Cohabitating with Special Privileges
Here is a quick thought about the churches and homosexuality. It is something that people who oppose the present teaching by churches on homosexuality and those who support it can both agree on.
Why is it that churches feel a need to work so tirelessly against homosexuals and “their agenda”, while at the same time welcoming couples who are unmarried and live together into their congregations and making no mention of it.
The reason I compare these two is because – according to an important factor of church dogma – they are the exact same thing. Sex out of wedlock is the issue in both cases.
Gay couples are “living in sin” in part because they are engaging in intimate relations with one another and doing so outside the bounds of holy matrimony. But the same can be said about the preponderance of couples in modern society who live together and who are not married. I would say that almost a quarter of the young couples I marry these days have children together before they get to the altar. So, there is no way that they are cohabitating chastely.
There are only three solutions to this mess, as I see it, and all require a greater degree of consistency on the part of the church and it’s witness to the world.
First, admit that cohabitation is not a sin and so homosexuality (or at least the cohabitation argument) is not a sin either.
Second, admit that homosexuality as cohabitation is a sin and so is all the other cohabitation going on. Kick the straight couples out church, refuse to marry them, preach against them, and require more discipline among the elect of God.
Third, admit that they are the same thing – bad, but not the end of the world. Most preachers and churches do not condone cohabitation, but they spend very little time fighting it. After all, there are two wars going on, the rich are getting richer at the expense of the rest of us, we have a lawless president in the White House, two parties who like to complain but do nothing about it, an education system that does not correlate to our wealth, abusive relationships, child molestation, widespread meaninglessness and hopelessness, and so much more. Perhaps as a church there are more important things we can worry about. We’ll get to this other stuff when we are ready to take a breath.
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