Ancient Truth | Modern Sound

Q1: What constitutes adultery? Is pornography considered adultery? Is looking at another person with desire and lust considered adultery?

Adultery is any sexual activity that takes place outside of marriage.  So the real question is “what is a sexual activity?”  Jesus says that lusting in your heart is the same as doing it.  

Matthew 5:27 

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.”

The heart is easy to corrupt, in fact our hearts are all born leading us to darkness and corruption. 

Jesus said in Mark 7:21: 

“For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” 

So the bottom line is there is no loophole, there is no justifying sexual activity outside of marriage.  This is all encompassing, it includes everything from mental fantasy, pornography, naked photos, long thoughtful looks at magazine covers, billboards, bikinis, masturbation, oral sex, passionate kissing, fondling, peeking down blouses, sizing up how someone fills out their jeans, and any other lustful meditation.

But, do not despair. No one has any hope based on their ability to please God or man, no one is good enough, or even close. Our hope is in Christ’s mercy alone.  None of us will live a perfectly pure life. A common 12 inch ruler shows us that none of us can draw a straight line. God draws straight with crooked lines.  This is our true hope.

It was at the apex of my teenage narcissism that I sat before my mother and father and confessed the latest and greatest disaster of my adolescence.  I knew this one was different though.  There would be no talking my way out of this problem, indeed, my mother and father and even the rest of my family would this time be effected by my choices.  It was going to be bad.

My dad was a big guy and a tough guy and as he silently came to the boil I remember my mother saying to him, “Tom, he needs our forgiveness”.  I was stunned, but it was the moment in which I grew up.  My mother’s forgiveness changed the course of my life and since that moment I have tried to pay the two of them back by trying to be someone they could be proud of and glad they had forgiven.  Strange that I had experienced the power of forgiveness before I understood why it was so powerful.  It would take a few years and a Christian conversion to work that out.

Today, my mother has Alzheimer’s disease.  If you have watched the movie “The Notebook” you have seen the romantic version of the story.  In the movie a great love story is retold and in the telling a woman is released from the prison of her mind to remember her husband and family.  It is cruel to see the movie end with mother retreating back into the world of dementia not knowing who is in the room or what that story is about.  Gena Rowlands played the mother in the movie and did justice to dilemma of families affected by the disease.  The real notebook though is different.  My mother waits in a hospital ward with other older women waiting for a place in a care home for those who have the disease.  It is a sad Victorian hospital that has seen better days.

I never had a close relationship to my mother.  In fact, I often had the thought she was more than slightly mad.  I am ashamed of that thought today.  Dad worked of course, and being paid by the hour, he worked every hour he could (especially time and a half for Saturdays and double time for Sundays).  Mum looked after the house.  In that house - one bathroom and about 2o00 square ft. - lived ten people.  My grandfather, my older sister and her two kids (married at sixteen and home again by nineteen), my younger brother, two younger sisters, and mum and dad.  That, I suppose, is the reason why my mum was slightly mad.  I don’t remember her smiling much and don’t really remember her having fun.  Always cleaning and cooking and doing “piece work” to help make money for the family.  What does live with me though is the memory of my mum and dad taking a mattress out and laying it on the floor of our family room to make their bed up each night.  There was just not enough room. 

Today, lying in the hospital bed, my mother knows who I am but doesn’t remember my children.  Or that I am married.  She asked my brother once, “How is your mother?”.  My father visits every day and chats with my mother whether she recognises him or not.  There is no notebook to read and no magic to make her return to who she once was.  And yet “The Notebook” isn’t completely off the mark.  For on occasion the disease shows the relationship that was once there between mum and dad.  My own formative years were at a time that was full of struggle for my parents as they tried to just make ends meet - I can hardly remember them having fun together.  But mum now occasionally seems to regress to a time when it was just her and Tom and sometimes, just sometimes, you see in her eyes the love they had together 50 years ago. 

 When I write this blog I sometimes wonder, what’s the point.  But seeing my mother in the grips of this disease has made me realise that even the most trivial things in life can be glorious and significant.  Take away the power to know your spouse or your son or your grandchildren and what is left?  Not much.  Thinking again about my mother also has made me realise that parenting can all boil down to a moment’s decision.  That’s an unforgiving test which my mum passed but I fear I will not.  Who knows when that moment will come and if so, will I be ready?  Are you ready?

The Amazon Kindle is changing my life.  I have spent a lot of time on my own these last 18 months or so.  I don’t like it.  After 25 years of marriage and 18 years of children I can vouchsafe the biblical quote, “it is not good for man to be alone”.  I miss my helper and guide, Karen; and I miss Jack, Kate, and Hope.  Of course together they confuse me by all talking at the same time and make fun of me that I cant keep up with them (poor father …….).  But I cant live without them.

For Christmas Karen gave me an Amazon Kindle which is quite simply the best gift I have ever had.  For a reader like me it is like manna from heaven.  Of course, unlike manna, it is not free, but I would have paid twice the price for this thing.  It is an electronic book reader but I predict it will be more than that, it will become a cultural force like the iPod. 

Lets take a tour round by Kindle.  On it I have both the NIV and King James bible (the King James bible has never been surpassed in terms of its language - God definitely seems like God when he speaks in King James English).  For reference I have Roget’s Thesaurus which I admit is completely unusable on the Kindle.  Currently I am reading “The Pillars of the Earth” by Ken Follet - a wonderful read.  Also on there and already read are, “The Blue Knight” by Joseph Wambaugh; “Moscow Rules” by Daniel Silva; “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” by Stig larsen, and “Extreme Measures” by Vince Flynn.  Oh, and also on there, for my little girl Hope’s reading pleasure, “Twilight” by Stephanie Meyer.

So much for the spiritual and the entertaining.  On the more educational side I have “The Ascent of Money” by Niall Ferguson; “Gomorrah” by Roberto Savia; “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell; “The Reason for God” by Tim Keller; and “10 Big Lies about America” by Michael Medved (a bad book and bad use of the $5.99 it cost). 

I wont share with you the periodicals I also pick up occasionally.  Suffice to say I always have my nose in this thing and I can always find an excuse to buy more books for it too.

I am writing this in my house in Leiden, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leiden ) which during the middle ages and through the reformation was part of the great revolution in learning in continental Europe.  About 350 miles south is Strasbourg where in 1440 Johannes Gutenberg invented something that we would recognise as a printing press.  This machine allowed people who would have seen only one book in their life (a bible, probably chained to an alter) to ownbooks.  This unbelievable opportunity changed the course of history and gave access to learning to a mass audience.  The world changed because of Gutenberg’s machine. 

I count 15 books currently on my Kindle.  In the “Kindle 2″ there will be capacity for approximately 150 books and the ability to play audio books and mp3 files.  I don’t know if this is a Gutenberg moment but it seems to me a moment when a piece of technology arrives at the right price-point, with the right combination of features, at the right time.  That is, an iPod moment. 

As a final thought, think about this.  I downloaded the NIV bible in less than 2 minutes to my Kindle - does it change my attitude to the book itself to have it in such consumable form?