Ronald Weinland

The quote above is from Part 4 of this series and is worth repeating before continuing in this post.

It is important to now consider and seek to digest the rest of what Paul told to the Romans that we examined in the first part of Part 4. Paul explained how that mankind has not been thankful to God, but they have instead raised themselves up in their own pride-filled minds to have no need for God, and have lived life by their own choices and foolish reasoning.

This is exactly what Lucifer did as he became the original adversary to God. As a result, his spirit changed to one that seeks to influence all others to “think on their own” (from their own reasoning) and to not yield to nor depend upon God to know the “way to think.” Satan influenced a third of the angels to follow his perverted advice. He then persuaded the first two humans to do the same. In this case, it was the woman who was directly persuaded and then the man through the woman.

It should be obvious to note that those who decide (reason) to no longer follow God and His Church (His ministry) do as Lucifer did. They also set out, as their “mission,” to turn (free) others from God’s Church by “thinking on their own” about God and what they want to interpret as the “right way” to believe and live.

Adam and Eve had free access to the knowledge of truth – to the truly free way of thinking. They had not yet been begotten of God’s spirit, but the blessing of learning and receiving truth (free access to the tree of life) was similar to what happens to an individual when first being called by God and their mind is opened to be able to receive truth. However, what Adam and Eve had was far greater until they sinned and were cut off from such free access. Their choice of sin distorted and perverted their ability to think right. This in turn perverted their thinking regarding the subject of sex and how they saw themselves “sexually.”

Sin Infects Behavior
Paul went on to explain how man’s choice to sin, by relying on their own distorted reasoning, also infected their thinking and human behavior regarding sex. As part of this perverse quest to omit any of God’s authority in their lives, mankind has belittled and reduced God to the lowest levels of earthly likeness and thereby minimizing God’s importance in their life. Paul then went on to reveal the correlation of man’s great desire to live life his own way (sin) to what then happens to the thinking in the human mind that leads to sexual perversion (perverting God’s beautiful intent and purpose) in unbalanced and distorted relationships in life.

“Therefore God also gave them over to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts (which becomes magnified by hormones) to dishonor their own bodies between themselves. Who changed the truth of God into a lie…” (Rom. 1:24-25).

The more that people turn to sin (any kind of sin), the more unsound and distorted their thinking, choices, and behavior becomes toward the subject of sex. Sin distorts and perverts all thinking, but it is more manifest in the area of sexual thought, emotion, and conduct. The product of this “wrong thinking” regarding sex then leads to distorted judgment, feelings (emotion), and communications in relationships. Through Paul, God reveals part of this process and correlation in thinking and behavior.

This process begins by people moving farther away from living in agreement to the awesomely beautiful enhancement to the marriage relationship that God created mankind to be able to experience together as husband and wife. Marriage between a man and a woman was created to be the closest and most important relationship that mankind is able to experience in all human relationships. The sexual part of that relationship is an important part of the overall relationship and reveals much about each individual separately and also the ability of both (as a couple) becoming “one” as family. The sexual relationship between one man and one woman in marriage was created to be natural, healthy, beautiful, endearing, binding, and exciting in producing one of the most giving and receiving experiences that two people can share together in life.

But people have robbed themselves of the fullness such an experience can give in life by yielding to the bondage of lust that never fulfills and satisfies. Instead, it lends itself to greater bondage and more sin, with far more distortion in thinking. It leads to unsound and unnatural issues with jealousy, envy, anger, resentment, suspicion, increased selfishness, distrust, pouting, cheating, being too self-conscious, becoming hardened, mental torment and anguish, low self esteem, turning inward, etc., etc. All of these issues having to do with the way one thinks and feels then has a powerful impact on all relationships in life, especially in the family.

As a result of pushing God away, Paul stated that “God gave them over to uncleanness through the lusts in their hearts to dishonor their own bodies between themselves.” This is done not only literally, but also mentally in fantasizing, flirtation, and filthy thinking about others.

Today’s world is so perverse that young people find the idea of two people being monogamous and faithful in marriage for life as weird, strange, and as a totally unfulfilling concept in life. Long before marriage (if they do marry), people pursue numerous sexual relationships (fornication), along with various forms of experimentation, unnatural acts, and enhancement supposedly gained through the use of various drugs (that affect the mind). It is no wonder that once people do become married that extramarital relationships (adultery) can occur so easily and so often, which can tear families apart and cause great pain and horrible suffering in life.

Such distortion of thinking does not stop with fantasizing or direct fornication and adultery, but also in other forms of sexual perversion and practice made so readily available today through modern technology. The sickness of “fantasizing” can now be magnified many times over by the misuse of the Internet in all forms of pornography and “sexual communications” with others.

Paul continues in Romans by further explaining how far the endless, out of control spiral of lusts, evil desire, and increased sin pervert human thinking and relationships. This is a progressive process, and its beginning is next to impossible for people to understand what is happening. It just happens, and people accept what is occurring as a “normal” part of life. In this process, women have become largely reduced to “sex objects” rather than for simply knowing them for “who they are.”

Without moral thought (God’s instruction concerning how to think and how not to think), a young man will grow into adult life and progressively look upon women in judgment and lust in a “sexual context.” Some entertainment even seeks to portray such incidents to seem funny and natural. It is natural for a male to recognize an exceptionally beautiful woman and/or a shapely figure, but it should stop there. Instead, men do not exercise control, respect toward women, or even the woman they are with (whether dating or married) and tend to ogle and drool lustfully with “sex” being the bottom line. Such things are not “natural” in the way that God created the mind to be and it certainly is not funny. Simply ask a date or wife how she feels about such ogling stares. Such things reflect the lack of respect, care, understanding, control, and morality that a male has toward other women. This obviously affects and hurts potentially meaningful relationships.

The lack of exercising control of the mind as part of a process to “think right” in how one lives leads to an ever increasing disrespect men actually have toward women, though they are largely unaware of their own thinking (without care or concern). This uncaring and accepted attitude of men leads to a progression toward seeing women as subservient, unequal in ability and thinking (reason), lower than and beneath them. So men tend to “rule over” women in a harsh and controlling manner, and women are “expected” to listen and take it. That is not God’s way. Instead, it is a very perverted and sick way of living life.

Is it any wonder what Paul says happens next? “For this reason (sin – perverting their thinking, their mind) God gave them up to vile passions, for even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature (the way God created a woman to think and be)” (Rom. 1:26). This is about a “process” that can progress to simply become worse and worse the farther it goes.

As part of this process, men have harshly “ruled over” women, not only in the home, but in business, advertising, and entertainment, have “given into” such control – perversely so, and have accepted such a thing as normal. Men have selfishly and lustfully “ruled over” women in all aspects of society. To get ahead in business or to be “accepted” more in the world, women have tended to “use” more of their sexual appeal in how they dress, groom, apply make-up, flirt and/or behave around men in their struggle to rise above such oppression from men. This world is truly filled with a completely unfair, unrighteous, and controlling dominance from men toward women. So women have misused (most often unwittingly so) what God gave them naturally in an intent that is not natural (“changed the natural use”) in the way to act and behave in society. These are all curses because of sin.

All this is only a quick glimpse and overview of the process Paul is describing. God is revealing a process whereby sin infects the mind and ultimately infects, hurts, corrupts, and distorts actual human relationships and behavior ­– primarily between the sexes. This is about the very distortion in thinking that also infects attitudes and behavior about sex itself.

Unnatural Behavior
Through Paul, God has been revealing how sin, through moving farther away from God’s authority over life, actually distorts thinking regarding the subject and righteous purpose of sex. This ultimately distorts and pollutes the thinking and behavior of both men and women toward each other and also toward themselves (about themselves – unsound self-consciousness). Since men have “chosen” to give themselves to lust and not to obedience toward God, they have perverted their natural strength and masculinity into one of dominance through a “controlling,” demeaning, and superior spirit (attitude) over women. Women in turn have “chosen” to yield to such “brute” influence over them. These attitudes are then perpetuated and taught (by example) within family units, generation after generation. People have lived so long in such conditions of human life that they think it is “normal,” but it is highly abnormal (in the “way” God created it to be). Actually, this is spiritual bondage.

Women can be so mistreated (mentally, physically, and sexually abused) by men in society and even by their own husbands that they “fight back” in mind and attitude toward men. Sometimes this is done in such a simple manner as in the style of clothing being worn to even the shortness of their hair. They begin to lose what God created to be truly feminine in nature. Most often people do not even know why they are responding as they do because they are not actually able to “see” themselves by truly knowing themselves. Only God can give the help and healing that is needed to change such a course in life.

Such “fighting back” as a response to wrong treatment can be carried much further than simple matters in styles of clothing worn or length of hair, but can go much deeper depending upon the kind of mistreatment a woman continues to experience. There is an ever-growing list of responses to such abuse that is exercised (lived, practiced) as a woman is moved to fighting back and retaliating against such aggressive behavior from men. As there are those among both men and women who have a stronger sex drive than normal due to hormones, and this simply may be due to some who just progress in unnatural practices due to increasing sin, there are those who do turn to affection and sexual experience from the same gender.

Again, it needs to be stressed, that what Paul is describing involves a process that becomes more unnatural the farther mankind moves away from God’s originally created purpose in the lives of both men and women (through searing the conscience and by increasingly rejecting moral standards).

“For this reason God gave them up to vile passions (unnatural emotion, thinking, and desires), for even their women did exchanged the natural use for what is against nature (a process of escalation that begins small and subtly). Likewise also the men (again beginning small and subtly which does lead to that which is fully opposite of what God created to be natural), leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due” (Rom. 1:26-28).

It needs to be stated at this point that the attraction to homosexuality in today’s world has additional causes apart from that which has existed in centuries past. Some people want to give a simple cause for such thinking, emotions, and/or feelings. Most homosexuality through time has been the result of polluted and unsound thinking caused by the progression of sin that distorts and infects the overall thinking of the mind. However, some homosexuality develops from the traumatic or mentally confused state (about love, emotion, and affection) that is the result of sexual abuse (which has also occurred in times past). Although in this case, some are too young to recognize it as abuse and confuse it with love (not sexual love). Other same sex attraction (occurring in times past as well) comes from what is developed as a desire to experience sexual love, but because of harsh, unhealthy, or emotionally scarred encounters, individuals have turned to the same sex for gratification and emotional support (though it never fulfills such desire).

Finally, however, what has changed over the past century due to a world cursed with greed and misuse of scientific knowledge, the world today is plagued with an over abundance of dangerous chemicals that can and do alter the proper healthy functioning of the human body that God so perfectly created to exist in a physical world. Large quantities of chemicals are added to foods we eat, ingested or injected as medications or used in other medically evasive practices, as well as the excessive use of chemicals in every imaginable area of agriculture. Animals are given medications, steroids (growth hormones), and other growth altering drugs, which then enter the food chain as meat, milk, eggs, etc. The genetics of plants (for produce, grains, etc.) have been altered (unnatural) which humans then consume. Although everyone is assured that these are “safe,” these were not what God created the human body to consume or be exposed to.

This cycle goes on and on, but it has produced changes in the children being born and changes in children as their bodies are growing and many of these very things actually work to alter the chemical makeup in a person (hormone production as an example, and other chemical regulators of the human body and mind) which can produce a different sex mindset than what one has been born with physically. Such things are also the cause of many diseases and illnesses. Many know as young children that they are different and think differently than much of society around them. Today, we are all the product of a cursed and sick world (physically, mentally, and spiritually), which is the product of 6,000 years of mankind’s rejection of God.

As the subject of homosexuality has just been addressed, it also needs to be stated that having such feelings, emotions and pulls are not sins, but the practice and lust of it is sin. This is just as true for those who are naturally drawn to those of the opposite sex. Such is not sin, but the practice of sexual relations outside of marriage is sin, as is lust and the fantasizing that is so often associated with it.

All this that has been covered is not a matter of personal opinion, or of scientific intellect, knowledge, evidence, and/or examination, but it is solely from God.

There is good news for the family – good news for women and good news for men. This world is about to be reversed from its current course of disobedience that has produced so many curses upon family. This reversal will be the healing process of mankind learning and then choosing obedience to God’s ways that produce blessings – blessings that remove the curses of bondage that plague family life in this world.

[Part 6 will continue in next week’s post.]