Some notes based on (and quoting from) a sermon by Glenn Pease:-
There once was a woman who always was tired
She lived in a house where no help was hired.
On her death bed she said, dear friends I am goin
Where washing aint done nor cookin nor sewin,
And everything there will be just to my wishes,
For where they don’t eat there’s no washin of dishes.
Don’t mourn for me now, don’t mourn for me ever,
For I’m goin to do nothin, forever and ever.…
Everyone loves a good story. Not surprising, then, that storytelling has been at the heart of the sexual revolution. Storytelling seems to fit the shape of the human mind, and to reach places that other forms of communication cannot reach.
The entertainment industry understands this, and has exercised its talents in taking complicated ideas and melding them into powerful, attention-grabbing, and persuasive narratives:-
‘And so with riveting narratives about hypocritical politicians and fossilized bishops, pitted against outsiders and the oppressed, brave men and women finding the courage to be ‘who they really are’, they appealed to the moral instincts of ordinary, decent people.’…
Summarising this post by Jason De Rouchie:-
Although the sexual revolution has been driven by powerful ideas, we should not underestimate the power of emotions – of gut feelings – in changing attitudes and behaviours.
Nor should be assume that the sexual revolution has entailed an abandonment of morality. Rather, it has entailed a change in how we thing and feel about morality.
Jonathan Haidt has pictured the relationship between feeling and thought as that between an elephant and its rider. If this analogy holds, then we need to appeal to the emotional elephant as well as to the intellectual rider.…
This recent post by Ian Paul has prompted me to return to the subject of statistics on sexual identity.
According to the Office for National Statistics:-
…
- In 2016, just over 1 million (2.0%) of the UK population aged 16 and over identified themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB).
- The population aged 16 to 24 were the age group most likely to identify as LGB in 2016 (4.1%).
- More males (2.3%) than females (1.6%) identified themselves as LGB in 2016.
So a 69-year-old Dutch man wants to reduce his age by 20 years. Emile Ratelband has launched a legal battle to change his birthday from 11 March 1949 to 11 March 1969.
I guess that most people would greet this news with a smile and a shrug of the shoulders. After all, “there’s nowt as strange as folk”.
But look at Ratelband’s reasoning:- “We live in a time when you can change your name and change your gender.…
Behind the sexual revolution is an ideology of radical individualism. This ideology has been driven, in part, by the philosophy of Nietzsche (‘there are no facts, only interpretations’) and Marx (‘our identity is determined by our social context’). Berger added the idea of ‘plausibility structures’ – by means of which ideas gain leverage who endorses them, and how, rather than by the application of evidence and reason.
But:-
‘We mustn’t abandon reason simply because we have learned how easily she can be fooled…The biblical concept of human beings created in the image of God means that we expect a meaningful correspondence between the reality that God has put us in, and our abilities to make sense of it through the gift of reason.’…
Since the 1960s we have witnessed ‘the overturning and liberalization of long-established social and moral attitudes to sex.’
Central to this sexual revolution has been a relaxation of the idea that sex is given for enjoyment within the constraints of marriage. But it also includes:-
A number of factors have been at play in this sea-change of attitudes and behaviours:-
Such changes – many of them good in themselves – have contributed to a weakening of the link between sex and marriage, and of the idea that marriage entails a life-long commitment.…
Two movies illustrate the sexual revolution that has been taking place since the 1960s:-
The Magdalene Sisters tells the story of four women incarcerated, in the 1960s, in one of Ireland’s ‘laundry asylums’. For the ‘crime’ have having an illegitimate child, such a woman could be kept out of sight and out of mind for years on end, and her child quietly removed and put up for adoption.
By contrast, in recent years Ireland was, in more recent years, the first country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage, and over one-third of births now take place outside marriage. …
Text: John 7:25-52
Kid McCoy was a US boxer, world champion in 1896. He became involved in a barroom brawl, when a drunk insisted that the boxer was not who he said he was. McCoy flattened his opponent, who struggled back onto his feet and said, “It’s him alright. It’s the real McCoy.”)
1. People, then, as now, have confused and conflicting ideas about who Jesus is.
‘The people were divided because of Jesus.’
Today, some consider Jesus to be
(a) a myth
(b) a Martian (i.e.…
