Selah.

We in the West have generally decided on the age of 16-18 to mark adulthood. Culturally, while things are changing, we tend to be dubious about sex before 16 and marriage before 18. Legally, things are different, and there are ‘close in age’ exceptions. In Old Testament times, the ‘age of consent’, as they would have understood it, would be shockingly low from a modern perspective. So, the real question is, how did we arrive at these ages?

Sexual immorality in the Bible included sex outside of marriage and this is the phrasing commonly used throughout the Bible to include sexual activity outside of marriage. It would have been clear to first century Jews, based only on their customs and regular teachings, that outside of marriage was immoral. Yet, these law came more than a thousand years after Adam and Eve who are not recorded as having been married…

Conservative Christianity has long had an uncomfortable relationship with youth romance. Baptists have long been the butt of jokes about bans on dancing. Evangelicals love talking about, teaching about, and writing about sex, though, as they reached late stage Evangelicalism. The topic has always been couched in heavy moral language, however, and leans more than other issues into ‘legalistic’ views of the Bible. There’s one admonition that towers above them all, however, and that’s lust.

It is true the Bible talks about restraining anger: “‘In your anger do not sin’: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold” (Ephesians 4:26-27). Yet, we know that anger is frequently ascribed to God so we know there’s more to it than simply ‘do not be angry’ [1]. Even Paul, in Ephesians, says “In your anger, do not sin.” If God can be angry, how do we understand anger, for ourselves?

The relatively recent phenomenon of the ‘Protestant work ethic’ has instilled in those of us of the West an abiding sense of pride in work but also shame and guilt in rest. We are well into the post-Christian era of the West and some feel this pride and shame to greater or lesser degrees. Yet, in Christian circles, particularly Protestant, we continue to value some vocations and some life paths over others.

There’s no easy way to put this. You are almost certain to experience, in your lifetime, a major conflict that will affect you, in your home country. Exploring war and killing is an exercise in brutality against the intellect and against the heart.

The kinds of drugs and psychedelics we’ll be looking at are the kind that give a user a “trip” and often, because of feelings of euphoria or enlightenment, create a desire to experience the trip again. Trips, in particular, are often described by feelings of euphoria, oneness, enlightenment, and sometimes even voices, beings, angels, or even demons, who sometimes even communicate.

We start with, perhaps, an easy one, a topic that is not a difficulty for most to permit but is likely a difficulty for most to justify. How does smoking fit into the New Covenant moral order, or the Old Covenant Law and Prophets, for that matter? It doesn’t seem to be related, at all.

We’ll begin with some hopefully easy moral choices to ensure that we are rightly oriented so that we set off in the right direction. In each of the Ten Commandments, it is trivially seen how we fulfill Love God and neighbour, as we are obeying God’s command and treating our neighbour as we would like to be treated.

Universal patterns are descriptions of reality as such and how reality and being play out fractally at every level. Their value is not just in showing us how reality plays out but in showing which patterns produce optimal results. one you see them, you can’t unsee them.