One way we do this is by taking each child on their own purity retreat, where we introduce the importance of sexual purity and elevate it to a place of great importance. Something to be celebrated. Something to invest in. Important enough to dedicate time away with special activities. Special enough to commemorate with family and ceremony.
Passport 2 Purity Download
The quantity of gold for which the investor pays is protected, since he receives the ongoing market price at the time of redemption/ premature redemption. The SGB offers a superior alternative to holding gold in physical form. The risks and costs of storage are eliminated. Investors are assured of the market value of gold at the time of maturity and periodical interest. SGB is free from issues like making charges and purity in the case of gold in jewellery form. The bonds are held in the books of the RBI or in demat form eliminating risk of loss of scrip etc.
The nominal value of Gold Bonds shall be in Indian Rupees fixed on the basis of simple average of closing price of gold of 999 purity, published by the India Bullion and Jewelers Association Limited, for the last 3 business days of the week preceding the subscription period.
On maturity, the Gold Bonds shall be redeemed in Indian Rupees and the redemption price shall be based on simple average of closing price of gold of 999 purity of previous 3 business days from the date of repayment, published by the India Bullion and Jewelers Association Limited.
The great difficulty of this demand is that it excises what has become, atleast for many Americans, the very heart of Christian sexual morality. Ittherefore places the churches under a great test--essentially the same test asthat which confronted the pious among the Jewish people during Jesus' ownministry and the circumcision party within the earliest Christian church at thetime of Paul's Gentile mission. Will the churches hang onto their ownself-defined purity and so hold themselves aloof from those excluded by it, orwill they proclaim the grace of God which plays no favorites? Will they maketheir existing purity codes conditions of salvation, or will they acknowledgethat they have no right to limit what God gives?
To be specific, the gospel allows no rule against the following, in and ofthemselves: masturbation, nonvaginal heterosexual intercourse, bestiality,polygamy, homosexual acts, or erotic art and literature. The Christian is freeto be repelled by any or all of these and may continue to practice her or hisown purity code in relation to them. What we are not free to do is impose ourcodes on others. Like all sexual acts, these may be genuinely wrong wherethey also involve an offense against the property of another, denial of theequality of women and men, or an idolatrous substitution of sex for the reignof God as the goal of human existence.
Homosexual orientation has been increasingly recognized in our time as a givenof human sexuality. While most people feel some sexual attraction to members ofboth the same and the opposite sex and, in the majority of these, attraction tothe opposite sex dominates, there is a sizeable minority for whom sexualattraction to persons of the same sex is a decisive shaping factor of theirsexual lives. It appears that this orientation is normally inalterable and thatthere is no strong internal reason for the homosexual person to wish to alterit. To deny an entire class of human beings the right peaceably and withoutharming others to pursue the kind of sexuality that corresponds to their natureis a perversion of the gospel. Like the insistence of some on the circumcisingof Gentile converts, it makes the keeping of purity rules a condition of grace.It is sometimes suggested that homosexual persons be told to become celibate.While celibacy is a venerable Christian tradition and may even, as Paulsuggested, be called for under certain circumstances, it is also a charisma(gift) and can never be demanded of those to whom such a gift has not beengiven. Paul indicated that the presence of this gift is known by the ability ofthe celibate person to deal with ungratified sexual desires without beingdominated by them. For those without this gift, Paul considered thesatisfaction of their desires, so long as it was within the boundaries of theproperty ethic, entirely appropriate. Any insistence on celibacy forhomosexuals as such is, accordingly, contrary to the New Testament witness.
Erotic literature and art (commonly called "pornography") form a widespread anddiverse phenomenon which may at times be contrary to Christian ethics,particularly when they set up idolatrous ethical standards which treat the selfand its sexual gratification as the final goal of all existence or when theypresent as acceptable the degradation of adults (usually women, in our society)or abuse of children. Explicit verbal and pictorial representations of sexualacts are not forbidden by the gospel-- apart from such considerations which mayrender one or another particular item ethically obnoxious. By the traditionalstandards of Western Christianity, however, whatever is sexually explicit isimpure. Although we tend to think of the issue of pornography as limited tonewsstands so-called "adult" bookstores, and theaters, actually it permeatesour whole society, as attested, for example, by our lack of an ordinaryvocabulary in English (as distinct from a medical or an obscene one) for thediscussion of sexuality. Anxiety about the erotic is, most importantly thething which prevents the dear and open sexual education of our young. We arecurrently reaping the consequences of this purity rule in the form ofwidespread pregnancies among teenagers who are neither capable of nor veryinterested in the rearing of children. And we shall be very lucky indeed if wedo not promote the rapid spread of AIDS by our unwillingness to speakexplicitly to children in the educational process. The pleasure attached toexplicit sexual portrayals, in words or pictures should be accepted as thepowerful ally of any effort to teach the responsible use of so beautiful athing. We cannot, however, expect to forbid sexually explicit representationsin most respects and still make good use of them in one narrowly permittedarea, namely, education. Children will not usually trust claims on which theyhave no independent controls whatever.
The New Testament, of course, does not demand that those Christians whoseconsciences are committed to some purity law give up the practice of it. No oneshould be required to take an interest in erotica or to indulge in sexualpractices which, however permissible, seem to that person a violation ofconscience. For that person, they would indeed be wrong actions. Conscience, ofcourse, is not fixed in its final form, and one must expect that it will maturealong with our comprehension of other aspects of God, the world, and thegospel. It remains true, however, that every Christian is responsible to his orher own present understanding. Those whose confidence in grace is great enoughto free them from purity codes (the "strong," as Paul called them) may notforce their position on others; but neither may those who observe such codes(the "weak") refuse the strong the right to follow their consciences. Sinceneither group has any right to deprive others of what properly belongs to them,it follows that the weak should not attempt to prevent open sexual education,outlaw erotic art and literature, or keep homosexual persons out of the churchand ministry. The strong, on the other hand, must not make their standard ofconduct a prerequisite of grace any more than the purity rules are. Paul urgedthe strong to avoid occasions of public offense to the weak. This is good, solong as the weak also commit themselves to a clear recognition that the stronghave a part in the church; it would be a betrayal of the gospel, however, ifthe needs of the weak were made an excuse for the reinstitution of purity lawas a condition of grace.
There has been a tendency, over the past century or so, to reinstitute puritylaw under the guise of mental health, by claiming that deviations from it are akind of sickness. Our society, having made a religion of medicine and apriesthood of physicians, is tempted to invoke the word "sickness" as a meresynonym of "impurity" without imparting any definite meaning to it. This shamwas long used to threaten children who masturbated with such dire consequencesas insanity; but the most obvious and shameful use of it has been againsthomosexuals, who have been labeled as sick merely because they differed fromthe majority. Even though intelligent and truly comparable studies have nowshown that there was never any foundation for such claims, there are those who,on dogmatic grounds (nothing else being available), still make them.
The identification of sickness and impurity has become even more apparent inthe irrational anxieties focused recently on people with AIDS. These anxietieshave induced many to seek a radical separation from carriers and potentialcarriers of the virus, even though competent authorities have repeatedlyassured the public that the virus is communicated only in quite specific ways.The irrationality and intensity of such responses testify to the enormous powerthat the purity ethic can still have for us. It is not death which is theprimary source of these fears, for the advocate of quarantines may well bewilling to take much greater risks, day by day, in driving metropolitanfreeways. The great fear is of contracting a disease as "dirty" to many in themodern world as leprosy was in antiquity.
Those who wish to rescue our society's purity rules by designating everyone whodeviates from them as "sick" are merely renaming purity; they are not tellingus anything new or illuminating. In many cases, they have even been utteringfalsehoods; and, in the process, they have harmed many generations of the youngwho were forced to fear that masturbation or homosexual attractions were signsof insanity. 2ff7e9595c
Comments