relationships and community on Perversion

In his classic fictional work on spiritual warfare, The Screwtape Letters , C. S. Lewis imagined a senior demon (Screwtape) corresponding with one of his protégés (his nephew Wormwood) as the latte...

The church is often called a killjoy for protesting against sexual license. But the real killing of joy comes with the grabbing of pleasure. As with credit card usage. the price tag is hidden at the s...

Defilement is what sin does to us; damnation is what sin introduces as our eternal end. Except for God’s intervention. We have needs, and God addresses our needs. Even our sin, the most destructive re...

The sin of injustice is defined in the Bible as the abuse of power—abusing power by taking from others the good things that God intended for them, namely, their life, liberty, dignity, or the fruits o...

And of some sinful pleasure they say "Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pl...

A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.

In the early 1900s, a “respectable” woman wore an average of twenty-five pounds of clothing when she appeared in public. The sight of an ankle could cause scandal. Over the next hundred years the pend...

It is human to err, it is devilish to remain willfully in error.

For though [something] be good, it may be loved with an evil as well as with a good love: it is loved rightly when it is loved ordinately; evilly, when inordinately.

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Give me chastity and continency—but not yet!

Envy, the meanest of vices, creeps on the ground like a serpent.

O God, our Father, in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus you have given us the remedy for sin. In him you have opened to us the way to forgiveness for all our past sins, and you have given u...

The wicked envy and hate; it is their way of admiring.

Gracious Father, the words of scripture are not without harshness in relation to our sin. We are prone to lead others astray in our words and actions. Knowingly or unknowingly done, we are condemned. ...

In this short excerpt from C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, the fictional demon Screwtape complains to his advisor Wormwood about all the pleasures God has created that point back to a loving creator: ...

Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.

To the degree you experience God's love towards you - seeing you as beautiful and radiant - to that degree sex won't ruin your life.

Mercy, detached from Justice, grows unmerciful.

If I were making a list of benefits like the one Mike McKinley imagines, only this time using the devil’s actual logic, it might look more like this: Experience the excitement of new romance. Get th...

O Lord, my every sense, member, faculty, affection, is a snare to me. I can scarce open my eyes but I envy those above me, or despise those below. I covet the honor and riches of the mighty, and a...

Have mercy on us, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out our transgressions. Wash us thoroughly from our iniquity and cleans us from our sin. For we know ou...

Human sexuality includes more than hormones, organs, and orgasms; it runs through the psychic and spiritual ranges of our lives. We experience our sexuality on the spiritual level as a yearning for an...

Seduction is never ugly in appearance.

Some years ago I had a pastoral relationship with a couple of people who were deeply in love with each other. They believed that God wanted them to get married so they could consummate their love. The...

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignora...

God made every one of us a sexual being, and that is good. Attraction and arousal are the natural, spontaneous, God-given responses to physical beauty, while lust is a deliberate act of the will.

Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against thy holy laws....

Exposed to public view like slabs of meat hung from a market stall, troublesome slaves were nailed to crosses…past. No death was more excruciating, more contemptible, than crucifixion. To be hung nake...

People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromis...