1But know this also, that in the last days perilous times will come: 2For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those who are good,4traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!
–2 Timothy 3: 1-5
During the last 25 years, we see the rise of what I call facsimile relationships. Emails have replaced handwritten notes and letters. Relationships are initiated through Facebook and other so-called “social” media. Just as directions when driving use Waze or Google Maps as the guiding intermediaries between ourselves and our destinations, the posted photos and cryptic sharing’s on the Internet become the new meet and greet. The Internet increasingly has become the “necessary intermediary.” But is this great electronic meet-up room consistent with and supportive of true relationship, or does it deal with superficiality and pseudo-relatedness even more than the dating scene of the pre-computer age?
We see now that there are sex robots being created, mostly in Japan, but also in New Jersey. Is using a sex robot the same as relating to and with a woman or a man(most robots are robot women)? Can you have a relationship with a sex robot? Can you have a semi-human family of robots? Would the family be called “hubots?” God created man and woman in His image. He did not create a man and a sex robot. So, we now have a facsimile culture. More and more people are satisfied with the appearance, not the reality. I don’t want to provide a one size fits all “answer,” but relating through computer media dilutes the idea of relationship.
The decline in true relationship with others is reflected in today’s morality. Today the young people have “hook-ups.” They are like fish that “get hooked.” Sixty years ago, it was considered romantic and scandalous to have a few kisses and then have romantic fantasies of a life together with the other, the one with the “special lips.”
Here is a song “It’s Been A Long Long Time” from that ancient pre-debauchery era by Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong:
Kiss me once…and kiss me twice
Then kiss me once again
It’s been a long, long time
Haven’t felt like this, my dear
Since I can’t remember when
It’s been a long, long time
You’ll never know how many dreams
I’ve dreamed about you
Or just how empty they all seemed without you
So kiss me once, then kiss me twice
Then kiss me once again….
In the 1950’s there were good girls and boys and bad boys and girls. Today there are vast millions of amoral and immoral young people on the one side (oh no, they can’t be called “bad”), and on the other side are the uptight, the prudes, the kill joys. Most of the kill joy variety are Bible believing Christians, an ever-dwindling minority. Do you see a decline or improvement in the social order? [Don’t worry: it’s a rhetorical question.] Who says America hasn’t changed during the past 50-60 years?
While a little kissing and “making out” was hardly a paradigm of Christian purity and virtue even in the fifties, the moral life of that earlier decade was “pure” compared to modern vulgarity and debauchery. Today, the above words by Satchmo are considered by millions to be innocent, innocuous, infantile, unsophisticated, and even silly. One can only speculate what today’s society would substitute for the word “kiss.” Do you know why? We are turning out millions upon millions of sex-crazed amoral and immoral people, people burning with lust day and night who think that nothing could be more normal. It’s called the “new normal.”
The post-Freudian world of psychology tells us that these sexual attitudes and feelings were repressed and thus hidden from view possibly for centuries but certainly in the 19th and early twentieth centuries, but they were driving us just as much or more than they are today. However, by being repressed, our society was neurotic. Now, we are post-Sigmund Freud and post-Abraham Maslow. Freud supposedly liberated us from sexual repression and Maslow insisted that it was a human value to “meet our needs.” Now we are liberated (thanks also, of course, to the hippie movement and the acid droppers in the ‘60’s who freed us from uptight Christian-American morality). Millions are shouting hooray as they sink in the quicksand of debauchery. Hooray hooray hooray hooray……
Facsimile relationships, debauched sexuality, decline of family values and commitment, and devilish justification of various perversions are deeply based on the denial of the hypostatic union of Christ with the Father (Christ as second person of the Godhead). Hypostatic union means that Christ and the Father have the same essence. But this important understanding is rarely mentioned in churches or outside of seminaries. Yet, the morality of Christianity in both the Old and New Testaments derives its power and authority in that it comes from Almighty God. The fact that morality comes from God and is not culture-centered and culture-originated must be stressed and stressed. What better place to stress this truth than in our churches; yet, it is stressed less and less by churches because of their fear of offending the members and losing financial support. Church attendance is dwindling nonetheless. Without there being a strong sense that one is hearing from God in our churches, why attend? Also, many church-goers fear putting themselves in direct opposition to the Supreme Court’s many God-offending decisions, the latest of which is Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) which legalized homosexual marriage.
But the prophets, John the Baptist, and Jesus called it as they saw it. When Jesus in the synagogue told the people that the prophecy of the Messiah was that day fulfilled (“setting the captives free”), they wanted to throw him off a cliff. He brought them good news, but they didn’t want such good news. Marriage is between a man and a woman. It likewise is very good news and is biblically sanctioned by Almighty God.
Jeffrey Ludwig
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