Who goes to Hell ?

Human Sexuality redeemed

True Prosperity from the life of Job

Consider the prosperity of Job in The Bible. How he had it (Chapter 1:13) How he lost it (Chapter 1 and 2) and how he received it back many fold (end of Chapter 42).
We seek here to prove from the book of Job and the rest of scripture that true prosperity is not about money and material goods but is first and foremost about the prosperity of our soul (3 John 2, Revelation 3:17-19).
At the start of the story, Job is said to be perfect and upright before God (Chapter 1). The content of his uprightness is to be found in Chapter 31 from Job’s own confession. He worshiped God solely and singularly (not his creation) and he did not worship money (31: 24-28). He kept himself from lust, from being a womanizer and an adulterer (31: 7-12). He dealt justly with his employees. He took in strangers and shared his goods with the poor, the widow and the orphan (31: 13-22). Such was Job's impeccable character. He was a man who sought to serve and please God with all his heart.
Had God made Job prosperous? Yes, even Satan admits to this while insinuating that Job's devotion emanated from his earthly blessings. What was Satan’s design for Job? It was to make Job curse his creator(Chapter 1 and 2) and ultimately to destroy him and his testimony.
Why did God allow Satan to attack Job? Did God allow Job's testing to prove Job's devotion, whether it was pure or tainted by an ulterior motive like Satan had said? Regardless of the answer to those questions, God allows all of Job's earthly substance to be taken away by Satan including all of his children. In a demonstration of incredible devotion to God, Job manages to bless his creator in the midst of Satan's cruel onslaught on his life.
How prosperous do you think Job felt after Satan had attacked him several times? Presumably, not very much; he rather mourned the calamity that had come upon him so disastrously.
What was God’s design for Job? It was to let him go through a season of trails and suffering followed by a deeper face to face encounter with himself (Chapter 42:5). Job would become an example of suffering, being made an eternal testimony for us who would believe so we can endure and persevere in trails. Job's sufferings mirror the sufferings of our own savior. Rather than cajole us with a half-truth ( IE that we will be healthy, wealthy and wise if we follow God) Job’s story gives us a complete picture of the trails of life, the attacks of the enemy and the wonderful plan God has for our life in-spite of these trails.
In the end, God blesses Job even more than at the beginning with better and more beautiful blessings. However, the story of job does not permit us to single out material prosperity as the main purpose and reason for life. Neither is material prosperity front and center in Jesus's teachings in the gospels or in all of the Bible for that matter.
Teachings that emphasize material prosperity apart from the cross are deceptive and give an unbalanced view of scripture and God's plans for our life. We should not buy into the greed driven gospel being preached in certain corners of Christendom. Yes, material possessions and wealth are spoken of throughout the bible and its OK to have them but we should be careful that these things don't become a snare to our spiritual life and don’t come between us and a pure love and devotion for our beloved Jesus.
The main course of our salvation is knowing and loving God and becoming like him. As a side dish for our salvation we are promised that prosperity that pertains to our mind, body, intellect and our material and emotional needs will be supplied profusely and abundantly.
For example, we see God commend Solomon when he asked for wisdom instead of material wealth ( 2 Chronicles 1:11) and as a reward God blesses Solomon with both. In his word, Jesus is telling us that our attitude about money should be to put him first before everything else. We need to be wary of going primarily after "all these THINGS" that are to be "added" to us instead of "The kingdom of God and his righteousness" which we are to seek first and foremost (Matthew Ch. 6:33).
As many would testify, Those of us who are in love with Jesus already know and have proven that Jesus is all sufficient, and that all we need He has provided for us. This is the prosperity we should all desire, one that is born of a close walk with the master and includes us being prosperous in all areas of life so that we can overflow in our spiritual and earthly life and become a blessing on this earth.
Even if we don't have a single penny at the moment but have the Lord in our life then we should consider ourselves wealthy for we have the greatest gift anyone can have, a relationship with God through Jesus Christ our lord.
“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
Nor have entered into the heart of man
The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”
The spiritual treasures that God is about to release to us in Christ are a thousand times more valuable and glorious than any material blessings we can have on this earth.

Stories of Heaven

Testimonies of Heaven:

 

 If you love stories of heaven like me here is a compilation of books, videos and links. Enjoy!

 

1. Rev Odin Hetrick relates the amazing intimacy and love found in heaven (Also on Youtube) in his book "Inside The Holy City"
linked bellow. This one is a favorite.
https://ia601504.us.archive.org/…/Inside%20the%20Holy%20Cit…

https://youtu.be/G5QBZU870Ms

 

2. Marrietta Davis
http://christendtimeministries.com/…/Marietta-Davis-Part-1-…

3. Betty Malz's Testimony
http://www.bibleprobe.com/my_glimpse.htm

4. Dr Richard Eby
http://www.near-death.com/…/richard-eby-and-secomd-coming-o…

5. Rebecca Springer
https://youtu.be/v-9htSG6jRQ

6. Percy Collet
https://youtu.be/dldTnOuP4J0

7. Marvin Ford
https://youtu.be/eaj20WTl8qM

Purity Sown

If you love Jesus, one of the best gifts that you can give the Bridegroom is your purity. In Song of Songs, a book about love, we find the words, "do not awaken love before its time" The promise of such a suspended desire, will be an intimacy of much more meaning, quality, value and fulfillment. The same principle of self denial can apply to all the appetites like food and sex from which fasting today can lead to a much more fuller enjoyment and ecstasy later. Do not be cheated by the world's cheap love and fulfillment, seek the love and fulfillment that is in God which is much much better. Seek a Devine romance with him!
Listen to the song: purify my heart

The Divine Romance: A Profound Mystery https://youtu.be/CoYuk_Po5sA

The Art of Donald Pass

Vision of The Final harvest

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Mr Pass obviously had a very real, genuine experience that illuminates the final reality of what is going to happen at the Resurrection of souls, some to everlasting life and others to damnation. His art is also quite engrossing. It's one of the best resources that I have seen on this subject.



Video


You can also see his art at, http://www.donaldpass.com/

Donald Pass draws what he saw in a vision in 1969. This is an artist's vision of 'The Resurrection harvest' and his interpretation of his vision at a cemetery which he then put on canvass. He was only partly able to capture this deeply moving experience but one can get a sense of what he saw in his art.

Keys to overcoming Pornography in our Home

    There are probably lots of sources both online and in book form, secular and Christian, that have useful information concerning sex that can be helpful to a married couple or to those who are to be married soon. The treatment bellow is not directed at such good sources but explicit hardcore pornographic sites that are sinful, addictive, and detrimental to our spiritual life.   

 

  Do we really need to establish today that Porn is a hellish sin? Isn't it obvious? Apparently not! Shouldn't a redeemed people shy away from humanity depicted at it's worst? Theoretically, they should but practically they don't. We can tell this from statistics such as that collected by the Barna group and the response given by people from different backgrounds and sections of society, to questions regarding the use of Pornography. Although well forewarned of the dangers of lust in scripture, a lot of people including Christians naively venture into these internet hell-holes called porn sites that are gateways into the sickest debauchery known to man. This is partly due to Porn being easily accessible through the net, right inside our home and only a few mouse clicks away. Those who flirt with online porn, soon enough find themselves, getting deeper and deeper to where they become addicted and find it difficult to free themselves. Once porn gets its hook in us, we become enslaved to it and find it hard to pry ourselves from it. It turns into a regular habitual ritual in which one seeks to procure excitement that they were only supposed to get from a marriage bed. How can we overcome the problem of pornography in our homes? The chapter bellow is a short account that seeks to shed God's light on this very serious matter.     

Porn as Warfare

The Devil is in the conception and details    

   

   We wouldn’t do justice to the topic of pornography if we didn’t try to show that it has satanic roots. This can be a tricky task as sex was something good given to us by God for intimacy and joy in marriage. Mr. Briggs endearing article quoted here, that talks about the life of the now deceased porn actress, Linda Boreman gives us an inkling into porn's demonic roots. The article documents innuendos made by Linda that she was forced to do sex acts with animals, she was threatened and abused often and that there was frequent drug use by her and her husband/producer while working with the mob as overseer. If it proves nothing else, Linda's life shows that porn started as a mob contraband just like liquor in it's early years. What is porn but a false fantasy sold to us, that is birthed in the deep recesses of hell itself, in order to destroy us. It must be one of the adversaries’ favorite weapons to degrade people and turn them into something animalistic and something much lower than what they were created to be; in God's image.  Maybe you don’t believe in the existence of a horned and hoofed fiend. We don’t either; we believe the real devil is much more sinister than Hollywood's classic portrayal of him. How does he operate? Let's take a closer look.

 

The Power of suggestion    

 

   Perhaps you have had an experience when all of a sudden a sick, sensual thought came into your head. You sense that it came from somewhere close, you even think it's from your own mind. You could have left it alone but you follow through with it and act on it, only to regret that you did. How many times has that happened to us and yet we fall for it again and again? That is the power Satan has still, to slip in an idea in order to tempt us, make us fall, control us and if possible even posses us. As a fallen celestial creature, yet limited by God in his activities, one of Satan’s methods of attack is the power of suggestion.   

Begin to filter your thoughts and identify the foreign ones by putting them in light of the whole counsel of God.  

   

The suggestiveness of movies    

 

   We can take this truth further by saying that there is nothing more suggestive than a moving picture. All Satan has to do is influence and possess unregenerate men motivated by greed, lust and power and use them to produce movies to disseminate his evil, sinister  plan. As the god of this world, Satan has temporary access into our realm that allows him to suggest, tempt and lie in order to blind us to God’s truth. He might say things like, “Your husband doesn’t love you.” Or “You are not pretty” or “There is money in the sex industry” Attacking the mind with such suggestions may be all he has to do, to lead men with a selfish nature to do his will; our own fallen-ness and corruption will do the rest.

Therefore, it’s not that far fetched to say that he uses Pornography to tempt, entrap and enslave people into sin. How and why he does this and why he is allowed to continue (for now) is subject for a branch of theology called ‘theodicy’ ( the study about the existence of evil in the world) We won’t get into it very deeply here but we will assert simply that it is true (A study in the book of Job and the gospels illustrates the reality that the devil exists and is sometimes allowed to tempt people through sorrow, disease, lack, desire suffering and other ways)

    It's a biblically well established fact that Satan's methodology is to lie and tempt people, make them fall and destroy them any which way he can. Eve and Judas are prime examples of this in scripture. We will stipulate and try to prove here that pornography is one of major ways Satan does this today. As soon as film became invented in the last century men had already started to use it for making 'naked pictures'. This continues up until today when tech savvy teens do 'sexting'. The fact that porn became a protected form of free speech where as only a few decades ago it was an outlawed contraband is a sad footnote in our history and an indication of where things are moving in our world

Prophetic insight: At a certain place, The Bible, lumps all such activity, behavior and lifestyle and calls it spiritual Sodom (To what else can Rev 11:8, Isa 1:9 refer to, except the apex of sinfulness), as an emerging element of one of the signs of the last days and very last hours, where moral and spiritual life would have deteriorated in our world, to the point of requiring God's intervention and judgment, the way it did in the time of Sodom. Just think how much sin we have become used to in our time, it's getting to the point where we are getting a taste of the pressures that Lot must have felt while living in Sodom.

Porn in a Christian marriage and churches  

A cursed booty  

What does a redeemed people have to do with partaking of material showing humanity behaving at it’s worst. Instead of praying for their conversion should we partake of their sin?

 

    There may be good ways of using one’s imagination in order to make one's marriage exiting in the bedroom; but using pornography is not one of them and will have the opposite effect. Allowing Pornography in a Christian home is like sneaking in Achan’s booty (Joshua 7; 1-26) ; it can only result in judgment and destruction. The word in the camp during defeat was "There are things under the ban in your midst, O Israel"
What was it about that Canaanite booty that was heinous? Naked pictures and/or Canaanite gods?

In any case, we shouldn’t expect God to bless us unless we have repented and stop permitting it's uses in our homes. Also, because the pornography pictures today tend to show extreme depravity, the same spirit can enter a once wholesome marriage and destroy it. It can create a feeling of inferiority and an unfair comparison with ‘professional‘actors and their acts who almost always have exaggerated sex drives and and/or over-enhanced physique. These will serve to create cracks in marriages that along with other factors can help destroy it. We will throw the follwing advice out of our hat for someone.     

Stop watching porn; you can't use a sinful merchandise to build a holy marriage, you will only destroy it. The way you will see your spouse will start to change and you may never recover that giddy kind of love you had at the beginning.

Lessons about warfare from the old Testament.

When Balaam, a prophet for hire and Balak the wicked king of Moab conspired to destroy Israel, they found out to their dismay that ISRAEL was blessed and protected by God. It’s interesting that the next mode of attack they tried was not a military one but a spiritual one (Revelation 2:14) according to Jesus words. By making the men of  Israel to fall into sin with the strange women of Moab, they were able to score a considerable victory against a previously impregnable force by making God angry at them. Even so today, Satan uses the same technique to attack and destroy the people of God. Pornography is really the same ancient technique tailored for today using current technologies. The people of God need to be aware and be forewarned and stay away from  it.

Porn: A Red Line not to be crossed  
 

     Porn addiction is an example of the enemies 'trap door' bondage in which people can fall into while on an illicit search for gratification. Besides, if one is satisfied with the imaginary and the virtual why go look for the real thing?

   

A Scriptural Foundation  
 

     The Lord Said, "He who looks upon a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart"(Matthew 5:28) The usage of both verbs in "he who looks.. to.. lust" intensifies the act to where just looking at people and admiring their natural attributes is precluded from being sin. We look at people everyday and we say "She is beautiful" or "He is handsome". This is obviously not what should be understood to be sin.   

 

     Jesus' use of "he who looks" and "lusts" makes his statement fit aptly to the use of pornography we see in our world today. It fits so well in fact that it would seem like when he spoke it, He had anticipated a time, when men would streamline lust, first on paper and later on the new media technologies, as they have today. Being God and prophet He must have peered through time and given us a warning so we could be repentant of this scourge.  What are we doing but looking and lusting when we watch Porn. Jesus statement can be reworded to apply to women also as they can also be guilty of such sins. She who looks upon a man to lust after him has committed adultery in her heart. We need to know and be convicted that watching porn is adultery of the heart and mind, a sin which should be hated and one if not repented is terminal to our spiritual life and growth. Eve, King David, Clinton, Tiger Woods, the list goes on and on of the people who "looked upon" and "Lusted" and experienced a great downfall. Each had brought terrible consequences and judgments upon themselves which also affected those around them as well. We find in Hebrews the following quote,   

   

Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge. Hebrews 13:4  

   

Internet Porn: The New Idolatry   

 

    It used to be people had to go to the seedy part of town wearing a trench coat with the collar up in order to hide their identity, while they browsed the sex shops and the coin operated peep shows. Today, due to the fact that porn sites are easily accessed and because they can be entered with relative anonymity, it’s easy to think we can get away with surfing porn on the net without fear of being labeled a pervert. It has also become very easy to think we can keep it a secret form everyone and believe that people are not watching. We can also convince ourselves that it won’t harm us or those around us, but this is a serious deception.    We might think that no one is watching(Someone probably is; almost all our activities online are logged somewhere!) God is however watching and grieves and the people around us are very much affected by us watching porn. We might ask how or why is this true? It's true, because of the spiritual lukewarm-ness[6] that ensues from sin. While we are supposed to be burning filaments and be a light to those around us[7] we will have our spiritual light extinguished due to this idolatrous sin of worshiping in front of gross lewd images coming through our computer’s screen. Men who are the designated leaders and priests of the home will have become prisoners who are ineffective in discharging their holy duties to lead and minister to their families.

Lies and Excuses

“You will not surely die”  

  Those of us who succumb to wondering into online porn sites, tell ourselves the same lies Satan told Eve “you shall not surely die, but your eyes will be open to be able to see good and evil” Porn is most certainly the forbidden fruit of our generation that we ought to stay away from. Some of the lies we tell ourselves to ease our conscience when we open up this literal and figurative window (on our PC screen) to watch porn are the following.  

 

Common lies we tell ourselves:-  0. I am lonely, god will understand 1. It won’t affect me or harm me. 2. I can stop any time I want.   3. To watch Porn is not a sin it's those who produce it that are sinning.  4. I am doing research to study the subject. (please! C'mon! ) 5. It will bring excitement to our marriage. 6. It will help me to learn techniques to spice up my marriage.   7. God must have allowed it to exist for a reason(C'mon!). Also refer *.

It’s dangerous

keep your mind out of the gutter   

 

    The dangers and pitfalls of being involved with porn are many. There is plenty of research from unbiased scientists about the adverse effects of porn on people, like for example the onset of depression on some. We will only state a few here from common observation.

Let’s begin with what it does to us individually. First, Porn introduces us to perversions and debauchery of the worst kind and stains our mind and stays in our memory’s registry for a long time. Therefore, we can say that every time we read or watch Pornography we are being permanently marked with sick, lewd images of debauchery and the words or images will stay in our memory bank for quite some time affecting us in our daily lives. Our self esteem can also be hurt by the use of porn which is no doubt habit forming. Secondly, we can be led to try to act out what we see in porn, in real life. Most rapes for example, have porn as some sort of ingredient before they occur. Thirdly, it demeans and degrades our perceptions of people around us, making us to see them as objects for sex and lust. It utterly corrupts us and can turn even the most innocent from among us into a pervert. No generation had to deal with what we have seen happen with the proliferation of porn happening in the world today. It has spilled over into the main stream affecting everyone and sparing no one including our very young, who are getting exposed to it at a much earlier age than ever before. Lastly, as the sin that it is, porn will drain us of a healthy thriving spiritual life. If we don’t repent from it our prayer life will dry up, lacking fellowship, intimacy and life from God.  

Also being that we have brought in a detestable idol in our midst, it will stand as a wedge between us and our God hindering our intimacy and prayer. We need to get rid of it, if it's present in our home.    

 

     Besides us, porn can hurt others around us and near us. It can hurt marriages by introducing sex acts that may be unhealthy, violent, perverse or unnatural. Couples who partake of porn get cheated out of real love and intimacy, instead to emulate strange sex acts from the satanically inspired world of porn. When we surf porn we risk exposing someone young or impressionable which is a heinous sin according to Jesus. (Mark 9:42).
   
Many serial rapists and murderers trace the inception of their crime spree to porn. The convicted and executed serial killer Ted Bundy for example said in his last interview that soft porn was the gateway drug into his crime spree.  If we don’t stop feeding our minds with Porno, we will be in serious jeopardy of coming into a bondage that can destabilize our spiritual life, our walk with God and how we see and relate to people around us. We might succumb to seeking to live out the fantasies from porn in real life situations; we will start to see people around us with a sexually evil eye. We might think that won’t ever happen to us but all it takes is the slight impairment that comes from use of drugs or alcohol to put us over the edge and do something we thought we would never do. We would then have graduated from the world of fantasy into reality and actual commission; from the sin of the mind and heart to the sin of the flesh.     

I am addicted to Porn? What should I do?     

1. "Look to those things that are above" 

  We in fact become complicit in the sin of others when we purchase or even simply consume porn. “Shall I then take away the members of Christ, and make them members of a harlot .. But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit”(I Corinthians 6:17)
Therefore, Stop! Granted we will sometimes need to inquire good information about making love and the anatomical and physiological functions of our bodies, we should be careful about where we go to get information and advice. We are deceiving ourselves if we tell ourselves that we are visiting Hard Core pornographic sites or magazines to get good information on how to make love with our spouse. There are many good secular and christian sources both off and online geared towards helping a married couple. It’s better to remain naive and discover the joys of sex by experimenting with our spouses than rely on something evil and sinful like hardcore pornography and drink it's venom. The Bible teaches that we remain innocent concerning things that are evil (Romans 16:19, Revelations 2:24). Porn is definitely one area where curiosity killed the cat.

Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory (Colosians 3:1-4)

However, If you have somehow opened the door to internet pornography and have become addicted and want to be free, you can do so by simply repenting, asking for forgiveness and committing to use the net only for its better purposes. Install software filters to protect you family and have an accountability pact with your spouse where you both promise to be transparent, pray for one another and assure each other of your love. There are many anti-virus software like Zone-alarm's security suite, which include a parental control feature that locks out pornographic and Hack websites, that can be downloaded and installed for less than $50. This can help assure that children surf the net safely when parents are not present to monitor what they are doing. The Bible teaches that we set our imagination on things above, not beneath and have a though life focused on things, good pure, productive and clean.
  . 

2. A Good counsel “Flee fornication” and “be ye separate”

              

God’s Word concerning any form of sexual Immorality is always to run from it and stay away from it. It’s as simple as that. Because we are inundated with sexually provocative material in magazines, billboards and commercials, we have to be creative in how we practice these two simple pieces of advice from God’s word.

  

The word “Parabis” in Greek meaning a 'trespass-sin' in the New Testament and is used to mean trespassing a clearly stated commandment (Romans 4:15, 5:14; Galatians 3:19). Likewise we need to be convicted that going to a porn site is a ‘Parabis’, a spiritual trespass of God’s word that repeatedly says “do not enter, the sin of lust kills.”(Leviticus 18:29). As it turns out the internet has evolved to have some more safe guards in-bedded due to the outcry that followed its heyday when it was flooded with free flowing porn access. It's still not that hard to find and watch pornography online. However, because of the new federal rules put into law to protect minors, porn sites have to ask users to verify their age before allowing anyone to enter their website.   

Next time you stumble upon this first page, consider it a warning not to go inside. If you do, you are committing a ‘Parabis’, a trespass into somewhere where the Lord does not want you to go. If you find that you habitually do this please take this time to ask God for forgiveness and take steps to eliminate the use of pornography in your life. God's grace and mercy always has a ready smile for a repentant sinner.



References for Further Study
 

[1] Matthew 5:28

[1] I wish you were hot or cold

[1] Timothy save yourself and those around you

[1] Mark 9: 42

[1] I Corinthians 6: 15, 17)

[1] The Act of Marriage: Tim and Beverly Lahaye

[h] I Corinthians 6: 18

[i] II Corinthians 6:17;l

[1] Romans 4:15, 5:14; Galatians 3:19

[1] Proverbs “a young man who goes to the door of an adulterous woman”

[r] Jesus said, "He who makes one of these little ones to stumble it would be better for him if he had a milestone around his neck and thrown into the sea"

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[1] Joe Bob Briggs, Linda’s Life: A sad story, and its impact on us all. http://old.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-briggs042502.asp

[2] Job, Eve and Jesus were all tempted and propositioned different things

[3] [3] Joe Bob Briggs, Linda’s Life: A sad story, and its impact on us all.

[4] Achan whose family was stoned under Joshua’s leadership(Joshua)

[5] Matthew 5:28

[6] lukewarm

[7]Porn as a weapon of Spiritual Warfare

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Seeing People Through Christ and allowing Him to grow them

Excerpt from chapter: searching for the one
Never Lonely by Heli Tad

 Seeing and growing people through Him


Probably the most important principle that needs mention here is that we need to look at people as a work being completed. “He that has began a good work in you will perform it until..” the end(Phil. 1:6). This means that the people we are looking at (ourselves included) will be missing something and may not have all the ingredients we would have liked to have in our prospective mates, spouses or neighbors. However, the fact that Christ is in them gives us hope and assurance that they are being progressively beautified by the greatest sculptor in the universe who will improve and perfect them  through time. We just need to make sure that they are in Christ. We need not reject people easily or only want people who are perfect. We also shouldn’t be too quick to judge people but should rather give them a break when they make mistakes the way The lord does with us.  We should quickly dethrone ourselves from the position of being their judge to which we were never elected and install ourselves as a disciple-disciple-er, to humbly and kindly teach them what we have learned and show them things that elude them. The simple truth is that after the fall, we are all in various degrees of nakedness, for which Christ has come in order to cloth us with his own righteousness(Galatians 3:27) . When we understand this, we won’t look down upon anyone, but we will allow The Holy Spirit to use us towards the end of helping them put on Christ’s righteousness and to grow into His likeness(Ephesians 4:14-16, I John 3:2) .

Seeing "Two and a half men" through a morality prism, or Dear Charlie

“Two and a half men” starring Charlie Sheen, sticks to a recipe that flaunts a hedonistic portrayal of relationships in order to get laughter. Instead of boycotting the show for its 'in your face' hedonism we somehow forgive Charlie and laugh away at the jokes. Why? Well there is(was) a little cute boy in the show(who has since grown up) and Charlie's philandering are a result of him being raised by a doosie of a narcissistic mother. Also, the comedy and sarcasm is so good that we hardly notice the serious moral glitches paraded throughout the show. The show is smartly couched against an outcry with many shades of Grey that makes it blend into a strange normalcy we have become used to in the current cultural atmosphere. It's only when put against a white background(scripture) that its moral fuzz begins to differentiate and become visible. In it's bare form it insidiously challenges the very fabric of society by shall we say, "daring the male ego to seek to go to heights of debauchery".

It's true, the character Charlie has some identifiable likability; he has bouts with his conscience and he is certainly way cooler than his eccentric brother played by Jon Cryer (who Charlie generously allows to live with him along with his son). Just don't bring your fiancee within 50 yards of him or your wife for that matter. Yes, Charlie also commits adultery and once had gotten a black eye to prove it. He also usually drowns out his downturn in mood by drinking profusely and needs to see his therapist quite often. Can't even Charlie see that he must stop somewhere?

Getting away with murder

"That Charlie, 'har har', I tell you, is a smooth criminal." And so the mockery continues with Charlie laughing it up all the way to a ratings heaven and to a syndication blitz of a show about gross immorality. To be fair, Charlie Sheen is just an actor in the show who is only lending his 'academy award' caliber acting ability to such an inspiring production(sarcastically speaking). Assigning blame may not be easy in these situations. Is it the writers, the producers or the audience who is at fault? It suffices to say something is wrong and we are still waiting for the moral of this show to emerge. Is it that a life of philandering makes you hate yourself or that you should never grow up to stop chasing women? We give up; trying to find a moral in this show is like trying to eat spaghetti with a spoon. I don't think they are even trying Vern; are they?
It would seem as if every excuse possible is being created to corroborate the premise that Charlie's hedonism is cool or justified.

Analyzing Charlie

A conservatively minded, family oriented audience might find itself getting drawn in for a little while and might even occasionally sympathize with Charlie's pathos, only to end up being let down and infuriated as it watches the story lines descend extreme south very fast. Therefore the show should be visited and convicted with the old and yet still valid charge of being a corrupter of morals and promulgator of indecency. And yet, if there wasn't too much crude suggestive language and behavior and blatant debauchery put on a lot of the(ratings week?)episodes, we would have liked to give the writers more credit to having documented the classic American neurosis of wanting too much more than what this life can give, or what can be described in a simple term as selfishness. "How much is enough?"; "Remember that line from 'Wall Street', Charlie?" Which leads to the crux and apex of man's spiritual quest that says, "Where is satisfaction to be gotten for the human heart?" We will volunteer a clue to the answer; It's to be found at Jacob's well (read John Chapter 4).

Can Charlie be redeemed? Yes, we hope

It's obvious Charlie is stuck in a loop, why don't the producers seek a new direction for the show by finally giving Charlie a solid moral dimension instead of the fake 'eyes raised to heaven' prayers we see him do in a mockery of true spirituality. Maybe this time around, a 'new' Charlie can be written as an upstanding guy trying to stay on the straight and narrow, vending of the temptations that come at him and guarding himself from a relapse into 'old Charlie'(That would be a wonderful exploration if anyone is listening). Some of the other characters could also be written to having their own epiphanies. Charlie has grown and is currently in a monogamous relationship but keeps having double and triple visions which is an improvement still over his heyday when he used to bring home a new girl or prostitute every night. However, he keeps coming short of the promised land called fidelity even with the best of candidates. His fear of commitment we are told is due to him having mother issues having to do with, what else, but one of the religions of modernity, Freudian principles.

One can always dream

Maybe someone will write in an ending where Charlie has a conversion experience, even if only in an alternate universe, but we are only dreaming (sure, anything but that, as it would effectively kill Charlie the depressed "horn-dog" the bread winner of this show). And anyways, a show called Fringe running on another network is using that angle; we might have to tune in there next week instead.

Our 'beef' with the show

Someone will say, "There are fine, subtle points to these shows we need to appreciate, along with the biting sarcasm and a well written and acted comedy." To which we will reply, "Subtle points, really?! which ones?" Sure, it's superbly written and acted with a type of comedy that makes a farce of those things we all should hold sacred. Whatever other subtleties there might be are drowned out completely or forgotten while we unwillingly laugh at the sheer suggestiveness of the lines spoken in the show. Someone else might even suggest that these shows are the last bastions of a straight entertainment, as if God were to carry a bigger stick for one sin over against another. The truth is, a bold sin encourages other even bolder types of sin. Can someone please establish boundaries for sexual conduct for Charlie and the other characters in this show? If doing so makes it boring then we will at least have laughed without guilt being mixed in. Yet someone else will say, if you don't like it just don't watch it. We say, "Amen!, perhaps we won't"

The sign of the times: Repent

Once we have lit the barn on fire, there is no point in trying to save the hay. That's what sin does to our communities; it spreads like fire and ultimately it destroys lives; so we don't compromise with it, we put it out, by repenting(meta-noeo: greek for turning or changing of our mind) and turning our backs on it once and for all and embracing Christ's wonderful offer of his own pure and righteous life instead. Unlike when our buddies tell us to quit something, the power of the word "repentance" has great authority because it's heaven's council to someone living a wayward lifestyle. It's a council which we pray Charlie would also heed as God would accept and love and change him also.

Comedy and redemption

If you were to ask what hat the devil was wearing these days, comedy has to be one of his favorite five. What we as a people find funny can serve as gauge as to where we are in the history of western culture, where once upon a time Christianity held sway. Today, both seemingly and apparently, people want their fill of selfish indulgence as a right of passage before having to commit to any relationships. Comedy more than any other single art form encourages that. The way back from our dark digressions can be as simple as a genuine turning of our hearts to God who loves sinners. Charlie, we hope you will one day find redemption also.