This thought, expressed by the Apostle Paul in Galations 5:16 is truly toxic:
“Do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh.”
The message is clear. The flesh is bad. This life is bad. Sex is bad. Only the afterlife is good, and this life we have now must be sacrificed to it. We must sacrifice what we have for what we do not have, and may never have. We must forsesake the joys we know for the sake of something that isn’t known, and which cannot be objectively verified.
And Paul is considered an oracle of virtue?
Why is it virtuous to believe things that are unsupported by evidence? Look at the history of the world. It is precisely those ideas that have lacked evidentiary support that have caused the most harm — Nazism, Communism, Islam . . . Christianity?
We are alive now. Let us live. Let us enjoy life, taking our pleasures in the balanced moderation that is necessary to the retention of the joys those pleasures provide. And let us please take no more pleasure in the words of those, who like the Apostle Paul, make baseless assertions about ultimate reality.
