Posted on 12/20/2021 8:03:30 AM PST by SeekAndFind
While many Christians are taught that premarital sex and cohabitation aren't advisable for many reasons, a growing number of single believers are following secular society's model instead of the biblical model.
In the most recent episode of "Challenging Conversations" on the edifi podcast network, host Jason Jimenez, who's also a pastor and founder of Stand Strong Ministries, was joined by apologist Sean McDowell to discuss why some 60% of professing Christians believe cohabitation and sex outside of marriage are OK.
Jimenez said that he and McDowell, who hosts classes on premarital sex and marriage at Summit Ministries, wanted to speak truth in love, as Ephesians 4:15 says, and began the discussion by reading what the Biblical Counseling Coalition says about sex outside of marriage:
[P]remarital cohabitation has become common in the Church because many Christians have made today’s secular values their own. Our society cherishes 'trying before buying,' convenience at any cost, sex without rules, companionship without commitment, and relationship without responsibility — everything premarital cohabitation provides. Instead of questioning such values — if not downright opposing them — countless Christians have adopted them. It’s no wonder so many of them are living together before tying the knot.
Similarly, exposure to pornography on television and social media, they added, has been a leading cause for why many Christians are engaging in premarital sex and think it's “taboo or outdated” to only have sex in biblically defined marital relationships.
Speaking about the saturation of unbiblical ideas about sex, pornography and relationships that Gen Zers and youth are exposed to, McDowell noted that, unlike the 1980s and '90s when exposure was limited to select movies, MTV and a few other sources, today, youth have easy access to porn and are inundated with unhealthy messages.
“In every Netflix show, TikTok video, social media — the amount of information … and the big change I think is the ubiquity of porn. … I think this has shaped how this generation thinks about sex and relationships more than anything else. It affects their brains. It affects their bodies. It affects their expectations. This is truly a pornified generation,” said McDowell, who published a book in 2020 titled, Chasing Love: Sex, Love, and Relationships in a Confused Culture.
Another reason why more Christians are having casual sex outside of marriage and engaging in increased porn use, McDowell said, is because depression and loneliness are at an all-time high due to the lockdowns in response to COVID-19.
“So you take emotional hurt, relational breakdown, an increase in secularism and this nonstop message of an unbiblical or nonbiblical, and sometimes anti-biblical view of sexuality, we can begin to understand the soup our kids swim in, so to speak, on these issues,” McDowell added.
To illustrate why cohabitation isn't a beneficial way to "test drive" what marriage might be like, McDowell said he recently told students in a high school class he teaches that living with someone actually puts couples at a disadvantage for having a successful, future marriage. "Living with someone lacks the very thing that makes a marriage work, which is commitment," he stressed.
Pornography, the other societal ill that Jimenez and McDowell discussed at length, is destroying people's ability to have strong relationships and marriages, including for couples who regularly attend church.
“The ethic of pornography is that a noncommitted one-time spontaneous sexual act is the most fulfilling," McDowell said. "That’s the narrative of much of pornography. That’s the opposite of what you’re experiencing, the opposite of what Scripture teaches.”
"Sex has a relational, it has a spiritual, it has an emotional component designed by God to be best experienced when all of those are present in a married relationship," he said.
Two areas where the Church has gone astray, he added, is to say one of two things. Either that "sex is bad, don't do it." Or to say, "'You think the world has good sex … come to church, we’ll give you the best sex.’”
“I’m like, wait a minute … we are playing by the exact playbook of our culture rather than Scripture,” McDowell said in response to what some church leaders tell Christians on how to view sex.
“So what we should say is that sex is designed not just for physical pleasure in the way that the culture describes it. It’s meant for commitment, vulnerability, love and trust. And it is most beautiful — in fact, somebody flourishes the most and has a deeper sense of love … [when] sex is designed for a loving, committed marital relationship where there is trust, and there's care, and there's commitment.”
Jimenez noted that in the church world, sex is often a "taboo" topic and it isn't "handled in a biblical fashion" and asked McDowell why that is.
"Ignorance is bliss," McDowell said, adding that churches fear having the conversation and aren't aware of how much children are being bombarded with messages pertaining to sex through social media and the educational system. "They'd rather convince themselves that it's somebody else's kid than deal with the messiness of it."
"The other thing," he added, "is that it's just an unbiblical viewpoint" and "bad theology" to say that sex is bad, despite what the Bible says, especially in the Song of Solomon. "It's when we step outside of God's design that sex is bad and hurtful and harmful."
Parents and grandparents, he said, must have these challenging conversations with the children and youth in their family because the world has changed, and they're going to take in messages from the secular world if they're not taught the Christian view of sex.
Jimenez also raised concerns about so-called "Christian" leaders and authors who are promoting the message that sex outside of marriage can be just as "sacred" as within marriage, as long as it's consensual.
"Sadly, this progressive pastor you're referring to ... has bought a complete gnostic worldview. ... It's one that favors the mind and disparages the body. So basically, come to the conclusion that the body carries no inherent meaning as long as we decide the context, then sex outside of marriage is just as meaningful as sex within marriage. So our mind trumps our bodies. That's a gnostic worldview; that's not a biblical worldview.
"The Bible says we are body and we are souls. And we are to honor God with our bodies. Offer yourself as a living sacrifice. And love God with your bodies. ... This is the same reasoning we hear behind a lot of the transgender narrative ... the body is malleable. That's not a biblical worldview.
"The biblical worldview is that God has made us male and female, and marriage is meant to be that a man leaves his mother and father and clings to his wife and the two shall become one. That is God's design for body and for soul."
Jimenez then asked McDowell to respond to the argument from some that the Bible doesn't specifically condemn sex outside of marriage. McDowell replied that that was "partly because of the culture people lived in," which wasn't a hook-up culture like post-sexual revolution America.
"It didn't condemn it because there wasn't the same kind of phenomena we've seen" in society today. "But it sets up a pattern of what marriage is supposed to be. ... All other kinds of sexual immorality is unequivocally condemned," he added, noting that the church in Corinth and others had failed to live it out.
Jimenez added that intimacy is a gift God has given to marriage and encouraged married couples to share that intimacy together.
Listen to this fascinating discussion on the 'Challenging Conversations' podcast
Ask Laz...................
A man cannot be a husband until he can support a family.
Men cannot marry at age 15 or 16 anymore. They cannot marry at age 20. It is rare that they can marry at age 23.
Girls want babies when they are two years old. They also cannot now marry when they are able to safely bear children.
Sexual desire is not mere pornography. It is a deeply embedded drive, in men and in women, directed towards the formation of families and the bearing of children.
Either society will reorganize to facilitate marriages and family formation at ages appropriate to the biological drive for such, or cohabitation will occur.
You cannot have it both ways.
<><>it’s not okay for a CNN producer to groom children,
<><>but it is okay when public school administrators do it.
Vermont school commits to kiddie porn as enlightening for children:
Proclaimed it has the duty to expose children to porn imagery — to support free speech
American Thinker ^ | 12/11/2021 | John Klar Posted on 12/11/2021
This marks the beginning of a perverse justification for distributing pornography to children. The rationale employed would serve to groom children sexually for adult sodomy as a child’s “right.”
Vermont’s Essex-Westford School District, which includes the town of Essex that last year fired a high school lifeguard for merely questioning Critical Race Theory, has done it again. In the midst of a national furor over a sexually explicit graphic novel, the school has proclaimed it has the duty to expose children to pornographic imagery — to support free speech.
It is axiomatic that free speech rights do not extend fully into schools — they never have. For example, the First Amendment protects quite a shocking variety of pornographic materials, including bondage and rape videos. Are those acceptable, protected school teaching materials? School administrations are supposed to be answerable to the appropriate needs of children.
But ESWD has declared itself the champion of the minuscule percentage of children afflicted with gender dysphoria, which not only is rare, but most often disappears with adulthood. All children must be sacrificed at Essex-Westford.
The book in question, Gender Queer, created a national controversy not because the subject of the book is a “non-binary” student (a multitude of such titles abound, as all informed parents are now unavoidably aware), but because the book features “pages of explicit illustrations depicting oral sex [sic].” The school’s defiant letter to parents avoids mentioning this fact, instead proclaiming itself the defender of constitutional values:
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Cont
GET THIS IN ALL SCHOOLS
AFTER A Leaked Audio Reveals How California Teachers Recruit Kids Into LGBTQ Clubs, Supt. Tarallo, SUSD President McDougall and Kate Pagaran, Buena Vista Middle School principal, issued a letter addressed to the “SUSD Community:”
<><>the gay indoctrination club “UBU (You Be You)” has been suspended.
<><>“Any future student clubs will be required to submit an outline of all activities and materials before being allowed to meet,” the letter states.
<><>“Student sign-in sheets will be maintained and parent/guardian permission slips sent home prior to a club holding a meeting.”
<><> “all messaging shared in the morning announcements” will be controlled and distributed by the principal, a practice that “will be in place permanently.”
<><>SUSD states clearly: “Teachers are prohibited from monitoring students’ online activity for any non-academic purpose.”
<><>SUSD will follow state-approved standards and curriculum on all presentations involving “sensitive themes such as sexuality”
<><> “materials of any sensitive themes will be shared with parents/guardians before being shown to students.”
The true Church can never be totally compliant with the prevailing decadent culture. The Churches that constantly adapt their beliefs to accommodate prevailing amoral trends and political narratives are worthless.
If only God could give us the grace to live according to his will.
STD’s are on the rise too and has been since free live and if it feels good do it.
Keep that in mind when the desire hits do you want an infected spouse? I wouldn’t think so, but nobody taught me about sex in 2nd grade sex class either.
“Ask Laz...................”
LOL
“And at that time many will fall away and will deliver up one another and hate one another
1 Timothy 4:1
Verse Concepts
But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and demons
Jeremiah 7:24
Verse Concepts
Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and in the stubbornness of their evil heart, and went backward and not forward
2 Peter 3:17
Verse Concepts
You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness,
Source: https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Falling-Away-From-God
Yes, I think that’s a good point.
I also think in the meantime, premarital sex should not be demonized - even though it is not ideal, there should always be a way back.
When religious taboos are applied too strictly, the message is sent that kids are ruined - that there can be no course correction.
My kids are all safely married now - I don’t know to what extent they experimented with pre marital sex - if at all.
But if I had learned of it, I think I would have kept my distance - give advice only if asked - teach by example - hoping they would figure out for themselves what is valuable and what is not.
Confrontation and ultimatums can be destructive - because they take away freedom to choose the best path.
there’s something else to do?????
For every man on this earth there is ‘the love of his life’ somewhere. He does not know her until he meets her and he may never meet her. If ‘the love of his life’ rejects him he may or may not marry but it will be to someone who is not TLOHL. He will carry the image of TLOHL in his heart but never be happy and she will never know that she once was the love of someone’s life. Sadly, most marriages are not between people who think of each other as the love of their lives but something a little less.
"Finally then, brethren, we urge and exhort in the Lord Jesus that you should abound more and more, just as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God; for you know what commandments we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also forewarned you and testified. For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness. Therefore he who rejects this does not reject man, but God, who has also given us His Holy Spirit. 1 Thess 4:1-8
Some wonder why people have open marriages must be because some people never get enough of it?.
It is how I met my wife.
She was costing .99 cents a minute at first then we went out on some dates and I was spending dollars as she preferred cash and now that we are married I use the credit card to buy her things.
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