| Isn't heterosexual marriage actually against Biblical teaching?
I mean, we all know the homos are going to hell, per the Bible.
But Jesus doesn't approve of hetero sex or marriage, either. Take Matthew 19, where he condemns divorce on any grounds, and his disciples say that in that case, "it is not good to marry" - and he agrees, praising those "which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake."
Again, Luke 20:34-35 - "The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage."
Then there's Paul: 1 Corinthians 7: "It is good for a man not to marry." He elaborates that it's better to marry than to "burn with passion," but "I say this as a concession, not as a command. I wish that all men were as I am [i.e. celibate]." Even if you're married, Paul thinks you should STILL abstain: "From now on those who have wives should live as if they had none."
The reason, of course, is because both Jesus and Paul believed that the "Kingdom of God" was at hand within a generation, and that, therefore, the old injunction to procreation was no longer valid, and people had better live as celibates in preparation. They only allow marriage and marital intercourse as a concession for those too morally and spiritually weak to make "eunuchs" of themselves for God.
Needles to say, it turned out that the world didn't end in the first century C.E. But for Christians who still claim to take the Bible seriously, I see no reason why these very plain injunctions don't still stand. You can marry and have sex within marriage, but you're only proving yourself spiritually inferior by doing so.
So OK, there's the verse. Now for the chorus: "You're taking it out of context!" Of course, I'm not; and of course, it's absolutely hypocritical of "Christians" to pretend that the Bible condones their married sex lives, or to condemn homos on account of theirs. Right?
I accidentally thumbed up searcher - meant to thumb you down. But you actually admit what I said of Matt - "if you can control your desires it is better to not marry." Which means that it's best NOT to, which means that there is something intrinsically "wrong" with marriage and sexuality.
As for Luke, 33 is in no way the "crux" of the argument; it's just the set up. The dilemma of the seven husbands in the afterlife would never occur had none of the marriages occurred - THAT'S the crux.
And the point of the passage in Paul that you quote is that husbands and wives distract each other from the Lord; it's just an injunction to keep the distraction to a minimum. And again, it's only a concession to the weak.
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