Desperate Joy

God's design and plan is always good.  Our bodies are inherently good and valuable because we are created in the image of God, and we are the Temples of the Holy Spirit.  Our bodies are sacred objects worthy of dignity and respect.  We have been developing these ideas over the last couple of weeks, but there is more to the story. Adam, Eve, and all of creation was called "very good" (Genesis 1:32) but then Adam and Eve sinned and all of that was shattered, destroyed their selfish choices.   As much as we need to realize that our bodies are created in the image of God and are meant to be the temple of the Holy Ghost, these images are marred, and these temples are damaged.   No one is the perfect image of God, or the ideal temple. The sad reality is that we live in a post-Genesis 3 world - a world broken by sin.   Our bodies, brains, minds, and spirits have all been stained by its ugly curse.   The Chemistry in our brains is out of balance, our neuro...

There is a scene in the film adaptation of S.W.A.T. (starring Colin Ferrell) in which a couple of cops are giving a third cop a hard time because he is eating fast food, "Hey, I thought you were a Mormon now, and you weren't allowed to eat that stuff anymore!?" The fast food cop replies, "Yeah, I converted when I married my wife, don't tell her.   We aren't supposed to eat this stuff, our bodies are a temple." "Huh! I treat mine like an amusement park!" It is a funny exchange, but it does offer an insight into the way many people think about their bodies.   Many people believe that the only purpose our bodies have is to provide us fun, excitement and pleasure, God and religion are just obstacles in the way of this goal.   There is little if anything considered sacred these days.   What was once considered holy is now profaned and what once was profane is now considered holy.   Our bodies included. We have lost the understanding that o...

  A few years ago, I had the pleasure of visiting the Mall in Washington D.C. and taking in the majestic statues honoring men like Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and Martin Luther King, Jr.  Standing at the feet of that massive statue of Lincoln, I felt awed and humbled.  Lincoln, along with all the others enshrined on the Mall, were great men who helped form our nation and make it into the flourishing country it is today.  As a society, we have erected these statues to honor these men and to remind ourselves of their sacrifice, courage, and dignity.  Looking at these images of great men, we can clearly see the desire to honor them, to capture some of their glory and display the dignity, wisdom, and honor with which they lived their lives and led our country. If someone spray-painted crude and offensive language across that statue of Lincoln we would not just say that he was being creative and expressing himself, we would not just say he had committed vand...

  God has a gloriously good plan for our sexuality.  Over the last few posts, we have been looking into this idea.  Central to our understanding of God's plan is the idea that we are created in the image of God.  This truth is found in the first chapters of Genesis and is the cornerstone for developing our understanding of a Christ-centered view on sex and gender. Through the days of creation, God created all the myriad animals found on planet earth.   He created the flocks of birds that soar through the air, the schools of fish that swim so through the seas, and the herds of cattle that graze upon the prairies.   But on the sixth day of creation, He took a step back and made something special, something distinct and unique from all other creatures.   He created man and made him especially in His image, and then breathed life into him and made him a living soul. After God created Adam, He recognized that Adam was alone in the world, and this was no...