Evangelism to the Flesh

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A new month, a new topic. New? Aren’t we still trying to get well?

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Well, I am not yet well. But move on so that we can hover there.

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We Americans are a fleshy people, we love sex without commitment, Lord almighty how we love this! So how do you evangelize God’s love to such a weird people? Don’t walk away, oh no. Instead you try to speak what an ear can hear. What was always true remains true now. “Be all things to all people.” Okay. So you remind the people of the times they were smitten, against their will, by a lewd armpit popping with smoky curls, a nipple with a briny sheen, and a little tender fold of skin that is pouting like a face. Oh, I’m in love, a person would cry, but this is never exactly love. It had the sting of something temporary – namely, of flesh. And the person with this horrible power over you would always abuse you in one way or perhaps in another. There was always abuse. Because a human body, in fact *because* it was human, was not likely to be a fit object for worship, oh my delightful yes but not *fit*. And so the human one with this power over you would betray you to your face, that was just how sex operated, one of the rules of the game. Yes, but the intensity of the passion, that still hung around when the object of the passion had disintegrated and fled. There was always a sudden opening of the soul. The opening was real anyway.

And so you tell the people of one you love with the same intensity as this. You love this one just as much. But this one does not betray you or hurt you in a wanton fashion. This one is so oddly *worthy* of your love. And the hearer starts to have the awful impossible suspicion that the one who is worth loving is God. He was here all the time, why did we ignore the passion in that name?

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