By: Shane James O’Neill
What are you passionate about?
If I asked you to name one thing you’re passionate about, could you? Maybe it’s something you do right now. Maybe it’s something you’ve already found. Or maybe it’s a dream; a hope that is pulling you forward in life.
‘Passionate’. That’s a buzz word, isn’t it? A millennial word. Our generation is all about doing what we’re passionate about. Which I don’t think is actually wrong. Sure, it’s had negative repercussions, like we can’t seem to settle down; we always have to be on the move. We’re also pretty notorious for job hopping, cause you know, we’ve got to be passionate about what we do.
But we also put all of ourselves into everything we do, which I think is pretty neat. It also grants us an awareness of emotional realities that previous generations might have neglected.
Passion is a sacred thing.
what is passion?
Passion is the area you care most about. The place you give most of yourself. Passions are fundamentally sacred because they are the spaces that most shape you. Something that is sacred needs to be nurtured and guarded. The sacred certainly can be shared but often it isn’t supposed to be.
what is sacred?
While the West has tried to destroy the idea of the sacred, you can’t destroy something that is an objective reality. In trying to destroy something objective, like the sacred, you’ll only end up destroying yourself and other people’s lives in the process.
An easy way of figuring out what is sacred is to look for evidence of the sacred being mistreated. Or to state that another way, what does everyone consider awful? If you make sure these evidences run across political, ethnic, generational, and cultural divides, then you’ll come away with a good grasp of the sacred.
For example:
Family. Relationships. People’s stories. Loyalty. Sex.
When someone says they’re from a broken family, are going through a break up or divorce, have had their heritage and personal narrative disregarded, have been cheated on or abandoned, or have been raped — these things are awful in (nearly) everyone’s book, across all political-ethnic-generational-cultural divides. So we can walk away knowing that family, relationships, peoples stories, loyalty, and sex are objectively valuable. These areas of life are sacred and are (what philosophers call) transcendent.
The violation and mishandling of the sacred is terribly self-destructive.
sex, passion, sacred
Because sex is an exclusively passionate action it is an exclusively sacred action. Passion as a cultural value has hurt us in the area of sexuality. Just because you don’t think something is sacred doesn’t suddenly stop it from beings sacred…
Passionate for God
Did you know that the Proven part of ‘Proven Men’ stands for something? Well, it does. P.R.O.V.E.N. presents Proven Men’s description of a man of God.
The P stands for “Passionate for God”.
Above, when I asked you what you’re passionate about, was God anywhere in your answer?
Let’s get real, just for a few seconds. When stats tell us that 80 percent of men watch porn, it isn’t just millennials. We’ve tried to destroy the idea of the sacred and it is wrecking our culture — like firing a machine gun directly at a ricocheting wall.
Porn is destroying marriages, families, self-image, physical ability, and social relationships. In short, we’re destroying our own passion.
Values like honor, dignity, sacrifice, compassion, encouragement, stewardship, listening, submission, vulnerability, character, and courage shouldn’t be neglected and forgotten by the men of any generation.
What would change?
What would it look like for you to be passionate for God? What would it look like if Jesus gave meaning to the things that you do? How would your relationship with your wife change? How would your relationship with your girlfriend change? How would your relationship with your children change? With your friends? With yourself? How would your hopes and dreams and imagination change? If you started seeing passion as sacred and your passion revolved around Jesus, instead of cultural norms and self-indulgence?
Reclaim the sacred, know God intimately in your passions, learn the honor that sex deserves, and let the Gospel mark you Proven.
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Shane James O’Neill is the Editorial Director for ProvenMen Ministries. He is currently working on a graduate degree in apologetics at Liberty University’s Rawling School of Divinity.