Shameless!
(Leia este post em português.)
A friend of ours shared a link today to a Fox News report concerning some pornographic and violent images that have been appearing in the Facebook newsfeed. Several people spoke of accessing the giant social network only to be embarrassed in front of family members as these images assaulted them. I mention this as a recent example that illustrates a greater issue in world culture: shamelessness. The barrier walls that once protected the innocent from the barrage of speech and behavior not deemed “suitable for the public” are crumbling. In places, they are eroding away from lack of upkeep; in others, they are being obliterated by social wrecking balls—the popular kid, the brazen celebrity, the “enlightened” lecturer—smashed to smithereens and allowing all sorts of evil to run amok in situations we once thought safe.
This used to be the talk about TV and movies. Yes, since the beginning of onscreen entertainment, we have seen a decline of morals and appropriate speech. Profanity, obscenity, hatefulness, vindictiveness, lack of forgiveness, and flat-out lying saturate today’s entertainment. Extramarital sex is so commonplace that people act embarrassed for you if you respond negatively toward it. Seinfeld’s “not that there’s anything wrong with that” describes pretty much anything out there. I realize there is a simple solution for these forms of entertainment—don’t watch them. Unfortunately, as I said above, these barriers aren’t crumbling only in the media.
I remember a few years ago, standing waiting for my luggage in the Springfield, MO airport, listening in amazed silence as pretty much every major “cuss” word popped out of a woman’s mouth as she spoke to another woman (both adults beyond their forties). And she wasn’t mad at anyone—this was apparently her usual way of talking! The other woman didn’t even flinch at her language. Every day, both in the States and here in Brazil, we encounter examples of people who have allowed these forms of speech and behavior into social settings we once thought safe. It is appalling to see what people choose to post or link on Facebook. People are going on public (and nearly permanent) record, saying things that at one time would have embarrassed them to even think. And there isn’t an MPAA rating, however flawed, that protects people from the what one encounters in everyday settings.
Here’s what God asked and answered about His people: “Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush” (Jer 6:15; 8:12). God was talking about a different sin, but what is particularly powerful to me is the idea that these people were not only doing something “abominable,” but they were not ashamed, and couldn’t even blush about it! Completely shameless!
How is this different than we are now? We are exposed. Our collective, social Jiminy Cricket is lying battered and bruised in a back alley, if he’s not already dead. And we are so used to this, that we can’t even blush about it. It is truly—we are truly—shameless.
There was a time in human history when shamelessness was a good thing. Think for a moment about the shamelessness of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. They were completely, physically and spiritually, naked; exposed, both to each other and to God, and they were not ashamed (Gen 2:25). When did this change? The moment they disobeyed God. They immediately saw that they were exposed, and made an effort to hide this both from themselves (with clothing) and from God (by hiding) (Gen 3:6-7, 10). The truth is that now, in our present condition of sinners in a sin-cursed world, there are two situations in which we will feel no shame (or fear): when we are truly without blame, or when we foolishly fail to admit our blame. In the former, we have no shame because we have done nothing wrong. (Blameless of specific individual sins, not without sin in a general sense. The person that drives the speed limit has no need to let off the gas when they see a police officer.) In the latter, we simply don’t care. It is foolish in that we act like the fool, who doesn’t acknowledge the existence of God, therefore no one to whom he is accountable (Psa 14:1).
Here’s an interesting twist: God actually calls us to be shameless! No really, He wants us to talk unashamedly of His Gospel (Rom 1:16); to unashamedly believe in Him (Rom 10:11); to unashamedly suffer for Him (1 Pet 4:16); and to unashamedly believe and hope for Christ’s return (1 John 2:28)! Naturally, this is referring to the former type of shamelessness—the kind that comes from being blameless. And it is necessary to add that this blamelessness only comes through Jesus Christ; we are incapable of achieving it on our own. The kind of shamelessness God calls us to is not that which ignores God’s standards, but that which upholds them! His constant call to holiness, and His plan to offer it to the unholy through belief in Jesus Christ, is His way of giving us a life without shame.
Are you struck by the shamelessness of our generation? Then it is time to respond with some shameless behavior of our own! Shamelessly believe in God and Jesus Christ, shamelessly await for His return, shamelessly proclaim His message, and even shamelessly suffer persecution by those who won’t accept His message!
This is, after all, the message of Christ: that through Him, we can be transformed from shameful sinfulness to shameless obedience before God.
“And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight…” (Colossians 1:21–22)
The Complete Husband, in Portuguese
On my return to Brazil in 2006, after living for many years in the United States, I was pleasantly surprised by the number of excellent books that had been translated to Portuguese by publishers like Fiel, NUTRA, Hagnos, among others. I was saddened to find out, however, that among all the translations there was nothing in the way of books for husbands. I was familiar with two books, Stuart Scott’s “The Exemplary Husband,” and Lou Priolo’s “The Complete Husband,” but neither of these had been translated. I had no idea at the time that I would be translating books at a later date. Not long after, I met Pr. Jayro of NUTRA publishing company, and I mentioned that I would like to see these two books in Portuguese. How could I have known that he would answer (speaking of Priolo’s work), “We have the rights to publish that book”? And how could I have known that a short time later he would offer me the privilege of translating it?
In August of last year, I wrote a post (in Portuguese only) about how I was able to meet Lou Priolo during one of his visits to Brazil. I also spoke of the series of encounters since 2008—meeting Pr. Jayro “by chance” on an elevator in St. Louis, getting reacquainted with him here in Brazil and discovering his church is a little over an hour away, etc.—that had led up to that event. I had no idea that when I met Pr. Jayro in that elevator in St. Louis a few years before, that God would lead me through a series of steps that would bring me to translate the very book I wanted so much to see in Portuguese. But that’s exactly what happened.
Last week, NUTRA published “Maridos Perseguindo a Excelência” (Husbands Pursuing Excellence), “The Complete Husband” in Portuguese. If you are reading this post and are a husband that has not yet read this book (in either language), you owe it to yourself and your marriage to do so. It is a must-have for any pastor’s bookshelf. Five years ago, I lamented the fact that this book was not in Portuguese. Today, I rejoice because, thank God, this book is now available to Brazilian husbands! That He also worked it out that I could be a part of this book being published in Portuguese is icing on the cake. Let us pray that this book will be well-used, and Brazilian men are able to take advantage of the biblical truths that Lou Priolo has organized so well in his work.
Perfect Weddings. Imperfect Marriages.
(Leia este post em português.)
I love linguistics. I like the clarity it can bring to otherwise inexplicable foibles of everyday language. I really like it when it brings clarity to something completely not related to language.
Today’s post is about the words perfect and imperfect.
In everyday usage, we understand “perfect” to mean complete, whole, or flawless; conversely, we understand “imperfect” to mean incomplete or flawed.
But in linguistics, these words explain aspects of time in certain situations. The English language doesn’t reflect these differences all that well, but I’ll attempt to explain. The perfect aspect describes an action that took place and was completed. “I ate the cake.” The imperfect aspect describes an action that was continuous, or ongoing. “I used to eat cake.” It leaves a sense of incomplete action; it conveys the idea that cake was eaten more than once; that there was a habitual action that continued indefinitely.
I thought of these aspects when I read about the most recent public example of the grim reality of modern marriage: on October 31 (2011), Kim Kardashian filed for divorce from her husband of only 72 days, Kris Humphries.
Their lavish wedding and brief marriage mirror a modern trend in western culture. The media buzz around their August wedding was all about the millions (reportedly somewhere between $10-$20 million) spent on making the “perfect” wedding. Lest you think that this is only a celebrity problem, however, consider: The Wedding Report puts the average cost of an American wedding at $21,227.00. And the cost is rising. And experience tells us that this isn’t because of rising costs of things you need at a wedding, as much as it is the increasing number of things people want at their wedding to make it “perfect.”
Unwittingly, these couples are focusing on marriage as if it were lived out in the perfect aspect—as if the wedding, an event that happens and is completed at a particular time, were as important as the marriage, the union that should be ongoing, and only completed only at the end of a lifetime together. It only confirms the popular saying, “a wedding does not a marriage make.”
As the number of “perfect” (flawless) weddings rises, so does the number of “imperfect” (flawed) and brief marriages. Hard numbers for divorce rates and length of marriages are hard to come but many agree that, conservatively, one third of new marriages ends in divorce, many of them in five to ten years. Others state the well-known (but possibly inaccurate) statistic that half of all new marriages end in divorce. Numbers aside, our own personal experience tells us the divorce rates are high and the length of marriage is decreasing, all around us, every day.
We need desperately to get away from the “perfect” (flawless) idea in relation to marriage. You will not have the “perfect” dating relationship, you will not find the “perfect” spouse, you cannot have the “perfect” wedding day, and certainly will not have a “perfect” marriage. All these things are sold to us by a less-than-perfect world—the very world that produces “fairytale” weddings that end in disaster (anyone remember Princess Di?).
This is not to say that we cannot have blessed dating relationships, blessed spouses, blessed wedding days, and blessed marriages. The sooner we come to grips with our imperfect, sinful world, the sooner we will realize that our only hope to achieve lasting companionship, love, and intimacy in marriage is living our imperfect lives in imperfect (continuous, ongoing) marriages, while striving to bring the only perfection we know—Jesus Christ—to the center of our lives.
While society strives for “perfect” weddings and produces “imperfect” marriages, the biblical trend is to strive for perfect weddings; and to live Christ’s perfection in our imperfect marriages.
