When Christians spend more time dividing, labeling and fighting each other than actually trying to save the lost, you get the kind of Atheistic society that is blossoming in America today.
Modern Christians are too stupid to help the world because they are too busy fighting each other. No wonder why Christianity overall is declining. If people can't even get along in the same faith how in the world are they supposed to converse with non believers and skeptics.
It has become distressingly similar to the whole "which one of us are the greatest" nonsense that the disciples were asking amongst themselves while Jesus sighs and put his hand on his forehead.
When Jesus says that there will be those who claimed to know Jesus and he tells then that he never knew them, this prophecy will apply to people of every christian division that exists. God is not fooled by the petty and sad differences that have come to define the Christian faith. God is much less interested in religion than man is. It's spirituality that he is much more concerned about.
Christianity didn't start out with sects, and will not end with them. Heaven will not have Calvinists and Reformers and Protestants and Catholics. It will have those who accepted Jesus as their one and only way to redeeming their sins with God and satisfying his wrath.
I'm somewhat convinced that love is not the kind of thing that if you "search" for it, you will find it...at least not in the sense people like to say.
Like many non tangible things, love must be derived. It's a lot like faith in a way, you can't read about it and then have it. You need to find your own 'version' of it to understand its reality. Love is inside you.
Though I do have to wonder whether your idea of love might have been over idealized in a certain sense? Just because women do not exclusively wear full length dresses in church does not make love dead. Perhaps for you, it might make it harder to find but then again there's a certain benefit to not 'falling' for every attractive girl you see. I can't really know if it's true, but I wonder if the longer one remains searching but not finding love, the longer the love will last when found. It certainly makes sense from a behaviorist standpoint...
Basically keep hoping and searching. The beauty of monogamy is once you have found that special girl and she has found her special man in you, you won't be needing to worry about that problem any longer.
And when you think about it, if the love of a spouse is the second greatest thing that will ever happen to your life, isn't it almost...good that it's not easy and doesn't drop from the sky?
Considering that Jesus himself would drink on occasion, I find that absolute abstinence from alcohol doesn't really provide any benefits for the body when compared to infrequent drinking. On the contrary, a glass of red wine every day or two has shown to have its benefits for the body.
But I'm being quite the nitpicker here. Obviously such a lifestyle, especially if done for the Lord, is a very honorable thing and one to be praised. Chastity for the lord in all its forms (after all, Chastity goes far beyond sex) will only help you as a Christian.
As for me, I have followed all of them except the drinking, but it's incredibly rare that I do drink.
Considering that Jesus himself would drink on occasion, I find that absolute abstinence from alcohol doesn't really provide any benefits for the body when compared to infrequent drinking. On the contrary, a glass of red wine every day or two has shown to have its benefits for the body.
But I'm being quite the nitpicker here. Obviously such a lifestyle, especially if done for the Lord, is a very honorable thing and one to be praised. Chastity for the lord in all its forms (after all, Chastity goes far beyond sex) will only help you as a Christian.
As for me, I have followed all of them except the drinking, but it's incredibly rare that I do drink.
I agree strongly with letthismind2. Seriously question the underlying motivations if you are even inviting polygamy. Not only is it by nature a discriminating policy that has allowed men to dominate women for millennia (sorry boys but 1 woman many men has barely even existed in real life) and not only is it totally unfair and awful also to men, many of whom in such systems will obviously not be able to have any wives (unless you allow sharing...which is a different beast entirely) but it has historically been driven by nothing better than lust and sin. Sin by men to dominate women and possess more flesh for themselves.
And using the whole "Well it's in the bible....it must be okay!!!!" is a very weak argument since slavery was abound in the bible as well. (As was incest, murder, adultery, rape) Are you going to walk up to your black neighbor and ask him to be your slave again because the bible has recorded slavery and you are merely being an 'obedient christian'? What a self-serving faith you would be living and if you were a member of a group that was previously enslaved, I somehow doubt whether you would voluntarily walk up to someone and ask to be enslaved because slavery is in the bible.
At the end of the day, polygamy was not in God's plan, but like other human failures, God has done his best to incorporate it into his master plan for us. God knows the evil of it, and how it is such an unequal and discriminatory system. Just look at the culture of the FLDS and look at how primitive and backwards all the people are in it, let alone the women. General ignorance of the world, of math and science is profound, and because polygamy is mathematically unsustainable you see them kicking out boys. It's just beyond words disgusting.
I'd reckon emotional security. Sure the average man can be as hard as a rock on the outside emotionally, but beyond the callous exterior most have long bottled up emotional needs that they are frightened to reveal and yet need being met. To find someone with whom he can entrust them to and feel secure with is likely many a man is looking for, beyond the physical attributes he happens to prefer. Most men might not dwell on the subject matter in great detail or in dramatic romantic scenes, but it's likely a big deal. It only takes words to ruin a person, especially nowadays. A man is likely not interesting in a woman who he cannot trust.
But that's stereotyping hard, the bucketloads of shallow men who just want sex and power will likely be happy with a submissive wife who gives herself to him and never pushes back. Then there are men just the opposite, who are looking for the shrew to tame, the prized animal to outwrestle. It all depends, really. God made us all as individuals and it is as individuals, not he corporate, that we are truly understood.
Those Who Teach Contrary to the Word and Those Who Defend Them
Posted : 14 Nov, 2012 08:33 PM
Sorry for the late reply.
Do I think there is anything strictly unbiblical in this thread? Not from a legalistic standpoint, but I think the heart and spirit of God is being missed in place of a rule-enforcing totalitarian Christianity that Jesus fought vigorously against in his day.
When I meant by the use of the word 'trivial' is not to dismiss the importance of the issue, but to emphasize how easy it is to do.
Anybody can point a finger at anybody else who disagrees with them and make the claim that they are a false teacher. Heck, even the DEVIL HIMSELF quoted scripture. Quoting scripture isn't even close to proving one's point true, not even close. Jesus proved that in his confrontation with the Devil, that the heart of God must be sought after even more than the word of God (though we find most of the heart of God through his word).
My comment was simply to caution overzealous and self-righteous Christians who perhaps are too trigger-happy to 'shoot' at those they perceive as 'false prophets' when in fact they themselves could simply be in an erroneous belief. I am not here to make any specific decisions on specific topics, but just to keep in mind how hypocrisy (which is cursing the modern church) occurs.
As I said before, it's often the well-intentioned who err in hypocrisy. We all have our sins and hurdles to deal with, let us always put the heart of God much higher than the law, as Jesus showed us when he spared the life of the adulterer whom he had every legal right to stone but chose to ignore the law for a higher and better purpose.
If it makes this comment seem any more personal, I have a lot of personal experience in this area. It's easy for many people, myself above many, to think and feel abstractly about biblical principles and judge other's ideas as false or inaccurate and then in practice fail miserably.
If you ask me, humility is without a doubt the most underrated of the virtues (once I need work on!)...but now I am getting quite off track so....
How important is it to date/marry a lady who is sexually pure?
Posted : 14 Nov, 2012 07:50 PM
In the imaginary 'ideal mate' list of attributes, virginity would certainly be one of them for me, but honestly it's pretty shallow to see it as a dealbreaker. Modern evangelical christians have the tendency of having strange tier lists of kinds of sins. Why would it be any worse to date a non-virgin (ignoring previous marriage) than to date someone who was once a thief or a coveter or an atheist? Most evangelicals wouldn't think twice of the last three, but the first one becomes a big deal. It's really nothing more than self-serving pride getting in the way of God's plan and is actually a sin. Such people really need to soul-search and ask whether their obsession with their lady being a virgin is about them-self or God. Remember, pride is the biggest sin of all men, and due to it's more spiritual and emotional nature, it's harder to nail down on paper, but this is nothing more than pride.
We are all sinners who deserve to burn in the fires of hell forever and ever and ever. There is no limit to the amount of torment we justly deserve. We cannot even fathom it. We have no right to judge people for actions they have turned from any more than they have to judge ours. This is what forgiveness and love is all about. Chastity is a wonderful and beautiful thing, but like many of the virtues, it has an ugly side when it is overemphasized in ungodly ways. Chastity done out of pride is no better than lust, at least in my opinion.
