First things first, regardless of what you conclude about the topics in this article, as far as those of us in the church called the body of Christ go, worrying about whether something is sinful or not isn’t something we’re even supposed to do anyway. In fact, we aren’t supposed to actively try to avoid sinning at all (to actively try to avoid sinning is what Paul referred to as “walking after the flesh”). The truth is, all things are permitted for us, even if not all things are beneficial. So even if something is a sin, we’re technically still allowed to do it no matter what it is, even if it might still be something that would be better for us to avoid.
In addition, whatever any believer concludes about the sinfulness of an action, we aren’t meant to enforce our own conclusions about what would be sinful for us to personally participate in on others, or to judge our brothers and sisters in Christ for whatever they might decide to do or avoid. Nor are we meant to get involved in politics to try to enforce our own preferences on the rest of the world (politics and moralism are the domain of the unbeliever, and are not activities those of us in the body of Christ are called to participate in). So, if you have concluded that it would be a sin for you to participate in some of the actions discussed in this article, by all means, avoid doing so. However, like all decisions about sin, this is something for each of us to consider for ourselves and ourselves alone. That said, for those who haven’t made any decisions about whether some of the things I discuss in this article might be best avoided or not, it’s still helpful to consider the facts about sex and lust, which is why I’ve published this article.
Now, you’ve almost certainly been taught that premarital sex is a sin, and the primary reason that most conservative Christians are so confused about and against premarital sex is one little word: fornication. If you look fornication up in an English dictionary you will indeed find that it can mean sexual intercourse between unmarried partners. The problem is, that not its only meaning. In fact, it’s not even its original meaning. You see, the word “fornication” originally referred to “prostitution,” and it should be understood along these lines when read in the Bible as well, since the word literally meant “to meet a prostitute under an arch” (the word comes from the Latin word “fornix,” which means arch or vault; prostitutes used to wait for their customers in ancient Rome under vaulted ceilings where they’d be safe from the elements, and “fornix” became a term for brothels, with the Latin verb “fornicare” referring to a man visiting a brothel), although when referring to prostitution in the Bible, it’s more about temple prostitution than simple sex work the way the word would generally be used today.
Of course, some modern versions of the Bible now use the term “sexual immorality” instead of fornication, but that just confuses things since “sexual immorality” is a broad and general term which doesn’t tell us anything on its own about what sexual acts would actually be considered to be immoral, so sticking with ”fornication” is much better, so long as we understand what the word meant when the KJV was originally translated, as well as what it means when used in Scripture, which Bible scholars pretty much all agree is generally “illicit sexual intercourse,” or “unlawful intercourse between the sexes.”
Now, if we take the term “illicit sexual intercourse” literally, it means sexual intercourse that breaks the law. Generally, here in the western world, premarital sex doesn’t break the law, and it certainly wasn’t against the law among the Gentiles Paul wrote to when he told believers to flee fornication either. And if one digs into the Mosaic Law, they’ll see that it also wasn’t ever spelled out as being illegal there. While there were sometimes civil consequences for premarital sex among Israelites back in Bible times without first getting the permission of (and likely paying a brideprice to) a woman’s father (sadly, women were considered to be property in ancient cultures including that of Israel, and were often basically sold from one “owner,” her father, to a new “owner,” her husband, through marriage), and deceiving someone into thinking a woman was a virgin when she wasn’t could also result in harsh penalties, premarital sex on its own was never specifically forbidden or called sinful in the “Old Testament” books. Of course, premarital sex (or sex outside of marriage) technically could fall under the broad label of fornication in some parts of the world (and still can today), but it could (and can) only legitimately do so in regions where this actually was or is considered to be illegal (such as in parts of the Middle East today, for example). Outside of those more conservative regions of the planet, however, it wouldn’t be considered to be wrong by the law and hence wouldn’t be a sin to do so since it wouldn’t be a crime.
So what sexual acts would be considered illicit when the word fornication was used in Scripture? Well, it would, of course, cover the specific sexual prohibitions that actually were mentioned in the Mosaic Law, or at least it would for those who were required to follow said law. And without even having to go any further, the passages I just linked to prove that premarital sex is not a sin all on their own: aside from the fact that God wouldn’t have had to go to the trouble of forbidding sex with animals, or even with other people’s wives, if premarital sex really was a sin — all He’d have to have said is, “Don’t have sex with anyone you aren’t married to,” something He never actually said anywhere in Scripture. The fact that He also never forbade men from having concubines, who were not wives but who were women that men had sex with, and in fact never once condemned the many men in the Bible who were considered to be righteous (relatively speaking) yet had concubines, also makes this quite clear (it also makes it obvious that those Christians who claim having sex with someone means one is automatically married to that person haven’t thought things through particularly well, since concubines would have been called “wives” in Scripture instead, if that was the case). God also didn’t add new sins to the list in the “New Testament” books, so we always have to interpret anything spoken against in those books in light of what the “Old Testament” books said and meant, and premarital sex just wasn’t ever condemned as a sin anywhere in the “Old Testament” books.
But it primarily spoke of sexual idolatry, referring to sleeping with temple prostitutes (Paul would presumably have also been speaking against the rape of the women forced to participate in prostitution when he spoke against fornication — since it was rarely voluntary back then — not just the idolatry aspect of it, but the connection to idolatry was a large, if not the largest, part of it) who did so as a part of worshiping other gods (in Bible times, Satan used sex to lure people into idolatry; today, now that temple prostitution is no longer a thing, he uses it instead as the new circumcision), although it could also be used in reference to sexual practices that actually were considered illicit by the culture in question, practices such as incest, for example. This particular instance of fornication actually demonstrates quite conclusively that premarital sex was not considered to be a sin. If it were, the Corinthian believers would never have even considered letting things go this far; they would have stopped long before accepting, and seemingly even taking pride in, this relationship happening among their church members if Paul or anyone else had previously taught them that sex outside of marriage fell under the category of fornication-based sins, and he also apparently forgot to tell them it was a sin in this epistle as well when he was telling them to avoid such fornication, so one who claims it is sinful is just eisegeting their own preconceived moralistic bias into their interpretation of the word fornication in this and other parts of Scripture.
Of course, some try to argue that Paul did tell them to avoid premarital sex a couple chapters later when he tells them, “Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband,” supposedly telling them to get married rather than have premarital sex, but that’s not what he’s actually trying to get at there at all. It would take a much longer study to get all the way into the full meaning of this chapter, but along with actually taking the context of the passage into consideration, there are also idioms being used here that aren’t obvious if you’re not aware of them (for instance, the phrase “not to touch” was a figure of speech that literally meant “not to have sex with,” only perhaps somewhat cruder), so what he was basically getting at was something along the lines of, “Now, about what you wrote to me, you said: ‘It is ideal for a man to avoid having sex with a woman.’ Whether or not that’s true, in order to avoid the temptation that would almost certainly arise to have sex with temple prostitutes instead, let every man continue having sex with his own wife, and let every woman continue having sex with her own husband.” Basically, this passage is talking about Corinthian believers who had come to the conclusion that it would be more righteous or holy to avoid sexual intercourse with their spouses altogether (likely because of outside Gnostic influences), but Paul warned them that they should not stop sleeping with their already existing spouses or they could end up inadvertently committing idolatry as their biology would very likely lead the men to sleep with temple prostitutes instead (because they were the easiest people to find sex with aside from with one’s spouse, since people generally didn’t have romantic relationships back then as we do today; marriage was more of a business arrangement until very recently, so outside of marriage and adultery, the easiest and most common way for a man to have sex in that time and place was with a temple prostitute), and the women could even end up committing adultery. Yes, celibacy is honourable if one can handle it (the reason for this isn’t because sex is somehow dirty or less than righteous and something that should be avoided in general, however; it’s because it helps one hold lightly to the things of this Earth so one can focus solely on the things of God instead of the concerns of one’s spouse, since the easiest way for one to have sex while avoiding idolatry was through marriage when Paul wrote that), but as the writer of Hebrews put it (even if this is a Circumcision writing, this is one of those trans-administrational truths that applies to both the Israel of God and the body of Christ), marriage (and sex in marriage) is just as honourable, and one shouldn’t defile their marriage bed by sleeping with temple prostitutes or by committing adultery (both of which would be temptations if a married couple stopped sleeping with each other).
Contrary to what most have been taught, Paul wasn’t telling single people to find marriage partners rather than commit the supposed sin of having premarital sex in this passage (they generally didn’t have boyfriends and girlfriends like we do today anyway, so the idea of unmarried, romantic “couples” having sex probably wouldn’t have even crossed Paul’s mind); the context of this chapter and the previous chapter makes it pretty clear that he was talking to the already married in the first seven verses, telling them that the husbands risked going to temple prostitutes if married couples stopped sleeping with each other, which would be tantamount to idolatry because sex with temple prostitutes would necessarily involve worshipping other gods in the process.
As for those who were once married and wished to remarry (even if this might also be perfectly valid advice for those who haven’t ever been married yet, it’s clear that the word “unmarried” in this passage actually refers specifically to widowers, because to say, “the unmarried and the widows,” and to be referring to everyone who is currently unmarried would be entirely redundant, making about as much sense as saying, “the dogs and the beagles”; and if it simply referred to those who have never been married, then “the unmarried” would leave out the widowers from this instruction, so the only logical way to interpret this is as meaning ”the widowers and the widows”), while he’d prefer for them to remain unmarried like him so they can focus on the things of the Lord rather than on a spouse, he does still say that getting married is better than burning with the desire to be married if they can’t control their desire for marriage (it’s unlikely that he was talking about burning with sexual desire here; based on the context of the topic of marriage in general throughout this part of the chapter, and the fact that he was saying it would be good for them to remain unmarried like him, it seems far more likely that he would have simply been referring to the desire to be married — particularly since sex outside of marriage hadn’t actually been condemned anywhere else in Scripture prior to his writing this, at least as long as it wasn’t illegal or idolatrous, and Paul wouldn’t have added new sins to the list of already existing sins mentioned in the “Old Testament” books; although, even if he was talking about burning with sexual desire, remember that they didn’t have romantic relationships back then, so sex with a spouse or sex with a temple prostitute were the two main ways to have sex at the time Paul wrote to this particular audience, and Paul certainly wouldn’t have wanted them to choose the latter option). And as far as those of us in this day and age go, at least here in the western world, there are other ways for unmarried people to have sex without resorting to visiting temple prostitutes, although if they are “burning” to get married, they certainly should.
In addition to these more literal interpretations of fornication, there was also a figurative meaning to the word, having nothing to do with physical sex at all, but simply being a metaphor referring to outright idolatry.
The one thing it never meant, however, is premarital sex, or at least by now it should be obvious that there’s zero reason to believe it did, despite the fact that your parents and pastor would probably prefer you believed it did. Of course, they likely only think they want you to. If they understood just how many STIs and unwanted pregnancies this teaching is responsible for, they might change their minds (unless they’re the vindictive sort who want those they consider to be sinners to be punished physically for defying their rules; there are Christians out there with this mentality). The idea that premarital sex is sinful causes many parents to actively make sure their kids don’t learn about protection and birth control, but since pretty much an equal number of Christians have premarital sex as non-Christians (the religious can’t fight nature and biology any more than the rest of the world can), only without any knowledge of how to minimize the potential risks, young people in conservative areas or with religious parents tend to end up with more diseases and unwanted pregnancies than those who don’t, and if you’re going to judge a doctrine or religious teacher by its or their fruit, it’s easy to see that the conservative Christian view on sexuality is rotten to the core.
Even with all that being said, though, many Christians will try to defend their indefensible claims about premarital sex based on Jesus’ comment about “lust” and “committing adultery in one’s heart,” attempting to convince us that this makes premarital sex sinful by default since you wouldn’t have sex without sexual desire (they like to use this argument to condemn masturbation and pornography too). However, because so few understand right division, they don’t realize that He was actually speaking about something else altogether in that passage from what most people assume. In fact, when you discover what “lust” really refers to in Scripture you’ll realize that it is actually often encouraged, and that it’s also time to reconsider your thoughts on porn as well (and, really, anyone who cares about women at all should actually be encouraging the spread and consumption of pornography because [contrary to the claims of the morality police who, as it turns out, appear to be wrong about basically all of their assertions about sexuality] when porn usage increases, sexual assault decreases, unless they don’t care about reducing sexual assault, which would be quite sad).
To put it plainly, the word “lust” in the Bible doesn’t simply mean to have sexual attraction to someone (unless you think Paul meant that “the flesh” is having sexual attraction against the Spirit in Galatians 5:17, whatever that would entail), but is rather a synonym for “coveting” something, or “strongly desiring” to own or have something or someone, and sometimes lusting/desiring is a good thing (the Lord’s statutes and judgements are to be lusted for/desired more than gold, and even Jesus “lusted/desired” according to the Bible. In fact Paul himself encouraged lust/desire at times as well). What Scripture does condemn when it comes to lust is desiring to take something that already “belongs” (so to speak) to someone else, such as someone else’s property (or wife, since, again, women were considered to be property back then, unfortunately), which is what the 10th Commandment is all about. But to enjoy the way someone looks, or even to fantasize sexually about someone, isn’t what is being criticized when lust actually is spoken against in Scripture; intent to take someone else’s “property” without permission also needs to be there for the coveting to be wrong (otherwise, accepting something you desire as a gift, or even finding your own spouse sexually appealing, would also technically be wrong). So for lust over a woman to be considered “committing adultery in one’s heart,” in addition to needing to have intent to actually possess her, she would have to also belong to someone else already, which is, thankfully, not possible in the western world today since women are no longer considered to be property. And, of course, that passage only applied to Israelites, and even then only to some of them (it was a part of the Sermon on the Mount, which was all about elaborating upon the Mosaic law, something that never applied to Gentiles, and doesn’t apply to Jews saved under Paul’s Gospel either, so even if Jesus did mean what most Christians assume He did here, it wouldn’t apply to most people anyway).
But even if those saved under the Gospel of the Uncircumcision did somehow fall under this particular point in Jesus’ sermon (which they don’t), the word “adultery” in that passage really tells us everything we need to know about the context of the passage; a man (even a married man) couldn’t commit adultery with a woman who wasn’t married (or at least betrothed) back then, since adultery in Bible times wasn’t defined the same way we define it today (adultery was a property violation back then, not a purity violation, which is why Jesus didn’t condemn women for desiring men, since a woman couldn’t own a man through marriage — a wife was always the property of a husband and never the other way around at that time), and it’s extremely important to interpret a passage of Scripture using the definitions of the time rather than basing our interpretations on modern definitions of English words (using modern definitions rather than the original definition of a word is how we ended up with all sorts of confused and unscriptural doctrines). It’s also important to note that nowhere prior to this sermon had sexual attraction or fantasy, or sexual desire in general, ever been condemned anywhere in the “Old Testament” books (or anywhere else in the “New Testament” books either, for that matter). When one realizes all this, it becomes apparent that Jesus wasn’t creating a new law for Israel to follow, but was simply expanding on one His audience was already familiar with (the 10th Commandment), pointing out that for a Jewish male to covet his neighbour’s wife with the intention of having her would basically be the equivalent of breaking the 7th Commandment as well, but He wasn’t even hinting that finding other people sexually appealing, or admiring their bodies (or even fantasizing about them) was at all wrong.
In fact, those who do try to force sexual desire out of their (and others’) lives are actually demonstrating a symptom of a far more pernicious form of lust than any mentioned already, one which affects (and infects) Christianity to a fatal degree. This, of course, would be the religious lust of self-righteousness, so if a religious leader tries to convince others that simple sexual attraction and desire (or even premarital sex) is sinful, it would be wise to question any of their teachings since they’re demonstating how little they likely know about Scripture, and it seems unlikely that they’ve even been saved yet (relatively speaking, of course), since they probably don’t understand what it means to rightly divide the word of truth. Of course, another reason that religious conservatives are so opposed to “lust” (and anything even related to premarital sex) is simply basic erotophobia. Thanks to the horribly harmful purity culture that conservative Christianity has inflicted upon the world, too many people grow up with the idea that sexuality (anything from simple sexual desire to any form of sexual activity itself) is inherently dirty and shameful. Most Christians will deny this and claim that sexual thoughts and acts are only “dirty” or sinful when they’re outside the context of a monogamous, heterosexual marriage, but they themselves don’t realize just how deeply the effects of purity culture have rooted into their subconscious, eventually blossoming into full-blown erotophobia, which in turn forces them to have to believe that their misinterpretations of Scripture are true because anything else could allow the sexuality they so fear to enter their lives.
I’ve already mentioned this, but it’s also important to keep in mind that something generally has to be spelled out as a sin in the “Old Testament” books or else it’s very unlikely to actually be a sin. Neither Jesus nor Paul (or anyone else writing any of the “New Testament” books, for that matter) were adding new sins to the list when they wrote or spoke about these topics, so the passages have to be interpreted in light of what came before. And since the “Old Testament” books didn’t call premarital sex a sin, but did call idolatry, adultery, and incest sins, it stands to reason that one or more of these have to be what Paul was actually talking about. Likewise, Jesus said His yoke is easy and His burden is light, and since we know that A) “lusting” the way religious conservatives interpret the word (enjoying the way someone looks, and even fantasizing about them sexually) had never been condemned in the “Old Testament” books, and B) there’s no way that avoiding “lusting” the way religious conservatives understand the concept could ever be considered easy or a burden that is light in any way whatsoever (anyone who isn’t asexual or doesn’t have a hormonal imbalance — and no judgement to anyone who is or does — who is being truly honest with themselves knows I’m right), it has to mean something else than what most people assume (which it does, as I’ve already covered). This also means that those who try to avoid — as well as try to convince others that they need to avoid — their completely normal biological drives are perverting not only what Scripture actually teaches, but the natural instincts God gave us as well, and this is why those who teach the conservative religious perspectives on lust and sexuality are the true perverts.
There is a lot more that can be said about this complex topic (which has admittedly been simplified a great deal here), but the bottom line is that modern conservative Christians are following in the footsteps of the fourth century Institutional Church (so many of the errors of the Christian religion find their roots in that time period) and are making the same mistake of reading their own biases into the original text just as those so-called “Early Church Fathers” did, although it’s even worse today since so much time has passed and most Christians are now unaware that, in the first century, sex among the people Paul taught almost never took place between people who were considered equals, and this included sex within marriage. As already mentioned, the idea of a boyfriend and girlfriend, as we understand them today, in love with each other and sleeping with each other probably wouldn’t have ever entered into Paul’s mind since that wasn’t how relationships between the sexes generally worked back then, but there’s literally no reason to think he’d have a problem with consensual sexual relations between a couple in love today as long as no worship of other gods was involved, and it wasn’t actually illegal where they lived.
Premarital sex and lust (and porn) aren’t the only things religious leaders have insisted that people shouldn’t participate in, however, when it comes to sexuality. There are so many other traditional religious ideas that aren’t in the Bible but that you’ve no doubt been told you must abstain from as well. For example:
• Modesty means not revealing too much skin or the outline of your body. Modesty is the opposite of vanity, not nudity. Nudity was extremely common in Bible times, yet never called a sin in the Bible. God did not condemn Adam and Eve for being naked (in fact He created them naked and saw them as “very good,” and if nudity wasn’t inherently sinful before the fall then there’s no reason to claim it suddenly became sinful after the fall), but rather asked them who told them they were naked after they sinned and realized they were. He didn’t say, “Oh no, your nakedness has been exposed! How could this have happened?!” since He made them that way and left them to enjoy the garden that way. The reason they sewed and put on clothing was because they were suddenly ashamed, not because they were suddenly naked (and the reason God made new clothes for them out of animal skins was because the dead animals covering them were a type of Christ covering sin, not because they suddenly needed clothing — they already had clothing at that point, after all). The truth is that sin distorts our perceptions and makes people feel ashamed of their bodies, just as it makes them feel guilt and shame over all sorts of innocent things. Puritanism over our physical bodies is not a scriptural virtue, but it is a form of gnostic dualism, which is enough to tell us we should be avoiding that kind of prudishness. In fact, God even sent Isaiah out to prophesy naked, so obviously nudity just can’t be considered sinful. Modesty is still important, but it’s about not showing off, not about not showing skin or curves. When Paul called for modesty in the church, and asked women to dress modestly, he meant to dress “with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; but (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works.” It had nothing to do with their bodies and everything to do with their attitudes. Basically, he was telling them not to wear fancy outfits that would make them appear more important than those who weren’t able to appear as wealthy as them. Similarly, Peter wrote that beauty should not come from “outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; but let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.” Nobody in their time would have looked twice at somebody showing a bit of skin, or even at being completely naked, and Scripture certainly didn’t condemn it, so neither should we. But Scripture is clear that we should not try to make ourselves look better or more important than those around us with expensive clothing and lavish hairdos, so true modesty (humility) is something we should certainly aim for. And as for the concern that not dressing like a prude might cause men to lust, we’ve already covered what “lust” really means, and that the idea of “lust” as religious conservatives understand the concept isn’t actually a problem at all, so if someone tries to use that argument, they need to go back and learn that.
• Homosexuality is forbidden. Homosexuality is definitely never forbidden in Scripture. In fact, Scripture says nothing about the topic of being gay at all. That might seem like a strange statement, since I’m sure you can think of plenty of verses which you believe talk about the topic, but like many of the things discussed in this article, this is an assumption based on a misconception. Remember, “homosexuality,” or “being gay,” is simply the state of being attracted (sexually and/or romantically) to members of the same sex, and doesn’t inherently have anything to do with actually having sexual intercourse with someone of the same sex at all (someone who is gay might never have sex with anyone of the same sex, and someone who is heterosexual or bisexual very well might — in fact, most gay porn is actually filmed with straight actors, who do it not because they have any attraction whatsoever to people of the same sex but rather for the money), and simply being attracted to somebody isn’t a sin in and of itself (even if same-sex relations were sinful, temptation itself is not a sin). That said, as far as same-sex relations go, the most one could argue is that the Mosaic law might forbid anal sex between males outside the context of rape and/or idolatrous prostitution (which is always wrong, and quite possibly what it’s actually forbidding according to many scholars), but even if so, this would only apply to those who are under the Mosaic law since the “Old Testament” books are the only part of the Bible where it might have forbidden it on its own outside the context of rape and/or idolatry; it’s never forbidden on its own anywhere in the “New Testament” books, as I’ll discuss shortly. And regardless of whether it does forbid anal sex between men, it doesn’t say anything about love, romantic relationships, or other forms of sexuality between males. The passage about a man lying with a man in Leviticus would have to be strictly referring to anal sex, presuming it’s referring to general sexual intercourse between men at all, rather than to temple-prostitution the way fornication generally was for heterosexual couples (for those who disagree with me here, if it were including other forms of sexuality, such as oral sex, for example, there would have also been a verse forbidding women from lying with other women or from performing oral sex on other women, and since there isn’t, there’s literally no good reason to believe it’s including that particular act between men either) — and it should also be pointed out that just because something is forbidden, or even called “an abomination,” in the Mosaic law doesn’t make it wrong in and of itself, or else we Gentiles wouldn’t be allowed to eat bacon or shrimp or play Pick-up Sticks on Saturdays; many of the rules in the Mosaic law were there simply to make sure Israel was set apart from the other nations, and had nothing to do with something being inherently right or wrong. On top of that, the Bible definitely never says anything anywhere about love, romantic relationships, or sexuality between females. The passage in Paul’s epistle to the Romans about idolatry that some mistakenly use to argue against homosexuality does not actually condemn women lying with women as many believe, and was far more likely to have been referring to women lying with animals (an action that actually was forbidden in the Mosaic law) when the context of worshipping the creature in that passage is taken into consideration. The idea of women lying with women had never previously been forbidden in Scripture, so there’s no justification for claiming it was all of a sudden being forbidden at that point (again, Paul didn’t make up new sins that were never mentioned in the “Old Testament” books). And, of course, there’s also the fact that the actions mentioned here were actually “punishments,” so to speak, themselves. Paul’s point in this passage wasn’t that he was telling people to avoid certain sexual sins, but rather that the sin of idolatry would lead, or more likely led (past tense, quite likely referring to “sacred orgies” that included same-sex intercourse performed in worship of Baal-Peor in “Old Testament” times), certain people to certain negative consequences, such as performing acts that went against their nature as the heterosexuals they presumably actually were. As far as the rest of the passages in the “New Testament” books that people normally use to argue against same-sex relations go, those passages are horribly misunderstood. I don’t have room to get into all the details here, but when Paul wrote about same-sex relations in his other epistles, it’s really only idolatrous prostitution between males that he’s specifically condemning (much like the “fornication” issue between men and women). When you read, “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind … shall inherit the kingdom of God,” it’s easy to get confused if you’re basing your understanding of what some of those terms were referring to on what tradition and what your religious leaders have taught you, but as we already know, the word “fornicators” there is simply referring to a man who has illicit sex with a woman, specifically a man who has sex with a female temple-prostitute in this case, based on the context of the latter part of the chapter, which is men committing idolatry and worshipping other deities by joining themselves with a temple-prostitute. With that in mind, and based on the fact that sexual intercourse on its own was never forbidden between unmarried men and women, apart from specific circumstances primarily involving idolatry, as we learned earlier in this post (which tells us there’s basically no reason to assume there’s something wrong with sex between just men either), it stands to reason that the two terms which are used for same-sex relations in this passage are also referring to an illicit (idolatrous) form of same-sex relations. And, indeed, they are. When we again consider the context of the rest of the chapter, it becomes clear that the two words are referring to temple-prostitution just like “fornicators” and ”harlot” are. The first word is “effeminate,” referring in this case to a male temple-prostitute, and the second term being “abusers of themselves with mankind,” which basically refers to a man who slept specifically with male temple-prostitutes. So, to break it down, in Paul’s epistles a fornicator would be a male who sleeps with female temple-prostitutes, a harlot would be said female temple-prostitute, an “abuser of themselves with mankind” would be a male who sleeps with male temple-prostitutes, and an “effeminate” man would be said male temple-prostitute. Bottom line: it’s all about committing idolatry and has nothing to do with simple sexual desire or same-sex relations outside of temple-prostitution and the worship of other deities. Even if someone does decide to ignore all of the above, however, they should be warned that Scripture is very clear that it’s the anti-gay conservatives who are actually guilty of “the sin of Sodom” (which had nothing to do with homosexuality at all) today, and I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of these religious conservatives at the final judgement. Even if only indirectly, homophobic (and transphobic) conservatives are responsible for many homeless youth, as well as for numerous suicides, not to mention all the assaults against and even murders of people who are different from them when it comes to their sexuality and gender identity, and pretty much each and every conservative (whether they’re religious or not) is going to have to answer for their culpability in these horrors when they’re standing at the Great White Throne Judgement. Because even if they’re only indirectly responsible, they all still have a responsibility for all of this suffering nonetheless.
• Abortion is condemned by the Bible as murder. Regardless of one’s feelings on abortion (and whether it happens to actually be wrong or not, which I’m not taking a side on either way in this section), it isn’t ever mentioned in the Bible; and since murder is a legal term, it can’t legitimately be defined as murder in places where it’s not illegal (abortion might involve killing, but killing can only be classified as murder if the killing is unlawful under one’s human government, or capital punishment and the killing of enemy combatants in war would also have to be called murder, as would killing in self defence). Most Christians today also aren’t aware that abortion (at least if performed during much of the first two trimesters) was not actually considered to be wrong by most Christians throughout much of history either (at least among Christians who hold to Sola scriptura). This doesn’t necessarily matter as far as one’s consideration of the morality of abortion goes, since those of us in the body of Christ don’t base our theology on what Christians have historically considered to fall under the purview of “orthodoxy” or “orthopraxy” anyway, but it is still useful for us to know that until relatively recently evangelicals and other Protestants have actually been mostly okay with abortion, and that it was only due to the machinations of certain conservatives who decided to join forces with the Roman Catholics in their fight against abortion (although it appears that even Catholic opinions on abortion have changed over the years) in order to create the movement now known as the Religious Right so they could fight against desegregation and continue to promote racism that nearly everyone has been swayed into incorrectly assuming abortion has always been thought to be a sin by all Christians. All that said, there are some facts that are important to be aware of when it comes to abortion. The brain physically cannot have a consciousness (and so a fetus can’t be said to have a soul, because “soul” involves consciousness and feeling) until at least 24 weeks of gestation have passed (and likely more; maybe much more) because it does not have the structures necessary to develop consciousness or sentience. Therefore, since only about 1% of abortions take place after week 21, abortion in the overwhelming majority of cases definitely does not kill a living soul (it might kill something that is biologically human, but it’s not a “person” or a “soul”). It’s also important to note that abortions in the third trimester basically only ever take place because something has gone horribly wrong and the baby is going to die anyway (often in an extremely painful manner), and often because the pregnant mother will jeopardize her health if she continues with the pregnancy as well. No woman goes through months of pregnancy only to abort it near the end unless something is very wrong, and it’s almost certain that no doctor would do so for any other reason either, so these are all facts to keep in mind whenever someone insists that abortion is definitely wrong. Of course, it’s also important to note that a large number of Christians who today claim the “Pro-Life” label are only actually against abortion when it comes to other people’s abortions, thinking that the abortions they themselves have had are somehow okay, but that everyone else’s abortions are wrong and should be illegal, basically telling us that they believe the only moral abortions are the abortions they have, as well as that the main reason they’re fighting against abortion is actually because they want to punish other women for enjoying sex, and to ensure that those women suffer long-lasting consequences for their actions (they’ll argue that it’s actually because they think abortion is immoral and that they believe in “the sanctity of life,” but their hypocrisy, along with the way they treat those who have been born, reveals the real truth about them to the rest of us: that they don’t actually believe in “the sanctity of life,” or in ethical practices at all, for that matter).
• Monogamy is the only acceptable form of romantic relationship. Honestly, nearly every Christian is likely aware of the fact that polygamy and other forms of non-monogamy were considered to be an acceptable practice for people by God in the Bible, with the possible exception of local church overseers and deacons (depending on how one interprets those particular passages; there’s good reason to believe they’re actually just saying that an elder or deacon should have at least one wife, meaning they should not be single), but you’d never know it to hear them talk about it. God even told David that if he wanted more wives, rather than taking someone else’s wife all he had to do was ask God for more (and if polygamy is a sin, that would mean God would have been offering to help David sin). So basically, those conservatives who claim they’re fighting to promote “traditional marriage” really aren’t (if they were, they’d be promoting polygamy at the very least), and if monogamy was actually natural, cheating wouldn’t be so common in so many relationships (yes, even in Christian relationships).
• Swearing is shameful. I’m including this in the list because so much “swearing” here in the west is either sexual in nature, or is connected to shame about the human body and its functions. Scripture actually has plenty of profanity in it, even if it isn’t always obvious in English. In fact, the only thing that looking down on profanity does is demonstrate what an unspiritual (and likely hypocritical) snob one is.
All that said, I’m still not here to tell you that you should (or should not) participate in any of the activities I’ve discussed in this article. After reading everything I wrote above, the most important thing to remember is that, regardless of the conclusions you’ve come to as far as whether it would be sinful for you to participate in any of the actions I just discussed, if you’re in the body of Christ, you are not called to condemn the rest of the world for what they do, or to try to influence it to straighten up their walk. All you’re called to do is walk after the spirit, and let the rest of the world make their own decisions about morality.