immorality - vs - intolerance?

I Cor 5:1-2   It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife. 2You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst. 

Immorality.   Are we even allowed to use the word immorality in the context of right or wrong anymore?  We are immediately accused of "intolerance" as if the two are reversed.  Is there a time to be intolerant?

My first commitment in reading at face value comes back to me.

 I've decided, no I've realized I want to, blog through the book of 1Corinthians.  I'm going to blog as a somewhat introverted, prone to depression, 50 something, never quite dressed well mom.  I'm going to take it at face value and assume God knows Himself better than even Beth Moore or Francis Chan or even Mother Theresa know Him.  I'm going to assume that if He says something is bad.... it's bad.  I'm going to assume that if He says "Do this",  then I should just do it.  I'm going to assume that if He describes Himself a certain way, then He really is that way.  I'm going to take it at face value and assume the Bible is Truth.

        I'm going to assume that I'll be wrong sometimes.  I'm going to assume that it won't matter because as long as I keep reading His word, He'll show me where I'm off.  I'm going to assume He actually wants me to know Him for our sake, mine and His.

        And if, in the end, I think He's a fake... I can walk away.  But I've known Him just enough and for too long to think that will actually be the case.  And yet I'm going in with that freedom.

    I'm going to take I Corinthians one verse at a time - for ME.  This may take a month - or the rest of my life.  I have no idea and I refuse to let it matter.  I'm reading it as Lydia Crouch...

Immorality has become entertaining...  We accept off color comments because they are funny.  They are.  Not because they are good.  They are funny because someone with a really good sense of humor wrote the script that way.  But then what?

Even Christian comedians  elude to sexual humor.  There are times when our sexuality is just funny.  It is.  People are funny.

But Paul is concerned that we have become arrogant.  We think it doesn't effect us.  We don't mourn.  We do not remove them from our midst.  We don't turn the show off.  We let them teach our children.

We don't mourn.  Note: Paul did NOT say "you don't get angry"  or "you don't punish" or
"you don't judge them."    Those are all arrogant actions?  Paul corrects them for not mourning.

Mourning is an emotion reserved for death, for great loss.  We mourn those we love.  October 26 was my brother's birthday.  It's hitting really hard this year.  I woke up so very sad this morning.  I miss him terribly.  Some years are worse than others.  I mourn for what I lost.  I mourn for what I can not have.  Sometimes, I just feel lost without my brother.
 
"You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead"  This is a call to love the immoral enough to set boundaries.  To feel lost without them, but to set the boundaries.

I have wept at times when I had to discipline my children.  They were already so miserable that it was hard to allow them to have consequences.  But without them, my children would have been left in a very lonely place.  They have looked back recently and thanked us for not letting them get by with stuff.  We talked about the beautiful "No's" in life.

We don't mourn...  It doesn't break our hearts that immorality is quite literally killing lives.

Someone has his father's wife... and we don't mourn.


Lord, show me how to weep for those who have so lost sight of how wonderfully they were created that they turn to immorality to try to see themselves as valuable.  Lord, show me how to be discerning.  Lord, let me ache with love for the homosexuals, the adulterers, the immorals who try to mold you into their own image instead of realizing that you created us in YOUR own image, but we've walked away... all to be entertained.  Lord, in my tiny little corner of this huge, huge world; let me stand where you stand.  There is nothing that you are unable to redeem.  Grace is unlimited.  Boundaries are maybe just the goblet given so that we can receive it?  Drink it to the full?