“Having eyes full of adultery and that cannot cease from sin, enticing unstable souls. They have a heart trained in covetous practices, and are accursed children.” 2nd Peter 2:14
I would like to take the time to say something here that I think is quiite importanat to point out for us from the writting of Peter.
These false teachers had:
Eyes full of adultery – they didn;t have porn movies or internet porn per say, but they consistantly put themselves in places of sexual stimulation. We have TV & Interenet that do just fine in supplying us all the fullness of adultery behavior. How many times do you think you have seen Adultery being committed in your life? This is crazy to think about, but I would guess that most of us living in this 21st century have seen the ‘act’ of adultery hundreds of times in movies before. It is no longer marginal, but common. What are you and I viewing? Has it changed the way we think about the subject? When I used to watch porn, I would think, “hey this really is not that bad. It’s making be a better lover to my wife.” Oh, what justificaiton for viewing adultery over and over and refusing to believe there is a consequence in it.
They Cannot cease from sin – Here is the problem of viewing sexually stimulating ‘acts.’ It is addictive. We will soon be in bondage to the behavior. It’s not that we will not cease, but we “cannot” cease. (akatapaustos – unable to stop, unceasing)
Continued viewing brings us to consistent behaving, leading to bondage. We now think adultery behavior is the way things were designed, we have seen so much of it. My culture bears this out completely. Growing up I saw behaviors over and over and assumed that was the way things were done. I had to re-learn what I had seen for years and years. The brain is a magnificant sensory organ in the body, capturing images and storing them in our hard drive, over and over this happens. We tend to emulate those we see on the screen. But the end of this is destruction. This behavior really was not what we were created for, but a ploy of the Matrix so to speak, to keep us in our so called happy blindness.
Enticing unstable souls – This is where it gets bad. What is porn there to do anyway. Make money? Only one way to do that, and that’s to entice. To entice means to arouse desire. That sounds like porn to me. Not only porn, but those that are ‘in the church’ that continue in sin with no heart for confession to the glory of God and their own joy. I’m talking specifically about chuch leadership that has gone this direction as to not offend anyone, but has gone the total opposite way, enticing those to continue in a world of sin by not willing to confess their own adultery themselves! I know, you say that sounds hard core. But how many Pastors are caught in sexual sin? Heterosexual sin? Homosexual sin? Whatever the case, we will continue to entice unstable souls until we are ourselves no longer being enticed ourselves by the culture. Oh, I have a long way to go.
Trained in covetous practices – When learning guitar, I practiced. I did not practice once a week, but for hours a day. Now picking up a guitar and playing something takes no thought at all. It comes easy and naturally. How great is that? But what if it’s adultery, lust, sexual immorality? Don’t you think this too becomes natural to us who have been practitioners of this? We cannot just think the input in the brain has not changed the way we export behavior. Something is training you and I! What is that? We get so used to mediocrity in porn that we cannot see the beauty in our own spouses or a precious older couple that has weathered the storms of life for 65 years. Oh, we have compromised through a deception, our hearts have become hard. It’s like those that listen to American Idol singers never realizing the greatness of the Hillard Ensemble of works of Puccini.
We need re-training.
Kill your TV! haha – I remember that bumper sticker. Maybe there is a inner crucifying that we need to do within the church to find something far greater, or rather someone!
Jesus is beautiful…precious is He…1st Peter 2:7