One Christian's Explanation.
Posted by Kris the Girl on Sat, 02/05/2005 - 9:25am.
To answer this, I think I should back up and ask a different question first: Why did God create man?
The answer, as I understand it, is that God wanted to have a loving relationship with His creation. The natural things, the earth and sea, the plants and animals, all love and worship God simply by being--they are as he created them.
But He created man in His image. He also gave this new, different creature a soul--an eternal life-force that makes it more like God and less like another animal of creation. So man is cared for and loved by God as a unique and wholly different thing than anything else on this earth.

In the beginning, there was no sin. Adam and Eve (or the first peoples, if you will) lived in a Utopia, walking and communing with God. Now, the temptation of sin has always been around--the snake in the garden was known by God. He knew the threat. Adam and Eve let that temptation overwhelm them, and they ate the fruit from the one tree that God had said to leave alone.
I think it's worth pointing out here that the "sin" in this act was not actually the eating of the fruit, but in disobeying God.
In doing so, they allowed sin to enter the world, and all of creation--not just man, but the whole thing--fell from that utopian, perfect ideal that God had created. All of what we as Christians now call Sin stemmed from one act of disobedience.

So, now to your questions.
God cares what we do in all aspects of our lives, not just the ones our culture finds important. God created marriage first, before sex--my best guess would be to keep families together and give children two parents of different genders, and to satisfy what is truly the nature of humans, which is monogamous relationships. That's why he cares about ceremonies like marriage. He created sex for procreation, of course--but that doesn't explain why it's so enjoyable. I think it's also the approximation of expressing love that people have that comes closest to the full nature of the love of God, yet still falls far short.

But, like everything else in this world, sin has twisted something as holy and beautiful as sex, making it something people think they're entitled to or deserve because they want it. The idea that 'whatever feels right is right' is a fallacy. We get to deal with temptation and overcome it because we no longer inhabit a place called Perfect. Now it's acceptable in society to give in to your desires, to do whatever you want (as long as you aren't hurting anyone) and to simply seek after momentary fullfilment wherever you can.
God cares which two creations are having sex because any sex relationship outside of marriage is not as it was intended to be. It doesn't matter that it feels good, or right--sin wouldn't be tempting if it was boring--it's still outside of the will of God.


To add to what is already possibly the longest post ever, I'll say this: I also believe that all sins are equal. i don't think that babies born outside of marriage are cursed, or that people in relationships other than 'man+woman=married' are bad. People are just people, and as a Christian I am called not to judge them, but to love them. Am I an expert at this? Far from it--there are many people I have a hard time loving. Generally I struggle with loving selfish people. I have many gay friends, I know a lot of people who either live with someone else or have slept with their S/O's before...honestly, I don't care. I've comitted my own share of sexual sins, of sins in general. I don't want to commit more by laying down judgement on someone. That's not my job. I'm much more interested in knowing someone than judging them. I am sorry if anything I've said in this post has offended anyone, because that wasn't my intention--I just wanted to answer the question as fully and honestly as I know how.
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