Breaking Free from Bondage Takes Time and Patience

We need a balanced Church that combines, as perfectly as possible, the call to holiness with His paternal and merciful heart. And you will remember that I originally said this concern arose in my spirit as a result of my writings concerning homosexuality.

And I want this to be understood: I have dealt extensively with that subject over the years, and right here in the city of Boston we spent a long time fighting to stop a law legalizing same-sex marriage, a fight in which we ultimately did not succeed. Boston was the first city in the United States—or the state of Massachusetts was also the first—to legalize same-sex marriage, and from there it opened a door for other states that have followed the example of Massachusetts. I was very involved in trying to fight that law, which unfortunately was ultimately put into effect.

Let my firm opposition to any practice that goes against the Word of God be clear, whether it is homosexuality, adultery, any kind of lust, any kind of sexual relationship outside marriage, physical abuse in the home, emotional exploitation of our children, lying—whatever it may be. We are clear about God’s call to live a holy life that reflects the purity of our God.

Having said that, however, it is also important to understand that today people fall into terrible spiritual traps because of the frenetic, highly experimental world in which we live. People can often fall, for example, into the trap of pornography without even looking for it. One day someone is watching a program on the Internet, and suddenly a pornographic image appears, sent by someone trying to ensnare unsuspecting people. Unable to resist it, that person may fall into an addiction to pornography, as so many young people do today.

Today pornography is one of the most terrible addictions affecting our societies, and there are children, men, women, and Pastors—terrible as it is to say—who are addicted to pornography. Many are noble, good people who love God and suffer because of this addiction. I know Pastors who struggle with this addiction and who, incredible as it may sound, I know are people who love the Lord. Perhaps some who are reading and listening to this program know what I am talking about; they themselves are bound by this terrible situation.

Today, amid sexual experimentation, some people fall into adulterous relationships and sustained sexual relationships outside marriage because of the constant contact between men and women at work, in schools, and in offices, where the standards of separation between men and women that once existed have been relaxed somewhat. People are more prone to fall into adultery and illicit sexual relationships; then they become trapped, do not know how to deal with it all, and each day become more entrenched in sin.

And so churches receive this mass of people with so many different problems, so many different bonds: people who were sexually abused as children, perhaps people who then fell into sexual addiction involving homosexuality or lesbianism. After decades of practicing these aberrations, they come to the Church, their minds already permeated by these practices, and they do not know how to get out. Unfortunately, their restoration will take a long time.

My long experience as a Pastor and counselor shows me that these things take time, even with the work of the Holy Spirit, my brothers and sisters. There are cases in which, yes, people are set free instantly. But I can tell you with complete confidence—and the experience of many other Pastors I know, as well as very well-prepared people who write books on these subjects, supports and confirms my conviction—that breaking these bonds takes time.

And it requires churches where people feel free to express these things in a safe environment, where they are not condemned when they open up and confess them; where there are Pastors with experience and knowledge of the dynamics of sanctification and the transformation of the mind; where there are men and women in the church pews who are merciful and patient, who know themselves and look at themselves first, who know what they themselves are and admit their own struggles instead of condemning others for things they themselves are doing and suffering from.

So, to be pastoral churches, churches able to deal with the complexities of life in the twenty-first century, we must live with this tension, asking the Lord to give us that balance between the call to holiness and the desire to please God in every one of our actions and thoughts, while also knowing that we are in this flesh, this human skin, this animal, carnal, devilish, earthly biology, as the apostle Paul says, which betrays us again and again—that body of death of which the apostle Paul speaks. And when he speaks of his own thorn, from which he longs to be free, he asks God to deliver him from that thorn, but God tells him: “My grace is sufficient for you.”

So we need churches of grace—not churches of license, but churches of grace, love, and mercy. And I can assure you that those churches of grace, combined with a commitment to holiness, will be the churches that draw many souls to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, draw many souls into the fold, and be effective in evangelism. God bless you, and we will continue talking about these subjects in our next meditation.