*sigh* Look, I realize that no one is perfect, yadda, yadda, yadda. Whatever.
*However*, please, please, do not lecture me on how my interpretation of the Bible is *wrong* (and, y'know, it's not *my* interpretation, thanks very much, it would be the Church and the Apostles and, the Fathers), and how LaHaye and Jenkins and their ilk are right and we should all be building bunkers, and the believers will be Raptured, and oh, by the way, God put the dinosaur bones there to *trick* us...
Just, just don't do that while you're *shacked up* with a man. You're such a shiny, great Christian, who KNOWS THE TRUTH AND IS TRYING TO FIX ME! but you're having sex with a man that you're NOT MARRIED TO and have no intention of marrying!
So, yes, sure, I'm gonna listen to a word out of your mouth.
Not.
LOLZ
ReplyDeleteYeah...gee, that sounds an awful lot like my dad (heck, his whole side of the family), who has lectured me on the "End of the World" and "The Rapture" and "how you have to be saved and go to church" my whole life...but who has shacked up with every girlfriend he's ever had. His newest wife (#5) is no exception. His siblings are the same, and they're all grandparents before being "mom and dad-in-laws". My dad is the only one who isn't a grandfather, but that's because my mom taught me and my brother that our educations and careers come first, then children later on, AFTER MARRIAGE.
*sigh*
Sound like you had an encounter with another one of those people who is "do as I say, not as I do". (Which, I have to admit, is my least favorite kind of person.)
Hahahahaaa....yeah....
ReplyDeleteShe drives me nuts. I try not to go to the religion place with her, but she's determined to save me. Determined. And I've flat out been rude about it too, and called her on the hypocrisy, but apparently her 'union' is blessed, because they're both 'believers' and, well, whatever.
*sigh* indeed.
Oh wow, Amber, I can't believe someone would lecture you about that especially - as you pointed out - she is deliberately living against God's will. I mean there really isn't any gray area in the Bible on sexual sins, is there? I mean sex outside of marriage. It's not like some things where people have freedom. I'm glad you called her on the hypocrisy. I really hate those types as well. I'd rather they just shut up about religion because people see them and think "THAT'S a believer in Jesus? Uh, no thank you!"
ReplyDelete:-/
Totally agree with you on the not making judgments and telling you how to interpret things. It really frustrates me that someone would be trying to "fix" you.
ReplyDeleteNot related to the actual point of the post I don't think, but I do want to point out that "her" interpretation isn't "wrong" either, and there are other ways of looking at issues like sex/marriage. There aren't actually commandments against pre-marital sex, only against sleeping with a woman someone else is married to (or a married woman sleeping with someone who is not her husband). In fact, the way you GOT married in early times was by having sex, and pre-marital sex is seen even in Orthodox Judaism today as an allowable (if frowned upon) way of becoming engaged. My view is that she IS married to the guy she is "shacked up" with, and she isn't doing anything wrong. Just my opinion, and of course I'm not asking you to agree with me, I just want to pipe up since I don't think it's such a black-and-white issue.
Sanil, I never heard that about premarital sex at all. Wow,very interesting. But once a person has sex with another, they are "married" and if they have sex with others later THEN they are adulterers, right? They would have to "divorce" first sex partner in order to "marry" (have sex) with another. Right?
ReplyDeleteI always thought "fornication" was any sex outside of marriage which would include pre-marital sex. And the Bible is clear that "fornication" is a sin. But maybe it has a different definition than what I know of.
I can see how your view of premarital sex would be well-liked in our society. :)
"Fornication" is porneia in Greek, and doesn't even necessarily refer to sexual immorality, but is also used for idolatry. Taken as "sexual immorality", however, that's as far as the definition goes and it's never explained what that means. While I'm sure it has been interpreted by some to mean all "extra-marital sex", I think that's a bit too much of a jump, since nowhere in the Bible is pre-marital sex forbidden.
ReplyDeleteSanil,
ReplyDeleteWell, I'm willing to 'live and let live' as far as that whole, 'rapture' stuff goes. I don't believe it, and it's unsupported as far as I can see. It's a new innovation. *However* I will call her wrong on this whole, 'dinosaurs are there to trick us', I call bullshit.
As far as fornication/sex outside of marriage/etc. I'm not a scholar, and I've not studied it in seminary, however, it's been the interpretation since, as far as I can tell, the beginning that you aren't to have sex outside of the formal relationship of marriage. This whole, fornication is only fornication if you're already married is a new interpretation. It's just another way of making things permissable that've been forbidden since the beginning. We 'reinterpret' or 'rediscover the correct reading'.
Marriage was consumated, and made official by the act of sex, sure, but there's always been a religious/social aspect that came before that. I'm certain that, in these Orthodox Jewish circles, if you have sex, you're forced to get married, so sure, maybe couples do it that way to do an end run around parents that don't approve of the pairing, but that's clearly not the desired way to do it, and if they're already married by that, why the worry about formalizing it with a ceremony?
How do you get a divorce from that kind of 'marriage'? By that count, a huge percentage of the world is committing adultery and they don't even know it! It just doesn't make sense to me, historically or otherwise. So, we'll just have to agree to disagree here, me thinks.
Even assuming that you're correct on this, I still have a problem with her.
Given her denomination, and her belief in the main stream Protestant Christianity, sex to a person you aren't married to, officially, is a sin. That's the majority opinion in Christianity. That's the belief she ascribes to herself. Given that, she has no right to preach to me on certain matters while living in sin herself.
Amber, I read an article online yesterday that sounded like Sanil on this topic. It's from a "liberated Christian" website. (Google "fornication" and it's one of the top sites.) I'd just never ever ever heard this stuff before so I was like 8-O when Sanil mentioned it. :-)
ReplyDeleteSusanne,
ReplyDeleteIt's a modern interpretation. They want to make it so that it offends no one, and everyone feels included. This means reinterpreting the text and ignoring the historical understanding.
They're (imo) basically saying that, for the past 2,000 years, we've been doing it wrong. But they've figured it out. I honestly don't lend much credence to such 'new fangled ideas'.
To quote: "This is a revolution, dammit! We're going to have to offend somebody!" -- William Daniels, 1776
If we worry about offending everyone, we become impotent.
Amber - It's not a modern interpretation, and it's really not about "not offending" people. I don't care about that, and frankly, my interpretation does offend people...obviously. It's just the decision I had to come to when I scrapped what I'd been told to believe and read the Bible for itself. I agree yours is the traditional interpretation of the Church, but the commandments are older than the Church and Christianity, and I think it's significant that that isn't the way Judaism seems to ever have understood it. We're just coming at it from different traditions and therefore different traditional readings. But yeah, we can agree to disagree, and ignore that topic. Probably best. :)
ReplyDeleteI do agree that there's an intentional aspect to it, which I didn't say well in my first comment. It's definitely not just "you had sex, you're married", I was more aiming at the idea that there isn't a prescribed marriage ritual/ceremony. Part of it I think was that I don't know the situation, and wondered if she saw that differently than you did. I don't know what you mean that she had no intention of getting married, and figured since she called it a "union" and said it was "blessed" that maybe she, like me, had issues w/the legal institution of marriage and had done a private, non-legal ceremony and also considers herself married.
Sorry, it's all sort of irrelevant. I got sidetracked. Regardless of whatever sin is in her life or anyone else's, the problem here is her telling you what to believe and judging you. It's not her place, and you could as easily judge her for not believing what you do. And over an issue like dinosaurs/evolution/whatever...sheesh, it's just always seemed so ridiculously unimportant to me. Why spend time on that when she could be working with you and actually doing something beneficial in the world?
Sanil,
ReplyDeleteWell, I'm hardly offended, and I didn't mean to imply that *you* were worried about offending people. :)
I see this sort of idea coming from, a lot of the time, people who've taken ecumenism to extremes, and *they* are worried about offending people. Or at least that's the impression that they give off. And theirs is a modern interpretation.
Now, if you'd like to recommend me some books or articles that can show me the historicity of this interpretation, within Judaism even, I'd love to read them. I'm always willing to admit to being wrong. :)
It's a difference of how we feel the Bible is best interpreted, I guess. I've read it for myself, certainly. And I know, for a fact, that left to my own devices, I can read into the text whatever answer I want. I'm not saying that's what you're doing, I'm saying that I *personally* have done so, in the past. And I've come to the conclusion that the Bible, on it's own, is not sufficient. Which, I guess, is part of what makes me Catholic and not Protestant. :) I know Christ didn't leave the Bible, He left the Church.
From a certain point of view, the Commandments don't predate Christianity, but are a part and parcel of it. They belong to Christians, just as much as the Noahide laws do, or the Mosaic laws, if you want to go that route. Otherwise, we could chuck them and just go from the New Testament.
It's hardly irrelevent, and at the very least, it's interesting, which makes it relevent, as far as I'm concerned.
As I said, I've never really studied this particular aspect in depth. I accept the historic teachings of the Church, and yes, eventually I'll learn more for myself, but there's *so much* to cover, I have to choose a place to begin, yes? :)
I have no problem with people disagreeing with me. In fact, it makes life interesting, and it's part of how we learn. If everyone agreed, we'd all be terribly boring. ;)
My problem is people who are hypocritical *within* their own professed beliefs. If you tell me you profess to a belief system that includes the fact that men and women shouldn't be having sex before marriage, then you shouldn't be sleeping around. She has never had any sort of ceremony - if she had, I'd have no problem with it. She'd be married. I won't list all the ways I know that this woman holds others to standards that she doesn't hold to herself, but I've known her for years. This is just the latest.
The dinosaur thing...*grrr* it's a personal pet peeve. If it were true, then God lies, and purposfully tricks us. Which would make Him 'not good' and therefore not God.
Ah, that makes sense. I see what you were getting at now.
ReplyDeleteI really like what you said about "I know Christ didn't leave the Bible, He left the Church." I agree, even though I'm pretty sure we mean that in different ways, too. :D But either way, it's true and I appreciate that perspective...and will probably use that statement in the future, if you don't mind.
Sanil,
ReplyDeleteGood, I'm glad we understand each other now. :)
Yeah, we probably do. After all, how're we defining 'the Church'? ;)
Oh, feel free to use that. I'm pretty sure I cannibalized it from somewhere else myself. :)
Honestly I didn't get the dinosaur statement. Did I miss something?
ReplyDeleteSusanne,
ReplyDeleteIt's sort of a brief comment I made.
She believes in a strict, literal reading of the Bible. Therefore, the earth can only be 6,000 years old, and the dinosaurs never existed. Because they weren't mentioned in the Bible, see? Though I do like to point out that neither was the platypus, and it exists, but my point is lost on her, I'm afraid.
Anyway. Her (and others) belief in re: dinosaur bones is that God put them there when He was making the earth. To trick us into thinking the earth is older than it really is. Which, as I said, would make God a liar.
Hmmm, that is strange. Well, I tend to believe the earth is younger than evolutionists do, however, I have NEVER EVER heard anyone say God put dinosaur bones around the earth to trick us! :-O
ReplyDeleteThe people I've read and heard of who believe in a young earth don't deny dinosaurs existed. In fact I think they point to some verse in Job to show where they *were* mentioned in the Bible. (Not that it matters, as you said there are other animals never mentioned in the Bible, but we can see they exist! The Bible is not a book listing animals and birds and insects by name!)
So anyway, your acquaintance just doesn't make sense to me in a number of ways. Even if I believe in the young earth, I am not dogmatic about it to the extent that no one can disagree with me else I label them heretics and such nonsense. I am perfectly fine with being wrong on some issues. I really want to have a teachable spirit and not one that says, "I am right always and, by golly, you'll not change my mind because, well, I am right!"
I greatly dislike that kind of attitude so I pray I *don't* act that way. I want God to teach me and change me. I fully realize I don't know everything. :)
Susanne,
ReplyDeleteWell, I don't think her belief is wide spread, by any means, but I do know it's not just her, and it's just...crazypants!
I reserve judgment on earth's age until we have more data. I think it's *much* older than 6,000 years, but just how old? *shrug* I honestly don't think it makes that much difference.
I've also seen the young earth people who believe in dinosaurs, and while I disagree with many of their ideas, at least they don't deny reality. :)
She doesn't make sense in many ways, yes, I know. And I can't explain her, because, well, talking to her makes me want to rip my hair out, so I avoid it as much as possible. :)
I like a good argument, but when it's with a brick wall, eventually, you give yourself a concussion.
I wouldn't worry about having that attitude you so loathe yourself. I've certainly never seen evidence of it. ;-)