Ray Boltz and his sexually confused generation
Matt Friedeman - Guest Columnist - 9/16/2008 7:00:00 AM
Someone coined the term "The Greatest Generation" to describe the men and women who fought the Second World War and launched America into a prosperity unlike any the world had ever known.
Alas, for all their greatness they raised what, to that point, could be arguably the most morally confused generation; and you can only imagine the kids that generation and the next are now raising. The latter, like their parents, decide right from wrong based on...get this — feelings.
God help us.
E. Stanley Jones wrote to the "greatest generation" before the war ended that the word "bedlam" used to be [the word] "Bethlehem" – "the place of the birth of Christ has changed to the name of a place of confusion." And, said Jones, this is what had happened sexually in that day over 65 years ago... "Bethlehem, symbol of the birth of a Child — the epitome of sex in its most beautiful and tender phase — now degenerates into a veritable ‘Bedlam' of sex frustration and defeat. Why?...
"No age ever emphasized sex more than this age has done, or enjoyed sex less. Restraints are gone; Puritanism has been banished. But now that the age is free to do as it likes, it finds it doesn't like what it does."
Christian singer Ray Boltz has shocked many with his declaration, "If this is the way God has made me, then this is the way I'm going to live..." God, in Boltz's mind, created him homosexual. Hence, freedom now to live the lifestyle. But Boltz will never like what he is doing, because in his spirit he knows that his argument is fallacious.
Boltz' addiction apparently is men. So, God made him that way...why deny himself? Another man's addiction is alcohol (or in Boltz's terms — God made me this way...this is how I will drink); but who among us would say, Good...drink then for His glory! Or how about the addictions to pornography, to child molestation, to crack cocaine, to arson? Good...this is the way I'm going to live...God made me this way...when I get drunk I feel his pleasure?
No. No, of course not, God forbid, and wake up. No.
There is a way out. Compulsive disorders like sexual addiction can be healed through a support group of three to eight people who constitute a healing community and to whom the whole history of abuse and failure can be confessed confidentially. It sometimes takes years of persistent accountability, but the grace of Christ can bring transformation as, in the words of professor Don Joy, "the tank of self-respect, based on significant, unconditionally affirming relationships" makes its impact.
Stanley Jones penned a prayer that many a Christian struggling with sexuality ought to memorize:
O God, our Father, I thank Thee for this fire of sex within me. Let it burn within me as a sacred fire upon Thine altar, lighting up my entire being. For if it is not this, it will be a fire to consume my mind, my tissues, my bones, my possibilities, me. Then help me this day to dedicate this sacred fire to Thee. Amen.
With a prayer like that — to a God like that — there is hope for Mr. Boltz, you, me, our families, our churches, and our nation.
