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I don’t watch the VMA’s, but it was hard to miss Miley Cyrus shock splashed all over the internet this morning.  I don’t recommend you google the video to find out what happened because the summaries I found are sufficient:

Miley Cyrus performed for the very public VMA awards and pushed all the limits of public displays of sexuality. She dressed so as to simulate nudity, stripping down to nude colored underwear onstage, and danced so as to suggest various sexual acts with fellow performer Robin Thicke.  The other photo that has gone viral is the Will Smith family’s reaction to Miley: everything from shock to disgust on their faces as they watched her perform.

No wonder Christians are confused about sex.  Our culture makes vulgar and public all that should be beautiful and private. Our stomachs turn at the raunchy displays of popular people.

I feel especially sorry for the parents out there whose little girls grew up with Miley and follow her still. I feel sorry for Miley herself, whose actions reveal she is desperately lost in depravity.  She obviously wanted to shock the world and push the limits. Mission accomplished.  But I don’t know how happy she’ll be with her success.

Nothing is new under the sun, including depraved acts of public sexuality. Anyone who has read the Old Testament will read of equally shocking things occurring, including kings sleeping with the wives and concubines of other kings in the open air of the castle roof.

Sorry Miley, you may have been shocking, but you were not original.  Sin is ancient and uncreative. Satan does not innovate; he only plays at puerile imitation.

My children are young; they know nothing of Miley. But my time is coming to have these conversations with them.  I hope I can warn them of the shame of immorality without shaming that which God created to be beautiful and good.

The privacy and safety of a healthy marriage provides the proper place for the expression of sexuality. Satan would take that out of context and ruin it, twist, corrupt it. We as Christians should not allow that.  We speak against immorality, but not sex itself.

As for Miley, I pray for her today. Maybe she is riding high on the attention, but maybe she feels that metallic sting of regret that we all know so well when we’ve made our own mistakes.

The public will have no problem throwing stones, but we are the blood-bought ones who know our own stains of sin, and so we feel compassion. Yes Miley, we are sinners, too. This is why we need Christ, the sacrifice, the blood and the washed robes.

And friends? If you haven’t already, don’t google the video. Don’t bear witness to Miley’s mistake. Don’t allow curiosity to tempt your flesh. I’ll leave you with this quote from Kevin DeYoung on holiness.

“Holiness is the sum of a million little things–the avoidance of little evils and little foibles, the setting aside of little bits of worldliness and little acts of compromise, the putting to death of little inconsistencies and little discretions, the attention to little duties and little dealings, the hard work of little self-denials and little self-restraints, the cultivation of little benevolences and little forbearances.” -Kevin DeYoung, The Hole in Our Holiness.