The Bible on Sex, Love, and Marriage

quote:

---

Why the hell are you insulting me with this playground crap? What about my 'pre-nup' comment was immature? The first time you wrote it, I thought it was a typo, after you repeated it a few times I'd thought I'd let you know, and thought I did so respectfully. I suppose you'd rather walk around all day with spinach in your teeth rather than have someone let you know. Don't be so rude.

---

Ok, so your pissed off at me then. I guess you were correcting a typo of mine and I was using the wrong abreviation for the term. I thought it was spelled pre-numtual arrangement. I should have looked it up on the net first to avoid the bad spelling. My bad.

quote:

---

Dead wrong. The relationship is dead. No love, respect, communication, trust? Dead relationship even if still together in name.

---

I disagree with this. From what I have personally witnessed in the church and what Christian conselors have written about in their materials, as long as the couple is still together, then there is a pulse. It's when they have split up and divorced is when it becomes almost impossible to mend the wounds because the divorce is like tearing off a piece of your own flesh vs. a bad existing relationship is like a broken bone.Sure the injury is bad, but it can be set and with the proper care, it will heal with some scaring. But to reattach a limp that has been torn off requires much more surgury and no matter what, there will be much scaring even if the surgury works.

There is still "a pulse", they are "still together", if there is a bit of love/respect/communication - without that, marital status or even fear of God won't bring them back.More importantly: You've argued throughout the thread that marriage is "just a piece of paper"; well, that is exactly what a divorce is as well, "a piece of paper". In both cases, whether or not a relationship is alive or dead comes before the pieces of paper. Thus your loss-of-limb analogy doesn't really work for me.Were you going to comment on anything from my previous post other than this one point?

quote:

---

From you comments here and elsewhere, you seem more interested in avoiding legal entanglements than in building healthy relationships.

---

What I am interested in doing is defending the Bible's position on how to conduct yourself within a marriage relationship. I am also interested in showing that the Bible's position is non-applicable in today's society as far as putting blame on someone or something for the current marriage situation. By posting what the Bible says is expected of the man in the marriage I tried to show that this position is totally foreign to most people and guaging by the questions asked of me, my assumptions were accurate.So if everyone was asking what terms like sacrificial love is, and the 90/10 equation is crazy, it appears that the vast majority of people trying to make a marriage work are doing the 50/50 equation which is modern secular society's answer. The high divorce rate in society suggests that the equation doesn't work and since the very concept of marriage is evolving, it is trying to fix itself through the courts.The Bible's equation has not changed in 4000 years and even though it isn't being practiced by the church now, does not disqualify it as a workable plan for a healthy marriage. It does say though that is is a lot of work. I also attempted to show that just because a group of people call themselves a Christian Church, it does not mean that they are adhereing to the Biblcal principals. I think Crash could verify that in a church you have a small group of very committed believers and a larger group of floaters and coat tailers. So to pin the actions of the floaters on the Bible's teaching might not be accurate without first examining the floaters since the Bible is firm.Finally, I attempted to show that since our society is firmly a Post-Christian America, from an evolutionary perspective it seems illogical for 2 people in our society to remain together in a relationship if one or the other is not happy when there are so many others out there to discover and you only get so many heartbeats in life. So why not concentrate on the here and now and not bind oneself in a legally complex arrangement that has more failures than success's. Why not abandon the marriage act and co-habitate with looser constraints which allow people to mover freely between relationships and maximize their present happiness.Again, from an evolutionary perspective, once your heart stops, that's it and the electro-chemical reaction which was your consciosness is over like a popped soap bubble. So why not live for maximizing you happiness instead of holding to a psudeo-Biblical code which includes a binding Marriage?

quote:

---

Were you going to comment on anything from my previous post other than this one point?

---

You going to be in here tomorrow? My eyes are falling out of my skull and my wife wants me to practice some Biblical sacrificing with her tonight now that the kids are in bed. This means that I'd better put aside my desire to stay and debate more and go spend some quality time with her. Hope to continue here tomorrow and thanks for reading my posts.LizardThis message has been edited by Lizard Breath, 10-24-2004 08:25 PM

Huh!? Our society is permeated and entrenched in Christianity - I'd ask you to elaborate but that is probably off-topic. Perhaps it is not Christian in the way that you would prefer, but it is still Christian by-and-large. You have NOT established that higher divorce rates are a result of the 50/50 equation. The higher rate of divorce among Christians vs. non suggests that the Biblical model has failings, as Crash outlined.The 90/10 to 50/50 transition is not the only trend that has accompanied increases in the divorce rate. Divorce has simply become more openly accepted by society and many mainstream religions. I would argue that this acceptance allows failed relationships based on the Biblical model to dissolve in a way that wasn't permitted in the past.I still feel like you only arguing how relationships fail, not how they succeed. I'm not sure what you mean by the concept of marriage fixing itself through the courts. Apparently, from this comment and others you have made in this thread, you think that the secular world is filled with self-serving immoral hedonists. That is not the case. Many couples, regardless of their religious convictions, want to commit and nurture in lifetime relationships, and do so in a way that is celebratory with their community.I'm not sure why you find that so hard to understand. Because many who have no belief in an afterlife realize that this is the only life in which to make a positive impact. Unlike many Christians, who disregard improving this world while preparing for the next, many atheists try to make a real positive difference in the here and now.Besides, what if for an individual "maximizing happiness" in this life means getting married and sticking by that marriage?Also, I would argue marriage existed before the Bible, so by getting married one isn't necessarily acting 'Biblically'. No doubt you would disagree with this point...

I don't understand why you think the "expectations" would be substantially different. We do, after all, still live in a culture that tells us you're supposed to be able to find one everlasting soulmate and be able to stick with them, and if you couldn't, it's your fault, somehow.

quote:

---

What I am trying to convey is that if the Biblical Marriage model is bad for women as is being supposed by those debating me, then abandon the covenant of marriage.

---

...or change what it means to be married.

quote:

---

I think that we are in the process of changing what it means to be married right now in the last 25 years by making it very easy to get divorced and possibly re-writing the boundries of who can become legally married via the Gay Marriage initiatives.

---

What it means to be married has always been in flux.women used to be chattel, and men could have many wives, like many cattle.Women used to have no legal rights, or only the rights of a child, in marriage or a s human beings.Women used to be completely dependent upon men for their survival.Etcetera.

quote:

---

So from my perspective it means far less to actually be married now then it did 25 years ago so fast forward 25 years from now and where might we be?

---

From my perspective, it means much MORE to be married now, because it is a choice and a commitment to get and stay married rather than something that you do because you are expected to and can't undo.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 10-25-2004 10:19 AM

This is totally my opinion based on some personal observations. That being said I feel that a lot of the reason why a number of supposed "Christian" marriages fail is because of the irrational way in which young people are taught about relationships in the Church. It is not necessarily the Biblical plan for marriage that is flawed but rather the institution of the religion of Christianity and the emphasis placed on how young people view relationships.What I saw and experienced growing up in church was that young people are taught that sex is bad, everything that might lead to sex is bad and that we should just wait for our husband/wife to come into our life and make everything right. Then when these young people get to be of reproducing age they are stuck in the irrational mode of self repression because they want to do all these things that they had been taught was evil. Then they get this idea that marriage is the way out, the way to be able to express these desires and they end up marrying the first promising person they meet in their church.So basically there is little teaching of what the real issues behind all these religious restrictions are or how to go about managing relationships so that you can even find the person who is right for you. The only seal of approval for a mate is if they are a "good God fearin man/woman."What the Church needs to do is realize that this is a different time and that they need to teach their children how to have healthy relationships. We should stop treating our children like idiots, stop "protecting" them from the world that they are going to have to live in anyway, and start teaching real life skills as it pertains to relationships and marriage as well as a ton of other things.This is not to say that this is in anyway universal or anything. I realize that there are some churches out there that are more enlightened when it comes to these issues. I just know that from personal experience that I have seen quite a few couples go down the road of marriage in ignorance while expecting it to totally succeed because they are following the Biblical plan. The Biblical plan for marriage can and does work in Christian couples who actually understand it, understand what it means to be married, and actually got married for the right reasons. It does not mean that it is the only plan for a successful marriage though evidenced by the many people on this thread who spoke of their successful, non-Bible-plan marriages.So what good is there in the Bible about sex, love, and marrige for non-believers? Well probably not much but it can and does make sense often for those who do believe and can apply the concepts appropriatly in their life.The Biblical plan for marriage is not for everyone just like Christianity is not for everyone.

Ha ha!I like your sense of humor.Actually, I have never forced my wife to do anything.You asked me how the biblical model works, in actuality, and here is my experience with it thus far:I have never, as I said, forced my wife to do anything. As the head of the house, when we discuss an issue, I tell her what I think we should do. We discuss and debate the pros and cons of my plan and her plan (if she has a different plan). Then, if she still disagrees, I compromise until we reach an agreement. For example: Similarly, in other situations, I have told her what I think is the best course of action and, if we can't agree, I don't force her. I don't think it is my responsibility to force her. Ultimately, I believe God will deal with her for her failures- and the same goes for me.BTW, I don't think my wife would be opposed to posting. I'll talk to her about it.I apologize for my absence from here. I tried to post on Friday evening but I kept getting server errors.

Hi Jazzns,You wrote: If a church is teaching that sex is bad, I think, biblically, that's wrong. The bible doesn't teach that sex is bad. The bible teaches that sex is good, but only in the context of a marriage.What we are overlooking, I think, is that young people are receiving alot of sexual stimulation by the media (television, radio, magazines, etc.) and the manner of dress of some people. This is one of the problems and the other is that young people need to be taught to "take each thought into captivity" as I mentioned in my other post. The mind is where these images and messages turn into sexual stimulation.I am speaking, of course, from a Christian perspective of this problem.

Hi. I'm quite new here, but I have to agree with Jazz. I've been raised in the south my whole life. LOTS AND LOTS of Christian churches down here. For the first 17 years of my life, all I heard was "sex is bad" in church. So what did alot of us do as soon as we could? You guessed it. Kids are being over-run with Britney Spears singing about being a "Slave 4U" and Christina Aguilera being "Dirty". Sure, sex is bad, but Christina and Britney make it look so fun! Right? So many churches around here seem to think that the way to do battle with the sex industry is to make sex such a HUGE sin that they're kids will be scared too do it--instead of giving kids the tools they need to make good decisions. I have a very good friend of mine who married her husband for this exact reason. She wanted to have sex with him, but was too scared to do it out of wedlock. So they got married and they're miserable. They're not bad people, just not compatible. Do kids really know what a healthy relationship is anymore?

Hi MeganC,You wrote: What does this mean?

Got back from the weekend, found five new pages on this thread, still trying to sort through what's addressed to me, but has not yet been responded to by someone else.But in the meantime, come on dpardo. You're a smarter guy than that. Two people. Both good folks. Not suited to make one another happy in marriage.It's not rocket science.

---

"If I had to write ten jokes about potholders, I don't think I could do it. But I could write ten jokes about Catholicism in the next twenty minutes. I guess I'm drawn to religion because I can be provocative without harming something people really care about, like their cars."
-George Meyer, Simpsons writer

Hi Megan,I was raised down here in the South too, but I have to say that I've never once heard any pastor or anyone for that matter say, "sex is bad." Though I'm sure there are probably some po dunk little country churchs that still preach that. I've heard just the opposite. Love and Sex is one of the greatest gifts from God to mankind as long as it is in its divinely ordained context. I do know exactly what you mean about the story of your friend. That seems to happen a lot at the Christian school I go to. A pair of 18 or 19 year-olds fall in lust with each other and get married just so they can have sex within marriage and then they discover they had no idea what love or marriage was all about. As you can imagine the divorce rate for students that marry is pretty high. I think most do not, and those with wisdom are many times blinded and overpowered by hormones. I think skewed church doctrines and the nature of our society are a big part of it.