Shame On You

There’s a new program out on The Discovery Channel called “Naked and Afraid.”  If you haven’t already been unfortunate enough to see it, I don’t recommend you do so.  American Family Association’s One Million Moms protested it as “soft porn” on TV. 

Basically the premise of the show is very simple.  Two complete strangers, a man and a woman, get fully naked and try to survive in a harsh wilderness for 21 days.  That’s it.  That’s all folks.  This is what American entertainment has devolved into.    

Americahas fallen far from its original founding ideals.  In the novel, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, 17^th century life in Puritan Boston was characterized by a distinct set of societal rules.  Adultery was (and should still be) shameful.  While I don’t intend to suggest we go back to the days of public humiliation in the town square, perhaps something is to be said for the inhibition factor required to curb detrimental societal behavior with good old-fashioned SHAME.  If America was to have a scarlet “A” inscribed on her chest today, it should stand for “Ashamed.”  We should be ASHAMED of how we have promoted ungodly behavior resulting in the decimation of today’s family structures.  Studies indicate that broken family structures are the driving force behind poverty, lawlessness and most of our societal problems.  A child born and raised in a traditional family structure, with a married mother and father, simply and clearly has the best odds of succeeding in life.   

Whether he was speaking literally or figuratively, we cannot know for sure today. Perhaps he was referencing the many scars he endured as a result of the religious persecutions he experienced from whippings and beatings.  According to the Catholic Church, St. Francis of Assisi, in 1224 A.D. was the first recorded stigmatic in Christian history.  Interestingly, St.Francis is most known for REPENTANCE.  He probably knew quite a bit about the necessary function of shame.    

Back to modern day America:  The “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave” is now the biggest exporter of pornography and largest importer of illicit drugs. The FBI just busted a ring of 150 child sex traffickers with some of the victims as young as NINE.  It’s wretched, revolting, appalling…dare I say, SHAMEFUL?    

When will we recognize our shameful condition?  Adam and Eve HID from God in the garden when they became aware of their nakedness.  They recognized how far they had fallen from communion with God and were ASHAMED of their nakedness.  They covered themselves in fig leaves.  In the Bible, Fig trees are representative of Church leaders or priests.  When they are performing their proper function, they should provide their flocks with the understanding of how to obtain a spiritual “covering” for their sins.  They should be producing spiritual figs or “fruit” to feed their hungry flocks.  The True Churchought to be leading people to Yeshua/Jesus to cover over their “stigma” with his “stigmata.”  He was marked and punctured so we could be cleared and made whole. 

Interestingly, Jesus cursed the fig tree on his way to Jerusalem as a “shadow-picture” for the Apostate Church.  It was kind of early in the year in Jerusalem for figs to be sprouting at that time, but Jesus cursed the tree anyway.  Why?  Like the First Century religious leaders, so it shall be with much of the Christian Church worldwide in the final days.  For goodness sakes, BY NOW the Church should be bearing all sorts of fruit.  Instead, our religious organizations seem to have worldwide systemic failure. 

If our churches do not begin fulfilling spiritual hunger soon, they will be cursed when Jesus makes His second “swing by.”  There needs to be recognition of our shame and then a massive move towards REPENTANCE.  More maturation time will not make any difference for those who have knowingly chosen apostasy over Truth.  In fact, they will be the first to experience God’s refining wrath.   

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