Open Warfare

 

Originally posted with a different title on June 15, 2019 at DaTechGuy Blog.

Rely not on the likelihood of the enemy’s not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him.

— Sun Tzu 

In 2018, I said this: 

A lot of people – even some Christians — discount the existence of satanic spiritual forces and ridicule the material-world advocates of these forces. The latter count on this. For the record, I’ve seen some of those forces in action. 

From 2019, by Tara Isabella Burton at American Interest: 

For an increasing number of left-leaning millennials—more and more of whom do not belong to any organized religion—occult spirituality isn’t just a form of personal practice, self-care with more sage. Rather, it’s a metaphysical canvas for the American culture wars in the post-Trump era: pitting the self-identified Davids of seemingly secular progressivism against the Goliath of nationalist evangelical Christianity. 

 The biblically-literate will note the irony of that last comparison. 

There’s the coven of Brooklyn witches who publicly hexed then-Supreme Court candidate Brett Kavanaugh to the acclamation of the thousands-strong “Magic Resistance”—anti-Trump witches (among them: pop singer Lana del Rey) who used at-home folk magic to “bind” the president in the months following his inauguration. There are organizations like The Satanic Temple —newly featured in Penny Lane’s 2019 documentary Hail Satan—a “nontheistic religion” and activist group that uses its religious status to demand for its black-robe-clad members the same protections afforded to Christians in the hopes of highlighting the ridiculousness of faith-based exceptions (Satanic prayer in schools, say). There are dozens of Trump-era how-to spellbooks that blend folk magic with activist practice: the 2018 anthology The New Arcadia: A Witch’s Handbook to Magical Resistance; Michael Hughes’s 2018 Magic for the Resistance: Rituals and Spells for Change; David Salisbury’s 2019 Witchcraft Activism: A Toolkit for Magical Resistance (Includes Spells for Social Justice, Civil Rights, the Environment, and More); and Sarah Lyons’s forthcoming Revolutionary Witchcraft: A Guide to Magical Activism. There are hundreds of thousands of users of witch-popular blogging platforms like Tumblr and Instagram, which at the moment boasts 8.5 million photographs hash-tagged “#witch.”

You'll want to read this whole thing. 

Burton says that this is fair, since much of rightism has Christianity overtly embedded in it. And guess what: she’s right. And, more than that, it’s a Good Thing in that clarifies the spiritual sides and the attendant stakes. 

You want the enemy’s servants to be open about their identity. This indicates arrogance — a fatal flaw.

I’d say that the Democrat Party – now one with the Organized Left – de facto and de jure pledged allegiance to Lucifer when, during the 2012 Democratic National Convention, its delegates loudly booed the (re-)admission of the word ‘God’ into the party platform. (And, in the 2016 platform, “God-given” appears three times, but “God” by Himself, not at all.) 

Probably, many ignored this back then, and will keep on doing so. 

But, consider this: great forces for both good and evil have begun in the highways and byways of societies — in homeless shelters … or on Tumblr. Zealots of any sort begin as a remnant, later gathering followers, acolytes and resources. See: Christianity. 

And the Devil is a copycat. Everything he does is in parody to the works of God. Christ is building His kingdom and, therefore, the Devil is building his among these people who hate God and who hate their parents – especially their fathers. 

However, those who mock these worshipers do so at their peril. In Ephesians 6:12, Paul acknowledges the existence spiritual rulers of dark places and of their power. Again, in imitation of God, the Devil gives powers to those who worship and serve him. 

And he won’t make them wait around for it and try to teach them anything, like God does with His servants. 

Also in Ephesians 6:10-18, Paul also provides the defense against these forces.

The fact that these people are so open about whom they serve is not only good for God’s servants, but for those who have a foot in two boats. 

Choose one boat or the other or, as the boats continue to move further and further apart, end up in the water. 

And forget about walking on it.

*****

September 2, 2020:

Can anyone deny that all the terrible things we've seen this year have supernatural sources? Well, I suppose they could, but I adamantly disagree.

I also think that these have been and will be the time of God's greatest miracles.

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South Africa and the Folly of Revenge

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On Monday, I did a BlogTalkRadio interview with Facebook friend Chris Levels on his show Politics and Prophecy. Though I'm less than adept at these types of conversations, it was a pleasant experience, in spite of some equipment mishaps on my end.

One of the things that Chris asked me about is the situation in South Africa. If you haven't been keeping up, the South African government is considering confiscation of farms owned by white South Africans. I gave my opinion on the topic, but I want to do it here, as well.

James Michener (1907-1997)

The small amount of knowledge I have about South African history comes from James Michener's novel The Covenant. It's been quite a while since I read it and I plan to read it again, but the bottom line is this: The Boers and the English moved in and herded the natives in various ways, separating the latter from the former and taking the best parts of the land for themselves. It's a much longer story than that, but these things usually are.

Therefore it seems that the present-day government -- dominated by black persons -- intends to turn the tables. Tit for tat.

This makes sense in a worldly way. The black South Africans want to take back what was stolen from their ancestors.

Some of my black Facebook friends -- even the Christians among them -- are cheering the black South Africans on or at the very least are indifferent to the report. After all the white South Africans are getting what they deserve. Right? They are living off of the bad deeds of their ancestors, some from just one generation back, right? Apartheid ended in 1991.

However ...

Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

-- Romans 12:19 (KJV)

Revenge feels good, but, as is so with all of His other admonitions, God has a good reason for telling us not to take it when we are wronged, the main reason being that it is usual the beginning of a never-ending cycle of revenge. If I may quote myself:

[E]ven if one does not believe in [God], it’s easy to see the chaos which is nearly always brought about by the unending cycle of human vengeance. You murder/enslave/oppress mine, then I take vengeance and murder/enslave/oppress yours. Then you take vengeance and murder/enslave/oppress more of mine. Then I ...

There are often unforeseen consequences to vengeance, almost all bad. But there is nothing unforeseen about the long-term consequences of mass vengeance through property transfer.

Zimbabwe went down the same road that South Africa is considering and now the former exists as an abject lesson about the folly of The Big Payback.

If South Africa carries out a plan to take (back) the land, I predict that the consequences will be worse for that nation than was so for Zimbabwe, for one reason and it's a spiritual one.

Zimbabwe had no example to learn from; South Africa does. And, should SA do this, it would be choosing to ignore the example.

God hates stupidity, but I bet that He hates aggressive stupidity even more.

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Two Kingdoms Offer Protection to Their Children

Disclaimer: I'm biased towards this Kingdom.

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*****

Compare and contrast.

In this post, I opined that the Devil is not only the progenitor of lies, also the architect of all that is false.

God is building His kingdom, and so the [Devil] is building his.

This adversary does deal in simple falsehoods, but those aren’t his most lethal weapons. He is an imitator of his enemy, God, and therefore, his deceptions are high, wide, deep, broad, complex—and, long-term.

These types of deceptions are four-dimensional at the very least; they are his weapons of mass destruction.

If you take everything you know about the God of the Bible, you'll notice the Devil -- and his servants -- will always try to copy those things. But the parodies will always be a far inferior and will, ultimately, be a curse.

Case in point coming.

In Psalm 91:1-2 (KJV), David observed that

He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust.

The implication is that if a person trusts in God and everything that entails, that God, in turn will protect that person. (Pertinent note: a person's core self is his/her spirit and soul and, in this Psalm, God offers conditional protection to a person's dwelling. While you're wearing it, your physical body is the dwelling of your spirit and soul. This is important to remember.)

Robert Spencer points to a milestone on the highway of postmodernism -- a building in the parody kingdom.

The Orlando Weekly’s Xander Peters frames the story this way: “Orange County middle school teacher has an incredibly racist Twitter account.” According to Peters, this teacher “retweeted an anti-Muslim post by Identify [sic] Evropa, a white supremacist group that aims to create a white ethnostate.”

Neither the Orlando Weekly nor the Orlando Sentinel, which also covered the story of this “racist” teacher, shows you a photo of the offender. That is probably because the accused “racist” and “white supremacist” teacher, Sundai Brown, is a black woman.

What race is she supposedly attacking? Jihad terror and Islamization. Islam, as any sane person knows, is not a race, and Muslims are not of a single race, but of all races. But the Orlando Weekly and Orlando Sentinel are out to destroy Sundai Brown’s career and livelihood, for the crime of opposing jihad violence and the spread of Sharia to non-Muslim countries. They have targeted her because she reportedly tweeted that “imans [sic] worldwide instruct muslims to invade western countries, outbreed them, overthrow governments, kill infidels and implement sharia law.”

Understand this: Ms. Brown, is, under the chaotic laws of Leftism, a "white supremacist." Under that law, a white supremacist is anyone who openly disagrees with any idea, anyone, or any group that the Organized Left (OL) takes under its wing of protection. Also, understand this: the OL can confer, withdraw favor on an idea, person, or group at any time for any reason.

The OL also takes these privileges to itself:

• Promotion of one idea/person/group over another, regardless of previous status. Black people used to be the OL's faired-haired boys and girls, if you'll pardon the irony. But now, the OL has demoted black people in its hierarchy of "children."  have been displaced by Muslims, illegal aliens, and women.

• Denunciation of heretics. As is demonstrated by the treatment of Ms. Brown, any member of one of the protected groups who "attacks" one of the groups higher that his/hers, will be publicly denounced, shamed, and, if possible, driven to financial ruin.

• The OL can and will promote an idea, then denounce it later; often seconds later.

That list is far from exhaustive.

Thus are the foundations on which a person/group takes refuge under the wing of protection offered by Leftism ever shifting and, ultimately, unreliable. Those foundations are composed of the sand on which postmodernism -- a kingdom of lies -- are built. This is a "perfect" counterpoint to the solid foundation that God provides.

Is it harsh to say that Leftism is of the Devil? Yes, it is. Harshness is often necessary. 

And here's something else that the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of the Devil have in common: you can die -- be removed from your present dwelling place -- due to reliance on either.

Where the situations diverge: what comes after that.

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It's Okay to Dislike Trump; It's Not Okay to Distort the Bible

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I was going to fisk this short bit of virtue-signaling by NRO's David French, but the bulk of it merely builds on a foundation contained in the first paragraph – or, rather, the absence of that foundation.

I agree wholeheartedly with my colleague Jonah Goldberg. Social conservatives (especially Christian conservatives) should unequivocally condemn Donald Trump’s now almost-certain affair with a porn star. They should speak with the exact same level of conviction and apply the same standards that they’d apply to a Democrat caught in the same sleazy circumstances. After all, Republican adultery is every bit as repugnant as Democratic adultery.

I get right on that as soon as Mr. French can reference scripture in which we Christians are commanded or even encouraged to denounce the past sins of a secular leader who was not even a Christian at the time of those sins. (And let's not forget what the Bible says about gossip many, many times.)

To help, I would humbly suggest that Mr. French review the life stories of Moses and Saul/Paul. (I certainly hope that French and others understand why I point to these two.) Re-reading and comprehending John 8:3-11 would also be in order. Also, the Parable of the Priest and the Publican; the priest in that story had the nerve to try to flash the virtue signal at God -- who wasn't having it.

Used to be that only anti-theists felt comfortable publicly perpetrating their distortions about God and about what Christians believe. Times they are a-changing.

RELATED: Trump is God and the Devil


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Why Non-Christians Don't Understand Christian Prayer

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This is a continuation on my post from a week and a half ago at Da Tech Guy blog. It probably won’t follow a direct line of thinking, though. Call it a train of meandering thought.

After the massacre at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, many expressed sympathies toward those who were affected and still living. “Thoughts and prayers” is the usual phrasing, something with which I have no quarrel.

However, with such an evil act having been perpetrated on followers of Jesus the Christ while they were in the midst of worshiping Him, many non-believers took the opportunity to mock Christianity and Christians.

Most of the mockery amounted to this: “Where is your god now?” “Prayer doesn’t work.”

I have several atheist friends and family members with whom I usually don’t argue and, usually, they don’t argue with me when I expound on the Bible. However, I hope that they all read what I write here and it’s this: if you’re going to argue against Christianity, know what you’re talking about and what you’re arguing against. That is the failure of naysayers to Christianity and of prayers to the Living God.

A lot of people, even some Christians, argue about what happens here on Earth as if there is no afterlife, as if this life is the only one there is. If it’s true that this is all there is, then why bother doing what’s right? Why not get all you can get and get away with?

I’ve always believed that God exists. But, before I became a Christian, the god I thought existed didn’t pay much attention to me and was busy lavishing his attention on others he felt were worthier. (The riveting thing about that is, after I became a Christian, I began to reflect on certain incidents prior to that and concluded that God had been paying close attention to me, but I had ignored it or forgotten about it.)

The beginning went like this: after reading the Bible the first time all the way through, I said “Okay. I’m in.” There were no harps or angelic visions.

Since becoming a Christian, my struggle has been to rid myself of that old notion of who God is and to discern the true nature of our being and of this world. I’ve read the Bible from beginning to end more than once. I’ve attached myself to a Bible-based nondenominational church. I’ve read and listened to topical sermons from many pastors.

The story of my search for a church is told here, but that was only the barest beginning. My life as a Christian used to be like this: I’d go to church, listen, take notes, say amen. And then I’d go back to ignoring God on the other six days. That pattern stopped when my life seemed to take a turn for the worse. Broken relationships, taking care of a terminally ill great-aunt (parent), loss of house, car and loss of the majority of my physical possessions, homelessness. Oh, I was praying then, every single day! Hanging onto the promises of God. Taking them and saying to him “you promised this if I did this.” And the big one “are you going to leave me, too?”

I could almost hear Him say: “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Okay then. Just checking.

And He has stabilized my material possession situation – several items have been replaced by my generous friends-fans -- but I have not reverted to my old relationship with Him. And that’s one of the main purposes of prayer: keeping the relationship alive. It does so many things including this one thing: it will keep you sane. But you must listen even more than you talk because He knows things that you don’t know. Example: eternal life; the life after this one.

If I’m going to die and my body becomes worm food and my consciousness ceases to exist, then why bother to do anything other than satisfy my own appetites? People much more intelligent than I am have struggled with this, but that intellectual inequality matters not at all. If we actually think about these things – if we are “fortunate” enough to have it enter our minds and curious enough to keep turning over those rocks to see what’s underneath, we come to one of two conclusions.

1) That there is no God, and nothing matters in the long run, or
2) That there is a God, and what we do here matters to that deity.

Of course, item 2 has many subheadings, such as, the nature/personality of this deity and what that deity wants of us, if anything.

Leaving aside all the other theologies, why wouldn’t I want to serve an omnipotent, omniscient God of whom I’m a reflection and who loves me like any father loves his child? And why wouldn’t I want to be with Him when this life is over? To experience things I can never imagine in this life? And if I listen and talk to Him, why wouldn’t I want His omniscient self to reveal things to me that I need to know? And if He loves me with perfect love, why wouldn’t I trust Him most especially when the feces hits the fan?

This direction of thought – this walk of faith – is, mostly, unfathomable to those who never embark on the journey and, especially, to those who volitionally choose to walk in the other direction. If there is nothing else other that this reality, prayers seem foolish to them. But the irony is this: if there is nothing else other than this reality, then there is no point in getting worked up over murders, suicides, rapes, etc. either! I mean, if there’s no final accounting, then it’s eat, drink, be merry, rape, steal, kill and destroy as much as you can get away with, if any or all of those are your thing.

Right?

If we learned that the vast majority of the world loved chocolate but hated vanilla, would we claim this made vanilla “wrong” or “evil”? Of course not. It’s just a matter of taste, or human preference. Yet how is it any different asserting murder is “wrong” or “evil” if the only reason we do so is that we learn that the vast majority of the world hates the idea of killing others in a way the vast majority of the world considers unjust? 

If man’s consensus is all it is, then it falls into the same category as flavors: human preference. (…) 

And if God doesn’t exist? Then we should stop fooling ourselves and putting lipstick on the pig of mere preference. Stop using words such as “values” (prevalent now precisely because “morality” connotes something absolute), designed to obscure atheism’s meaninglessness.(…) 

So, if God doesn’t exist, neither atheists nor theists can be moral — only in or out of fashion.

This pastor caught no end of short-sighted ridicule even from Christians about this very biblical point of view.

When we pray [“Deliver us from evil”], we are certainly praying that God would deliver us from evil temporally—that is, in this earthly life. Through these words, we are asking God to send his holy angels to guard us from those who would seek to destroy us with knives and bombs and bullets. It may seem, on the surface, that God was refusing to give such protection to his Texan children. But we are also praying that God would deliver us from evil eternally. Through these same words, we are asking God to deliver us out of this evil world and into his heavenly glory, where no violence, persecution, cruelty, or hatred will ever afflict us again. 

We also pray in the Lord’s Prayer that God’s will be done. Sometimes, his will is done by allowing temporal evil to be the means through which he delivers us from eternal evil. Despite the best (or, more accurately, the worst) intentions of the wicked against his children, God hoists them on their own petard by using their wickedness to give those children his victory, even as the wicked often mock the prayers of their prey.

I don’t want to tell the story of the Garden of Eden again, but one thought about it reminds us that the evil in this world was set in motion then and, at some point will lead to the destruction of it. But, again, is this the only existence there is? Christians give an emphatic “no” to that question. Therefore, those who have Jesus the Christ as Savior will live forever in Paradise, and that includes most if not all of those who were murdered in Texas. This world is bad and, in it, evil falls on the just and the unjust alike. That, however, is not so in the next world, not for the group mentioned, at least.

But there’s the soul and spirit of one person that everyone seems to forget about in the discussion of this tragedy: the perpetrator. He will live forever, too. I don’t even want to think about it, really. But assuming there is an afterlife and you spent your last moments in this life mowing down innocents …

Back to prayers; in situations like this, Christians pray for the comfort of the living, that they are reminded of the hope of eternal life, and to go along with that, that their loved ones likely made it into Heaven, considering what they were doing when they died.

So those who ridicule prayers and Pray-ers have no concept of what they are doing. It's like a spiritual Dunning-Kruger effect.

I think we should pray for them.

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On Love, Taking a Stand, and Clear Vision

The following is an edited version of a post I wrote on my 49th birthday -- seven years ago -- at my old blog. Contemporaneous items have been removed.

*****

During my morning reading and prayer, it “occurred” to me -- again --to ask God what His will is for my life. I wanted to know what I was or wasn’t doing that is against His will. Was there something I needed to do more of? Had I failed to ask ‘how high’ when God told me to jump? Every person still breathing has an assigned mission, whether it be great or small.

After admitting publicly that I'd had an abortion, I received many compliments for my courage and honesty, but I felt neither courageous nor particularly honest. It wasn’t false humility; it was simply a feeling that there was more—as if there was something else I needed to face. And there was.

The accolades I received for that admission were watered down by a very sobering state of affairs in my life. The one person from whom I needed love and support has, because of my confession, repeatedly ridiculed me for it--seeming to want to induce shame in me for being so public. The irony contained therein is that, prior to my admission, I had avoided blogging about abortion due to the shame I had felt for doing away with my own child. Admitting it publicly was an attempt to free myself from that shame and it was done in the hope that at least one young woman reading would realize that she did not have to be the fool that I had been.

Abortion was my greatest shame and, though my eternal guilt has been washed away by the acceptance of Jesus Christ as my Savior, its earthly effects have been extremely painful, spiritually and emotionally—the consciousness of sin and the regret at committing a form of suicide.

The interesting part is this: when God opens your eyes, your spiritual vision is 20-20. The person who wants me to feel shame for my admission once claimed to love me. But, my being continues to be shaped by God and when He says, “Stand,” I have no choice. And what I’ve had to face is this: anyone who would ridicule me and attempt to provoke shame from me for my obedience to the Lord cannot possibly love me.

Even more interesting is the realization that when you are doing what you know is morally correct in the sight of God—when you take a stand in the name of Jesus Christ—any chastisement you receive is an indication that you are on the right path. Additionally, the source of that chastisement will give you a clear view into the soul of that source. Be sure to pray for that soul, however.

On Honor

The primary recipient of our honor as individual human beings is to God and is simply outlined in Mark 12:30-31; each human being is commanded to love God with an entire heart, and with full mental power and to love one’s neighbor as self. Love is the variant of honor that should constantly pour from our being—the highest type of honor.

For the longest time, I did not understand what it meant to love God, this incorporeal being. But how does one love a sentient earthly being? We communicate. We talk to that person and, most importantly, we listen to them and when we do this, we trust that the communication consists of truth—we extend good faith to our beloved. (And we show love by rejoicing in our beloved’s happiness and comforting him in his pain. And we never, never, never ridicule our beloved when he reveals his soul.)

With God, loving Him has an extra component, of course. Since He’s omnipotent and omniscient, we show our love to Him by doing what He commands and trusting that the commandments of a loving God are meant for good. We extend to God the ultimate in Good Faith.

After talking to Him (praying in the name of Jesus Christ) and listening to Him (reading the Word), we do what He puts in our hearts, in spite of any earthly consequences. We take a stand.

So, my eyes are open and my vision is clear. I will continue to stand for the unborn and the murdered.

And I will remember that true love is (Holy) spiritual.

Though my story seems sad, I feel set free; very happy and peaceful. Peace is what I prayed for. It's a great birthday gift.

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It's a Trap--Reboot

I will be to intermittently featuring old posts from my political blog, baldilocks, and from my Christian blog, Turn not to the Right Hand nor to the Left. As I said in the last post,  the old baldilocks site is still available to the public, but TNTTRHNTTL is not; I only have it on my hard drive.

Before, I thought it was best to separate my Christian faith walk into another blog site, but I have changed my mind. The fact that Jesus is my Lord and my Savior is integral in my offline life, and so it shall be online.

The original version of this post was offered at TNTTRHNTTL on November 7, 2010. This version is edited yet again and has a couple of additional paragraphs. During the time in which I composed the old version, I was trying to free myself from a very toxic relationship and what follows below are concepts which I knew in my head to be true. However, it took a little while after that for these things to be cemented into my heart.

*****

Recently, a friend mentioned the concept of being “caught up”--being “in love”—that which is defined as Eros, "passionate love in the narrow sphere of sexual desire and longing."   Since that conversation, I have been thinking about how we sometimes call ourselves being “in love” with another and how such relationships almost always fail when one or both parties fall out of "love."

Much of what we call being “in love” is, in reality, delusional selfishness if the other two types of love--agape and phileo--are not shared between the two parties.  Minus friendship and, most importantly, minus the desire for growth in the Holy Spirit for one’s beloved, Eros is mere fantasy and when that fantasy fades in the face of reality and you find that you really don’t like the other person and you really don’t care whether that person lives or dies—or whether that person will have to experience the Second Death, the relationship ends.

It seems to me that when a relationship is based solely on Eros, two people aren’t really having a relationship with each other.  On the contrary, each individual is having a relationship with himself or herself.  

At first, neither person wants to see the “beloved” with characteristics apart from those which personal fantasy projects; and we certainly know the definition of projection: “the attribution of one's own ideas, feelings, or attitudes to other people or to objects.”  He is relating to his fantasies—most likely sexual—and projecting them onto her.  She is relating to her fantasies—most likely emotional and/or status-related—and projecting them onto him.  Initially, neither person sees the other as a separate individual with needs and wants of their own.  One might as well masturbate.

Inevitably, fantasy gives way to reality and the “beloved” turns out to be a real person who is different than our fantasy man/woman.  And when fantasy has been disabused, it can sometimes get ugly.  As I said to my friend, when we discover that the person is different than our fantasies—when we discover that the other person is a real person rather than our self-created phantom--we often get angry at that person for not being what our fantasy is or we keep trying to make that person into our fantasy.  

Both are losing propositions.

The Bible calls this “vain imagination” and it is necessary to my point to give the definition of the adjective ‘vain:’ “having no real value : idle, worthless .”  Additionally, the pertinent definition of the noun ‘vanity’ is useful:  “inflated pride in oneself or one's appearance : conceit.”  (Emphasis mine.)

It always seems to come back to pride, doesn’t it?

I once heard someone liken an intimate relation between a man and woman--read: marriage--to a properly baked cake with icing. The relationship is the cake with proper ingredients--spiritual love and a fully-formed friendship--and sex is the icing.

An insufficiently baked cake will taste awful and will melt the icing. And icing with no cake tastes sweet--at first. But after a short period of time, one becomes sick of it.

At any rate, this concept of being “in love” seem to be an inversion of one of Jesus Christ’s two greatest commandments: to love one’s neighbor as one loves oneself.  If you know that you have needs, wants and desires, you can be sure that others who you may claim to love have them as well—and you can be sure that many of those needs, wants and desires are different from your own.

Therefore, if you are using another person to gratify your own personal desires--physical or otherwise--regardless of his/her own and when your desires have been sated, you walk away, you are committing a grave sin, almost an act of hatred.  You are treating that person as an animal or a thing and not as a sentient being.  And the irony of this is, the person to whom you are doing the greatest harm is yourself—your own soul.  Repeatedly hurting others and being hurt in this manner builds up deafness to the Word of God and to the Holy Spirit contained in the hearing thereof—it produces fear rather than faith and we all know the origin of fear.

We see this pattern over and over again in so-called love relationships—using others to gratify oneself or to promote self in the eyes of other human beings.  People who are familiar with the biblical proscription of sex outside of marriage but don't want to follow it seem to think that God is trying to keep us from having fun.  But, personal experience and observation should tell us otherwise—that God prescribes this standard to keep us from hurting each other and hurting ourselves.

And, the “fun” waiting to be had can be so much richer and fulfilling when one cherishes the person having that fun also—when one loves and likes the real person’s spirit and soul rather than relating to the phantom in one's own head. 

I've experienced this only once.

I pray I will again.