Gifts Freely Given

The Anchoress has a very true, but not often appreciated take on immorality:

I’m talking about the Gift of the Body of Christ. Christ gave himself to us - freely - of his own free will. A Gift freely given. If someone takes the Gift and spits on it or whatever - they’re only destroying what was given to them, they are destroying what is “theirs.” They don’t in any way destroy the Giver of the Gift, or lessen the Giver…OR the Gift. So they have no power over it, they can’t dominate it. All they can do is destroy themselves within themselves.

While the post is very Catholic, it is also excellent.

God gives us things, from the air we breath to the spark of life we were conceived with. While misusing what we have been given saddens Him and may even anger Him, ultimately it doesn't lessen Him. He chose to give it to us, for good or ill, while knowing how we would use those gifts. Yet he gave them anyway.

What it does is show us for what we really are. We are often like petulent little children who have broken all our toys by the end of Christmas Day. Yet God loves us and eventually will give us new toys, perhaps requiring us to learn a bit of a lesson first.

On a similar theme, my pastor noted a major difference between Christianity and Islam this weekend. Islam demanded that Mohammed be venerated and honored. It still does. Christianity required that Christ had give himself to be insulted, debased, and killed. While Christians may be upset with how people portray Jesus, ultimately it isn't any different from how he was treated when he was alive.