular among our youth - also embrace the New Age view of the end times.

Best-selling author and creator of the NOOMA videos Rob Bell also talks about "co-creating" with God:

"I would begin with the understanding that God has left the world unfinished, and so, in Genesis chapter 1, this creation poem is about trees that are created to have the ability to create more trees. So, to me an authentic spirituality begins with the premise that we co-create the world with God. The world is not done, and that all of action is essentially rooted in creativity. Any way in which you contribute to the ongoing creation of the world you are in fact, in some form or another being creative and so then I think the question from there becomes 'what is art?'"

Emergent Church leader Brian McLaren, besides openly partnering with New Agers on this platform, has already written of his alignment with this New Age eschatological thinking here.

You don't think this is a big deal? That anyone is paying attention to this nonsense? That perhaps The Vision Project is just a vanity project without any power or bite?  Look again at that roster. It is closely aligned with the United Nations, and lists the following speakers and organizations:

Kofi Annan, Secretary-General UN 

Bono, Lead singer of band U2 

Karan Singh, Member of Parliament, India 

Vacalav Havel, Former president of the Czech Republic 

Ela Gandhi, Member of Parliment, African National Congress, South Africa 

The Earth Charter Initiative (a United Nations document aimed at fostering sustainable development, and created by former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev)

This matters because the Emergent Church leaders I mentioned above (Brian McLaren and Rob Bell), while perhaps not all that familiar to many of us, are rock stars to our children, teenagers and college students. Their books sell in the millions.  Their influence is substantial. And we, as parents, are accountable for our children and will one day stand before the Lord and give an account for them. By God's grace, may we awaken to the dangerous teachings and leaders that have crept in unawares, and make every attempt to make sure that our impressionable young people are awake and alert to their dangerous teachings.

photo credit: AjDele Photography via photopin cc

 Additional Resources 

What Rob Bell's Theology Looks Like In The Real World

Love Wins? A Review

What Is The Emerging Church Movement and Why Is It Dangerous?

"Love Wins" the Smoking Gun That Proves Rob Bell is a "Christian Universalist"

Is Rob Bell A Universalist?  Yes and No.

Rob Bell: Don't Call It Universalism

Meeting at Mars Hill Bible Church Over Rob Bell's New Book

Jesus Gave Us Almost All We Know About The Doctrine of Hell

What Is A "Christian Universalist" (Besides an Oxymoron)?

What Is the "Wider Mercy" Doctrine?

Heads Up, Christian Parents: Rob Bell Is Teaching Your Kids Universalism

Two Thoughts on the Rob Bell Brouhaha

Rob Bell Praises New Age Author Huston Smith

Rob Bell and Shane Hipps: Blood on Their Hands

Quantum Science Proves 'Everything Is Spiritual?' Not So Fast, Says Quantum Physicist Dr. Frank Stootman

Former New Ager Marcia Montenegro Interviewed About Latest Harry Potter Movie

Posted by Christine Pack

From Christian broadcaster Tim Berend's program on KKVV radio, an interview with former New Ager and professional astrologer - now born again Christian - Marcia Montenegro:

Marcia Montenegro, a guest from the old St. Louis program, is today's guest. She is a former licensed astrologer and former president of astrological society. Tim asks Marsha about those predictions by astrologers and others that come true. Marsha responds that sometimes it is a coincidence, sometimes guesses, and sometimes even demonic guidance. She says it took her about a year and a half from the time she came to the Lord until the time she realized that astrology was evil. 

She then talks about the latest Harry Potter movie. This is the final movie in the series and has a special draw. There is now one whole generation that has grown up with Harry Potter. Tim asks Marsha how to witness to a person that is a big fan of Harry Potter. Marsha responds that God DOES take some of the things in Harry Potter seriously, even though some people don't. Marsha also objects to the underlying theme that learning the occult practices by Harry is a "good thing". Tim reads Deuteronomy 18:10-14 that deals with familiar spirits and diviners and sorcery. 

Tim asks Marsha about parents whose kids complain that "all the other kids are doing it". Marsha responds that it is a parents job to make those decisions. With older teenagers, she would sit down with them and talk to them about God and how He views it. Tim and Marsha also say that a parent is responsible to God for their children. 

She has several articles on books and movies on her home page, which is located at Christian Answers for the New Age.

The interview can listened to in its entirety here.

photo credit: Great Beyond via photopin cc

 Additional Resources 

How Much Witchcraft Is Okay?

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Is Death Still the Next Great Adventure?

What is Christian Liberty? by John MacArthur

Miller-Urey Proved Molecules-To-Man Evolution? Not So Fast, Says Biologist Dr. Jerry Bergman

File this one under "Why Do We Still Believe Discredited Scientific Experiments?"

Miller-Urey were the scientists who created the now very famous 1952 experiment that supposedly proved evolution. When people talk about the primordial ooze experiment that was sparked by lightning and which "proved" evolution, this is what they are talking about. This is also known as molecules-to-man evolution, or as skeptics call it, "from-the-goo-to-the-zoo-t​o-you" evolution. The problem is that the experiment was cooked from the beginning, by being recreated in an oxygen free environment, as oxygen is widely known to be detrimental to chemical evolution. Scientists now know today that the early atmosphere on earth had far more oxygen than even previously believed. The result of this experiment? Equal parts right-handed and left-handed organic molecules were consistently produced. This is a toxic mixture which cannot produce life.

Miller-Urey? Epic fail


Photo credit: (http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/staff/dave/roanoke/bio101ch19a.htm)

 Additional Resources 

Why the Miller-Urey Research Argues Against Abiogenesis - Dr. Jerry Bergman, PhD Biology

Proof of Young Earth Creation - Dr. Jason Lisle, PhD Astrophysics

A List of Modern Day Scientists Who Believe Science Supports the Biblical Account of Creation

Radiocarbon Dating Proves Evolution? Not So Fast, Says Dr. Andrew Snelling, Geologist

Answers in Genesis

Creation Museum

The Invention of Adolescence

posted by Christine Pack

Note: I found this article by Otto Scott on the Defending Contending site, and think it speaks very aptly to our culture today. I have also heard Paul Washer teach on this strange phenomenon of "adolescence" as well, but could not find the sermon in which this appeared. 

Adolescence is now accepted by most Americans as a strange and difficult period marked by wild swings of mood, outbursts of temper, rudeness, rebelliousness, and personality changes — all involuntary.

They would be surprised to learn that this period was unknown, unrecognized, and unseen in every previous civilization, culture, and society throughout the immensely long history of humanity. It is, even today, unknown in large areas of the inhabited world.

I recall marveling at the calm that pervaded families in South America during my last extended stay there in the early 1950s. I did not hear a single rude response by a teenager to anyone. No doubt it was different in the slums, but this was the atmosphere among the middle and upper classes.

In earlier times, this was once true even in the United States, the land now known for difficult children. There was even a time when there were no adolescents.

That was, of course, a time beyond the memory of even our oldest inhabitants: a time before the Civil War, during the First American Republic. Our great social changes began after that conflict; after huge waves of immigration came via the new, safer steamboats; during the period when many Americans anxious for a higher, more complete education, went to Europe — and especially to Germany — to study.

One of these was G. Stanley Hall, who earned a doctorate in psychology under William James at the new Johns Hopkins University in 1878. Hall went to Germany for two years and was swept up in German psychological research and became especially interested in the mental development of children.

After that immersion in what is usually termed “the latest scientific developments,” Hall returned to Johns Hopkins as a professor of psychology and pedagogy. (Wonderfully impressive terms!) Hall taught John Dewey, Lewis Terman (who later pioneered “mental” tests) and Arnold Gesell, later famed as a “child” psychologist.

Hall conducted numerous “studies” of children during the 1880s and 1890s, and in 1904 issued a landmark book cumbersomely titled Adolescence: Us Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education.

That title alone should have warned the wary, but it was a time when a number of savants were appearing with novel theories about human behavior. Dr. Freud, addicted first to opium and then cocaine, had convinced many of his patients that he could read thoughts of which they were themselves unaware. Lombroso’s theory that a criminal was an anthropological type with certain physical characteristics still had a following; so did phrenology: the idea that the contours of the skull indicated mental and spiritual qualities. It was a time, in other words, when — in the name of science — human beings were being redefined by various individuals who claimed to possess supernormal powers of observation and insight.

Dr. Hall was one of these. His theories fit inside spread of Spencer’s social Darwinism and the fashionable belief in the perfectibility of Man through formal, secular education. He thought the embryo in the womb repeated Darwin’s evolution of humanity from the sea, and that the stages of childhood repeated the stages of social evolution from pre-savagery to civilization. He left the definition of civilization unstated and seemed to believe that it was a permanent condition achieved in the West in 1905.

Dr. Hall argued that childhood consisted of “three stages, each with a parallel in racial history” and each requiring certain set teaching approaches. Infancy and early childhood were equal to pre-stages of culture, and parent/teachers should allow the child to play with blocks and to exercise freely. At six or seven, he believed the child experienced various crises leading to the “pre-adolescent” years of eight to twelve, when behavior is comparable to “the world of early pigmies and other so-called savages.’”[1]

At this point (six or seven) the child was, in Dr. Hall’s view, ready for school — and its discipline. But a new period of crisis, he believed, arrived between thirteen and eighteen — which he termed adolescence.

Hall compared this to ancient and medieval civilizations. He believed it was a crucial period, “because it prepares the youth for the acquisition of knowledge, mores and skills that will determine the future of the individual and, by extension, that of the human race.”

He also believed that it was “a stormy period . . . when there is a peculiar proneness to be either very good or very bad.’”[2]

There does not seem to be any basis for this conclusion. Throughout all the previous centuries of Christianity — and of Judaism before that, twelve had been considered the age of maturity. Both confirmation in the Christian religion in Pre-reformation centuries, and the Bar Mitzvah in Judaism (then and now) took place at that age. Thereafter, a young person was expected to behave as a responsible adult, and to assume a place in adult society.

Boys in New England whaling towns went to sea and rose to become masters of clipper ships in their early twenties Girls married at sixteen and set about raising a family, managing a home and behaving as matrons. Their counterparts around the world behaved the same. Life began early; tantrums may have occurred, but they had no general rationale connected to age: everyone was held responsible, and God was not blamed for anyone’s misbehavior.

Social life, however, is replete with imitative patterns. People are apt to behave as they are expected to behave — whether well or foolishly.

Hall’s ideas fit the fashion: it would not be fair to say that they were deliberately conceived to do so; it would be accurate to say that Hall was a man of his time, more than a man of original insight. He codified ideas about children and youths that were then floating in the air. That was the reason his argument was so easily swallowed by educators and other professionals. True originality has a much harder time.

In any event, Hall’s work provided a basis for segregating school children by age. Elementary school children were segregated from secondary schools along the lines of his “observations.” Twelve was the age of the break. The new fashion spread even into religion, and the clergy began to aim different lessons at special age groups: the Bible was too much for the young.

The movement mushroomed into special courses for special ages. At certain ages, a child was expected to learn this much — and no more. To learn behind the group was a cause for concern, so in time, was to learn ahead of the group. Norms came into being; to fit the norm became (as it is now) more important than to sprint ahead — and to fall behind is a calamity. Never mind that different children grow at different rates at different times and that even individual progress is sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Differences were put in the background; age in the foreground.

At a certain time, therefore, in the lives of contemporary American children, certain behavior patterns are expected — and subtly mandated. Nor is this only true of children. There is now an expected beginning and an end to a working career: one cannot be too young — or too old.

We have, today, an entire hierarchy of social groups based on age: from Day School to Leisure Village. There are assumptions surrounding each age group: from expected tantrums by adolescents to PMS for women of a certain age — and an end to creativity from the old.

There are many variations of this development — from youth gangs to the forced retirement. In fact, we have almost achieved a society nearly completely segregated by age in which the generations have been narrowed from the traditional thirty years to far fewer. Age now separates us more than ever before in any society; persons raised only a few decades apart find one another nearly incomprehensible. Dr. Hall, therefore, can be said to have influenced us as much (and perhaps more) than Darwin or Dr. Freud, and like these more celebrated “thinkers” has brought us at least an equal load of distress, disturbance, and unhappiness.

Originally appeared in the CHALCEDON REPORT, JULY, copyright 1991. 

1. Howard P. Chudacoff, How Old Are You? Age of Consciousness in American Culture, (Princeton University Press, 1989), p. 67.

2. Ibid.

photo credit: Dbl90 via photopin cc

Discontentment Is A Sin

"Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me." Philippians 4:11-13

Below are excerpts from an excellent sermon delivered by Jeremy Clarke, pastor of Legacy Baptist Church in Northwest Arkansas.  This sermon, Discipleship Part 1, is part of an expository series and can be downloaded in its entirety here.

❝God does not suggest that we ought to be content in his care and provision; He commands it.  Contentment is biblically described as freedom from external need due to confidence in God's adequate provision.  There is an intrinsic relationship between being content and your faith.  If you have Christ, you have all that you need.  Conversely, if a man has everything and doesn't have Christ, he has nothing.

And yet the church reflects so much of the world in this, I fear.....I'm convinced that the more people have the more discontent they become.  The church in America is literally saturated with discontented people who've been incubated in this soil of American consumerism.  They're just grumbling and complaining and covetous consumers.....it's really quite sad.  Listen to me.  Few sins are uglier to God than complaining.   Few sins hinder our effectiveness for the gospel more than discontentedness.  And because that's true, my children will tell you, that nothing is dealt with more severely in my own home than complaining and discontentedness.  Complaining at the Clarke home will typically elicit a very swift response.  I'm particularly sensitive to that issue as a parent and as a pastor, and I'm convinced that the greatest threat that faces our children is not drugs or promiscuity, the greatest threat that faces our children today is the seed of Christless discontent germinating in the soil of a home that presents a child with every temporal whim under the sun, and in doing so ignores or at least neutralizes the responsibility of pointing these young reprobates to Christ, and his sufficiency.  And children do not come into the world, content, do they?  Not by any stretch of the imagination. As we'll learn in the coming weeks, contentment must be learned.  Paul said, "I've learned to be content."  Discontent in the home must receive a swift, decisive sentence, or your child's heart will be given over fully to do evil.

The American church today is rich in a way that is foreign to the rest of the world.  And yet the church in America seems to find more to complain about, and the most minute issues to grumble about, and subsequently there seems to be very little humility in the church today, very little thankfulness, very little gratitude.  Servanthood seems almost to have been replaced by expectation, which does nothing but further feed discontent.  I'm standing here telling you that until we become servants and stop being some discontented customers, we will never attain to the deep intimate knowledge of the Son of God.  Never ever.

Every complaint that breaches your mouth, that breaches my mouth, is an expression of faithlessness.  Further, it's an indictment against a sovereign God who ordained the circumstances under which you are complaining.  All of your complaints and all of my complaints, one way or another, are complaints against the providential purpose and will of God.  And they do nothing but hinder your spiritual growth and your advance in Christ.  Discontent is devastating.  It's a devastating sin.  So let's not confuse contentment with just some nice, Christian virtue.  That's not what contentment is.  On the contrary, this is so serious, this issue of contentment, that it is nothing less than a divine precept.  It is commanded by God.  You're to be content with whatever you have, you're to be content with food and wages and clothing and your spouse.  This isn't a request.  It's not a suggestion, it is a command.

To complain about something is to complain about the circumstances that God has ordained.   You can put that in context of our lives today.  Pull up to the gas station, and you see it's $3.50 - oh, for crying out loud, this is crazy, $3.50?  These are circumstances that God has ordained, I don't have the right to complain about these things.  I  don't need to get fearful or concerned, because God promises to never leave me nor forsake me.  You go to start your car one morning, it doesn't work, and you go, ah, great, this is crazy, this is just not gonna do.  Does it not all belong to God? Has He abdicated? Is He not still on the throne? Is this not his car, are you not his child, does the road not belong to him, and the mechanic that you'll see, are these not all under the sovereignty of God?  Don't I give the mechanic breath, and the skills that he has, don't they come from me? Oh, fearful, grumbling, complaining child of God.  Relinquish your complaining. You are complaining against the circumstances that God has ordained.

God's Word declares it, and you and I are to comply.  We could end right there this morning, couldn't we?  God offers much more than that, though.  God doesn't just issue a command, He gives us the means by which we are to comply, the regenerative properties of his Spirit.  So God motivates us toward obedience by changing the principles and features of our hearts and motives and inclinations, so that we not only can, but long, to comply.  So we're to comply, but righteous duty is all but completely obscured in today's church by this matter of discontent.  Duty is not a popular word in the church in America. I think every one of us would agree with that.  Few Christians see their sojourn on earth as a duty, a divine enlistment.  The church today knows a whole lot about freedom, a whole lot about fulfillment, all of that kind of stuff, but it is calloused to words like 'commission,' 'obedience,' 'surrender,' 'charge,' 'duty,' 'sacrifice.'  We live in a self-absorbed, indulgent time, and we're insulated by all sorts of resources and comforts.  We've fostered a culture of expectation, a culture of preoccupation with whatever meets our 'felt needs.'  It ought not to be that way.  And around and around the church goes in this Americana, feel-good kind of spiritual haze: spiritually uncommitted, spiritually immature, possessing little if any discernment, little if any Biblical conviction, little if any aptitude for service and devotion and sacrifice.  Now listen to me: God's will, and the majesty of his infallible Word, is all that we need to motivate us toward compliance.  That's it.  It's all that we need to captivate us into obedience. You are to be content, and I am to be content, because the holiness of God demands it.

You see until the church returns to a Godly fear of the Almighty, until we become laid low by his resplendent majesty, until the church becomes shaken to its very roots, so that we see ourselves in comparison to his Christ, we will never know the depth of our own sin, the depth of our own ingratitude, the depth of discontentedness, the depth of our covetousness, we'll never know the heinousness of our grumbling and complaining.  The church today is not deeply pained by its sinful discontent, so much so that we don't have an inkling of the understanding of the holiness of God.  Not an inkling.

We are to be content because we understand that we serve an infinitely holy, inifinitely supernatural, omnipotent, majestic, resourceful God who says 'I will never leave you nor forsake you.'  He's a God who is faithful to his promises.  To be discontent is to trample that promise underfoot.  In fact, it's to call God a liar.

The operation of your life runs directly proportional to your view of God.  It's a critical thing for Christians to understand.  It's a simple formula that says this: to the extent that you understand God's holiness, to that extent you don't complain.  And I truly believe that this is Ground Zero for the church today, coming back to a vivid hunger for understanding the holiness of God, the majesty of God.  It's missing in the church today, and I think it has a lot to do with the saccharine teaching that has developed over the last 150 years.  The church today is not the same as it was 150 years ago. We've lost our solemn appreciation for the holiness of God. Our radios are turned to Christian presets that have lots of nice songs, and we come to churches that foster lots of nice feelings and emotions, lots of nice thoughts, but there is little or no acknowledgment of the incomprehensible holiness of God Almighty.

You scour your Bible, and you will see that any account of an encounter with God is accompanied by an overwhelming sense of sin and holy terror.  That's what it means to be confronted by the holiness of God.  And if at this very moment the Lord of glory would reveal to us here in this room just how detestable our discontent is before him, every breathing soul in this room would be prostrate on the floor, mourning in sorrow over that sin.  We don't have an inkling.

And don't miss this: discontent in the heart is revealed in the mouth.  Those who complain most are those who are the most ignorant of the holiness of God.  Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.  There is a critical relationship between a man's humility and his embrace of the holiness of God.  That embrace is revealed at the point of his speech.  I'm convinced that the greatest expression of ignorance of the character of God is expressed in complaining, in grumbling and in discontent.  Lamentations 3:39 "Why should any living mortal, any man, offer complaint in view of his sin?"  That Scripture is saying: you must have lost your mind, to offer complaint in view of the immense sin in your life.  I'm speaking about myself as well. Why on earth would we offer complaint in light of our sin?  You ought to underline that verse in your Bible, you ought to teach it diligently to your children, you ought to put it on the cornerposts of your home, you ought to wake up, and rise up, with that thought ever before you.  If your children complain, if you complain, swiftly and decisively deal with that sin.  Put it to bed.❞

photo credit: mahalie via photopin cc
photo credit: Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources via photopin cc

 Additional Resources 

Discipleship, from the Nature of the Church series (Pastor Jeremy Clarke, Legacy Baptist Church)

For the Christian: "I Will Never Leave You Nor Forsake You"

Serving One Another in Love

On Christmas Dispositions

Legacy Baptist Church, Northwest Arkansas

God's Design for Marriage Not So Bad After All?

Posted by Christine Pack

In a recent New York Times article, author Erica Jong who famously championed free love and commitmentless sex, has posed the question: "Is Sex Passé?" Erica Jong is known for having fought for decades to help women claim their "right" to casual sex. Now, 40 years later, an entire generation has been brought up in the aftermath of the free love 60's and 70's to become a culture that literally pulsates with sex: sexuality is on display on billboards, on TV shows, in movies, roaring through the internet in every deviant form, in books, even in the hoochie mama clothes sold at Wal-Mart and Target in the girls' section. But now, a reversal seems to be occurring. Writes Jong:

"I was fascinated to see, among younger women, a nostalgia for ’50s-era attitudes toward sexuality. The older writers in my anthology are raunchier than the younger writers. The younger writers are obsessed with motherhood and monogamy."

In Jong's mind, the reason for this backlash is because "daughters always want to be different from their mothers. If their mothers discovered free sex, then they want to rediscover monogamy." Jong seems to to believe that while the sexually repressed women of her generation had to fight for their sexual freedom, the women of this generation who already have this freedom are celebrating this freedom by going back to.....monogamy and children.

To make this story all the more interesting, Erica Jong's own daughter, author Molly Jong-Fast, has written of her upbringing in a heartbreaking way: of having a mother who casually walked around naked, of pornographic pictures of lesbians hanging in her home, of being required by her "very progressive middle school" when she was an eighth grader to go to a local store to purchase condoms, of her harrowing drug addiction.  Having survived this childhood, Jong-Fast came to reject the idea of sexual freedom as a good thing. She has also written of her deep desire to be "normal," and of being a stay-at-home mom who has a "closed marriage" (which, presumably because she was writing for Salon, she had to spell out by helpfully explaining that this is "where you only sleep with the person you are married to").

Some Pharisees came to him to test Jesus. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” 

“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” (Matthew 19:3-6)

In reading through Erica Jong's article and then several articles by her daughter Molly Jong-Fast, I came across a photograph of this family dated 1980, when Molly Jong-Fast was two years old, and Erica Jong was married to Molly's father, Jonathan Fast. I looked at the picture of this husband and father, and wondered: What must it have been like to be the man who was married to the woman who worked so hard to help women claim the "right" to not be monogamous? Was this a man who was valued as the leader of his home? Was he respected? I have no way of knowing the inner workings of this marriage, documented by this single black and white photograph. But what I do know is that to go outside the parameters of marriage, as it is ordained by God, is foolish. God's commands for us - all of them - are for our blessing and our benefit. As Christians, we should know that God does not give us commands to limit us, to take away our fun and freedom. But this is so often our thinking - wrong thinking, sin-addled thinking: that God is a big kill-joy, limiting us, not wanting good for us.  Let us let Scripture align our thinking in this area:

Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:9-11)

When we understand God rightly, we know that his purposes are always two-fold: (1) to be glorified but also (2) to bless those who belong to him. And thus, our obedience to his command about marriage results not only in God being glorified by the harmonious, loving unions that result - and serve as a testament to the world of God's loving care and provision - but also results in blessing the men, women and children who live in obedience to their Creator. Glory to God for his care and provision - He is deserving of all honor and praise.