Posted on 09/11/2015 8:17:28 AM PDT by wagglebee
September 10, 2015 (BreakPoint) -- In mid-July, a group calling itself the “Impact Team” announced it would release the names of people who used the Ashley Madison website if its owners didn’t shut the website down.
If you hadn’t heard of Ashely Madison back then, chances are you now know more than you care to about the site, which brings together people who seek to have extramarital affairs. Its motto tells you all you need to know: “Life is short. Have an affair.”
The site’s ownership didn’t comply with the demand, and in mid-August, the “Impact Team” released more than 25 gigabytes of data. As soon as the data was released, people combed through it looking for potential targets for humiliation, or even worse, extortion.
But this isn’t just a problem that’s “out there” in the world. Ed Stetzer of Lifeway Research estimates that “at least 400 church leaders (pastors, elders, staff, deacons, etc.)” would be exposed in the Ashely Madison affair. (Pun intended.)
In one post, Stetzer wrote that just as people reap what they sow, cultures do as well. Citing the story about the Old Dominion University fraternity’s signs that read “freshman daughter drop-off” alongside the Ashely Madison story, Stetzer wrote, “at some point, we must ask, ‘Is this what we really wanted when culture turned against traditional sexual mores?’”
He continues, “The sexual revolution is, by definition, a war against something—in this case against previous sexual mores. And wars, whether we admit it or not, always have victims . . . So it is in the sexual revolution.”
And as it turns out, in some instances, the victims of that revolution include churches and other ministries. As Ed says, “When the shepherd has violated a sacred trust, it harms the whole flock. This is not the time to act as if everything is fine, rush together a pastor search team, while ignoring the hurt and bleeding flock.”
After all, he continues, “Even when members of a church don’t idolize their pastor, there’s still a great deal of implicit trust in the relationship. The members believe the one teaching them week after week is the same in the park as in the pulpit, the same in public as in private. When a revelation like the Ashley Madison hack occurs, the breach of trust is severe, and often lasting far beyond his moment.”
For these victims, Ed urges them to “focus on God who does not fail.” Instead of focusing on your pastor’s guilt, focus on God who does great things despite the flaws and failings of his servants.
People should also take care of the pastors’ families. They are principal victims and yet, perversely, they’re often unintentionally punished along with their betrayers.
And most of all, we should remember that “God’s grace is sufficient for the shepherd who falls, and the flock that’s left vulnerable. “We have a Great Shepherd, a Chief Shepherd, who is for us what earthly shepherds can never be,” Ed writes—“perfect, absolutely trustworthy, and never failing. It is He who leads us beside still waters in and into green pastures. Let us place our faith in Him, and we will find rest for our weary souls.”
Reprinted with permission from Break Point.
This cannot be said enough.
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But.. but.. but, the sexual revolution got the seal of approval from the “experts” on human behavior, the psychologists.
Heh heh. Anyone with a lick of sense could have predicted the consequences. Apparently a few years of college can turn anyone into an idiot.
The sexual revolution has been a disaster for our culture.
We have normalized illegitimacy as a way of life, as an acceptable normal manner of parenting.
We have normalized the expectation that sex activity outside of marriage will happen. Regardless of consequences.
We have normalized the idea that marriage until death do us part is an outmoded outdated or dangerous concept.
We have seen generations raised with the idea that it is ok to have sex with any number of partners, any gender of partners, and that collateral damage such as unplanned pregnancy, is just something for the girl to worry about.
I even think that the universal availability of porn has affected people’s expectations of what happens during sex, such as performing particular sex acts being expected by the male. Don’t want to be too graphic, I think everyone knows what I mean. Some acts in porn are degrading and humiliating to the female.
The ‘sexual revolution’ actually eliminated guilty pleasure between men & women; so then we get homosexual, bisexual and other deviancy for ‘guilty pleasure’.
We know that women now feel liberated to have sex whenever they feel like it and abort unwanted babies.
What has happened to the men in this equation? How many men even know about their unborn sons & daughters? Why do men donate sperm? Have they totally lost the genealogical ties that bind us to our forefathers and descendants?
Faithful Christians were ambushed by the sexual revolution.
A wonderful reminder, nasty as it is, that should bring a few people back down to earth.
There are no greener pastures out there, you probably trade one set of problems for another, or you are feeding some kind of you-know-what addiction in the first place.
It seems to take so much longer for people to grow up now, with all the material comforts and high expectations for the “self”, and for pleasures, all in the absence of a spiritual and Christian life, so it’s a distorted combination that leads seemingly to clinical selfishness.
I just pray that it makes people take a look at their God again, and may our nation repent, renew our faith and return to our unfailing God.
The 10 Commandments List in Exodus 20:2-17:
7.“You shall not commit adultery.”
Saves a whole lot of trouble if you follow those 10 rules.
Sad to say, but even Christian young people have been affected by the larger culture, and are involved in sex before marriage and outside marriage.
You have to be pretty dumb to think that cheating on your spouse is prudent, morally right, or that you won’t be found out.
We can get even more specific than lamenting “war.” As wars themselves can be good or evil.
This is based on the devil’s eternal grudge against God. He has to press a “better way” even when there ISN’T a “better way.”
Actually what was revealed was a massive scam.
Most importantly, letting go of the idea that any righteousness can be had apart from God. We can have a shadow of it, but it will be backed by the wrong attitude and any challenge will show it to be self righteousness.
This stems from sodomites and their supporters blasting as loudly as they can in every venue that the perverted sexual fetish called homosexuality that they have so cleaning wrapped up in a pretty feel-good package and labeled ‘love’ is somehow NORMAL.
Even going as far as glorifying and teaching this abnormal sexual fetish to grade school children whether their parents like it or not.
Pretty soon every imaginable vile sexual act will be applauded as ‘expression’ that should be accepted as normal and any objectors will be publicly shamed and labeled as a hateful bigot.
So it was a small minority and not an ever growing immoral majority who is responsible? They forced the resat of us? It was the depraved masses who were only too happy to support the homosexual revolution because they had n moral ground to stand on. Even on this conservative site folks are always wondering if L would “hit it”. We think it’s cute around here.
do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Romans 12:2
I don’t understand it.
I lost my wife to cancer a year ago and it angers me that a man can risk something so scared for a piece of tail.
The day I decided I wanted to marry my wife was the day I was done chasing tail. If I still wanted to chase tail, I would not have asked her to marry me.
The best feeling I know is to reach over at night in the bed and my wife is right there. I would never worry about where my wife was, always, without fail, I reach over and she’s there. That felt good. There is no way I would have risked losing all that over a piece of tail.
Now people just take it for granted.
They choose to mess around and then...
The wife = gone
Kids = gone, juggled between two separate homes now.
The house = gone
All the years working building a home and a family = gone
...for a piece of tail.
“There are no greener pastures out there”
Bingo
Proverbs 5:15
Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well
Rudyard Kipling wrote in 1919:
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”
Agreed. Considering the demographics, those guys could argue they’re the least likely to be meeting new women.
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