Day 3905 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Psalm 101:3 NIV

To be a prude

It’s by no means something that our culture delights for anyone to do. Rather it seems something of a term used most often in mockery, a statement made with the express intent of belittling someone as a result of their opting to find offense within something that the general public finds to be mostly enjoyable or at the very least so common that none should be so taken aback for having heard or happened to look at. Indeed, to be a prude is something that most folks find rude as it stands in opposition to something they may well happen to be fans of themselves.

In fact, within just a quick search for the sure definition of the word what you’ll find is a list of synonymous words and phrases that mean something close enough to achieve largely the same message.

And these synonyms include such words and phrases as unthinking, non-thinking, narrow-minded, closed-minded, prim, prissy, petty, small-minded, insular, and perhaps my personal favorite, hidebound. I literally hadn’t heard of that word before this morning, and yet having now learned of it, well, I’m truly giddy to be hopefully deemed as being most preferably worthy of such a delightful moniker.

For to be hidebound, though to most, as it did to me, it might sound like someone who’s bound to hide as in afraid, rather it means “having fixed opinions and ways of doing things and not willing to change or be influenced, especially by new or modern ideas”.

And indeed, if anyone knows me then you’ll know how I detest most “new and modern ideas.” In fact, when it comes to “new and modern ideas” I find myself more disinterested and displeased all the time. And sure, I suppose that I’d have to agree that an outlook such as that which hates just about every form of modern advancement and all of this societal “progression” that’s come about because of it would likely find me being fairly close-minded.

Perhaps even narrow-minded. Maybe in fact unthinking, insular, intolerant and, well, why not add petty in there too. Why? Because I don’t really care. I truly couldn’t care less as to what anyone else may think of me or what words they may use to describe or define me in the process. Doesn’t matter. Why? Because I’m here at the pleasure of One and, well, knowing what He thinks of me pretty much sets me daily free to tell this world to grab their every opinion of me and take a hike.

And if that’s considered rude, well then I suppose that would make you a prude too!

For to be a prude is defined as being someone who is “easily shocked by rude things” or one with a “very sensitive attitude and narrowness toward custom and morality” or someone who is “excessively or priggishly attentive to propriety or decorum.” What is ‘priggish’ you might ask? It’s yet another word that’s mostly considered demonstrably derogatory that folks use to demean someone else who they consider to be acting “self-righteously moralistic and superior”.

But make no mistake my friends, there is nothing self-righteous in the heart of a follower of Christ as we firmly hold that our righteousness is found in Him and Him alone and thus anything we say, do, think or believe in terms of “custom and morality” does in fact rely upon Him alone. Doesn’t mean the world will see it that way as, well, those who’ve chosen to delight in the dark will always seek ways to defame those who dare live a way of life that proves that they too could be doing something better with their own.

Yes, this world completely detests any and all who live according to the call of the cross to take up our lives lived lost and hold them high for the world to see us die a little more every day to the person we were, the wasted life we’d lived and that it’s all because of only Him that we’ve found the audacity to become so prudish in our thinking, in our speaking, in our living and breathing of a life spent believing that there’s more to this than just depravity and deception.

Indeed, unto those deceiving and being deceived those who break free from the practice and become prudential in their walk will seem always to serve as only reminders of the failures being found by any and all who continue to live as if the best of life is still to be found upon this ground alone. Yes, those with hearts, eyes and minds set toward Heaven will remain exemplars of the heathen that overcame by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony.

A testimony that very few here will ever care to hear because it will come across as “excessively or priggishly attentive to propriety or decorum.”

But seeing as how decorum is defined as “formal behavior that is controlled, calm and polite” behavior thus “keeping with good taste and propriety”, and propriety refers to that which bears “the state or quality of conforming to conventionally accepted standards of behavior or morals”, well, again, I happily wear that mark as well.

Why?

Because for most of my life I was mostly found in a state of quality that was the direct result of my having chosen to sheepishly conform to the conventionality of what have been and still remain our culture’s commonly witnessed and thus conventionally accepted standards of behavior and morality. And yet as Christ got a hold of me I finally had my eyes opened to see said “standards” as nothing but sin. I realized that our world is so vastly lost that to be considered a fool or freak for leaving it all behind and striving for something better was and remains the very best decision anyone could make.

Why?

Because sin earns the wage of death, and having already died to everything better I could have already been, well, I just don’t feel like dying anymore.

Call me weird. Call me a loser. Call me a freak, a joke, a Bible-thumping buffoon. Again, I don’t really care. Because I know well that way of life lived in the still common way of thinking that nothing is off limits and we’re thus here only to enjoy ourselves and seek the sort of endless pleasure that this world finds so appealing. But I also know that it’s not the fall that hurts but rather the sudden stop at the rock bottom toward which all immorality and immodesty leads.

Indeed, I’m still in many ways carrying in my heart and head the scars of guilt and shame that I carved in my doing things that many here find acceptable enough to be deemed common and worthy of being approved. But alas, as one of my favorite verses in all of Scripture puts it, “blessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves.” Blessed because it’s absolutely miserable to carry in your memory the many things upon which you’d looked with approval only to have finally come around to realize that they’re the very things that caused Christ to die.

I never wanted these hands of mine to be so stained with the innocent blood of someone I helped murder.

But because I see that now in looking back at a life I’d lived afraid to be considered prudish as I knew it would make me seem priggish, I’ve found that I’m left with no choice but to kill again.

Only this time it’s that man who lived his life worried about what the world wanted him to do, to be, to say, to see and how he was always supposed to be okay with it all. All to avoid being considered narrow-minded by those so open-minded that we’re now to the point in which many believe men can be women and kids should be taught about gross sexual perversions in the classroom.

And yet I’m supposed to be the one deemed a social outlier because I hold to a different set of moral principles that ask that I strive for such things as holiness and honor?

Save me the nonsense friends, I ain’t buying.

No, if what it takes to be seen as normal and thus not some weak prude who’s so easily offended by things rude demands I agree with what this world’s all but demanding I do, well then I’m again happy to be considered hidebound instead. In fact, I’d almost be honored to be deemed insular, which, as you might be able to surmise, refers to something having an all but insulated existence.

For indeed, to be insular means that someone is “ignorant of or uninterested in cultures, ideas, or peoples outside one's own experience” something related to or from an island sort of existence. Indeed, I often almost laugh at the common suggestion that “no man is an island” because, well, I mind not being so left alone by most that I find I almost prefer it.

Why?

Because I don’t have time enough left in my life to even pretend to care about, let alone agree with so much of what this world is doing and all but demanding I go along with. I haven’t left in me even any passing interest in the cultures of ideas of peoples living outside and all but against my own experience. I haven’t a shred of willingness to endure the worry as to what a sinful may think of my fighting to kill my sinful depravity.

Sorry, I just have somewhere else to be and someone else to please, and well, if your name ain’t Jesus and you don’t know how to find Heaven then I’ve just got to be going along within my narrow-mindedness that has me increasingly happy to be so heartbreakingly shocked when all but every single day I hear or see something new that shouldn’t be the way it is.

It’s like the “holiday” so many just enjoyed yesterday. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I hate helloween more every single year. Which, granted, is weird. Because, again as mentioned yesterday, I was one of those kids who got all ramped up to dress up and spend all night partaking of this event in which I got hordes of free candy for doing absolutely nothing but walking around with a little plastic bucket (or pillowcase if you’re a seasoned pro and know the ins and outs of how to go about the deal and come out on top).

But you see, in all of our progressions and advancements made in what are indeed quite open-minded ways in pretty much every single way that’s both humanly and inhumanely possible, what we find is that there is nothing much that’s innocent anymore. I mean, growing up halloween was about hanging out with our friends and, for once, having our parents excited as to just how much candy we had. But anymore it’s become a race to have the goriest yard display and the time of year in which the most reprehensible movies are shown on tv.

And it’s not just the ghoul’s “holiday” that’s become more demonstrably demonic. Seems like almost everything has. Movies, music, even mainstream media is to the point of all but taking part in the division unto decimation of our very nation. We’re literally tearing one another to pieces because it’s become seen as commonly acceptable to hate someone simply because they say something you don’t like or believe in something you don’t.

Even hurting one another just for sport.

Friends, what about what this world’s become are we supposed to be supportive of? Of all the things that this world’s become and has folks cheering on, what is there that we’re to agree with? I’m not saying that there’s nothing good, decent or in some other way possibly redemptive to be found in the goings on going on down here. But I am saying that such things as those considered in Philippians 4:8 are seemingly becoming increasingly hard to find.

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”

And why are they seeming to slowly disappear? Because they’re not thought about. They’re not concerns of the common man anymore. They’ve instead all but been combined under the umbrella of things that only prudes worry about. And why is that? Because they’re not the kind of fun that this world is convinced fun is supposed to be and we’re supposed to have.

And that’s because this place has become that in which good is put for bad, righteousness seen as evil, light considered dark and love nothing more than mere agreement.

And again, we’re supposed to be good with that?

We’re supposed to drive around and see our crumbling cities filled with stumbling people and rejoice in our hearts? We’re supposed to feel good about the direction we’re heading when people are being murdered for their beliefs? We’re supposed to be found in agreement with our kids being indoctrinated to think that gender is something defined in some kind of ever-shifting and constantly growing spectrum in which you’re free to try things on until you find what makes you feel best?

Friends, we’re not supposed to feel good! In fact, looking at the direction the world’s going and what it has so many people doing and enjoying, we should feel miserable! Our hearts should be breaking every single day as we watch so many cheer on so many others in their being so “brave” as to “live their own truth.” Folks, there is but one truth and His Name is Christ and there is still no other Name under Heaven given unto man by which the same must be saved.

Not might be. Not could be. Not should probably consider such a plausible necessity.

No, we must be saved through Christ.

Why?

Because we all, in light of what we’ve done and been found in agreeance with, we all need to be saved and He is the only One who can.

Why?

Because He’s the only One who willingly gave up His life to pay the debt that every human owes for having earned such a wage in sin that hell exists as a place in which most will spend eternity unable to escape it. Yes, all of us have earned an unending death. And yet Christ came to take that punishment for us so that we could turn to Him, repent from our sins and begin the process of being sanctified in which we’re given new hearts, new minds which, when combined, do in fact become quite prudish.

And that simply because once you come to see the price that had to be paid to set you free from a life of sin and depravity, well, you just can’t ever go back to looking with approval on that which is still causing so many to remain all but eternally condemned unto the one place that none of us should even be able to endure the thought of even our very worst enemy ever ending up.

And that simply because we’ve all been offered the gift of souls redeemed and set upon a course to a promise the likes of which is simply too amazing for our feeble minds to even begin to imagine.

If we only knew either the sheer misery that awaits in hell or the unending majesty of He who bought our ticket to head the other direction I’m pretty sure we’d all be proud to be prudish in our thinking if not hidebound in the way of life we live as a result of our receiving such an undue hope as our avoiding what we so fully deserve in exchange for our being welcomed where we don’t deserve to be.

All because this world’s long had us convinced, mostly by our being coerced into a life lived vastly afraid of our being called all these names that this place uses to make us feel small or foolish, that we’re supposed to go along with anything and everything that anyone and everyone has chosen to delight in. Yes, this world’s convinced us to look with approval upon that which is sinful, and to even go so far in our approval that we too partake of the sinfulness ourselves.

But friends, again, I promise you that there’s nothing down that road that anyone wants to find. All of this world’s depravity and idolatry and immorality and continued fascination with continued immodesty, all it can ever accomplish is shame. And yet the world’s managed to become so unashamed that most here still have every intention of remaining a part of those who look with approval upon that which condemns, and even condemning those who refuse to do the same.

And that’s hard. No matter how tough or resilient we may like to think ourselves to be, it’s still hard to be hated unjustly. It’s hard to be judged unfairly. It’s hard to see a world that clearly cares so little about the only hope we have that they hate those who have any hope at all. But when it’s hard, or maybe, as has proven possible in the past, becomes dangerous, just remember that we’ve nothing to fear of those who can call us names or ostracize us from groups and communities in which we once felt as if we belonged.

No, in Christ we come to learn that we don’t belong here and thus have nothing to gain by our going along with those who’ve settled for trying to belong here and whatever they’re going along with.

In fact, we have far more to lose by walking in step with the world than we do in leaving it all behind.

My point is that we’ve either forgotten or elsewise become convinced that we’re not supposed to hate anything, reject anything, detest anything or find anything to be entirely offensive in nature. But friends, we are expressly called to hate that which is evil and to hold fast to whatever good we can possibly find. The struggle will be that we’re called to do this in a world that holds fast to that which is evil and asks that we either do the same or suffer the consequences.

Friends, welcome the consequences because there is simply nothing this world can do to us or take from us that can alter what Christ has already accomplished.

And what He accomplished is so priceless and hope-filled that we should all seek to become as narrow-minded as we possibly can. For narrow is the way which leadeth unto life and few there be that find it. Live to be found among that few, not those many more who find those few to be so prudish that we’re all but intolerable.

We should be thankful to be considered intolerable by this world we’re in. After all, we can see clearly what all this world is willing to tolerate.

No, do not live in fear of those who don’t fear God. And while you’re at it, have no part in anything which He may hate as the cross proves that it’s just not worth the cost.

Rather let us boldly live to be all but effortlessly offended by that which offends our Father.

Yes, forsake pride and rather live to be a prude.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold