Sleeping together?

Here are some examples which came to mind.

Unsaved man/woman live together for several years, share bills, buy house have kids.
Then they get saved but they either can't afford to get married or the penny does not drop
immediately. What should the church do, tell them they are not saved until they get married.
Tell them one should move out breaking up the family unit and causing deeper financial
problems. It's a toughey. I've actually seen this played out in my church and I can tell you
it all worked out in the end, with patience, teaching, love and understanding they decided
to get married and the church chipped in to help out.

Christian friend of mine, had a daughter who was 19, very much loved but not a Christian. Her
boyfriend had some disabilities and had many problems with his own alcoholic mother. In the
end the boyfriends mother throw him out with nothing except the clothes he was wearing.
Problem problem - what should my Christian friend do, she knows her daughter and boyfriend
are already sleeping together. Both are still fairly young and he has nowhere to go.
She (and her husband) allowed him to stay at their house and got a lot of stick for it
from some other people in the church. Fast forward 7 years both the daughter and boyfriend
are now married, both are Christians, they have a house of there own have some beautiful
little girls who are being brought up in a Christian environment.

Unsaved unmarried man/woman live together as in the first scenario. One becomes a Christian
and wants to get married. The other is not a Christian and does not want to get married but
they both love each other and don't want to split up so they continue as they are. What should
the church do? Well prayer comes to mind for the unsaved person - I suppose though they could
just make the saved person feel so bad for not being married that they leave the church and
stop believing in God.

There are loads of examples of different tricky situations.


Then there are the unchurched undiscipled Christians who get together and
blatantly go against God's word. Some even meet each other via church.
I have met only a few like this, usually it is the foolishness of youth or just maybe
they were not Christians in the first place. There are many non Christians who attend
churches.

Thankfully I go to a church which does practice discipleship, new babes in
Christ flourish, it gives good solid teaching. It does not leave new Christians to flounder.
It also practices church discipline, though thankfully it is rare this has been necessary.

I honestly think that if a church has a specific problem in this area , especially the last
example. They have to look at themselves and what they are teaching, how they are
going about teaching and instructing on biblical truths.

By far a big factor are the number of people who think they are Christians just because
they live in a Christian country, or just because they were baptised as babies. Or just
because they believe in God. I would have thought that would cover a large percentage of
the population of the US. I also covers a reasonable number of the population of the U.K.

I don't believe it is....but then again I am told I am old fashioned all the time. From the older generations it is a compliment. From the younger generations it tends to be a bad thing.


There was one kid when I was in high-school who said that his pastor essentially told him common law marriage was God's marriage.
I think the biggest reason though is the non-Christians arguments. Many my age seem to just fall for the arguments against abstinence. I have seen so many fall because of peer pressure or just wanting to fit in with non-Christian friends. It also seems like a lot of my generation doesn't even read the Bible, which is very sad.

If they can afford to live together, they can afford a trip to the justice of the peace. Legal marriage -- the wedding can come later.


This would totally crush my bogart, but the living arrangement would switch up immediately. I, the mom, would be sleeping in the same room as daughter. Hubby, the dad, would be sleeping in the same room as the boyfriend. Sure, there are still ways around us, but I'm not making it easy. lol


Teach what love is, because love isn't making choices for one's own benefit. It's making choices for the loved one's benefit. That's also what marriage is about. (Gee, wonder why.)


I think it covers a larger percentage of Americans simply because "christian" became an ethnic thing instead of a belief. That said, I thought Willie was asking about people on this site, which ought to be at least a bit more than national ethnicity. I could be wrong on both counts though.

(And, ha! I hope you understand me enough to know, if you ask, I will answer. lol)

my teacher didnt
I had to write a two page paper on personal responsibility. So. Much. Fluff. lol

Peer pressure is a crock for this one. I don't eat chocolate because I'm being pushed into it. Chocolate is great, so I indulge. Same concept with sex. If it was peer pressure then all we have to do to raise the amount of people eating liver is to start teaching that there is a time and place for liver, but not yet for kids. And then remind them "everyone is doing it anyway." lol

I personally think its okay to hold hands and occasionally kiss. The problem with that is keeping it that way and not going further. I know that kissing leads to other things and it can happen quickly. So yeah I guess it would be best to avoid it all together but I think the occasional kiss is okay. That's just my opinion though I could be wrong.

Yeah, but I would get banned if I used the other common terms for it. LOL

and this is why I believe all forms of birth control, condoms, ect should be done away with.

I agree, but I have actually seen people agree to it at school based on peer pressure alone.....So peer pressure does actually have some affect on this even though it shouldn't.

Peer pressure is more than just saying everyone is doing it....

Condoms etcetera are not the root of the problem and unwanted pregnancy is not the reason for abstinence. We talk about STDs and pregnancy when we should be talking about eternal damnation. Perhaps when we start sending the correct message, we will begin to make a difference.

Its been a while since my school days and there will be differences in countries.
But most of what we learnt was based on rumours, sniggers and gossip in the classroom.
Parents were the ones who were suppose to instruct their children - many shirked
that job.

Our sex education in school consisted of an extremely embarrassed young male teacher
explaining how to put a condom onto a test tube, it would have made for a good skit in
a Monty Python film. Plus I went to an all girls high school, so you can imagine how
embarrassed he was in front of a class of 30 teenage girls!

I suspect that for many these days, the Internet and TV is unfortunately the main
source of education.

When I was in high-school the class that did that was an elective. Not very many took it, but they used the doll instead of eggs... One of my friends went into a random class with this doll and accidentally dropped the baby. The teacher didn't know it was the doll from the other class and started to panic.

It doesn't always work.

My mother started teaching me the real deal somewhere around 7. One of my 9th or 10th birthday presents was a book called The Stork Didn't Bring You.

Unfortunately, we weren't Christians, and I watched as Mom lived her life of fairly free living as a single woman. I grew up as pretty much a horn dog, and had had more than 400 sexual encounters by the time I married my first wife. (Give me a break... I didn't get married till I was 27.)

I straightened up pretty quickly when I became a Christian, but it was a rough road up till then.

Condoms etcetera are not the root of the problem and unwanted pregnancy is not the reason for abstinence. We talk about STDs and pregnancy when we should be talking about eternal damnation. Perhaps when we start sending the correct message, we will begin to make a difference.

It doesn't always work.

My mother started teaching me the real deal somewhere around 7. One of my 9th or 10th birthday presents was a book called The Stork Didn't Bring You.

Unfortunately, we weren't Christians, and I watched as Mom lived her life of fairly free living as a single woman. I grew up as pretty much a horn dog, and had had more than 400 sexual encounters by the time I married my first wife. (Give me a break... I didn't get married till I was 27.)

I straightened up pretty quickly when I became a Christian, but it was a rough road up till then.

It doesn't always work.

My mother started teaching me the real deal somewhere around 7. One of my 9th or 10th birthday presents was a book called The Stork Didn't Bring You.

Unfortunately, we weren't Christians, and I watched as Mom lived her life of fairly free living as a single woman. I grew up as pretty much a horn dog, and had had more than 400 sexual encounters by the time I married my first wife. (Give me a break... I didn't get married till I was 27.)

I straightened up pretty quickly when I became a Christian, but it was a rough road up till then.

I am not judging you but when you say encounters do you mean 400 different partners, or it could have been 200 times each with two different women or some equivalent, like four partners one hundred times each? Haha. Just curious Thank you for being so open about it. Men have always seemed to have an easier time being free and easy about it.

I was going to put this as a stand alone post but I don't want to come across as bitter:

I wonder when and where men got the idea that it is okay to use women to fill their
basic physical needs and then just throw them away when they are done with them.

Of course it doesn't. I was discussing "unplanned pregnancy" I wasn't taking it in the other direction, but you are right