Tuesday, May 3, 2005

Passion for Purity

A Passion for Purity


By Carol Wiley
Director of Victim Assistance

Purity is an internal matter, of the mind and conscience, not external. Jesus made this very clear when He verbally chastised the Pharisees in Luke 11:40 (NAS), “You foolish ones, did not He who made the outside make the inside also?”

This is an important principle to remember as we try to make changes in our cultural norms, especially in the area of pornography and the harm it causes. We will never be able to make great strides in dealing with the detrimental effects of pornography in our society until we understand that it is a matter of the deterioration of a person’s heart and mind, one-heart and mind at a time.

The distasteful externals like the Sex-Oriented Businesses are there because a cancer has been growing in individual hearts and over-time the result is a seared conscience. They no longer can discern good from evil, health from depravation, life from death.

The distasteful externals like the Sex-Oriented Businesses are there because a cancer has been growing in individual hearts and over-time the result is a seared conscience. They no longer can discern good from evil, health from depravation, life from death.

The pornographers have been sending subtle messages for years and little by little our society’s standards for decency have been eroding. For example, what one laughs at one learns to accept. Check it out! Look at the messages on the sitcoms. People laugh at lifestyles and life choices today that would have been considered shameful ten years back. Today we laugh without thought of the erosion of decency within our own souls or the subtle lies we have bought that makes things once considered base and distasteful now funny. This is a pornographers dream.

Purity is an internal matter, of the mind and conscience, not external. Jesus made this very clear when He verbally chastised the Pharisees in Luke 11:40 (NAS), “You foolish ones, did not He who mad the outside make the inside also?”

This is an important principle to remember as we try to make changes in our cultural norms, especially in the area of pornography and the harm it causes. We will never be able to make great strides in dealing with the detrimental effects of pornography in our society until we understand that it is a matter of the deterioration of a person’s heart and mind, one-heart and mind at a time.

The distasteful externals like the Sex-Oriented Businesses are there because a cancer has been growing in individual hearts and over-time the result is a seared conscience. They no longer can discern good from evil, health from depravation, life from death.

The distasteful externals like the Sex-Oriented Businesses are there because a cancer has been growing in individual hearts and over-time the result is a seared conscience. They no longer can discern good from evil, health from depravation, life from death.

The pornographers have been sending subtle messages for years and little by little our society’s standards for decency have been eroding. For example, what one laughs at one learns to accept. Check it out! Look at the messages on the sitcoms. People laugh at lifestyles and life choices today that would have been considered shameful ten years back. Today we laugh without thought of the erosion of decency within our own souls or the subtle lies we have bought that makes things once considered base and distasteful now funny. This is a pornographers dream.

Self-actualization is the sitcom’s god and we have a generation of people who live in “freedom” that leads to isolation and bondage. Women are depicted as sex objects, men are only men if they can score, fathers are idiots that have to have domineering wives to run their families, kids are only sharp if they can talk crude and be disrespectful to all authority, love is sex whether one is married or not. The key to self-actualization is you are your own god and you are the only authority that exists for you. Your truth comes from inside your own heart. Your fulfillment in life is all that matters – you are an island. God tells one to beware of this type thinking in Jeremiah 17:9 (NAS), “The heart is more deceitful than all else and desperately sick; who can understand it?”

Yet, the pornographers being their own god feed on people who are willing to laugh themselves to sleep. Give pornographers a generation of people who live without an understanding of the dignity God desires for their lives and they are in control. Give pornographers a generation of people who believe that self-fulfillment without any boundaries is the ultimate goal of life and they set the standards for decency in a society.

The enemy has arrived and is unashamedly showing force in our families and our culture. We are laughing ourselves to sleep while the pornography industry is growing and claiming new victims daily. Sex-oriented businesses aren’t thriving in our city because the majority like them or want them, sex for sale on the Internet isn’t an eight billion dollar a year industry because the majority of citizens like the victimization of men, women, and children. It is running rampant because many people are rationalizing and compromising instead of standing up for what they really want for their families, their cities, their culture. Won’t you take the challenge and leave the sidelines and join an army of people who are saying NO! To the lies and the norms that the pornographers are selling as truth.

As citizens, people of faith in God Almighty, the Creator of Life and Author of True Freedom we must develop a passion for purity and God’s standards for life. We can make a difference when a passion for purity rules our minds and conscience. Join Citizens for Community Values as we strategically fight for decency in our culture. For more information, call me at 685-1493 or email me at carol@ccvmemphis.org.

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