LICENTIOUSNESS: Writing our own hall passes!

“ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness” Jude 1:4

A few years ago, California Highway Patrol officers ticketed to a man on the one of their Interstate freeways. The officers observed a vehicle heading south toward San Diego, at freeway speed, with a lone driver and two legs hanging out from under the hood. It seems the carburetor linkage broke, so one steered and the other laid under the hood accelerating for his friend. The driver couldn’t believe he had been cited. [FxLine News, April 24, 1994]

This points out that relativism isn’t the only social ill we are dealing with today: licentiousness is another. Though the driver and his friend were going in the right direction, at the correct speed, they were driving the wrong way … just to get what they wanted.

Licentiousness is what I call “writing your own hall pass.” In our Jr. High School, we needed hall passes, signed by a teacher, to be in the halls during class time. In order to circumvent the rule, my friends and I stole a pad of passes and forged our teachers’ names. We did this for no other reason than that we wanted to do what we wanted, irrespective of right or wrong. [No, I’m not proud of what we did.]

Check the dictionary and you’ll see licentiousness is generally defined as “lacking moral discipline or ignoring legal or social restraint; having little or no regard for accepted rules or standards of behavior.”

Look around at the world today; you’ll be surprised at how many people are driving down the road of live with legs hanging out from under their hood.

Christianity, Illustrations,
Licentiousness, Religion

CONFESSIONS: True Confessions!

"If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us."

1 John 1:8-10

A fully soundproof state of the art confessional was unveiled recently in Rome, offering air conditioning, black leather seats and soft lighting.

A Venice-based firm presented the spacious new confessional, which allows penitents to regulate the temperature at which they confess, at a major religious trade fair. A red light shows when the glossy box is occupied and a green light when it is vacant; an optional hygienic filter may be used to separate priests from penitents. “If it is too hot or too cold inside we have air conditioning and heating. These are the real novelties of the confessional,” Pierantonio Bellotto manager of the firm told Reuters Television.

The walnut finished confessional, to be priced at around $6,250, will cater to some of the 26 million pilgrims forecast for Rome in 2000. But some suggested the box was too extravagant. Responding to criticism was Don Rosino Montarelli, a priest from the Montecassino church, “The subject of confessions is not a comfortable one … the important thing is the act of confession itself,”. [“Thank God: Air-conditioned confessional unveiled in Rome”; November 29, 1999 Fox News Online]

We now know for certain that certain evil contractors will invade hell after judgment, to sound-proof, upholster, illuminate, and air-condition this place of the damned. I just hope they don’t talk Satan into the red light – green light option: seems to me anyone who might care at all will know the place is occupied.

I have been told that the English are masters of understated humor; well the Casino priest must be running a close second.

Christianity, Confession,
Illustrations, Religion