Sex before marriage

JrKASperov wrote:   Indeed, sin is such a horror to the Lord that even the smallest is big. We are all 'the same' in that prospect, and if God says that some are unworthy and some worthy, He must have The reason for it, and He is the only one who can see this. But surely, you must be working towards pleasing God in that prospect, and that is what Maani is warning you against. The more you refrain from fighting sin, in your knowledge, the less the chance is you will be admitted into His Kingdom. that is not our judgement, that is the judgement of the Lord Himself, according to Scripture and the Holy Spirit.

JrKasperov:

Any more passages for the Good Christian Infants Book Of Nonesense?

Indeed, sin is such a horror to the Lord that even the smallest is big. We are all 'the same' in that prospect, and if God says that some are unworthy and some worthy, He must have The reason for it, and He is the only one who can see this

Sorry but this sounds like something you would tell a child not debate with adults.It also seems to me like the Good Lord wants to develop some perspective:if he thinks coveting thy neighbours wife is as bad as killing thy neighbours wife,then God help us!!!

Do you think God is some nice old man with a long white beard in a nightshirt, smiling lovingly on everyone and writing down your good deeds in a golden book?  "I thy God am a jealous God."  "I thy God am an angry God."  And when Moses came down from Mt. Sinai with the Ten Commandments and found the people worshiping the golden calf, God justified him in saying "If you will not live by the law, then you will die by the law": throwing the tablets down, God caused the earth to open up and swallow those who had given up on Moses - and God.

Yes, "God is love."  And yes, He is full of grace, mercy, forgiveness and compassion.  But He is also jealous, angry, and, yes, it is His place ultimately to judge every human being.  To confine Him only to the "good" side of His nature is a dangerous misreading of Scripture and a dangerous misinterpretation of Christianity.

And God gave us "rules."  In the Old Testament, they included the Ten Commandments, as well as numerous other laws and guidelines for living a proper faith-based life.  In the New Testament, they include not only rules and limitations provided by Jesus Himself, but those provided by the apostles and disciples: whatever you may think of Paul, James, Timothy, Peter, Titus et al, their words hold only slightly less weight than Jesus' where living a "proper" Christian life is concerned.  To cherry-pick the rules, limitations and admonitions you "agree with," and simply ignore or deny the rest, is to condemn yourself: God no longer needs to condemn you.  "For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all."

Ultimately, God is the judge, and He will judge.  As with the "cast the first stone" story - in which everyone conveniently forgets the rest of it ("Go, and sin no more") - most people only remember that Jesus said, "I do not come to judge the world but to save the world."  Yet they forget (or ignore) the very next line: "He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him - the word I have spoken will judge him in the last day." (Emphasis mine).  And what does Jesus mean by "My words?"  Everything He said, including the rules and limitations He gave.

To think that you are free to do anything you wish during your temporal lives simply because "God is love" is a dangerous and illogical interpretation of Christianity - and God.

Peace.

JrKASperov wrote: James: you are turning things around. It is free sex that has allowed the wide spread of AIDS, thus advocates of free sex are the cause or at least the perpetuators of such diseases. As Maani has pointed out, Condoms will not help enough, they will only deter. Indeed, currently, it is not being out in the sun too much, it's more like staying in the sun all the time. If we are to be free of sin, we will remain in the piece of sun that has been given to us. Indeed, if you enjoy that piece in the Name of Yeshua, it will be as big as you can imagine.

The initial question of the thread wasn't about wanton, unrestrained sexuality but of the morality of sex before marriage. Is an 'advocate of free sex' the same thing as just believing that there is no immorality in sex before marriage? I refuse to be cast as enthusiastically encouraging irresponsibility simply because I don't think sex out of wedlock is neccesarily an immorality.

Just to be perfectly clear, I'm not saying it's okay to be foolish about it, and I'm not denying that irresponsible sex causes a multitude of complications for the individual and society (STDs being but one obvious example). But these are reasons why we should learn instead of simply obey; so we can value individual responsibility and awareness. We will likely find that the words of religion are very helpful to our own decisions, especially if that religion has shaped our culture and community...but we may also come to different conclusions.

JrKASperov: many of your statements were conditional: 'if we believe in god', or 'if we are to be free of sin'. This implies an alternative. When I say that I do not believe in a God (in almost any sense), does this immediately mark me as an immoral man? To go further, when I say that I don't believe man was meant to avoid sin (in the sense that your moral worth is measured against adherence to specific and unchanging rules) does that make me one who encourages immorality? A good man tries to make the world a better place (or at least, no worse). Having sex before marriage doesn't automatically defeat that purpose.

maani: I'm probably not the one you're responding to- I've avoided making any references to scripture. I readily admit my knowledge of it is much more shallow than yours, but be assured that I have no illusions that the god of Christianity isn't clearly depicted to be as scary as he is loving. I just find it odd that anyone would be happy to consider themselves a willing and faithful subject to such an admitted tyrant and author of misery. But I was also mystified at the enthusiasm and number of Bush voters, too, so I admit that there are powerful forces in the world whose appeal I do not yet comprehend.

Maani,JKas:

You two need to get together and compare notes,so that you can at least sing of the same hymn sheet.

The more you two spew forth this stuff the more we get a jumbled message.God sees things this way,then that way.But never the same way.If following a code of morality is crucial in one's devotion to God,he's definitely made it difficult to see the correct path.

The one thing we can be certain of:God is not very good at getting his message across in any clear and consistent manner.In fact,one might postualate that God has multiple personalities each contributing their own bit to Scripture.Or it could all be the work of a multitude of people across the ages.

Beau Heem:

I am not judging you, nor anyone else.  Only God can judge.  I am only expressing the tenets of the faith called "Christianity," and pointing out that, according to those tenets, God will judge you (and others) when the time comes.  It is at that point that you will have to explain to Him why (i) you refused to believe in His son as having died for your sins and been resurrected for your salvation and the eternal life of your soul, (ii) you refused to admit you were a sinner, (iii) you refused to repent for your sins, and (iv) you continued to consciously and deliberately (i.e., not simply as a "failing" or "weakness") engage in sin even after you were informed that you were sinning.

As for my comment on AIDS, I was admittedly being somewhat bombastic: the point is that promiscuity is what causes STDs, including HIV and AIDS, to "make the rounds," and that if only monogamous couples were having sex, then STDs, including HIV and AIDS, would "have no place to go": they would be stopped dead in their tracks.  It is interesting that everyone jumped on me for the bombast of my statement, yet did not admit its underlying correctness.  (N.B.  I thank James Lee for his singular admission of this.)

Reed Lover:

In fact, JrKASperov and I are very much on the same page: I have not seen a single inconsistency in our beliefs vis-a-vis our faith and understanding of Jesus' ministry, and Christianity in general.  There may be occasional "gradations" in the way we present things, but our underlying beliefs about God, Christ and our faith is at least 95% united.

James:

I do not consider God a "tyrant."  I consider Him just.  After all, I start from the belief that God created us (whether out of dust or via evolution does not matter at this moment) and that our life - our very "breath" - is a gift.  If so, then He has every right to impose any rules, restrictions, guidelines, etc. on us that He wishes.  Further, if He gave us life, then He has every right to take it away - at any time, for any reason.  His wisdom is infinite; ours is puny by comparison.  "Who can know the mind of God?"

Further, if we are "made in God's (spiritual) image," that means, as I pointed out, that He must have all the same traits as we do: not just "good" traits like love, forgiveness, compassion, joy, etc., but also "bad" (used loosely here) traits like anger, jealousy, grief, etc.  And, as noted, He freely admits having those traits.  Indeed, it is because He has those traits - and because He lived among us to see how those traits affect us - that He truly knows what it is to be "human."

God knows that we cannot live up to His standard of perfection: "The law was given so that sin might increase."  (Emphasis mine.)  That is, the Jews so clamored for God to show them how He wanted them to live, that He obliged them - just to prove that they could never live up to even the most basic of His standards (the "Ten Commandments") - and that, in fact, in the very fact of having the law, they would only break it even more.

So He allows us incredible latitude.  He knows that our "flesh" is weak, that our minds are carnal (i.e., "worldly" (as opposed to "spiritual"), not just "sexual"), and that it is difficult to "fight" the "animal" part of us and always follow our "better conscience."  However, He does expect us to make at least "good faith" efforts (a wonderfully apropos phrase...) to do so.  In this regard, He actually requires only four things: (i) Faith in His son as having paid the penalty for all sin for all time by willingly dying on the cross - shedding His blood so that your sins would be forgiven if you repented - and being resurrected so that your eternal soul would find salvation and inherit the kingdom (heaven), (ii) Admitting you are a sinner, and humbly and honestly repenting for your sins by asking forgiveness through His son, (iii) Making at least "good faith" efforts to minimize sin (and definitely not consciously and deliberately remaining in sin), and (iv) Making at least "good faith" efforts to live as Jesus lived; i.e., by the precepts of His ministry - love, peace, humility, forgiveness, compassion, patience, charity, selflessness, service, truth - and by His single commandment: "Love thy neighbor as thyself."

That's actually not alot to ask, is it?  Only four things.  Indeed, much of the rest of the New Testament is simply "details" of (iv).

As for "author of misery," I can only repeat that "God's ways are unsearchable"; that we, as mere humans, do not have the requisite knowledge or understanding to see the reasons behind God's actions.  We only see it from the "human viewpoint"; He sees it from the "divine viewpoint."  As a related aside, there is a wonderful little saying by Richard Bach in his book, Illusions, which is appropriate here.  As simple as it seems on the surface, you may have to read it more than once in order to get its full meaning:

"The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in tragedy and injustice.  What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly."

Simplistic, perhaps, but apropos.  When we see something as "tragedy" or "misery," we only see it through human eyes.  We cannot know what those events, moments, etc. "mean," or what they may "lead to."  As an aside, it is ironic that some of you believe that faith is based on a fear of death, on the "mortality factor."  Yet it would seem that Christians have a "healthier" understanding of and attitude toward death than non-believers: as Richard Bach's saying suggests, non-believers' fear of death leads to a misplaced notion of "tragedy" and "injustice," because they cannot get beyond their limited "human" view of death.  Believers, on the other hand, understand that they do not - cannot - know the "reasons" behind things, or the "butterflies" that God is creating.

Does this mean we do not care when someone dies?  Or that we are not sad, and do not cry, when "innocent" people, especially infants and children, die?  Of course not.  We mourn and grieve like anyone else.  But we do not search for "reasons" for such deaths, much less "blame God" for them.  [N.B.  Of course, many deaths are not caused by God, but by "the enemy."  However, this would get us into yet another hopelessly protracted and "unsolvable" discussion.]

Although it probably does the opposite (), I hope this clears up a few points.

Peace.

Maani:

Please have a look at your last statements and see that from the very beginning it's based upon your acceptance of the existence of something called god (sorry for the small caps). Your faith is what makes you believe on it, but you have to admit that many of us simply don't believe that and thus for us all your arguments fall like a house of cards. But I guess we have to agree to disagree on this. I have however some complains about your posts in this thread:

You say that your statement about AIDS was simply bombastic. Well, I think it was much more than that; anyway, if AIDS is god's punishment against promiscuity, can you please tell me your views on flu (that has caused many more deaths than AIDS)? What about malaria? A punishment against poverty?

Has AIDS being spread because of promiscuity? Yes, of course, in the same way that flu has been spread because of breathing. Living kills... and living as a human being has many implications, sex being one of them...

Another thing: you have stated that "condoms - even used properly - are only 87% effective against transmission of the HIV virus", which is fairly true but please read it again: only 87%. Is an 87% protection not good enough for you? Multiply some of the numbers of AIDS in Africa by 0.13 and see what you get... For (your) god's sake, they are at least 87% effective!!!

Peace... and health!

One thing bothers me.

The Bible was written by people to whom God spoke, right?

Doesn't George W Bush say that God tells him what to do?

If we disbelieve the latter, why should we believe the former?

If we believe the former, then why should we not believe the latter?

Just a thought.