JackTrade's Blog

       In his reply to my post, "Everybody's doing it!,"  Mmustangg made a very astute observation: "What needs to be done is to introduce shame back into society.  There is no shame anymore.  People do things openly now that years ago they woul have been laughed at or shunned for.  The shame starts at home.  We need to teach our kids to stay away from what's shameful and wrong."

      He is absolutely right.  Shame is the way to get people to stop paper predation.  (For the definition, read my post "Everybody's Doing it!")  I merely said it must be done.  He  told us the way to get it done.

      Judeo-Christian morality has served America well.  Because of it we are the greatest nation in the world.  But as a nation we have forsaken our roots, and removed the ancient landmarks.  If we don't repent and go back to the Christian morality that made us great, we will soon be just another nation that forsook our God, and we have already begun to pay the price. 

     We have become a prideful nation, like ancient Israel was in the time of the Prophet Jeremiah.  The worst part of it is that like them, our pride is not in our great achievements but in our great sins.  We wish to think of ourselves as above the old fogey morality of the Bible, and have embraced the new-fangled, modern morality.  As a culture, we have gone from being a decent and moral people to being totally immersed in sexual immorality.  People think this is good, and take pride in it.  They ought to be ashamed of it.

     In Jeremiah 13:23-27, we read, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?  Therefore I will scatter them as the stubble that passeth away by the wind of the wilderness.  This is thy lot, the portion of thy measures from me, saith the Lord; because thou hast forgotten me, and trusted in falsehood.  Therefore I will discover thy skirts upon thy face, that thy shame might appear.  I have seen thy adulteries, and thy neighings, the lewdness of thy whoredom, and thine abominations on the hills in the fields.  Woe unto thee, O Jerusalem!  wilt thou not be made clean?  when shall it once be?"

     Illicit sex sells.  But in the long run, what has the culture bought, but a shameless society?  The new morality has bought us an arrogance which makes us believe anything goes, including abortion on demand, which says, in effect, "Go ahead and have sex: You can always murder the kid later.  Just make sure you do it before the baby is born."  It has also bought us no-fault divorce, for people too lazy to work through problems in their marriages, or be faithful to their partners in the hard times.  One more thing it has bought us is a great increase in sexually transmitted diseases,  such as AIDS, gonorrea, syphilis, and other no one ever heard of before now.  All of this is a great argument for the necessity of shame.

     As a nation, we must stop feeding on sex.  The meaning of exposure must be changed back so that it becomes once again a shameful thing to be seen photographed naked.  People need to stop looking at Playboy and all other pornographic magazines, and the way to do it is create an atmosphere of shame and exposure.  As the Bible, in Ephesians 5: 11 and 12 says, "And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darknesss, but rather reprove them, For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret."

     In other words, Expose the sin for what it is--immoral and wrong!  Then, instead of embracing it, expose it to the public shame and shunning it deserves.  Punish the predator with prison.  Punish the paper predator by not buying his magazines and not watching his television shows.  Make it once again so smut is harder to get, and must be hidden from view, because it is viewed as shameful.  We must go back to the days when porn had to be hidden in brown paper bags so others would not see it, and put the buyer to shame if he is seen with it.

     We must publicly punish lotharios like Eliot Spitzer and Bill Clinton, by putting them to public humiliation in the kind of exposure of exposure no politician should want.  Never elect them to office again!  Teachers who have sex with underage students should never be allowed in the classroom again.  Religious leaders who are sexual predators should never be allowed in the church pulpit again.  Parents who molest their children should automaticly lose custody, and never hope to get it back.  The exposure of these people should be so public and so glaring, that the shame they are exposed to would be a warning to other not to go there.  A public whipping along with a long prison sentence would be shaming enough to stop most of these shinanigans.

      Much of the blame for this situation lies with the religious entertainment centers called churches.  Instead of calling sin for what it is, the preachers today try to mitigate it with modern psychobabble.  Instead of preaching redemption through the Lord Jesus Christ, for sin, they give out mantras of self-esteem, which is nothing but a shoddy  defense of the pride that prevents repentance.  Instead of the great hymns of the faith, many churches incorporate rock music and idiotic "praise songs" whose repititiousness act like drugs on the brain and leave the "worshipper" unable to think straight. 

     The church must not function like an entertainment center.  Instead of the nonsense and babble people need to hear preachers preach the Bible.  Instead of self-esteem, people need to hear of the penalty for sin and Christ's salvation.  Instead of rock music, they need to hear and sing hymns like "Rock of Ages." 

     The church does not need any more entertainers calling themselves "preachers" standing in the pulpit.  She needs men of God who will call sin "sin" and not back down when they are persecuted by the babblers.  This means being willing to stand up to those like the people in the homosexual movement who are trying to foist their false interpretation of Scripture on the church.  The very fact that they have made such inroads into the church is a matter of shame to the church. The Bible calls homosexuality "abomination" (Leviticus 18:22), and in Genesis 18, God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for the wickedness that was going on in them. 

      Our society is full of pride and selfishness, the very opposite of the ethics that made Americe great.  As it says in Mcah 6:8, "He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" 

     For those who choose to disdain Christian morality, this is the only thing I can say to  you: Some day, you will be judged by God for your sins.  Jesus Christ died on the cross for you, and if you come by faith to Him and repent of your sins and accept the salvation He has provided, you will be eternally saved.  It is better to do that than to face Him at the Great White Throne and be shamed forever in Hell.  

      There is no entertainment there.