Pornos & Porneia (Part 1 of 3)
Pornos Christians should be looking into
Is your translation (so also your worship) malaligned with God?
Pornos isn’t “fornicator” | Porneia isn’t “sexual immorality”.
So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures. (James 1:16–18; MSG).
Part 1: self-sermonising
[Your non-preacher starts off pretending to be cool. No need to panic…we’re only going against rich Christian men with power-hats…what could possibly go wrong?]
(I) The tone of this message is of love. If anything here moves you towards Christ, take it further by your own prayerful study. If anything here destabilises you, or does anything other than move you towards Christ, then dismiss it and keep pulling him close on whichever paths you walk with Jesus.
Everything ultimately measures root-value according to whether it generates closeness or distance from God. Some might say this will end up being the most (or only) valuable measure of “value”.
So if the Lord has used certain scripture translations to move you closer to him, I would never say “I’m right and you’re wrong”. If the Lord intended for certain people to place a strong emphasis on a particular notion of sexual chastity, and that saved them from something, or protected them, or brought them into a closer relationship with Jesus, then I would certainly never say that’s less valid, sacred, living, loving or God-breathed.
Throughout this three-part series, I also am definitely not saying that we’re free to just run wild, causing harm to ourselves and others through rampant misuse of God’s great gift to us of sex.
Equally, if some rabid religious bats have misused God’s Word to suppress, or force upon someone their own self-declared absolute “truths” like ill-fitting, prickly or soiled clothes, then this series exists to tell the bats: your vision of God’s Word is impaired. You’ve covered truth with ice.
…If everyone just tightened up in the digital pews, let’s remind ourselves that all you need to do here is trust Jesus.
You can be assured that if you truly trust in him, he won’t allow anyone to move you away from him.
You can be assured: you are his as long as you want to be his. No one (other than you) can cause your salvation to be plucked away. God will never confuse, fluster or abandon you:
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand. I and my Father are one. (John 10:27-30; KJV).
That’s not to say that God is always easy to understand in our seeking. Pray to Jesus and ask him, should I study this or not? Will this be edifying for me? If he tells you ‘no’, then it isn’t for you; just navigate a different river with the Lord.
If he tells you ‘yes’, it’s him telling you: it’s all OK. It may even be him about to free you from someone’s chains.
You might find this confronting, but porneia is about something more important than sex.
[Warming up….Lord, are you sure this is your will?…Am I? I am? OK, inhalexhale, let us begin]
(II) When you read “fornicator” or “sexual immorality” in your English-translation New Testament, scratch the surface and you’ll encounter underlying Greek words of their time: pornos / porneia.
Do not be deceived: porneia is not “sexual immorality”.
A definition of a ‘pornos’ supported by the Bible is:
Person who trades the God-promised birthright-salvation of themselves and others for a spiritually poisonous fix: a spiritual adulterer of God.
Therefore, a definition of ‘porneia’ supported by the Bible is:
Actions in keeping with a pornos (similar to how if someone were a thief they might do thievery; a pornos does porneia).
[Lord, are you sure I’m qualifjed for this? Shouldn’t this be a job for a paid preacher who’s actually finished at least one readthrough of the Bible? Sip water. Pause…there’s still time to walk away, isn’t there? Good thing I’m on Medium so I won’t see them wincing and gesticulo-flabbergasting at me through their devices]
(III) You might say porneia is an extremely spiritually dangerous opposite of spiritual steadfastness. You might say it’s “absolute spiritual adultery”. If you think about what “spiritual adultery” means, it is essentially a euphemism for: putting your faith in the darkness and laying with the opposition to God.
To a holy God who sacrificed himself for you and all of us, what could be more important?
You could say the entire Bible is about this.
Let me show you how porneia cannot be about humans having sex with each other, despite many men trying to tell you this.
Let me show you why porneia has to have a specific meaning and cannot convey an essentially meaningless phrase like “sexual immorality” (meaningless because no one can define what “sexual immorality” actually would be, anyway, if it existed. You could walk around telling everyone that sexual immorality is this and that, and someone else will out-sexual-morality-you by saying “whoa, you do that? That’s sexual immorality, don’t you know?” Then someone else comes along and says to that person “oh no, no, you’re doing it sexual immorality style. Repent and cease at once!” So do you see that on its own without further explanation, this has no true meaning?)
This is important so let’s take our time with this. Pray to Jesus over it. Pause and reflect frequently. Read around the subject. Test the spirits. Not everything is quick and easy. Some truths take time.
[I really should have gone to that place they call ‘seminary’…I feel so un-indoctrinated. Well it was nice knowing you and serving as your non-preacher…]
(IV) Being a pornos really suggests something more like this: you are a spiritual liability who’ll get all the believers brought down when the persecution knocks. Faced with a spiritual or human enemy (or just some spiritual or physical stressor) you’re liable to crumple immediately (reacting like a Gentile might because they have no fear of God). You’re liable to betray, break solemn covenant, “sell yourself” to the adversary and take whole families down with you. You’re prone to worship whichever idol gives you a short term pleasure-fix in this world, causing immense harm. You’ll tell God you love him then throw him away as if his love meant nothing to you. In short, you are not someone who is trust-steadfast (which is how children of Christ are called to be). You are one who opens yourself to evil, primed to cheat when evil comes. You beget evil from evil and through you God’s other children risk losing their salvation as well.
That’s why this divine “crime of crimes”, this spiritual adultery, is so important.
If you actively cheat on God, who do you open yourself to and commit adultery with? You cheat on a human with a human and on God with a god.
It cannot be to do with human sexual acts or fornication.
It is proven by the Bible itself that porneia is not to do with the way you sex.
[Quick, do your Pharisee-face so they take this seriously. Maybe if I bash my Bible? No, probably better not, it’s quite heavy, I’d probably anchor-pull myself over onto the front row and they already look like they’ve swallowed a camel]
(V) So ask yourself what’s going on when millions of English-translated Bibles have taught countless people that porneia is about “sexual immorality” or “fornication” (which, by the way, don’t convey the same meanings).
Ask what it means that our Elders and scholars must know that the Bible itself proves there is no way this can be true.
Ask what it means for you and me, given that we must worship Jesus in Spirit and in truth.
This means something to me.
If I bring myself before Jesus to worship in Spirit and not in truth, I would want someone to correct me. I would welcome truth-tellers.
I accept some degree of human error. Every so-called “denomination” has made multiple errors and Jesus still loves each of them. This is normal because we are human, not God, and God gives us faith-freedom, which is a beautiful gift. But surely we should not be accepting error of this magnitude, not outright lies (maybe even on purpose) about core elements of the “Christian” faith.
There are millionaire Christian Elders (who made their money off the backs of the people) attacking certain groups of people with enthusiasm, yet they couldn’t sort out something as fundamental as this? Goodness knows, they have no difficulty assembling discernment focus groups to discuss what to do about gay couples in love.
These people jeopardise the ark of the covenant, balancing it on the back of a rickety old dirt-cart and it’s a miracle it hasn’t been desecrated. What do they think everyone else makes of their antics? Sometimes the beloved king just doesn’t get it. Sometimes the outsider-nobody who actually goes back to the scriptures in prayer and reverence has something to tell the Levites who got sloppy and forgot the scriptures.
Then David summoned Zadok and Abiathar the priests, and Uriel, Asaiah, Joel, Shemaiah, Eliel and Amminadab the Levites. He said to them, “You are the heads of the Levitical families; you and your fellow Levites are to consecrate yourselves and bring up the ark of the Lord, the God of Israel, to the place I have prepared for it. It was because you, the Levites, did not bring it up the first time that the Lord our God broke out in anger against us. We did not inquire of him about how to do it in the prescribed way.” So the priests and Levites consecrated themselves in order to bring up the ark of the Lord, the God of Israel. And the Levites carried the ark of God with the poles on their shoulders, as Moses had commanded in accordance with the word of the Lord. (1 Chronicles 15:11-15; NKJV).
We should remember that God himself sits on the ark and the Word is Jesus and Jesus is God.
Handle the ark accordingly.
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If my spiritual leaders have been knowingly perpetuating a lie and corrupting my worship for their purposes, why should I follow them?
They are the Levites, this is their career calling, their entire job.
If they’re too busy bashing over their LGBT+ preoccupations to know what’s real, to know how to carry the ark safely, to know how to handle God’s own scriptures, then why should I listen to anything they say?
Is this all just a bit of a jolly for them?
You should be unimpressed too.
[Is that my jowls wobbling? An emphatic vibrato seemed an appropriate voice projection…was it all a bit much? Whatever you do, don’t mention Matthew 23:13…]
(VI) We are called to walk in truth but also in love, humility and forgiveness.
We’re called to recognise that it might be us ourselves who is the liar or the fool.
We’re called to recognise how readily we ourselves can be polluted.
We’re called to recognise how readily the churches can be corrupted.
I’m called to put this out there, recognising that I’m human and my own might disown me (whether they find error or not).
[and that they’ll probably flame me good and proper for this one…telling a large body of Christian moneymen that they’ve been depriving themselves sexually for no real reason, oh boy, this won’t end well for me…let’s bring it back to Jesus, I trust you, Jesus…]
The one who will never lie to you or get it wrong is Jesus.
Jesus is the truth. Jesus is the Logos. The Logos is the Word. The Word is the truth.
No one else is.
There is no other name which truth is.
There is no other I AM.
No in-breath(YH)out-breath(WH) that makes you alive.
So if this non-preacher raises questions for you, just pray to Jesus and ask him to explain it to you. He’ll use your prayers to tell you exactly what he wills you to know (he may even spiritually co-create his will in concordance with your God-gifted free will through prayer as a child of Jesus).
If he asks you to, why not press your faith leaders about this translation?
If he asks you to, why not write to the committee-people to ask?
Fulfilment
[Where’s my handkerchief, phew, I’m sweaty. What’s this dull central chest pain? I’ll need to apologise to the front row for the anointing of spittle]
Christians and our leadership need to ask: are we actually serious about seeking to know Jesus properly? Because if so, how can we be this sloppy with the sacred Word?
How can you be in love with Jesus and let this blatant untruth spread?
I for one don’t want to be in love with someone without ever knowing who they really are. You might stay together, and your love might be “real”, but wouldn’t it bother you if you discovered that you hadn’t loved their whole person? There was a beautiful side to them you never discovered? Wouldn’t it bother you if some gossipy so-called friends of theirs kept telling you lies about the one you love? “Oh no he doesn’t like it like this”… “yeah he’s quite prudish you know, he’ll definitely dump you if you do it like that…” All the while you listened to the gossips and didn’t go to your lover to ask him. You dived into the man-made swimming pool next to the ocean and the pool committee told you the pool was the ocean, with all its pool rules, staff, paperwork and membership fees.
How can we even begin to awake to freedom-righteousness if we haven’t awoken first to something resembling the truth?
If we let slip our belts of truth then the sword of the Spirit which is the Word slips down with it and might break or become tarnished.
This is not just a minor distortion. This is not just, “oh well some people think this, some think that”. This is a major, biblically demonstrable falsehood of suppression.
Ask why isn’t every preacher in the land telling their flock about this?
In science, we would be issuing warnings about this, withdrawing articles, questioning institutional integrities, accepting resignations: so why are Christians not doing the same?
Why are we not marking every instance of porneia in the Bible with a caution?
“Christianity” was started on critical thinking, evidence, truth, study and honest, robust scholarship. Look where we are now.
We were never the religion of “don’t ask no questions”.
Ask why, given the magnitude of the error, there aren’t emergency meetings of our Elders asking how one of the main life-messages they’re telling people isn’t accurate.
Ask if it would be better to be the good Samaritan than a hand-rubbing Christian conduit of distortion, blaming the Samaritans for not wanting to become Christians like us.
The Samaritans feel falsehood when they witness it, because God put it in human hearts to know what’s good, and to know when someone is distorting God’s goodness.
If you’re not sure, pause, say nothing on the subject. Don’t be afraid to speak three words of truth: “I don’t know”.
Whatever you do, do not get up on your platform and tell lies saying you are representing Jesus. Whatever you do, don’t shout ignorance from that box on that street corner. You could easily be doing devilish work thinking you’re helping the Lord.
Have we forgotten the subtlety of the adversary? The warnings are there in every Book. Take every word the Bible says about evil very seriously. Porneia is about spiritual adultery against God, which is about losing salvation. No one can take it from you but you can lose it. And they’ve reduced it just to sex. Who does that help? Ask why people are hesitant to talk about Satan or even say his name. Ask, if a committee of older men assembles to formulate influential proclamations in Jesus name, where would Satan send his own that day? If you’re feeling uncomfortable at this open way of speaking about evil, therein lies a problem.
When I put forward any writings about Jesus, I pray frequently for protection and truth while I do so. Afterwards I pray that he sends me back to correct any errors I made by my own agenda-clouded prideful nature. He is moved by these prayers every time. How much more should the translation committees pray? Before they even think about putting pen to paper they should clean out their houses, spending much more time on prayer than the writs themselves. Instead of fussing over croissants and ring binders, they should be praying. There should be more people praying protection over them than doing translation work, not just a quick prayer-by-rote to ask for a bit of discernment. If God does not move a single tongue or pen, then they should simply be still and know he isn’t moving them. Maybe, God wouldn’t have been asking them to produce yet another translation. They must not enter the ring just for the fame and the prize money. They must understand it shouldn’t be them themselves entering the ring in the first place, but Jesus, through them. Otherwise how could they even begin to stand without him?
Your yardstick is always this: does it generate movement towards Jesus?
If it doesn’t, it is furthering the objectives of the opposition.
You would help everyone more by entering prayer and silent reflection, meeting God in the desert of your spiritual mind and waiting for him to be moved to move you.
There is a reason taking the Lord’s name in vain is in the ten commandments, given such precedence and clarity. Sometimes it’s about being too light on your commitment to what you’re putting out there in his name.
By Word
For those who care about the truth, Part 2 and Part 3 contain in-depth prayerful Bible study which proves that wherever you see anything in the Bible about “sexual immorality” or “fornication”, you should be extremely careful that you aren’t being deceived…
Never forget: the prostitutes and Samaritans sat closer to Jesus than the scribes and the establishment exclusionists of the hierarchy.
27 That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:
28 For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.
29 Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device. (Acts 17:27-29; KJV).
