I remember in a full gospel church in the 1980s one Sunday morning the pastor in his sermon was going on about the sex industry and pheromones on disco floors to speed up the mating game. Just think any babies born as a result would now be in the workforce paying tax so he could have a pension if he is still alive. He even mentioned sex education as a bad thing. Curiously he did not mention playing with of breaking or playing with someone's heart as being a bad thing.Clearly not an issue for him. I consider doing so to be the worst thing anyone can do without breaking the law. I won't make excuses for the allegations against the late Michael Jackson. I certainly thought he needed therapy. In his song Billie Jean song, "My Mama told me don't go around breaking young girls' hearts." Who had more perspective the aforementioned pastor or the late Michael Jackson? The pastor thought such music was the work of the Devil.
Traditional Christians support parental sex , children and strong family . Neurotic erotica is less relevant .
The devil always loses . My bible-thumping meth-head nephew thinks the Devil to be the most beautiful creature he has ever seen . Lately though ,Matthew shouts he's at war with the Devil . Is he at war with Art , with Beauty ?
Some people have no heart. Helen Steel on her relationship with an undercover policeman: ‘I feel violated’
relevance is a context dependent concept. (and even good things can be over done) sex isn't the root of evil, any more then the concept of symbolic value. the desire to be feared is. excessive birth rate though, is the proximate cause, along with poorly chosen infrastructure and other technologies, of the ecopocalyps that is only now beginning to catch up with and over take us. the relevance of any belief, is its impact on modes of behavior. the concept of beings who's only reason to exist, being to cause harm, is entirely our own invention. not that the existence of anything is prevented, but rather that it owes nothing to what we tell each other to think we know about it.
: ( Anything that prevents a person living in Truth is wrong. To find out such a big aspect of your life was not what you thought it was, and that another human knowingly put you in that situation.. i really don't know how people learn to trust again, after that.
I'm having a hard time getting this topic into focus. I take it that you're questioning a preacher for emphasizing the sinfulness of extramarital sex but not mentioning the sinfulness of "breaking someone's heart"--which means, what? Toying with a person's emotions? Leading a person on, to believe that a relationship is more solid than it is? Deceiving someone? Treating someone as an object or means to an end, instead of a end herself? Is that it? The latter problems involve insensitivity and lack of empathy for one's partner--lust instead of true love..
The preacher had no perspective. Michael Jackson despite his flaws had at least some perspective. The preacher was maybe trying to be popular. Sir Humphrey Appleby once said, "Newspapers pander with readers' prejudices." I think the preacher was doing the same thing with his congregation. These are all bad things to do but are rarely talked about. I started a discussion on flirting etiquette here, Flirting etiquette.
I think the big difference is that extramarital sex is physical and tangible, breaking someone's heart is emotional and less tangible. I agree that the latter, like emotional abuse, can do real, lasting damage, but lots of people are relatively shallow in their capacity to see beyond the physical or tangible.
If a person is raised to know the difference between right and wrong-----and adheres to doing the right thing---that person doesn't need "advice "from a preacher or anyone else.
more relevant isn't a who, its a what. rocks and trees and galaxies, are far more relevant than any word written or spoken by any living physical human on planet earth. the causes of harm can be observed, and more then nine tenths of them are aggressive and illogical inconsiderateness, whatever gods, books or anything else, might also happen to exist.
In retrospect was more concerned with being popular than he was with edifying the congregation. Maybe this is the problem with evangelical churches in general.
