Marriage, Sex, and Fun Stuff The Institutional Church Has Opinions On

I DO WANT YOUR FEEDBACK! I do however, wish that you would abide by these rules in commenting-

• Scripture is the final word- Scripture. The meaning of the scripture as it was written... which may or may not be your interpretation of it
• Do NOT just quote Scripture, explain yourself 
• Think your post through before clicking Comment.
• Comments are NOT to be deleted.
• You are NOT to maliciously attack anyone- myself included. The beauty of a blog and the United States, is freedom of speech.
• NO redundant arguments or made up statistics- If you use not-well-known facts, link to the source, and if stats come in, link those as well
• Be original- I want your thoughts/intelligence of this.. not spit-back of what I've already been told and can probably quote back more of it to you than you can tell me. 

Ok, that all settled? GOOD! On with my thoughts/studies. 

First of all as I began looking into all the scriptures quoted in our premarital counseling book, Preparing for Marriage by David Boehi, Brent Nelson, Jeff Schulte, and Llyod Shadrach I noticed that for all their inclusiveness on 'purity' and 'holiness' and 'immorality' and 'godlessness', while discussing the issue of Sexual intimacy, they never referred back to Songs of Solomon. This seems noteworthy to me... why leave out the one book totally devoted to showing us how God feels about sexual relationships? 

Before I continue on with that.. there are some important questions that must be answered first.

1- What is marriage?  -For the purposes of this blog, I"m going with my personal definition of marriage, which is similar to Webster's definition. with an added twist. and that's this. Marriage is a covenantal, life-long relationship between and man and woman and God.  If you disagree with this definition, please provide a working definition in your reply, and include why you think my definition is not correct. 

2- What does it mean to be holy? - "Holy" is from the Greek word that means "separated... or set apart for a sacred purpose.

Ok... so given that information, lets proceed with the topic.

So the first thing that made me want to write all this out is the reasons frequently given for 'saving sex till marriage' (note- I am NOT saying this isn't a good idea... if you want a mission-statement for this blog is to figure out whether or not the church places too much emphasis on this. If I'm to live by it, I don't want it to be just another rule the institutional church comes up with that sidetracks us from really living life as God intended.)

So the reasons given (as quoted from the book) 

1- You affirm that you care more for the other person than you do yourself.

2. You protect yourself from feelings of guilt and shame

3.You are protected from emotional, mental, and physical trauma should you break off your relationship.

4. You discover more about each other than just the physical.

5. You maintain a witness to a lost world. 

There are several others, many of which Im sure we all have heard, but I"m gonna hit on those five.

You affirm that you care more for the other person than you do yourself

       Ok. I had several issues with this one. The first of which is that from all my study, sexual intimacy is about what you can do for the other person, to meet their needs, and not your own. So please explain to me how abstaining from sex before marriage proves this. I could almost say, if two people thought opposite ways, that the person who would not be sexually intimate with their fiance because they thought it was wrong and thus prevented the two of them from being sexually intimate, he or she is caring more about herself. Now, that's not a rock-solid case... but the point is that sex in marriage isn't supposed to be selfish. And it is true that abstaining from sexual intimacy before marriage is a good idea, in most circumstances, it is a great idea! But, I would say that it is not beneficial in all circumstances. 

You protect yourself from feelings of guilt and shame

  major problem with this one- With the way we are taught "sex is bad" all the way till marriage.. it's not easy to take that training and toss it aside just cause "you said I Do." 

You are protected from emotional, mental, and physical trauma should you break off your relationship.

   My thoughts here- if a relationship seriosuly under consideration of marriage/is commited to each other, with or without sex you will still suffer from it.. and not necessarily minor sufferage either.

You discover more about each other than just the physical.

Well... I'd argue to say that if this becomes an issue... there's a bigger issue than premarital sex in the relationship.

You maintain a witness to a lost world.

And this all rests on Christianity being about a list of do's and don'ts. Which, while that is totally another topic altogether... Christianity is about a relationship with Jesus Christ who was crucified and rose again to free us from death's grip.

and as I'm lazy and getting tired, I'll leave it at that for now. comment with thoughts.

till next time, DFTBA