Flee unchastity!

1 Corinthians 6.15-20.

CHASTITY 'tʃæs.tə.di noun. The state or practice of abstaining from nonmarital or illicit sexual intercourse.

2. The state or practice of abstaining from all sexual intercourse.

[Chaste tʃeɪst adjective, unchaste ən'tʃeɪst adjective, unchastity ən'tʃæs.tə.di noun.]

Yep, today’s bible passage has to do with sex, and if the subject offends you, stop reading. But bear in mind I write these articles to explain what the apostles would’ve thought, given they lived in the first-century Roman Empire. If you’d much rather hear preachers guess what they thought, based on their own beliefs, prejudices, and hangups—conservative or liberal—okay, go find a church where the pastor never, ever challenges your beliefs, or a bible commentary which does likewise, and enjoy your blissful ignorance. Me, I’d rather grow.

So, chastity. Most English-speakers are more familiar with the second definition I listed above, and assume chastity is the very same thing as celibacy. It’s not. One can be chaste and sexually active. Chastity has to do with proper sexual activity, and by “proper” I certainly don’t mean what society thinks is proper; I mean within the very few limitations God has put on human sexual activity. And contrary to certain repressed Christians, he hasn’t put many! They have, because their parents have, because their grandparents have, and so on back till they’re entirely sure their tradition originates with God, not men.

True, when the apostles object to πορνεία/porneía, “unchastity” (KJV “fornication,” NIV “sexual immorality”), yes they largely are reflecting Pharisee custom. (Paul grew up Pharisee; Ac 23.6 Sosthenes, if he’s the same Sosthenes who was Corinth’s synagogue president, Ac 18.17 was definitely Pharisee.) And Pharisees actually didn’t define chastity as the Law of Moses prescribed it… because the Law accommodated the polygamous culture of ancient western Asia, which included multiple wives and concubines. Yep, in the Old Testament, men could have multiple wives and multiple girlfriends, and it wasn’t considered adultery. This fact still regularly blows Christians’ minds. Totally true though.

So why did Pharisee custom differ? The Greeks. Alexander of Macedon had conquered the Persian Empire by 330BC, making Judea now part of his empire. Judea was ruled by Greek-speaking empires and Greek-speaking kings ever after—some of whom had heavily adopted Greek culture. And a big part of Greek culture was monogamy. True, often it was serial monogamy, with divorce after divorce; but polygamy quickly became a no-no among Judeans who feared offending their Greek-speaking overlords. By the time Pharisees showed up after the Maccabean revolt (165–60BC), Judeans had been largely monogamous for more than a century. So monogamy (and, unfortunately, frequent divorce) was now part of Pharisee culture too. Adultery and chastity was now defined by that standard. Not—yeah, this is still mindblowing—the bible.

Although since the apostles wrote the New Testament, now monogamy is biblical; now adultery and chastity are based on monogamy. If you wanna be in Christian leadership, you gotta be “a one-woman man,” Tt 1.6 or one-man woman; you can’t be unchaste; you can’t be promiscuous. And if every Christian’s gonna strive for spiritual maturity, that’s the standard we have to strive for. That’s the standard the apostles expected Corinth to strive for. But, to their irritation, Corinth was still full of spiritual infants, and they were still—as we know from today’s passage—merrily fornicating away with temple prostitutes. Among other things.

Really don’t wanna go to church.

There’s a guy whose blog I’ve been following for years. For the past five years he’s really amped up his message to everybody to quit their churches. Stop going, he says. Just stop; stay home. You’ll be a lot happier.

And I get it. There’ve been times in my life where I didn’t wanna go to church either. I didn’t try to drag people away from church along with me, like this guy; I figured if you like church, you do you. But for me, nah.

For the usual excuses.

I HAVE ANOTHER CHURCH. Back in college I used the excuse, “I already have a church.” It was 100 miles away, and impractical to visit every Sunday, and that was my excuse for ditching all the nearby churches—none of which I cared for. I did go to church whenever I went home for the usual college breaks. But when I was at school, I figured it was okay if I missed 10 weeks of church services.

CHAPEL COUNTS. Plus my school had daily chapel services. So they became my other excuse that semester. Me and a lot of other students.

DON’T GOTTA GO EVERY WEEK. Which… is actually true. If you’re in leadership (as I often am), you’re obligated to be there weekly. But if not, you can miss a Sunday morning from time to time. Of course when I was in my don’t-wanna-go phase, it wasn’t just time to time; it was a lot of Sundays. I know a number of Christians who only attend once a month, and of course there are those twice-a-year Christians who only attend Easter and Christmas. (If that; nowadays they can watch these services on YouTube.)

“I have freedom in Christ, y’know,” was my usual excuse for inconsistent attendance. And I do… but in context that passage is about freedom of conscience, Ro 14 not the freedom to be irresponsible.

I CAN DO THIS ON MY OWN. Years before, when I was really annoyed with the people of my church, this was my excuse for a few weeks. ’Cause I totally can do all this stuff on my own:

• Pray?—no problem.
• Sing worship songs?—easily done.
• Learn from fellow Christians?—I have their books; nowadays I have the internet; I got content.
• Study the bible?—sure.
• Tithing? Well kinda. I could donate money to myself for “religious” expenses. Or I could give that money to charity. Or I could spend all of it at a Peets one afternoon while I sit there reading some Christian book; wouldn’t that totally count?
• Take holy communion? I could eat saltines and grape juice on my own, and call it communion. But the vital element in communion is, y’know, actual communion—with fellow Christians. So that makes it tricky.

As are all our other rituals which require the participation of fellow Christians. Plus evangelism: Once you share Jesus with someone, where do you take ’em so they can be taught Christianity and mentored? Well I could do it by myself… but that’d mean I’m starting a church, right?

There are plenty more excuses. Some of them get pretty complex, and as a result they kinda merit whole articles, because it takes a little time to take these excuses apart. But for many a Christian, any excuse will do.

Prophets and potentates.

Yeah, I wanted an alliterative title, and “prince” kinda gives people the wrong idea, so I went with the less-familiar word “potentate.” It just means “power.” Potentatus was the Latin word St. Ambrose of Milan used for the biblical Greek word ἐξουσίας/exusías, “power,” in Ephesians 1.21. Ambrose was thinking of spiritual beings, but I just mean any person with power.

• Might be political power, like a king, dictator, president, or backroom dealmaking party member.
• Might be economic power, like a billionaire or CEO.
• Might be cultural power, like a popular entertainer or internet influencer.
• Might be spiritual power, like a pastor or guru. (Sometimes this overlaps with cultural power, like with activist pastors; sometimes not.)

Whatever kind of power we’re talking about, they got it, and people are swayed by it—voluntarily or not.

Sometimes prophets have this kind of power. I’ve known more than one Christian who considered the prophets at their churches to be their spiritual guides or spiritual mentors. After all, prophets listen to God; when you pick a Christian mentor, they’d better be listening to God. And certainly various prophets in the bible had people they were mentoring; Elijah, Elisha, and John the baptist certainly did.

But usually when we see prophets in the bible, they’re not the ones in power. In fact one of their regular duties is to serve as a check on the ones in power. The potentate—whether a king, judge, governor, or emperor—oughta be listening to God way better than he is. So the prophet’s job is to either remind the potentate, “Thus says the LORD”—or just plain tell him, because the potentate doesn’t follow God any, and has no clue what the LORD says.

Yeah, there are obvious biblical exceptions like Moses ben Amram, who was both prophet and potentate. Or Joshua ben Nun. Or Deborah eshet Lappidot. Or Samuel ben Elkanah. Although you might be aware at some point Samuel had to give up judging Israel and hand the civic authority over to the new king, Saul ben Kish… and then spend the rest of his life reminding Saul that no, the LORD didn’t want him to do as he was doing; stop that.

Thereafter, even though there were various kings who could hear God the same as any prophet, and are even rightly considered prophets themselves, they still occasionally needed a corrective from one of God’s other prophets. King David ben Jesse still needed to hear from the prophet Nathan when he stopped listening to God and got a bit murdery. King Solomon ben David still needed to hear from the prophet Ahijah when he stopped listening to God and got a bit idolatrous.

Because power corrupts. Even good men can fall victim to the corrupting influence of the power they wield. That’s why they need prophets to pull ’em back onto the right path when they go wrong. They can’t just presume, “Oh I hear God just fine”; history has shown time and again no, they really don’t.

“Biblical principles” and extrapolating new commands.

In my early 20s I went to a conference presented by youth pastor turned lifestyle guru Bill Gothard. (He didn’t present ’em in person; we watched videos.)
Bill Gothard. [Wikipedia] His organization, the Institute in Basic Life Principles (formerly Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts, formerly Campus Teams) goes round the United States to teach young people “basic biblical principles” which would keep them on the straight and narrow. Gothard ran it till 2014, when he stepped down ’cause of molestation accusations. Since the statute of limitations means he’s not getting prosecuted, it looks like he’s quietly slipping back into ministry as the scandal fades from everyone’s memory.

Gothard is hugely popular among Fundamentalists, who promoted him ’cause his teachings are right in line with conservative Christian culture. He doesn’t just teach people to memorize bible verses, pray, and go to church. He claims the bible says we should obey our parents no matter what, women should obey their husbands no matter what, and everyone should respect authority. Plus rock music is of the devil, public schools are hopelessly corrupt (so homeschool your kids), Christians need to dress conservatively, Christians should have loads of kids, and Christians should never borrow money.

I’m picking on Gothard a lot in this article, but he’s far from the only guru who does this. Financial gurus like Dave Ramsey claim they also get their ideas from the bible. Leadership gurus like John Maxwell say much the same thing. Political activists on both the Christian Right and Left claim the basis of all their thinking comes from bible. Hey, if you’re an Evangelical, our ideas should be grounded in bible, right? (And even if we’re not Evangelical.)

Because of Gothard’s never-borrowing teachings, I actually wound up leaving my Fundamentalist church. ’Cause the church wanted to take out a loan so they could hire two pastors. It was a bad idea for lots of reasons, but Gothard had convinced me borrowing was a sin, so I was outraged when the congregation voted for the idea. “Well they’re not following God,” I concluded, shook the dust off my feet, and started going to my sister’s church.

Where in the bible are we commanded to never borrow? Well we’re not. In fact we’re commanded to treat people fairly and graciously when they borrow from us, Ex 22.25, Lv 25.37, Dt 15.8, 24.10, Lk 6.35 which implies God considers borrowing to be acceptable behavior, under most circumstances.

So how’d Gothard convince me it’s not acceptable? He claims it’s a biblical principle, an idea which isn’t explicitly stated in the bible—there’s no command which says “Thou shalt not borrow”—yet the bible teaches it anyway. If we read between the lines.

Not one of the “biblical principles” of Christian gurus are actual biblical commands. ’Cause if they were, the gurus could quote them! “Thus saith the LORD”—same as they do when they point out the LORD forbids murder, theft, and adultery. So no, there’s no one bible verse to back ’em up… but the gurus claim there are tons of proof texts which suggest the authors of the bible, even though they never explicitly state these ideas, believed these principles. And maybe we should believe these principles.

There’s only one major problem here: These gurus aren’t historical scholars. They have no idea what the underlying principles of ancient peoples were. I know, ’cause I do, ’cause I’m an historian. Historians learn and teach this stuff! Crack open a history book sometime. You’ll learn tons.

In comparison, all gurus know—all they care to know—is they have a principle they wanna teach, and think they can prove it with a bunch of biblical proof texts. Some of these texts are quoted in their proper historical context, but far more often, not. They’re interpreted as if they weren’t written by ancient Hebrews and Christians, but by 19th-century Americans. Yes I know it’s the 21st century. The gurus are still stuck in the 19th. Hence all the patriarchy and sexism. And to be fair, patriarchy and sexism are part of ancient Hebrew and Judean culture—but these gurus never ask whether God intends to do away with these attitudes. Because they surely don’t.

That’s the thing about biblical principles: Some of them deliberately aren’t biblical commands, because God was trying to mitigate them in ancient culture. They weren’t God-ideas; they’re fleshly. Like polygamy, polytheism, racism, and slavery. They’re part of the worldview of ancient western Asia. It stands to reason they’re in the bible. But just because they’re in the bible, it does not mean the Holy Spirit endorses them. Like the bad advice of Job’s friends, it’s okay that we’re aware of it—but we’re meant to use our heads, and reject these principles as ungodly.

Praying for our rulers.

After we elect a new president, governor, mayor, or whomever, we Christians tend to remind ourselves to pray for our rulers.

Sometimes enthusiastically, ’cause it’s our candidate who just got elected. And if we’re the really partisan sort, we’ll even rub this fact in other people’s faces. “The patriotic thing to do is to close ranks and back our new leader for the good of the country. So bury that disappointment and pray for your new leader. That’s right, your new leader.” Every so often, the Christian preaching this attempts a sympathetic tone—“Hey, I know it’s rough; I’ve had to do this when your guy won”—but most of the time they’re too happy to care. About 12 seconds of the message is sympathy, and the rest is a victory lap. Hey, I’ve been on both sides of it.

And when our candidate lost, we might pray mournfully. Regretfully. Reluctantly. The candidates have been demonizing one another throughout the election, and when partisans lose, they’re convinced the End Times have just arrived. Hence the prayers for our rulers aren’t so much for God to bless them. More like asking God to mitigate their evil. Keep ’em from ruining our land. Stop ’em from destroying lives. Maybe Jesus could make a Damascus-Road-style appearance to them and radically transform them into someone who’d vote our way. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

Sometimes we pray sarcastically. Partisans who hate their leaders will often immediately dive for Psalm 109.

Psalm 109.6-20 NKJV

6Set a wicked man over him,

And let an accuser stand at his right hand.

7When he is judged, let him be found guilty,

And let his prayer become sin.

8Let his days be few,

And let another take his office.

9Let his children be fatherless,

And his wife a widow.

10Let his children continually be vagabonds, and beg;

Let them seek their bread also from their desolate places.

11Let the creditor seize all that he has,

And let strangers plunder his labor.

12Let there be none to extend mercy to him,

Nor let there be any to favor his fatherless children.

13Let his posterity be cut off,

And in the generation following let their name be blotted out.

14Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the LORD,

And let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.

15Let them be continually before the LORD,

That He may cut off the memory of them from the earth;

16Because he did not remember to show mercy,

But persecuted the poor and needy man,

That he might even slay the broken in heart.

17As he loved cursing, so let it come to him;

As he did not delight in blessing, so let it be far from him.

18As he clothed himself with cursing as with his garment,

So let it enter his body like water,

And like oil into his bones.

19Let it be to him like the garment which covers him,

And for a belt with which he girds himself continually.

20Let this be the LORD’s reward to my accusers,

And to those who speak evil against my person.

Now that’s an angry prayer. Sometimes King David wished some hateful stuff on his enemies. And when people start praying these curses over their rulers, most of the time they’ll stop mid-psalm and say, “Nah; I’m just kidding.” But nah, in their heart of hearts, they aren’t really. Y’ain’t fooling God.

Flee gluttony!

1 Corinthians 6.12-14.

In the beginning of this chapter, Paul and Sosthenes rebuked the Corinthians for dragging one another before Roman courts, then reminded them the Romans weren’t leaders of good character, by listing some of their works of the flesh. (And we might recognize many of these defects of character in our own leaders. We really gotta stop voting for such people.)

The next passage riffs off those fleshly works by rebuking the Corinthians for indulging in some of them. In it, the apostles quote two popular Corinthian slogans:

EVERYTHING’S ALLOWED (πάντα ἔξεστιν/pánta éxestin, KJV “All things are lawful,” NIV “I am allowed to do anything”).

FOODS FOR THE STOMACH, AND THE STOMACH FOR FOODS (τὰ βρώματα τῇ κοιλίᾳ καὶ ἡ κοιλία τοῖς βρώμασιν/ta vrómata ti kilía, ke i kilía tis vrómasin, KJV “Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats,” ESV “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”).

Because in Corinth, hedonism was a virtue. Nope, it wasn’t just a tourist slogan, like “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”; it wasn’t just a way to encourage visitors to indulge themselves and boost the economy. This was Cyreniac philosophy: Pleasure, namely physical pleasure, was considered the most important thing in life. Knowledge—meh; what good is it? Stop thinking so hard and enjoy yourself while you can. Have some wine, some hashish, some opium, some sex. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. 1Co 15.32

So in Corinth, and in many Greek cities, you were permitted to do pretty much anything you pleased. Especially the sexual stuff, which I’ll get into at another time. But you were allowed to eat what you wished, as much as you wished—at least until your belly was full, or your purse was empty. (There’s a popular belief the ancient Romans would eat till full, then go to a “vomitorium” and purge themselves. That’s turned out to be false. Vomitoriums were in fact crowd-control passageways in an amphitheater, not some weird room where you indulged your bulimia—not that bulimia didn’t exist back then, but it wasn’t encouraged. Party food was expensive!)

In contrast Christians, especially we who follow the Holy Spirit, are meant to practice self-control. “Everything’s allowed” unless Jesus forbids it; unless those practices harm others and ourselves. Our “freedom in Christ” isn’t the freedom to do absolutely anything we please, simply because God forgives all. Unfortunately, Christians have taken the opposite attitude throughout history. Still do. Still wrong.

Bible time:

1 Corinthians 6.12-14 KWL

12“Everything’s allowed” to me,

but not everything is appropriate.

“Everything’s allowed” to me,

but I won’t be controlled by anything.

13“Food is for the stomach, and the stomach for food,”

and God will destroy both food and stomach—

and the body isn’t for unchastity, but for the Master,

and the Master for the body.

14God both raises the Master up,

and will raise us up, by his power.

Bummed your candidate lost?

Today is Election Day in the United States, and since elections take time to tabulate (and people whose candidate lost will sometimes refuse to accept the tabulations, and demand they run ’em again, and even then insist something went wrong in the counting process, and sue, and bear false witness against the tabulators for years afterward), the results are often up in the air. It agitates the impatient. But eventually we know who won… and one side or the other is gonna mope about it.

And, same as in every election, the losing side is gonna put on a brave face, say the usual platitudes—“God’s will be done,” and “God is in control,” and “God works out everything for our good,” et cetera, ad nauseam. God’s on the throne, even though their candidate won’t be. They’re very bummed, and sometimes there’s even weeping and gnashing of teeth and rage.

But they put their trust in Jesus. So they say… after the election. They didn’t really do it before. This “God’s in charge” stuff is what people say after they’ve been trusting in an idol, and God just smashed that idol. As he does.

But not all of ’em accept the idea God’s in charge. A number of dissatisfied voters will plot violence, and justify it by claiming God’s will has been frustrated. What comes next? God’s wrath… which always looks not-so-suspiciously like their wrath.

Back during the Barack Obama years I heard an awful lot of rightists talk about wrath. Yeah, it was projection; they were angry, and coveted power, and dreamt of sweet vengeance. Broken idol or not, they’re still idolaters—coveting and worshiping power.

Some of us are just that dense. I sure was.