Ranting to /dev/null

The main argument that I have heard for "premarital purity" is the "It is good for a man not to touch a woman" statement given by Paul to Timothy. But I think that using it this way takes it pretty far out of context.

does anyone know the greek word for adultury in the sermon on the mount? perhaps that would help?

and even if you could somehow justify it, it would still be seriously inadvisable for emotional, social and physical reasons, in my opinion.

Proverbs and Ecclesiastes certainly have a lot to say about the snare that a woman can become if a man isn't careful, and do seem to teach that one woman is plenty. No question about that.

But might some of the more bizarre sexual deviances and abnormalities in our society be lessened a bit if we treated pre-marital sexuality as merely strongly inadvisable instead of a capital offense? Bungee jumping may be stupid, but that doesn't make it automatically immoral, and as a result you'd counsel someone not to jump off a cliff with a rubber band tied around their ankles in a different way than you'd counsel someone not to murder their boss. Might our culture in general and the church in particular benefit from this distinction if applied to sexuality?

I hope to post something more extensive later on... but I had one quick thought in regards to the Old Testament teachings. In most cases, your Israelite kids were getting married around 12, so there wasn't the current, largely American issue of horny teenage/young adults running around without an appropriate outlet for their sexual energy. This is, perhaps, why the Old Testament focuses almost exclusively on extra-marital issues.

That is an interesting distinction, Ryan. It does seem more in keeping with Ecclesiasties and Proverbs to say that certain things are "wise" and "foolish" than anything else.
Perhaps some of this stems from our idea of morality being shaped by "total depravity" and "holiness". There doesn't seem to be much gray area there, so it gets difficult to talk about something being somewhere in the middle. For me at least.

Bobw makes a good point. But for just special revelation:

Yes...I think that what Daniel Kearns says is very true. Marriage was an assumption back than. The norm was that when you reached a certain age your family just had you married, right?

In many places the Bible refers to women (and men) just assuming that they are married. For example, Titus 2:4-5 (regarding what older women ought to do), "Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God."

But then we could go to a familiar text on such things: I Corinthians 7. It begins with "Now for the matters you wrote about: It is good for a man not to marry.[a] But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband." And the little [a]: 1 Corinthians 7:1 Or "It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman." So it's saying, "It's better not to have sex. But because there's so much immorality, each man should have a wife and each woman a husband."

And further, look at v.36: "If anyone thinks he is acting improperly toward the virgin he is engaged to, and if she is getting along in years and he feels he ought to marry, he should do as he wants. He is not sinning. They should get married."

Paul intends to console those who are "burning" by reminding them that marriage is not a sin...even though he thinks it is better "for a man not to touch a woman."

Regarding 1 Cor. 7:2, it seems that Paul is quoting a common proverb of the time, which doesn't necessarily mean he's asserting that, only that he's responding to common wisdom. And it's entirely possible to put the emphasis on "own" wife/husband. Further on, he says "as a concession, not a command" and talks about single and widowed people. After that, he switches to instructions from the Lord and says that divorce is wrong. Then he switches back to personal advice and talks about being married to an unbeliever. The passage starting in verse 25 is pretty clearly advice, not command, which would seem to make it an issue of wisdom, not law.

I've found this article to be helpful in thinking about homosexuality as a sin or not:
http://www.gaychristian.net/justins_view.php

I understand sex, along with the whole shebang that is marriage, as part of the representation of the singular intimacy between Christ and His church. It makes sense to me to have that same kind of exclusivity with one's own, most intimate relationship. That's the unequivocal monogamy that God has always demanded of His people spiritually. So when you give your heart to more than one god - God & mammon, Baal, etc. - perhaps that's like dividing your heart by having more than one sexual partner. That makes the idea, "Only get that intimate with the one person to with whom, exclusively, you will build your whole life". Most young people don't have that kind of discernment, so yeah, it's a wisdom thing. But then, I want to know what significance is of the marriage ceremony in the man & woman relationship. A public declaration of the lifelong commitment, recognized by a minister and witnessed by the people of the Lord: does that bring the man and woman into some sort of new, special epoch in which they previously weren't? Because if that's the case, maybe there is a biblical case for a law forbidding intercourse until then. But if it's not, perhaps we have read an extraneous requirement into Scripture where there is none.

By the way, Ryan, can you elaborate a little bit on what you have in mind when you mention the Christian culture being "deeply hypocritical" in attitude toward sexuality?

I certainly see that Scripture treats pre-marital sex as unwise - Proverbs is enough for that without 1 Cor. But Scripture does seem to treat marriage as being something different, and I think it's entirely possible to argue that the commands against adultery have more to do with violating those vows than anything else.

Scripture does seem to indicate that if you do fool around before you get married, you need to be willing to deal with the consequences, e.g. Ex. 22:16. But I think that it's entirely possible that we've taken what Scripture views as being an issue of discernment and responsibility and elevated it into a cardinal sin.

As far as the hypocrisy bit, I should think that's fairly straightforward. There's something truly bizarre about a society that thinks the vast majority of sexual activity is immoral that simultaneously spends vast amounts of time discussing said activity. Go to any youth group in the country, and the first thing you're likely to hear is that you shouldn't have sex. Umm, if that's true, aren't there more important things to talk about? And even more confusingly, you'll find that the arguments have a lot more to do with advisiability and wisdom than they do with morality, though the language used is moral, not advisory. Additionally, the gay community does indeed have a point: why does a society that is so adamantly opposed to homosexuality tolerate divorce so readily?

Youins is STOVE UP!!!