How should you steward your body? Are all bodily pleasures inherently sinful? In order to grapple with these questions, we take a tour through the bible from the Garden of Eden through to the time of Jesus to observe the balanced biblical perspective between asceticism (denying all pleasures) and hedonism (living for pleasure). As it turns out, God designed us to experience pleasure, but within his boundaries. We discuss several of these before considering how sometimes we may need to enter a period of abstinence to recenter ourselves. Lastly, we look at how legalism can sneak in and wreak havok when we impose our own personal boundaries on other Christians.
Links:
- Check out the other episodes in the Stewardship Series
- Read an article on how ancient asceticism invaded the church, leading to the rejection of the kingdom message
- Intro music: “Protofunk” by Kevin MacLeod. Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.