The Emancipation of Bella!

We Need To Talk:

After watching this happening repeatedly in ‘charismatic’ churches over years, one particular event a couple of weeks ago finally broke me. The straw it had been heaping on my back became too heavy for me to bear. So I decided to blog about………fornication and what happens when it goes wrong. When churches use the people caught to invite public stoning in order to ‘drive the message home’ that ‘we don’t tolerate that’ – whatever ‘that’ even is!

Definitions

Bear with me here it might seem like this paragraph is teaching you how to suck eggs but it is here primarily for all my peers who in my opinion, use their grossly insufficient views of what sex and fornication actually is and constitutes of to hide behind their (wrong) practice and acceptance of it as inconsequential to their walk of faith.

Sex is defined by the dictionary as:

• Coitus (Sexual intercourse between a man and woman involving insertion of the penis into the vagina)
• Any physical contact between two individuals involving (direct and indirect) stimulation of the genital organs of at least one

Fornication (which is important to know for the purposes of this piece) is also according to the dictionary defined as: ‘Voluntary/ consensual sexual intercourse between two unmarried persons or two persons not married to each other’

The word fornication has been historically translated from the Greek porneia, the original definition of which is provided by Strong’s concordance as:

• Illicit (forbidden if conducted outside one man and one woman married to each other and no one else) sexual intercourse
• Adultery, homosexuality, lesbianism, intercourse with animals, intercourse with more than one person
• Sexual intercourse with close relatives (Leviticus 18)
• Sexual intercourse with a divorced man or woman (Mark 10:11-12)

One can also go through the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament to see what Hebrew words were translated to porneia to get an idea of what the word meant. If you do it, you will find:

• Zanah – To lie down like a prostitute (Jeremiah 2:20, Micah 1:7)
• Zenunim – Harlotry, prostitution (Hosea 1:2, Nahum 3:4)
• Zenuth – Unfaithfulness, prostitution (Numbers 14:33, Jeremiah 3:2, Hosea 4:11)
• Taznuth – Harlotry, lust (Ezekiel 16:15, 23:7&11)

There is NO reputable Greek lexicon or dictionary which includes pornography or masturbation as a part of the definition of porneia even though the word pornography has clearly evolved from the Greek porneia. The actual Greek word for masturbation was anaphlan, which does not appear at all in the Bible. This does not however, permit either (as they both count as direct and indirect stimulation of the genital area).

So now we should all be clear exactly what the ‘church’ and the bible mean when they say fornication. This root word includes all forms of sexual act, thought, word or deed (resulting in both direct and indirect stimulation of someone’s genital organs) that are not within the confines of one single heterosexual marriage in which the acts are committed between you and your consenting spouse ALONE (this might seem like a straightforward thing to say but if your spouse does not consent or feels physically/ mentally/ emotionally/ spiritually coerced into sexual acts with you then this is non-consensual sex which is also forbidden in the bible). Any of the above involving anyone else other than your legal spouse is classed as adultery (when you are married). If you are not, this is fornication.

Got Caught Out!

I tried to find statistics on fornication in the modern church and surprise surprise-I couldn’t. So I did my own straw poll from the closest Christian married twenty girlfriends I have had in the past ten years. Only FIVE made it married without having coital relations with their now spouse and out of those five, only THREE of them made it without having done anything other than kiss their now spouse. But I can’t speak for the men whether or not they ever watched porn or masturbated whilst with my friend when they weren’t ‘getting it’.

Let’s not kid ourselves, this is not unrepresentative. The individuals classed above include women from all walks of life, all nationalities AND all types of churches but mostly the charismatic variety. They had and still have great walks with God, great marriages and happy families. But out of the twenty, two of them have something in common; they ‘got’ pregnant before they were married. And this sometimes happens I guess when people engage in sexual intercourse. But my problem is the way this and the ‘discovery’ of sexual immorality / sin (usually by the resulting pregnancy and the woman’s decision to keep the baby) are dealt with in the church. This is the subject of this blog piece!

DO TIME!

• Step down from ministry-OK
• For 1-3 years-Really?
• Re-do church membership class-Because I am automatically excluded by you for something I struggled and failed with!
• Attend EVERY cell group/ prayer meeting/ church service-And hand in my resignation/ let my studies fall apart so I can have you sign my ‘holy’ register……? Are you planning to make an exception if I work shifts or have exams coming up? And what about when my baby is born. If I have a caesarean or if it takes me time to heal/ settle/ adjust-do I have to still drag myself and my baby out in the cold as a single Mom with no transport? Are you going to punish me-and how long for exactly?
• If your attendance is not satisfactory (by whoever asserts themselves as holier than you enough to act as your mentor/ jailer), you will need to attend 4x for every once skipped-WTH?????
• Confess in front of the ENTIRE congregation-so they can all kiss their teeth at me as a harlot when I walk down the hallway, stop talking to me, judge me and cast stones at me. Oh-and not actually help me or encourage me, or even realise that now I have this baby I am struggling to love when everyone is making me feel like I should hate him/ her! What if my baby’s dad is in a position of leadership in the church?
• Attend counselling once a week for 1yr+-which I will clearly need more (after the psychological effects the congregations attitudes indirectly encouraged by the leaderships’ has left on me) than I need because I already feel deeply depressed at what I have done and where I find myself being so far than anything I had ever dreamed of/ wanted and having now to turn this into my dream
• Have your (few) movements chaperoned by someone from the pastoral counselling team who didn’t know you until your ‘case’ turned up on their desk making you their ‘patient’

The Rest

“I wish I’d had an abortion. But how can I think that? It says in the bible that God creates every child. So if my child is a consequence of sin-does that mean he/ she wasn’t created by God? That doesn’t sound right to me! I want to love him/ her, I want people to get excited with me, but they just won’t let it go. And now many people have deserted me, and even my friends who are all fornicating with their boyfriends have distanced themselves because they are scared I’ll drag them down with me. I feel alone and to be honest I can’t be bothered. My body hurts everywhere and all these demands-I don’t love people who are hurting me enough to carry out their demands. I’m out!”

“So what if we want to continue our relationship without being ‘forced’ to get married just because I’m pregnant? We want to do it in our own time and not think we did it just so we didn’t have our baby before. But then why must we then separate and he painted irresponsible because he won’t ‘marry me’ like if that is what validates our child. Is his/ her existence not enough to validate him/ her? And so if we don’t do what you say now why will you not dedicate our child? I’m out!

“I just had an abortion but I would rather torment myself forever than let them do to me what I saw them do to my friend. Not too sure God will ever love me again but I love Him even though I can’t ever say that I am sorry for what I did. The alternative is more unbearable to me than what I had to do. Don’t think I’ll ever tell whoever I marry; this will just be one of those things that eat away my heart until the day I die. I’m in, but I guess deep down-I’m out”.

“No one knows I am on the pill/ just took the morning after pill because I skipped a day by accident/ the condom tore/ that we’re having sex. Does that make me a bad person? I don’t really care I have been with him five years and we were ‘allowed’ to date from when we were sixteen but they want us to wait to get married. We have decided to do it our own way and just stop feeling guilty because as far as we are concerned we are sure we will get married and would do so tomorrow if they would stop telling us we are too young. So we’ve reached a compromise and well-stuff them. We’re out!”

THAT RIGHT THERE is the reality of how these things pan out. Although I must be clear. I do not condone sexual immorality of any sort, but I am a solution driven person and what I do believe is that ‘the rest’ must be looked at before ‘doing time’ is arrived at. Because potentially 65% of unmarried 16-30year olds in the church are currently sexually active and getting away with it which is completely overlooked like this means their walk with God is ok?

But how on earth do you expect to ever learn about ‘the rest’ when you’re so busy prosecuting and witch hunting and spin doctoring? Who do you think will ever come forward and tell you that they’re looking down at that slippery slope with a large dosage of vertigo? And why should they? When all they see are their friends leaving the church/ dropping out of faith because of the way you’re treating them when they get caught? I wouldn’t! And if I would be ostracised from the church for being the only one that gets excited for my friend then so be it. I am more for mercy from heaven than I am for earthly justice because heavenly mercy is not without fire, but earthly justice is without God and therefore, without grace.

Before the fall!

I want to talk to all the pastors and shepherds in the house (global kingdom of God) here and school you on what to do with ‘us’ so ‘we’ don’t get to you needing the next paragraph of this blog piece.

Why do ‘we’ do it? I have bullet pointed below some of the pitfalls of charismatic churches that in my opinion, contribute to why young adults and adults are increasingly sexually active within the church without regard for the sacredness and sanctity of sexual intimacy in marriage.

• The leaders never preach/ teach on it
• The leaders never invite questions on it
• The leaders never facilitate an environment in church where ‘we’ can talk about it openly
• The leaders never ask ‘us’ why ‘we’ are having sex
• The leaders are not prepared to listen
• The leaders are not approachable
• The leaders are unrighteously judgemental
• The leaders punish instead of judging with mercy and grace
• The leaders apply tactics that do not work (such as forced separation etc)
• Parents never teach their children restraint in a world where society says you can have whatever you want right now without waiting (lack of familial and financial discipline=lack of sexual discipline)
• Parents don’t facilitate an environment where children can ask as many questions on sex as they need to learn the correct way what purpose it serves

Now it says in the bible….

“Train up a child in the way he should go [and in keeping with his individual gift or bent], and when he is old he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6)

But how can ‘we’ not depart from something ‘we’ have not been trained in? “Don’t do it” doesn’t cut it in a world where children are more and more curious and exposed to a world more information at an earlier age. Not talking to children openly and honestly in great detail about sex at the beginning of primary school is a MASSIVE mistake. I came to this country aged ten years old. In two weeks I knew what oral sex was and how to do it along with other things that the girls I was befriending were doing behind the bike shed with the boys. That is the reality of playground talk and that was seventeen years ago. Now-it is even worse! Ten year olds are getting pregnant and primary school children are being taught how gay sex works which means they can, not only distinguish the difference between anal and vaginal sex, but are cognisant of the role of sex toys and pornography which is why children between the ages of 12-15 now watch porn more than adults do.

This is the beginning of the end. If you do not get to children before the world does, you will lose them to the world-if not physically, in their minds. Then ‘THE SEPARATION’ will occur. The relationship between God and sexuality will become severed and in going forward, will be permanently seen as independent one from another. This broken link is almost impossible to reconcile. This castration of God’s original template is the largest contributing factor to why ‘we’ have sex. And by the time ‘we’ get to sixteen, it is too late to try and educate ‘us’.

At this point in my life, I know of less than a handful of people out of hundreds of my peers who have kept the link between God and sexuality pure and intact from childhood into adulthood.

Personally, I have gone on a journey of re-building this link in my life and above all the seminars I have attended, conversations I have had with Christian friends and mentors, bible chapters and books that I have read, I have one book to thank for helping me make that re-connect. ‘Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections between Sexuality and Spirituality’ by Rob Bell saved my life and future marriage. It did for me what my parents and every church leader I have ever had, failed to do (largely due to cultural and societal norm not to talk sex as a taboo topic). It established a link in me so strong between God and sex that I am now unable to separate the two. But I have worked hard for this because I knew I was insufficient in my understanding of intimacy and the more I knew God, the more I felt a gap between Him and my understanding of sex, my body and the connection between the purpose of them all.

But that was me and I was hungry for the template that I knew existed if not in practice in my life. It is by the grace of God that ‘we’ in our generation come to this renewal of mind, soul, body and spirit. The truth is that church is still full of young adults and adults who still do not understand that God and sexuality were never created to be apart. They have sex outside of marriage and then are not fulfilled in their marriage sex lives because they have sex outside of God and don’t get that what they are doing is a re-enactment of communion and a representation of the intimacy intended by Christ with His bride the church. It’s deep and I have a revelation of it. But where are ‘we’ getting taught this!

And those are the ones who make it married. Sometimes a girl will get pregnant before she is married. But instead of the church and her parents and everyone around her examining themselves to see how far back ‘this’ started, they jump to corporate punishment.

If you have ever instigated or supported public punishment in your church of those caught in sin, the next few paragraphs are for you. May the Lord God teach you the right way!

Mercy

So what is mercy? And how do we calibrate it against ensuring we teach our people well in our treatment of those who have fallen in their walk? We know that God’s template is a certain way for families and life, but in this all, we must separate the person who falls from the rest of the congregation!

Mercy comes after the fall. There must be much private alignment of the person’s life with God’s intended pattern, and then public mercy shown. Jesus never invited anyone to stone anyone else in public and if anything-He condemned it. His pattern is the only way we should deal with these things. Draw a line in the sand, protect the person from stones, take them somewhere new and help them put themselves back together in the intimacy of grace.

This is not rocket science. Counselling-yes! Prayer-Yes! Buddying up-Yes! Potential relocation-Yes! Encouragement to attend and BELONG-Yes! But for the love of God, you cannot deny someone the chance to minister FOR YEARS because they fell (if they want help to come back to right standing before God). Perhaps they can’t serve somewhere so public but still, they must serve because to take that away from them is to take away what God created them for. And what exactly will a forced confession in front of an entire congregation do? The love of God builds people, and yet somehow the church tears people down. Doesn’t this just mean we are not conduits of the love of God? So are we really Christians and worthy of the name that is Himself love?

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is (springs) from God; and he who loves [his fellowmen] is begotten (born) of God and is coming [progressively] to know and understand God [to perceive and recognize and get a better and clearer knowledge of Him]. He who does not love has not become acquainted with God [does not and never did know Him], for God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest (displayed) where we are concerned: in that God sent His Son, the only begotten or unique [Son], into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation (the atoning sacrifice) for our sins. Beloved, if God loved us so [very much], we also ought to love one another.” (1 John 4:7-11)

“There is no fear in love [dread does not exist], but full-grown (complete, perfect) love turns fear out of doors and expels every trace of terror! For fear brings with it the thought of punishment, and [so] he who is afraid has not reached the full maturity of love [is not yet grown into love’s complete perfection].” (1 John 4:18)

“If anyone says, I love God, and hates (detests, abominates) his brother [in Christ], he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, Whom he has not seen. And this command (charge, order, and injunction) we have from Him: that he who loves God shall love his brother [believer] also.” (1 John 4:20-21)

When Jesus came to die on the cross for our sins, did he ever ask us to stand before the Sanhedrin before He went there on our behalf? Were we ever to confess our shame publicly? Did he invite us to stone each other one last time before He died? Did he turn the woman with the alabaster jar away from service because she fell? Did he scorn Zaccheus up the tree to stay there lest he got his hands on him to discipline him? Did he tell Nicodemus to wait a year before he could get the secret of the Kingdom because He had a questionable past?

“For God did not send the Son into the world in order to judge (to reject, to condemn, to pass sentence on) the world but that the world might find salvation and be made safe and sound through Him.” (John 3:17)

Mercy facilitates you back into the throne room where judgement abides, but grace also. Mercy is when everyone knows you’ve done wrong, but they choose not to punish you according to their own understanding because they understand that judgement and punishment are not only two separate things entirely, but that although judgement according to biblical specification is permissible, punishment however is not.

And this is why……

Judgement

Judgement is the evaluation of evidence used in the making of a decision. So in basic terms-you are fornicating outside of marriage=you are sinning/ are a sinner/ have fallen short of God’s template for your life. We have evaluated the evidence and reached a conclusion, judgement SHOULD stop here. But more often than not, punishment (the authoritative imposition of something negative or unpleasant on a person in response to behaviour deemed wrong by an individual or group) is thrown into the mix. And in the context of what led me to write this blog piece, the lines have become so blurred that I see in churches much punishment, but no judgement; much death, but no life.

This is not OK because judgement has been created by God to expose sin, in order for mercy to rescue and grace to teach. Punishment however, is man’s interpretation of how they should impose God’s judgement and more often than not, distributed independently of, and without either mercy or grace. It is no surprise then when we see this punishment killing, stealing and destroying people’s lives and although first painful, judgement brings life by first pruning of dead parts in order for the whole body to blossom and fruit again in the next season.

Mercy triumphs over justice

“Those who are strong and well (healthy) have no need of a physician, but those who are weak and sick. Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy [that is, readiness to help those in trouble] and not sacrifice and sacrificial victims. For I came not to call and invite [to repentance] the righteous (those who are upright and in right standing with God), but sinners (the erring ones and all those not free from sin).” (Matthew 9:12-13)

“So speak and so act as [people should] who are to be judged under the law of liberty [the moral instruction given by Christ, especially about love].For to him who has shown no mercy the judgment [will be] merciless, but mercy [full of glad confidence] exults victoriously over judgment.” (James 2:12-13)

When it comes to judging we always need to make sure we judge fairly and righteously (John 7:24) because this leads directly to mercy and grace; and this should be only after we know the facts and consider the situation. This is not an unforgiving or sudden judgment. It is a concerned response full of mercy intended to heal, help and deliver hope.

Mercy and judgment offer more than punishment and scorn which usually accompany prejudice, bitterness, pride and hatred. Judgement is connected to mercy and grace, forgiveness and hope. The kind of public punishment and humiliation often dished out to the women in church that get caught out pregnant usually delivers an unjust final verdict while mercy offers another chance and a fresh start. Mercy is what we need and where would any of us be without the great mercy of God? Through mercy God gives us what we need, not what we deserve. It is all a part of His law that gives life and freedom.  If we do not, in our entire pastoring, pass on this tremendous gift, we become selfish, short-sighted and unrepresentative of Christ for failing to relate that which we have received. If we punish and leave broken instead of judge with mercy to heal – we have failed God in our calling.

If you are a pastor reading this then I implore you to remember in your treatment of those caught in sin that our God is a judging and merciful God, one who abides in love, lives in justice and does not punish and break His children. Instead of the punishment which we deserve, each and every day we receive mercy and grace through judgement in our lives. It was by the mercy of God that Noah was not the last righteous man on earth after God judged the earth with a flood. It is by the mercy through the judgement of God that you are here today. And it is by the mercy through the judgement of God that born-again Christians will spend eternity with the greatest giver of mercy, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. So let us forsake punishment and let judgement lead to mercy that forgives and grace that renews. We who have been charged with the lives of others need to think truly of what reflects heaven the best.

Stay Fabulous

Bella.x