A few incidents recently have gotten me thinking about how Christians value the world around them. About a week or so ago I was going to the back room at my work place when coming from that way as if right out the doors themselves is a beautiful young female with, who I believed to be, one of our guys. No doubt, I noticed this. (Although mainly her of course.)

As I went to the back room some of the guys hollered to me, "So what'd you think out there?" I obviously knew what they meant and I simply asked, "Who was that?" To which the reply came, "See? Even Nick is interested in who she is." The answer immediately struck me as odd.

Sometimes I think we get the view of being prudes. We don't appreciate the things around us God gave us to enjoy. At times, we might as well be Amish or something of that sort. The Christians are the people that do nothing except pray and worship and read their Bibles.

Yet when I think about something like pleasure, it seems that the Christian should have the highest view of pleasure there is. The reason is simply that pleasure is the creation of God and we should have the highest view of the creation of God if we know the creator.

Imagine if someone came up to you and said they were a great fan of mine for instance. (Already on the right track obviously.) You're familiar with my writings and said, "Have you ever been to his website?" and this person said, "No." You seem surprised and say "Did you know he had one?" "Well, yeah." is the response. "I knew he had written some stuff and such. It doesn't really interest me too much."

Now that would seem like a contradiction. You are a fan of someone but you don't appreciate the things that someone does. I'm not saying to value people for what they do but part of how we show love to people is in how we treat the things that they do or like to do.

And there's nothing wrong with liking the things themselves. We recently had Valentine's Day and I'm sure many wives got great gifts from their husbands. Is it wrong for the wife to enjoy that gift? As long as it's nothing blatantly sinful, such as a bouquet of roses, absolutely not. However, the real purpose of the gift should be to somehow point back to the giver.

But consider sex along those lines. I think the truth is that the Christian has the highest view of sex and the pagan has the lowest view. To the pagan, sex is merely done for the sake of sex. True, there might be some intimacy involved but if one really wanted to be intimate with the person, one would marry them first.

I was debating a little with a Muslim yesterday and kept bringing this point home. "In your Muslim view of Heaven, you have men spending forever with virgin girls and infinite strength. (Who knows what the women get.) I never hear anything about being with Allah. All you have is more of the same in your Heaven. What is the purpose of it?"

Our true pleasure in sexuality should point to the giver of God. For instance, the diversity of two seperate persons being one is a minor mirror of what the Trinity is like. Sometimes we often talk about us and then go to God. We should start talking about God and go to us. God has a unity amongst his diversity which is kind of like what you have happening in sex.

In fact, this paints sexual sins like pornography and adultery in a whole new light. Both of them refuse to find pleasure in one's spouse alone. The purpose of the woman, for instance, is not just for the man to have sex with. The purpose is to form a strong family that will please God. It would be just the same as if the woman only saw the man as someone she's supposed to have sex with.

Adultery will say that I value this pleasure but I must look outside my spouse to find it. My spouse is not enough to meet my needs. Such a view is a low view of one's spouse and not cherishing him or her as the gift of God. Pornography merely sees the person as an object. To make a person an object is to make them not a person and not a gift of God then.

However, I did say at the beginning of this insight that this writing involved two incidents. I have only covered one thus far as it is my main point. The second one happened a few nights ago as I woke up after having a nightmare that our Stormy had ran away.

Stormy is our darling Himalayan kitty. I dreamed that we had left the door open and Stormy had run out and gone into the woods and we were searching for him. Not only could I not find him but there were several dead kitties in the area torn to pieces. (Yeah. Bizarre. I know.) I remember being worried something like that had happened to Stormy.

Well you know that after you wake up from something like that, you know it isn't true, but you like to look anyhow. My house was alone by that point so I woke up and went to my parents' bedroom and there sleeping on their bed was little Stormy all curled up.

When he woke up and I found out about it, I had him in my arms petting and "cuddling" with him. I am a cat lover unlike a lot of guys. My guess is Stormy didn't know why he was receiving such attention. I knew though. It had occurred to me what it would be like to not have him around. (Yes. I know that day will eventually come but it is one I'd prefer to not talk about of course.)

Too often, we don't appreciate the good things we have until we're seperated from them. Imagine what would happen if you were seperated from your spouse for a time for instance. What if you were seperated from a good friend of yours? For some we might point to things we enjoy also. What if you lost the ability to play a sport, or were seperated from the TV or from the internet? What if you had no water and couldn't take a shower? Wouldn't you view those things differently?

Appreciation comes in two ways. We appreciate what we don't already appreciate but should, and then we increase our appreciation for what we already have. Perchance we should also take this time now to appreciate what God did for us. It really shows the full love of God when you know that he himself came down to take our place.

God could have sent a creation as the Arians said. God could have sent the archangel Michael as the JWs say. God could have created someone from scratch if he'd desired. God values us (Dare I say appreciates) us so much that he himself came and did what needed to be done to enter a relationship with us.

So again, we can ask God how much he appreciates us and like the old saying goes, he stretches out his arms to be nailed to the cross and says "This much."

Do we appreciate him anywhere close today?

In Christ,
Nick