Cute Mormon Secularists

So my wife and I schlepped our way through one of the more recent offerings in the “romantic comedy” genre last night. Turned the first one off out of pure boredom (despite the reputations of the actors). The one we actually watched was only slightly better, but the fact that casual sex was presented in both, within 2-3 minutes of the start of the movie was actually pretty amusing.

It was like a college kid pulling out his black rimmed glasses at a hipster conference to show his street creds. It was like a mom sheepishly laughing and explaining away her two year old flopping and doing the angry ninja dance on the floor in front of a house guest. It was like a politician well, doing what politicians always do.

In other words, it was preachy. It was like, hey this is a romantic comedy, and psssst, *wink*wink*, don’t worry, we believe in sex. Hey guys, hey guys: we’re cool too. It was so totally Mormon. It was like Maxim and Cosmo sent their best reps in white short-sleeve shirts and bland ties on bicycles to my front door. And they both had elder name tags pinned to their nerdy shirts.

Now I realize that my sample size is pretty limited and I don’t ordinarily spend my Tuesday evenings cringing my way through a mildly amusing plot line, but it just hit me: this whole casual/free sex thing is just getting annoyingly condescending. It’s like they’re getting all moralistic on me: “Now, you know…,” the frumpy lady looks down at me through glasses perched at the end of her nose, “it’s just the right thing to have seeeexxxxx with strangers…” “What?! You haven’t had seeexxxx yet? You’ve been on three dates.” It’s like we’re all back in Mrs. Frumpmeyer’s kindergarten class and we have to be lectured about using the potty while sitting in mini-chairs behind mini-desks. Seriously?

Bible believing Christians have known for a long time that there is a full-court press on Christian morality. But it’s pretty easy to get unnerved. It’s easy to assume that the Casual Sex Evangelists are at least partly right. We tug our collars and stare at the ground and mumble things about virginity and modesty and essentially sell the farm, basically granting that it would be really cool to have hundreds of partners in bed.

But what if God is actually right? What if His word really is life and glory and pleasures forevermore? What if the sex therapists and so-called progressives are just petty little Mormons who worship a bitch-goddess named Orgasm?

Well it’s true.

And this got me thinking: the secularists and liberals are getting scared. Seriously. They’re worried. And the overreach is homosex. Casual, freelance heterosexual intercourse, even with the cheap thrill of the casual hook ups and affairs, gets old. And so now the sex preachers have to deliver the next thrill, but turns out that sodomy is a dead end and a bum deal. Idols are empty. Idols don’t deliver. Idols are liars, cheaters, and killers. What are the real STD statistics these days anyway?

And then it hit me: It’s actually all pretty cute of them, the secularists and atheists, getting all worked up and excited. Almost makes you want to pinch their fat little cheeks and pat their worried little heads. They’re like little puppy dogs wagging their tails desperately looking for attention, looking for affirmation. See what I did? See what I did? Did you see that little bedroom scene, that little romp in the bed between those people who aren’t married? Wasn’t that funny how his parents walked in on them in the *middle* of it them doing it? You can almost hear their middle school girl snorting and giggling.

But that steaming little pile of mess isn’t as cute or funny as they think.

Last thought on this: I also realized that nuking the family, obliterating marriage means that there really isn’t a place for promises to be made or kept. You know, promises: words you say that you actually mean, words that are far bigger, far heavier than you can even wrap your mind or heart around. Promises are words that you say, but they are like hot air balloons that lift you up, that send you on adventures. Promises are more than just words that you hold tight; promises are words that hold you tight.

These Mormon Secularists are out to destroy promises, and they’ve conned an enormous percentage of our culture into doing it. Long before porn exploded, long before adultery was just expected, long before casual hook ups and sexcapades were considered normal and expected, men broke their promises.

But the Bible says that the glory of men is their strength. Surely that means they are physically strong, but they need that physical strength in order to endure, in order to sacrifice, in order to not give up when the going gets tough. And the central thing they must not give up is their word. Men must keep their promises. They must keep their promises to love, to cherish, to protect, to provide.

But there’s only ever been one real man in the history of the world. There’s only ever been one man who always kept his promises, who never backed down, who never hid from his commitments. Jesus is the only man who bled and died in order to perfectly keep His Word. God is the perfect promise keeper. God is the one who promised Abraham the world, and God is the one who sent His Son to suffer and die in order to keep that promise. If men don’t know that God, if they haven’t met that Man, the Man who always kept His word, all their flexing, all their groaning, all their boasting will eventually cave into emptiness and thin air. Only knowing this God who kept His Word through the sacrifice of His Son on the cross and having His Spirit empowering you will give you the grace and power to keep your word.

Before we make much progress with the sex trade, with abortion, with porn, with sodomites, with prostitution, with oppressive economic policies that crush orphans and widows and effectively subsidize these abusive, barbaric industries, before we make a huge dent in those areas, we need a bunch of men to repent of their lies and broken promises. They need to go back to the families they left. They need to go back to the women they used. They need to go back and beg forgiveness. They need to own the fact that they have been cowards, that they have not been strong, that they ran away from the fight, they put their tails between their legs and wet themselves. And lots of men also need to repent of being cowards for refusing to make promises to a real woman in the first place. Failure to commit. Failure to pursue. Failure to man up and ask a woman to be your wife forever. That’s all failure to be a man, failure to have a word that’s worth keeping.

But if your life is full of that kind of failure, that kind of cowardice, you need to meet Jesus, the only real man. Ask Him to save you, to forgive you, and to give you His life so that you can be strong.

You aren’t a real man until you’ve made a promise that could kill you. You don’t know what danger is, you haven’t faced a real adventure until you put everything on the line and risked it all.

Casual hook up sex is just culturally approved and conditioned date rape. It’s about as noble as Genghis Khan solemnly humping a water buffalo.

O God, give us some real men.