Calling all unmarried, sexually active Christians!

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I haven’t been to a Christian church service in over twenty years, but last I checked, ‘thou shall not commit adultery’ was still a commandment and sex outside of marriage was a mortal sin.

So, my question is, how do you reconcile your religion with your sex-life?

… because, to me, it would seem to indicate a fundamental lack of personal and moral integrity.

Please, explain to me how I am mistaken.

This can not even be possible without them sinning, unless they were getting raped or something.

Adultery is where a married person cheats on their husband or wife. Having sex when you are not married would be fornication, which is a different thing.

Yes, yes, but the point is sex outside of marriage is strictly prohibited by all flavors of Christianity, yet many self-described Christians engage in it regularly...

I just wanna know how that works.

It means they are not really a Christian and are going to Hell, because they are going against the Bible-- by their supposed religion they do not even follow, that is.

No. Adultery occurs when a man copulates with a married woman.

Ain't yo' peeps red yo' bibles?

...

Last edited by jc6chan on 19 Jan 2010, 10:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

Condemnation skews the entire picture of what's 'real' about this world IMO - unless you take it in a tongue & cheek sense. Hypothetically if there is a God and he had sent Moses a message, that he had sent Jesus to die for our sins and give a sermon; you have to now also think of what these events mean through the lens of all life on earth and all actions being mechanized as we have no free will and thus everything we do is part of a fixed and given time line, like a book - it does not change.

Given that its most likely that everything about the church and its injections into society have been meant to do exactly what they have, that we are right now exactly what we're supposed to be as a society, and that injecting such things as 'the ten commandments' was part of curbing something earlier which we would in some ways rebel against today. If he is the 'unmoved mover' then everything that's ever happened or will happen in this world is his doing. That said I have friends of all types - atheist, agnostic, theist, some of my friends who are more abstractly theistic are also macks to an extent - I've never quite gotten that myself, the best I can gather from what they've said is that the ten commandments the bible are supposed to be an ideal, they're physically impossible to live by, therefore they don't try too hard to but at the same time they try to let the ideal guide them where they can allow themselves to function in that direction. For me, I'm not as sexually active not out of fear that I'll go too hell but more because the way my life has shaped me - I just can't feel good about one night stands and yes, I'm very particular about relationships and therefore haven't found that many times in my life where I found someone that I really wanted to let in in such a way.

I know you guys are out there.... COWARDS!

True, and many people don't seem to realize this. Adultery in the OT was a property crime. It was an offence committed by one man (the adulterer) against another man (the husband of the woman he slept with). It was about the wife possibly conceiving by the other man and giving birth to children who weren't his but who might mistakenly inherit his property.

Similarly, sleeping with an unmarried girl was an offence against her father, because by taking her virginity you reduced her value to him in terms of a bride-price - a man would be less likely to marry a girl who might be pregnant by someone else. (Nor is this purely ancient history; I've heard older people using the term 'shop soiled' to refer to a non-virgin bride within my lifetime.)

Most Christians I've met come up with rather different and more modern reasons why these rules exist, of course. (Which, no doubt, you can, but it'd be more honest if they at least admitted that yes, this was the way people used to think, but times have changed and they no longer really see women that way...)

And the penalty for raping an unmarried girl was that he was required to pay the father the bride price and marry her. He was forbidden from ever divorcing her.

Because not everyone agrees with that anymore. From the historical side of things, unmarried people having sex was more of a property crime against the woman's father more than anything else. Since that is how they considered women in those days and that nobody else would want to marry her when she's no longer a virgin. That's the only reason why it was considered a sin. The woman was also the greater sinner and generally the man was also forced to marry her. Interestingly the man would also be forced to marry her if he was accused of rape.

Yes, I understand that, but unless you can point to some theological justification, doesn't that just mean those people and society in general are merely wrong and engaging in heresy?

If you are a Christian and believe the bible was divinely inspired, how do you justify picking and choosing which doctrines to follow and which to ignore?

Do modern Christians simply lack integrity or have they decided the bible is merely a book of suggestions?

Does the word Christian actually mean anything in the modern world?

I can come up with tons of reasons why sexual abstinence was appropriate during biblical times and why it isn't necessary now, but I'm not a prophet.

If you are a Christian, if you believe in an all powerful, infallible god, how can you presume to know better than God about matters regarding sex?

PS

Just to clarify a bit more…

I know the cultural/sociological, manmade explanations for sexual regulation in modern and ancient cultures.


I want the religious justification from practicing Christians who choose to ignore the bible’s prohibitions against sex… or I’m gonna have to call b***s*** on the whole thing.

Its simple. I just tippex-ed those parts out and then hypnotised myself to forget about them. I did the same thing with the pro-genocide, pro-slavery, mysogynistic, and anti-gay lines.

but seriously, there was a time when i wanted to follow Jesus, but only Jesus - meaning all the gospels, (including non-canon ones that "felt true") but no old testament or epistles.

^ Ahh… how convenient.

I just read those things and decided I wasn’t a Christian after all.


I'd consider myself a Christian Deist/Stoic--meaning I have little problem with christian morals, ethics and the philosophy of Christ himself, sermons on mounts and whatnot, but I also think the divine gave men reason for a reason...

I didn't decide to not follow literal Christianity after some great theological study. It was just based on desires, what I wanted. I wanted to have sex, and I also wanted the freedom to explore other religions...and not to force myself to be anti-gay, anti abortion, etc.